The freelance lifestyle can be both creatively and financially rewarding but it does also come with a few hidden pitfalls that need to be avoided at all costs. If you want to minimize your chances of failure it is well worth having these 10 things in place long before you take the leap.
It feels like an increasing occurrence to meet creatives — particularly photographers — who feel no obligation to have their own website. Here's why it's still imperative to have an online portfolio that is readily available for your clients to access.
Workflow efficiency can always stand to be improved, and keyboard shortcuts are one of those little things that can add up to big savings over time. Here are seven such shortcuts for hopping around Lightroom as quickly as possible.
We have all been guilty of watching someone’s Instagram account and wonder how the hell the pictures are edited. Sebastian from TechGenie has recently been creating videos to demonstrate how to mimic some famous Instagramers editing style. The latest one on the list is named Sam Kolder and his desatured teal and orange look.
Whether you're a full-time photographer, interested in making the transition from hobbyist to professional, or just using photography on the side, attracting more clients is paramount to success and growth. With a plethora of photographers saturating the market, it can be intimidating and difficult to carve yourself a slice, but carve you must. Here are five of the most important ways I have attracted new clients.
Don't get me wrong, natural light and golden hour are gorgeous and a huge part of what we do. But, in addition to these types of photographs, we have built our name on imagery that differs from the typical wedding or couples photograph. Our studio (Lin and Jirsa Photography) has become known for unique and epic environmental portraits. While almost every client wants golden hour imagery, these stand-out epics help draw clients to our brand in the first place.
Posing is a highly nuanced art that can take a lot of experience to feel comfortably proficient at. This helpful video will give you 10 tips for better poses when working with women.
Seven years since inception, I have shot over 250 weddings across the world and it all began from that first itch to capturing someone’s special memory and putting a smile on their face. Looking back is always fun; a lot of mistakes made and lessons learned. As a wedding photographer, I sat by and thought over what I’d say to myself if I were to begin fresh now. Now, this post is not just to those who are raring to get started in photography, but also to the beginner in each one of us who loves to get started every now and then with a fresh perspective.
Shooting off-camera flash is one of the most important skills you can learn as a photographer. In this video, you'll learn exactly how to do that during the evening and see some wonderful portraits made using the techniques contained herein.
There are countless photographers out in the world who are producing truly exceptional work in the field of boudoir. Local to me in Utah, the field is one where most of the boudoir photographers are women. The ratio of boudoir photographers from female to male is really irrelevant, so I didn't even bother trying to figure it out. Starting to offer boudoir services as a male photographer was a fairly daunting idea to me, particularly because the community in which I live is fairly conservative and the boudoir genre itself is not as widely accepted as it might be in other communities around the globe. If you find yourself in a similar situation then here are a few ideas to hopefully help you get up and running.
The healing brush in Photoshop is a potent tool to clean things up. It can be used in numerous scenarios and works well most of the time. However, if there's one scenario where it doesn’t perform like we would like it to, it’s in the case of edges. For example, when you need to alter the edge of a face on a portrait or the border of a building when shooting architectural images, it tends to mess things up and create some sort of blurry areas instead of clean lines. In this tutorial, Joseph Parry shows us how to make the healing brush work the way we want it in those situations.
When shooting fast-paced action or a scene with tons of movements, it can be interesting to add more drama by using speed ramping. The technique consists in having a scene that’s played at different speeds depending on what’s happening. It may not make sense for now, but if you want to make your videos more attractive or just add a new tool to your belt, be sure to watch this tutorial.
Artificial lighting is one of the best tools a photographer can learn to implement in his work. It’s not something we have to use and rely on all the time, but knowing it’s there and not being afraid of it is always best. When working in a studio for portrait and beauty photography, it can become a necessity depending on the natural light you have and the looks you shoot. In this short behind the scenes, Rossella Vanon shows how she created six different lighting setups that keep a consistent feeling. Take this opportunity to learn new lighting setups and understand her thought process when building a set.
Photography is all relative to the creator and the viewers, so the decision of whether to underexpose, overexpose, or to expose your portraits evenly is obviously subject to personal preference. There is merit to any of the methodologies that you could apply to your own photography and it really just comes down to figuring out what works best for you and your gear.
Most photographers use their cameras on a daily basis with little or no thought to how it functions under the hood. For the most part, this makes sense, mastering a tool doesn't require understanding exactly how it functions on the most intimate technical level. There are, however, aspects of camera operation that a cursory knowledge of can aid in being better equipped to address unexpected technical or mechanical issues. Given that autofocus can be finicky, it quickly becomes one of the critical aspects of your camera that you should take the time to learn about.
Long before I ever picked up my first camera I was always fascinated by the subject of psychology. To understand some of the reasons why humans behave the way they do is rather useful in many areas of our lives. Once I started to get into photography more seriously I began to realize how the two subjects could be used together to make more powerful images.
Importing photos after a shoot is often one of the more boring parts of an assignment and getting it done as quickly and easily as possible is often the name of the game. This has unfortunately led to a lot of Lightroom users not really using the Import function to its full potential. In his newest video, Joe Allam walks through his entire process in great detail, explaining why he does each step along the way.
I've actually had quite a few people request that I create a tutorial for my production processes wherein I add background textures into my studio shots. I know, it has taken me forever to get around to actually putting it together, but it's here now! The tools that I will go over in this tutorial are quite handy for a variety of uses. But for this tutorial, we will specifically use them to select and mask the background in a studio portrait shot.
Is your Instagram really working for you? We all know how important a tool such a social media is to help create a brand and attract clients who may want to hire you. If you're finding that your account is struggling to grow then you might be making some of these many mistakes.
