With the advent of self-publishing and digital magazines, the landscape of print media has evolved. With many fashion magazines and communities that feature the work of many involved in the industry, the debate over the value of being published has been a hot topic in fashion circles. So what exactly is the value of being a published photographer in the digital age?
My favorite part of the wedding day is the reception. After the traditional first dances, and speeches are done, and the wedding party starts to let loose. The party is in full swing and the best man is giving “The Dougie” his best attempt in an effort to win a dance battle against the bride. While capturing these images I want the viewer to feel like they were in there, in the moment. My goal is to not light up the entire room like a Christmas tree. I want to see the light from the DJ and the motion on the dance floor. This is how I do just that.
As you build up your clientele, you will undoubtedly encounter a host of requests that can blindside you. Many photographers will learn quickly how being a good salesmen is just as vital to their business as the quality of their photographs. Below I have compiled a list of the most common customer concerns, and how to best overcome them while building value in yourself and in your brand.
Warm smiles and serene sun flares seem to be landing on the shoulders of portraits all over the internet nowadays. Complimented with beautiful bokeh from a shallow depth of field, the allure of a sun-kissed image image is easy to see. What happens when mother nature doesn't seem to be on your side? In this article, I am going to show you how to master "faking" sun flare.
As a photographer, my skill set is constantly put to the test. In most cases, I’m handed an idea on a slab of wood and the mission is to hand that idea translated to a tangible artifact back to my client on a silver platter. It’s never an easy process, but it’s a part of my job.
Getting your clients comfortable in front of a camera is always a challenge. I still get a little nervous before a shoot so I can imagine what my clients must feel like. In part one of this series, we talked about the importance of the pre-shoot consultation and how it can start you off on a good path toward a successful headshot or portrait session. In this article, I want to talk about ways we can address skin issues with our clients, how to deal with makeup, when to use a makeup artist, and discuss the basics of getting clients comfortable and focused in front of the camera.
Most of us love natural light and feel comfortable shooting with it – but how well do you really know how to utilize it effectively and to control it with precision? I just spent the day with Erik Valind, a New York City-based lifestyle photographer in his 'Controling Natural Light' workshop. Here are 17 simple ways to help get great results from better understanding and utliizing natural light.
Lighting isn't easy, a world-class-perfectly-lit studio portrait happens with a lot of instinct and experience. A strong grasp of lighting comes with experimentation and practice. Those that know my aesthetic know I'm a huge fan of one light photography. With that said, every image I produce I try and maintain the look of one light, even though it very well be lit with six lights. If I'm shooting for a hair, the hair needs to be well lit. If I'm shooting for makeup, the light needs to fill the face and really show detail. The same applies to product photography or fashion. I always give the client what they need, but always retain my dramatic lighting style.
It's a common problem to have a variation of colors across the skin in any image. This may occur for many reasons, such as blood flow, skin quality and texture, or lighting changes. It's always been a hassle to fix this since it requires some guess work and tweaking. It's often not as precise as it could be either. Michael Woloszynowicz has come up with a brilliant way of color correcting skin in a way that I've never seen before!
There is an old quote that says, “If you want to shoot fashion, shoot in color, but if you want to shoot emotion, shoot in black and white.” I don’t know who said it, but I tend to agree. I do love myself a good black and white portrait. There is something special about black and white imagery which has the ability to cut through all the baggage and display both the inner beauty and turmoil which can be so easily hidden away by color photography.
Frequency separation is an amazing technique used to retouch skin. It separates the color from the texture and allows you to work on them separately. In this tutorial, Elena Jasic goes over how she uses frequency separation in her retouching workflow.
As I promised when I wrote my Anatomy of An Interior Shoot post a few weeks ago, if the interest was there, I'd continue the series. I'm happy to report that I've got much more in stock for you. If you're interested in kicking your architectural and interiors photography into high gear and adding some special sauce to your photos, this post is for you.
Understanding how to fine-tune colors in your images can dramatically improve your final results.
