No doubt, the idea of being a professional photographer is a dream for many of us, but on the other hand, the reality of it can be far more difficult than you might imagine. This excellent video essay discusses some of the hard truths about being a professional photographer that you should be aware of before you undertake it.
Composition can be a tricky thing when it comes to landscape photography, with many different ways to approach creating successful images. This great video tutorial will show you a simple and straightforward technique for improving your landscape image compositions.
The world mourned when the crocodile whisperer and wildlife personality, Steve Irwin, was stabbed through the heart by a stingray. However, it seems his talents have carried over to his son, Robert, who has just claimed the top prize in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Leica adds its first true wide-angle lens, APO-Summicron-SL 28 f/2 ASPH, which joins APO-Summicron-SL series lens range.
Today I am interviewing my great friend and accomplished macro photographer Andres Moline. With an eye for design and a love of arthropods, Moline's work is truly captivating. He specializes in shooting sharp handheld focus stacks that leave you in awe looking at all of the little details.
The Fujifilm GFX 100S is one of the most impressive cameras we have seen in a long time, taking Fuji's highly respected 102-megapixel sensor from the GFX 100 and putting it in a much smaller body at nearly half the price, while still maintaining almost all the features from its larger sibling. This great video takes a first look at the camera and the kind of performance you can expect from it in the real world.
A wide-aperture 35mm lens is one of the most useful lenses a photographer can have in their bag, as it is versatile enough to tackle a wide variety of scenarios. Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 IS Macro STM takes that even further by adding macro capabilities, all in a very compact and affordable package. This excellent video review takes a look at how it holds up in practice.
Dust is the enemy of photographers in many ways, and unfortunately, it is just about everywhere. This excellent video discusses four ways dust affects your work and how to better deal with it before it detracts from the quality of your images.
Posing is something a lot of photographers struggle with, particularly since it is not something you can just learn objective values for like you can with camera settings. If that is something you are struggling with a bit, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you five tips for posing couples.
Have you ever taken an image and wished you'd taken a step farther back or used a slightly wider lens? Well, there may be hope yet.
When you look at the work of professional portrait photographers, you might notice that it often employs two- or three-light setups. And while those certainly have their place, you might be surprised by just how versatile a single light and a bit of know-how can be. This fantastic video tutorial will show you five useful single-light setups for portraiture work.
As you take pictures over the years, your mountain of images will grow. Many of them — indeed, most of them — will be forgettable, uninteresting, or unwanted. So, should you just delete them?
There is a wealth of information for every step of the photographic process, but one area that drastically improved my work some years ago is also one of the areas discussed the least.
Subscribing to the Adobe Creative Cloud is a big financial step for most beginning photographers. In this article, I’ll figure out if the free and open software RawTherapee is a real competitor when it comes to developing an image.
Lightroom is a more powerful and versatile program than a lot of photographers realize, and you can accomplish quite a bit in it without ever having to switch to Photoshop. This excellent video tutorial will show you five helpful tips for getting more out of Lightroom.
When it comes to portraiture, we most often choose light that is soft and flattering on the subject's features. However, that does not mean that direct sunlight is totally unusable for portraiture, and in fact, you can create great portraits with it if you know how to work with it. This excellent video tutorial will give you a wide variety of great tips to improve your portraits in directly sunlight.
Wide-aperture lenses are quite popular for a variety of creative uses and technical requirements, but they can also be highly expensive. The 7artisans Photoelectric 35mm f/0.95 is just $249, and this excellent video review takes a look at how it performs in practice.
Becoming a competent photographer with good creative aptitude is only half of what it takes to become a successful wedding professional. This fantastic video tutorial will give you a ton of helpful tips and information on how to start and build a wedding photography business.
If you are new to photography, you might have heard other photographers using the term "stops" quite a lot when it comes to camera and light settings. If you are not quite sure what the term means and how photographers use it, this excellent video tutorial will show you everything you need to know.
Golden hour is a fantastic time to shoot portraits, using the interplay between the warm and dramatic light and your subject to create visually compelling images. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how this golden hour portrait was lit, shot, and edited so you can try the same ideas and techniques yourself.
Godox’s line of flashes, including the incredibly popular AD200 and V1, have become a mainstay of the on and off-camera lighting market. They’ve become so popular, in part, thanks to the surprising value and feature set offered at each price point. As a result, the AD100Pro, a new addition to the line, has quite the legacy to live up to. Has it earned a place in photographer’s bags?
The last few years have been tumultuous for the camera industry in terms of plummeting sales and COVID-19, but that hasn't stopped the pace and innovation of camera development. So what are the key developments and what direction are manufacturers headed?
I recently tested out the Hasselblad CFV II and 907X with the XCD 4/45P lens, which Hasselblad totes as the smallest medium format setup on the market.
It might seem like a silly question; after all, modern lenses are almost universally optically superior to their vintage counterparts. But photography is about more than technical perfection, and vintage lenses may actually be the better choice for a variety of photographers and situations.
Back in the days of film cameras, a few select Canon bodies had a very interesting feature: autofocus points controlled by your eye. The feature never made it over to the digital side of things, but that may change soon enough, with a new patent showing Canon researching the possibility of adding it to its mirrorless line of cameras.
