Why do you feel it's OK to work without pay? Other occupations charge, and they charge handsomely for their expertise, but photographers are seemingly shy when it comes to money. Knowing this crowd, I'll need an obligatory qualifier: Not all photographers are shy, but a lot of them are.
Photographers spend a ton of time working on their technical and creative skills both with their cameras and in their post-processing. But the most important skill you can have as a professional has nothing to do with either of those.
New features added to Photoshop and Lightroom today might change how you edit your photos, but it entirely depends on what kind of images you make and what your current workflow is like. This is my review of the new features and whether you'll want to dive in or avoid them.
There are loads of tutorials out there for editing portrait photography, so I thought I would put together a reasonably comprehensive yet short guide to editing food photographs.
As you get more comfortable with editing, you’ll probably come across color spaces. Just picking a random color space to edit or export with can cause major issues with your photos, however. Want to know which color space to use and when?
There's a seldom discussed threat to any business owner or self-employed person. That threat can drastically affect photographers if they aren't aware of it, and it has been seen many times over already.
This year has forced many photographers and filmmakers to take an extended break from their day jobs and stay home. The newfound stresses that come with quarantine have left a lot of us uninspired, while others have used this time to pursue projects they couldn't find time for before. One professional filmmaker used his time during quarantine to create a beautiful Sci-Fi short film, from the comfort of his own home.
B-roll is one of the most important parts of visual storytelling, but it can be difficult to know where to start when it comes to capturing engaging shots.
Modern cameras are little technical marvels packed to the brim with interesting and useful features — some more useful than others. Here are five of the most overrated camera features.
Photographers from rank amateurs with their first camera through to seasoned veterans of the industry miss shots. The difference is that generally, the latter miss far fewer. Here are five tips to help you nail more shots.
Storing seamless paper rolls in your home or studio is always a bit of a task, especially once the collection has grown over the years. Although there are off-the-shelf options, I found that this simple $20 build does a great job.
In this video Jason Boone gives us a calculation and some apps we can use to calculate what we need to add to our invoice as the cost of capturing and storing the data.
The basic answer is that their videos are more complex. They have more setups and budget, sure, but in these videos, Josh Olufemii goes through the details to show what they do with regards to color, contrast, lighting, depth, and composition.
The tone curve is easily one of the most useful and versatile tools for editing your images, and its power extends far beyond simply editing the light and shadow in your images. If you need to learn more about how to use it for your own work, this great video will get you up and running in no time.
For many Instagram users, hub accounts can be a source of inspiration and being featured can be a game changer. For Jason, it was his opportunity to foster a sense of community.
We have all done it. It doesn't matter how long you have been a photographer; at some point, you will take the perfect shot, but the flash will not fire, you will have slipped and moved the shutter speed, or any manner of blunders. Here is how I fix them.
I've been using Photoshop in its many incarnations for over twenty years now. Even though I'm incredibly familiar with the program, I still managed to learn some new tricks thanks to this Photoshop master.
We would all love to become better photographers and make more money from our work. If you want to become a better photographer, make more money, and have more subject matter to shoot, you should consider shooting around your home area more.
If you’re photographing the ongoing protests taking place in cities across the world, you might want to consider making the people in those photographs anonymous and stripping the EXIF data before putting them online. Here are some tools to make the process easier.
I recently used one of my quarantine nights to create an art project for myself. A few weeks ago the rules were stricter about staying home and I used it as an opportunity to expand my own skills and vision. I encourage photographers who are stuck at home either because of the quarantine or protest curfews to push their limits and try new things.
With many online selling platforms now presenting rotating images of products, knowing how to create a 360-degree shot might be an important addition to your business. This excellent tutorial shows you a very simple and affordable setup.
In this video, I go over how I price local and small commercial photography jobs. The video covers day rates, license fees, and how they differ from bigger jobs.
Photography has changed as a profession. In this video, I go over how I make my money as a photographer, including a full breakdown of my income streams and what percentage of my income they comprise.
The first thing you should be doing when editing landscapes (or any kind of photo) in Lightroom is to apply a new profile. By adjusting this base render of your raw files, you’re providing a solid foundation on which to edit.
If you struggle with the different concepts of composition, this in-field tutorial might be something for you.
Distractions can ruin what would otherwise be a great photo, and they can sneak up on you more easily than you might expect. This interesting video discusses the issues of distractions in landscape photos and what we can do about them.
Composition is a tricky and intricate aspect of landscape photography, and though there are no hard and fast rules, there are lots of great tricks and guidelines that can help you on your way. This helpful video will show you seven great tricks to improve your landscape image compositions.