Adobe Lightroom has continued to improve as various tools inside the software have matured. One area in Lightroom that has made tremendous advances is masking, but are you maximizing the masking options in your photo editing to take advantage of these impressive features?
There are seven common traps that many photographers fall into that rarely get spoken of. Does your work fall into any of these? Here’s how to spot them and escape their clutches.
Mastering black and white photography can transform your landscape images into stunning works of art. This video offers a five secrets to elevate your black and white photos, guiding you through techniques rarely discussed.
The 16-35mm wide angle zoom lens is often seen as essential for landscape photography. Its versatility makes it a staple in many photographers’ toolkits. Here's how to get the most from it.
There are good reasons why monochrome photography is compelling. Let’s look at what makes a captivating black-and-white photograph and what doesn’t work. Also, why Nik 7 SilverEfex is possibly the best tool for converting color images.
Creating great images doesn't always require complex setups. Sometimes, all you need is a single strobe and a bit of creativity.
Imagine heading to a photo shoot and noticing afterward that most images you took are partially out of focus. You are sure you set the focus right, and the depth of field in the photos is also sufficient. The problem might be a decentered lens.
Half of the lenses I bought in the past 15 years were decentered. At first, I didn't know of that problem. The first wide angle lens I got from Canon required focus-stacking all the time. Since I mostly shot landscapes, it wasn't clear to me that this was due to a problem with the lens and not because of the topography of the...
Isolating your subject is a key technique that can dramatically improve your images. It helps draw the viewer's eye to the most important part of the picture, creating a more engaging and impactful photograph. Whether you're shooting portraits, landscapes, or product photography, mastering this technique can elevate your work.
Composition is a crucial element in photography, often separating a good photo from a truly captivating one. While understanding camera settings is essential, developing your eye for composition can elevate your images and help you create a unique style.
Lightroom masking tools offer quite a lot of control and precision when editing photos. This helpful video tutorial offers 15 masking tips and tricks specifically tailored for landscape photographers, with techniques that refine skies, add ethereal fog, create custom vignetting, and dodge and burn, all while maintaining a natural aesthetic.
Landscape photographers look forward to days with foggy conditions, which help create interesting scenes to photograph. But timing your outing with those types of conditions isn’t always possible. Using Lightroom, you can use several techniques to enhance the atmosphere of your photos.
Capturing a stunning photograph often requires more than just pointing and shooting. Post-processing plays a crucial role in enhancing your images and bringing your creative vision to life.
Light: it's the essence of photography. For landscape photographers, understanding and utilizing natural light is paramount. Unlike studio photographers who can manipulate artificial lighting, landscape photographers must embrace the ever-changing dance of sun and shadow, turning it into an ally rather than an obstacle.
If it’s not on paper, it’s not a real photograph. You must’ve heard this sentence at least once in your photographic journey. For many, it rings true. The best way to appreciate our captures is to hold them on a physical paper. But how to best print at home? Which printer to get? How to use it?
Understanding when and how to use black and white photography is a crucial skill for any photographer seeking to elevate their work. While color photography often takes center stage, black and white offers a unique way to interpret and present the world, emphasizing form, light, and shadow in ways that color simply cannot replicate.
If you are shooting in color but have no familiarity with color theory, you could be leaving a lot on the table when it comes to the quality and impact of your photography. Even an image with perfect exposure and artful composition can still be a dud if it lacks a compelling color palette.
Understanding the nuanced interplay between contrast, texture, and clarity is pivotal for properly enhancing image details and directing viewer attention. Each tool manipulates image contrast in distinct ways. This helpful video tutorial will walk you through the differences.
Allowing your shutter to stay open for longer can transform your images from mundane to something enthralling. Here’s how to precisely achieve various creative effects to tell your photographic story.
Post-processing is crucial in landscape photography, as almost every photo will have some level of editing. This helpful video breaks down the process and will help you improve your work in a straightforward way.