The new and more powerful Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro comes with a larger sensor, lightweight body, and other additional features with the modern videomaker in mind.
When it comes to landscape photography, deep depth of field and high levels of sharpness are often the name of the game. This excellent video tutorial discusses how to choose the right f-stop settings for maximizing the sharpness in your photographs.
A good macro lens is one of the most versatile you can own, useful not just for close-up shots, but also as an ultra-sharp portrait lens. Tamron's SP 90mm f/2.8 Di Macro 1:1 VC USD is highly affordable, and this fantastic video review takes a look at the kind of performance you can expect from it in practice.
Modern digital cameras can shoot remarkably quickly, but as impressive as they are, they have less machinery to move around than film cameras. This fun video shows the incredible mechanics behind an old 16mm film camera at 1,000 fps, allowing you to see how it all came together to produce watchable footage.
For hybrid shooters looking to stay compact and within a certain budget, choosing between the Fujifilm X-T4 and the notably older Sony a7 III can be a challenge. This short video puts the two head to head. Which one would be your choice?
It is very easy to take your camera and shoot a landscape. But there is a big chance it will be a disappointing photo. There are six things you should take into account when photographing a landscape. I call it the six pillars for a good landscape photo.
Avalanche for Mac is an interesting product for Mac photographers, and it has one function: to get your images out of one application catalog into another. With all the changes in photo applications, it's easy to switch to something that seems more useful, but often, the catalogs don't come along with your move. As catalogs embed more and more editing metadata, it gets even harder.
Whether you are new to shooting video or an experienced professional, we all make mistakes from time to time, and we might not always be able to shoot what we need again. This excellent video tutorial will show you five common mistakes people make when shooting video and how you can fix them in post.
The Canon EF 135mm f/2L is one of the company's most beloved portrait lenses, but having been released in 1996, you might wonder if it can keep up with today's high-resolution sensors. This excellent video pairs it with such a sensor to see how it performs.
The horizon element in an image can be used in a variety of ways to accentuate a scene, whether it's a dramatic sunset or a glorious sunrise. But have you ever thought of removing them to create fine art minimalist photos?
Today, Panasonic introduced their latest full-frame L-mount lens. The Lumix S 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 Macro O.I.S. is a telephoto zoom lens that opens up possibilities in a wide range of shooting situations.
For most of us, there's a lot of excitement involved in buying a new camera, but it might not be the best investment for upgrading the content you create. Here are 5 things you should upgrade first.
Long exposure photography is a staple of the craft and a right of passage for beginners, but if you have some photos or a time-lapse that wasn't a long exposure and you think it might have looked good as one, look no further.
A wide-aperture 35mm lens is one of the most versatile a photographer can own, suitable for a huge range of applications from portraiture to astrophotography or even as a walkaround option that lives on your camera. For Fuji shooters, there is the XF 23mm f/1.4 R lens, and this excellent video review takes a look at how it holds up in practice.
With the release of the EOS R5 and EOS R6 to complement the EOS R and EOS RP, Canon has created a very well-rounded line of full frame mirrorless cameras at a variety of price points. Which is the right one for you? This excellent video discusses the line from a wedding photographer's perspective.
In a recent conversation, a new photographer asked me a question that I had forgotten I'd had too when I was starting out. It was difficult to find much information that was actionable, so I'm going to do my best to provide it.
The wide-angle zoom lens is known as the “go-to” lens for landscape photography. It certainly has its benefits and in this article, I will explain how to compose for that distinctive dramatic look that a wide-angle lens can create.
When Japan Industrial Partners acquired the Olympus Imaging Division, it wasn't entirely clear what the future would hold for its storied lines of cameras. For fans of the cameras, there is a bit of good news: we can expect to see a new high-end camera from OM Digital Solutions at some point.
Portraiture is a challenging genre, as it requires the confluence of creative ideas, solid technique, and the ability to work with and direct people. If you are new to photographing portraits, this great video will give you five tips to improve your work.
Whether it is weddings, portraits, or something else, any genre in which you photograph people will require you to whiten a person's teeth at some point. This quick and to-the-point video tutorial will show you to easily and efficiently do that in just a few seconds using Photoshop.
A lot of photographers like to use a shallow depth of field for portraiture; however, if you are lighting your subject with flash, you will be limited by the flash sync speed of your camera. There are ways around this, however: high-speed sync and ND filters. Both come with their own pros and cons, and this excellent video discusses which is better for your work.
Many newer mirrorless cameras are on the more expensive side, but we have also seen a few budget models that offer affordable entry points into the world of full frame mirrorless. This excellent video review takes a look at one such option, the Nikon Z 5.
The Sony a1 mirrorless camera is here, and it takes a no-compromise approach to its design that is meant to handle whatever photo or video work you can throw at it. This great video review takes a look at the camera for both photo and video applications and discusses the sort of performance you can expect from it in practice.
Are we sometimes a little too obsessed with the quality of bokeh in our photography? Yes. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a little fun with it.
70-200mm lenses are highly versatile, and though f/2.8 is the professional standard, not everyone needs that wide aperture or wants to spend the money to carry around that sort of bulk. 70-200mm f/4 lenses offer the same focal length range at a more affordable price and in a more portable form, and this great video review takes a look at Canon's mirrorless version, the RF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM.