Compact cameras have fallen from popularity in the last decade with the rise of the smartphone, with most photographers working with their full setup and carrying a phone on the side. However, some photographers still carry along a compact camera, and this great video discusses why you should consider doing the same.
Noise is something we pretty much all try to minimize in our photos, and we know that one of the best ways to avoid it is to shoot at as low an ISO as possible. But even at low ISO values, you can still see noise, particularly as you shoot longer exposures. This great video will show you what long exposure noise is, why it happens, and how you can fix it.
Capture One is already quite a powerful tool for working with portraits (and is used by a lot of top professionals), and the latest version brings a variety of useful new features. This great video will show you how to retouch portraits using Capture One 20.
In my experience, it's been rare for me to watch a tutorial on YouTube and feel completely satisfied with the information being presented. In many instances, the information is either really basic, common knowledge or just a new way of saying something that's already been said. The video linked above is a very welcome change from that.
When it comes to photographing models, a comfortable subject can make for exceptional photos. Making your subjects feel like they are in a safe and welcoming environment will make your photoshoot a successful photo set for both your portfolio and the models. As a photographer, it is your responsibility to make the subject of your images feel comfortable and in a safe space.
Plugins for both photography and video are plentiful nowadays, and the quality of them varies hugely. Here are one cinematographer's favorite video plugins that he is glad he invested in.
You will often hear proponents of prime lenses tell fans of zoom lenses to simply "zoom with their feet." However, zooming with your feet will not produce the same image as zooming with your lens, and understanding the difference will give you lots of creative capabilities for taking more powerful images. This helpful video will show you the difference and the impact it will have on your photos.
A lot of beginner photographers hear the advice that professionals only shoot in manual mode and that it is a necessary method for becoming truly adept with a camera. And while there is certainly some truth to the benefits of using manual mode, you might be surprised just how often professionals use various semi-automatic modes, and this great video discusses why and how they can benefit your own work.
The blur tool was once a largely useless feature, only applicable in niche uses. That's no longer the case and it's now more powerful than ever before. In this video you will see five different effects you can utilize in your photography.
Creativity and productive is difficult to maintain at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. So why not try a simple and straightforward trick that can aid in both?
Pratik Naik is one of the more recognizable people in the photography industry, with tutorials across numerous educational platforms. But what most people don't know about Pratik Naik is that he was never supposed to be a retoucher.
In this video I show you around my commercial food photography studio. This is very much a place to create and steps away somewhat from the pristine white, minimalist set up to complete and utter (organized) chaos.
I firmly believe that anyone starting out with artificial lighting should master working with a single light first, but that does not mean one-light setups can't produce versatile and professional results. This great video will show you a critique of several one-light images and provide you with a ton of helpful advice on lighting, posing, and more.
Portrait photographers are told time and time again that their goal is to somehow bring a subject's soul, as Godard would phrase it, to life. Is this just myth? Is it even possible? Can you manipulate what aspects of a person's personality are highlighted in a portrait?
Even if you’ve never blurred an image in Photoshop in your life, you might be aware that usually the best way to do it is by using Gauss. But who is Mr. Gauss, why is he so good at blurring images, and why would image editing be completely different without him?
A lot of us are stuck at home right now and probably itching for something to shoot to keep our technical skills sharp and the creative juices flowing. If you are looking for something that is a ton of fun to shoot, now is a great time to learn more about splash photography, and this great video will get you up and running in no time.
Are you starting to book in clients for when the lockdown restrictions are lifted? Why not give your posing technique a quick refresh before photographing people again?
Photographing cars is no small task — literally. Their size makes them trickier to photograph than a lot of other subjects, requiring more lights, more space, and a range of other adjustments and considerations to create a successful shot. This interesting video shows you what it takes to photograph a car in a studio.
If you want to create a consistent body of work, it is crucial that you unify the elements of style that go into each image. One of the most overlooked of these is proper cropping, and this excellent video will show you why that is such a crucial thing to master.
Of course, having technical skills and the ability to craft a well-exposed and edited photo are important, but if your images are not telling a story, viewers will not find them compelling. This fantastic video will show you how to improve the storytelling in your photos.
Focal length is one of the most crucial choices in making a landscape photo and can drastically alter the look of the final image. How do you choose the right focal length for a given scene? This excellent video the importance of foreground elements and how to create a balanced composition through the correct choice of focal length.
When you are new to Photoshop, some of the first things you should learn about are layers and masking. Now is an excellent time to work on your editing skills, and this fantastic video will get you up and running on how layers and masking work and what they are useful for.
Capture One 20 recently gained some powerful and useful new features that will make the workflow of a lot of photographers more efficient and make it easier to accomplish more. This great video takes a look at the new features and what you can accomplish with them.