Landscape photography often challenges photographers to find beauty and composition in less than ideal conditions. This excellent video tutorial ventures into a seemingly mundane weather day and showcases this skill, demonstrating the potential of "boring" weather to produce stunning, intimate landscape shots.
Lightroom has some advanced tools for realizing your creative vision, split toning being one of the most useful for landscape photographers. This fantastic video tutorial demonstrates how Lightroom's split toning tools can significantly enhance an image's visual appeal, offering a practical guide on adding depth and contrast to photos.
Understanding and mastering lighting patterns is a critical skill for any photographer focusing on portraiture. This great video breaks down five primary lighting patterns and their storytelling purposes, offering invaluable insights for photographers looking to elevate their portrait work.
There are a lot of great tools available for editing, and my favorite techniques tend to have large impacts for little effort. Lightroom's masking tool does this better than anything else I've ever used. This guide will teach you everything you could possibly want to know about Lightroom masking regardless of your skill level.
Creating artificial fog in Lightroom Classic offers photographers another tool to enhance the mood and depth of their images. This technique is particularly useful for adding a mystical or ethereal quality to landscapes, elevating the visual narrative of the scene.
Photoshop's keyboard shortcuts offer an invaluable tool for photographers, streamlining their workflow and increasing efficiency. These shortcuts, often underutilized, can significantly reduce editing time and simplify complex tasks, making them a crucial aspect for any serious photographer.
Winter landscape photography presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities, making it a fantastic pursuit for anyone who enjoys the genre. This helpful video tutorial discusses some common mistakes and how you can avoid them in your work.
Continually exploring new techniques is essential for capturing your best images, especially in landscape photography. The practice of exposure bracketing, a technique of taking multiple photographs of the same scene at different exposure levels, is one of those valuable tools for photographers seeking to achieve perfect exposure in their images.
There is a lot of various advice on the internet. A large chunk of it is bad or irrelevant. Editing images is an art. It is an art that takes a while to master. Because there is so much bad info online, I decided to share some of my favorite editing techniques I use to get my signature look.
Just like most photographers, my off-camera flash journey began with the purchase of a speedlight and some inexpensive triggers. Many photographers will tell you that as soon as you get a speedlight, you need to acquire proper off-camera flash units. However, there are still many things you can do with a speedlight, and in this article, I will show you some of them.
One of the subtlest and yet most important skills an accomplished photographer has is the ability to look at a scene, no matter how ordinary, and find a way to portray it that captures the viewer's eye and imagination. How does one go about actually doing that? This great video follows one photographer discussing the process.
In an era where technological advancements have revolutionized the way we capture and manipulate images, the question of the histogram's relevance in today's photography is a pertinent one.
You’ve probably heard many outright lies about Micro Four Thirds. It’s suffered attacks from certain quarters, sometimes from those openly in the pay of its competition. Here’s everything you need to know about the system and why it’s a great option for professional and amateur photographers alike.
A few months ago, I shared how to take stunning night photos. There, I touched on the technical aspects of taking and editing such images. In today's article, I expand on the topic, focusing on creating perfectly noise-free night images.
Learning lighting is often considered the first step toward capturing better photos. When I began my journey, I delved into discovering various techniques and unconventional methods for creating truly unique setups that leave clients in awe. In this article, I will share my five favorite lighting hacks.
It can be a strange experience to take a photo you know is sharp, only for it to look soft despite getting everything right. If you know your technique is solid, but your photos still do not look sharp enough, check out this great video tutorial that discusses some of the reasons technically sharp photos can look soft and what you can do to improve them.
Photography is as much a business as it is an art. Amid the myriad choices that shape a photographer's journey, one pivotal decision looms large: pricing. For those straddling photography alongside another profession, striking the right pricing balance can be both an art and a science. Navigating my dual professional roles, I discovered that pricing isn't merely a reflection of an image's worth; it's a strategic tool, ensuring equilibrium between passion, profession, and personal moments.
