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One of the most intimidating things to learn when it comes to lighting is how to choose the right light modifiers. There are countless umbrellas, softboxes, octaboxes, stripboxes, and beauty dishes offered. All these contraptions help shape the way light spreads in different ways, and the appearance of the people and objects we photograph will be affected by this. The decision can be crippling. Thankfully there is an easy way to choose, and it’s all about understanding the language of light.

As the old adage goes, it’s not the gear, it’s the photographer that takes a good photo. While this is generally true, is there something to be said about $20,000 worth of Broncolor lighting gear? I mean a flash of light is a flash of light, right? Or is it?

Last year at my workshop in the Bahamas, my students challenged me to photograph a hotel room in under five minutes. They then wanted to see how fast I could retouch it, and I've decided to do it again, this time capturing it on camera, to show everyone what is possible with only a few minutes on location, a bit of Photoshop knowledge, and of course a lot of practice in the art of previsualization!

Everything starts from nothing. Thousands dream of being full time photographers, but knowing how to start a business - and how to grow it - are really tricky parts of a complex equation. Emily Soto today celebrates 4 years of full time professional photography. In this exclusive interview, she shares insights on how she has grown her business, as well as the struggles, hardships and rewards she's encountered along the way. If you're curious about what it takes to make it as a successful photographer today, this might just provide the answers you've been looking for.

The human expression is, for me, the most powerful form of communication we have. We all remember the looks our moms and dads gave us when we did something wrong, or the look on the face of the person we love when we proposed. These looks are just a few of the powerful ways we can communicate with no words, and it’s this that is the holy grail in portrait photography, whether it be stills or video.

This week I wanted to share a few of the tools we commercial photographers use to create our tabletop images. Particularly the items used in photographing beverages. There's a lot of trial and error when it comes to this sort of photography, often times we find ourselves using things in ways far from their originally intended purpose. Having said that, there's a lot of things that have become kind-of standard practice in food/beverage photography, some of those items I'll share with you today.

We’ve studied how direction and angle can drastically change the quality of light produced from your umbrella. We have also seen examples about how distance can change the umbrella light falling on your subject.

Now it’s time to look at the big picture. Let’s take a peek at how our umbrella is actually producing light across the whole image, not just the subject that you chose. In Umbrellas 103, we’re going to study fall off, and compare the type of light produced by four different shoot thru and reflective umbrellas.

If you’ve ever wondered why you might use a giant umbrella instead of a small, collapsible model, this article is for you!

As a commercial photographer, I specialize in product, food, and architecture. One of the products we've been shooting a lot of lately is jewelry, specifically jewelry for catalog use. In my opinion, jewelry is one of the hardest things to photograph, and many photographers don't know where to start. Whenever we're tasked with photographing shiny, reflective, spherical objects, our studio sounds like a group of sailors on leave with all the profanity flying around (often times strung together to make complete sentences).

So it goes without saying that there are a ton of different ways to match skin tones across your subject or between images in Photoshop so it's often just a matter of picking the option that is most convenient or intuitive. Despite the wide array of choices, I seldom see people use the selective color adjustment layer for this task. The beauty of selective color is that it allows us to go off the numbers rather than intuition and achieve an accurate result in little time.

One of the most overlooked, yet most used items in a photographer's arsenal, is the grip kit. A grip kit isn't something most photographers set out to buy, build, or assemble, it's generally born from necessity. Over the years we find ourselves on jobs needing certain things that we don't have readily available and we end up improvising to get the job done. Usually we make a mental note of how we can be more prepared in the future, which often times leads to adding small "grip" items to our pack list. When we collect enough of these items, they typically make their way into some sort of crate, bag, or box also known as a grip kit.

Our DSLRs have confused us. We obssess over the wrong things. Sharpness at 400%; bokeh characteristics of lenses produced from what-must-surely-be prancing magical unicorns; high speed burst frame rates that make cameras sound like gatling guns; 4k resolution to shoot better cat videos; 100 auto focus points that still won’t focus on what we need them to; and noise performance at 400,000 ISO. Absolutely none of these will make your photographs better. Shooting film will though, here's why.

During our 2014 Fstoppers Workshops in the Bahamas students had the privilege of watching 10 successful photographers share their top photographic techniques. Commercial and celebrity portrait photographer Michael Grecco taught classes on environmental portraiture and sexy swimwear photography, so of course we thought it would be awesome to tag along as Michael explained some of the tips that make his portraits so unique.

With the brand new Fstoppers website, everyone can now upload a portfolio to a profile for the world to comment and rate your photos. After just a couple of days from launch Jaime Ibarra's photos exploded onto the front page, with a whole series of popular photos and with good reason. His photos are a beautiful combination of emotion, concept and color that you cant help but be stunned.

Posing your subjects can be one of the most challenging tasks you have to face on shoot-day. If the person in front of your camera is not a supermodel who knows all the tricks, chances are you'll have to direct and pose that person (or people) in order to get pleasing images that make them look at their best. If you're in the business of photographing people, you should clear your schedule and watch this 2-hour B&H class as soon as possible.

In beauty and portrait retouching, one of the most important goals is to retain skin texture and keep the image from looking soft. We often however face a situation where the existing texture is unflattering and harsh. While we could heal out each pore or patch manually, this often leads to sub-par results and takes a long time. In this video I'll show you a unique, precise and fast way to target a particular texture frequency and offset it in a largely automated way.

In every business, and every industry, a decision has to be made as to what value a certain product or service holds and what the consumer should be charged. As Wedding photographers, we are often blasted with the stigma of over charging for what “seems” to be an easy and enjoyable job that takes only one day to complete. Obviously we know how false that is, but how do we logically and honestly figure out how to price ourselves?

In an instant, one can feel as though they are in another world. As a landscape photographer you have the power to transport someone in the blink of an eye and send them on a journey into your photography to see the incredible world we live in. Creating amazing landscapes goes far beyond just snapping photos using the HDR setting on an iPhone. Landscape photography can seem daunting, but after reading these secrets to landscape photography, there will be no excuse to why you can’t take mesmerizing landscapes yourself!

Zoom, focus, spray and pray. That seems to be the M.O. of many photographers who shoot runway. I admit, I was one of those photographers. The one who scours through thousands of images at the end of the night, wishing they had shot more strategically. And, after two hours of culling, flagging three images per look, they’d be lucky if only one was tack sharp. After many shows, I’d criticize my every move and would long for a time machine to do it all over again.

One week from today I’ll be on the other side of the world, shooting a personal project that’s been years in the making. On the one hand, I have to be prepared for all kinds of situations. On the other, I can’t bring a suitcase. What do I bring… what do I leave behind… and can I get away with only one shirt?

Color banding is a problem we encounter when retouching many of our images or making them ready for print, but in many of the cases we just ignore it hoping no one will notice. In this long and detailed video, photographer / illustrator Lee Varis explains why banding appears in our photos, how we can recognize it, and shows the best methods we can use to fix it.

The first time I saw a levitation shot, I stared at it for 15 minutes in astonishment. I could not conceive how the image was captured; I was captivated by the story it conveyed, it was surreal, magical and awe-inspiring. Conceptualizing the image and executing it can prove to be rather difficult and meticulous. Thankfully, photographers who have mastered the techniques involved in levitating have decided to share their secrets with us.

About 15 years ago, the first DSLR was introduced. The Nikon D1 showed consumers that digital was the future, and was quickly superseded by the Canon 1D. Sporting just 2.7 megapixels (and 4.15 megapixels for the Canon D1), the technology wasn't quite there to make the DSLR groundbreaking. 15 years later, the DSLR has become the staple for photographers everywhere. So where will we be in say, another 15 years?

This year for Christmas I wanted to surprise my father with his dream car, an original Chevrolet Camaro convertible in hugger orange with white rally stripes. Being that I'm a photographer I decided to photograph the car and give my father a framed print of the car before I revealed that I am actually giving him the car.

Phlearn has something ridiculous like 500 free photoshop tutorials to help you polish your images. This tutorial series, so far, has been one of my favorites. Aaron Nace, the founder of Phlearn, shows us a new technique with custom brushes for giving your subjects a unique corporate head shot look. This tutorial is a 4 part video series, enjoy.