If there is one type of photograph that you could call universally appreciated, I would say a properly executed cityscape ranks right up there at the top. While New York City often comes to mind when you think of skyscrapers and iconic views, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates now makes a very strong case for being the most amazing city to photograph in the world. Of all the photos coming out of Dubai on a regular basis, I'd say Daniel Cheong's are hands down the best of the best. He is ready to share his skills in an upcoming class on September 8 put on by 500px called "Shooting and Stitching Vertical Panoramas." Best of all, the class is free for 500px premium members.
Darkness is one of the most difficult situations to work with. Cameras have come a long way towards improved performance in low light but no light is an entirely different can of worms. Unless your goal is to create more ISO snow than Christmas in Alaska you need to introduce light. Flash is great at pouring some much-needed illumination into the frame but it isn't so great at making sure that your camera is in focus when you do so. Even the best autofocus system in the world continue to struggle in the darkness so, as photographers, it is our job to stack the deck in our favor by leveraging strategy to give our focusing systems a leg up.
There are many paths in professional photography. I have gone down the route of commercial photography, and whilst I am nowhere near where I want to be in professionally, I thought I’d share a few points that can go a long way to making it as a professional commercial photographer.
Have you ever had that gut-wrenching feeling of being defeated after a wedding reception? Let’s be real, it happens. There comes a point where photographing wedding receptions get so frustrating that you either dive deep into off-camera lighting, or you get out of shooting weddings altogether. I can relate 100%. Despite the terrible lighting, there are a couple ways to pull this off without just turning all the lights on in the building and compromising the receptions atmosphere. These are a few of the ways I light a wedding reception.
Traditionally, more involved edits such as dodging and burning are done in Photoshop, but it's often desirable to stay in Lightroom if you can. This helpful tutorial shows you how to dodge and burn a portrait all in Lightroom.
In a world saturated with photography, you have to find ways to stand out. If you are able to put in the extra skill and effort to make something that is unique, it can quickly gain attention. Backlighting is one technique I use to accomplish this. Initially, backlighting seemed like a difficult task. Extra equipment, more work, and setting up stands and lights all made it so intimidating as a new photographer. Now that I am years in, I can honestly say that my backlit shots have captured more attention and sold more jobs than any other one thing in my business.
Understanding light is at the heart of photography. The topic of light is a vast one but there are some fundamental concepts which should be mastered before all others. One of those is the difference between hard and soft light.
There are plenty of reasons you may want to blend natural light with flash. I know I rarely shoot with more than one strobe on location so the ambient light often acts as a fill light or rim light. Regardless of your reason to do so, knowing how to easily achieve this is extremely important. Check out this video where I explain my process for balancing strobes with natural light on location.
Lindsay Adler is best known for creative fashion and beauty work, but aside from her stunning and unique photography, she’s a great speaker and educator. She recently gave a two-hour master class at B&H on how to create a portrait that is a work of art. Listen to her and learn how to elevate your imagery and improve your workflow from pre- to post-production if you wish to build a portfolio that stands out.
The closest art to photography is painting, and thus the two primary visual art forms share basic precepts regarding light and composition. In the same way photographers use different lenses, filters, and lights to achieve their vision, so too might they learn to use various time-honored, classical techniques in composition. While a polarizing filter is not used for every shot, neither is the golden ratio and sacred geometry. But just as every photographer will have a polarizing filter in their toolkit, so too will they have knowledge of sacred geometry, whose rules they can exalt, or break, at will.
Adobe Lightroom can be a powerful tool in your photography workflow. There are a lot of features that are included, but as a new user or even someone who has been using it for a while, there might be some useful tricks within Lightroom of which you are still unaware. How many of these are new to you?
If you're just starting with shooting portraits and retouching them, learning and subsequently mastering the myriad of techniques used in Photoshop can be a bit daunting. This helpful video will get you up and running.
Photographers often treat color grading as a trivialized aspect of their workflow. Something that they only worry about once the image is complete and with no greater attention than flipping through a series of filter presets in whichever their flavor of the month plugin happens to be at any given time. Instead, obsessive time and attention is paid to aspects such as cloning, dodging, burning, sharpening, liquefying, etc. Colorists in the film industry have known for years powerful color grading is critical to great filmmaking. Directors know this as well, which is why colorists often enjoy a massive, expensive, personal theater filled with an impressive array of tools to grade the latest mega blockbuster.
Colorists and video production folks are already familiar with LUTs (Lookup Table) and likely already use them for color grading videos. This is the next level for working with LUTs.
It doesn't matter if you shoot weddings, portraits, or work in the commercial world. With the smallest about of kit and a little bit of knowledge you really can dramatically improve the quality of your images. The guys over at Westcott have produced a fascinating video with Chicago-based photographer and educator Bob Davis. This demonstration is focused on how to enhance the look of your groom preparation shots, but I actually think these tips can be used in various genres of photography.
Becoming as a commercial photographer can't be defined with a formula. Each story is different but lots of stories share similar basic principles. They can be applied not only in the areas of photography and filmmaking, but also in other businesses.
As with any craft, there are fundamental techniques which should always be considered regardless of the job, model, or location. Even working professionals overlook general rules from time to time and occasionally need to be reminded.
Each day there are new ways to accomplish the same task, especially with the ever-evolving social media whirlwind. Today I want to share my favorite two methods I use for sharing to Instagram (or any other social platform, but primarily Instagram since posts need to be made from your mobile device).
White balancing shots is not always as easy of a task as it seems. Sometimes, a gray card cannot be used, other times the lighting is too poor and the colors don’t come out perfectly. However, Blake Rudis from f64 Academy has found an extremely efficient and quick solution to color correct any shots in three easy steps.
For many photographers, the majority of their subjects aren't models and aren't trained in posing. And so, it falls to the photographer to really be able to guide the subject to finding suitable looks. This great video gives you some quick tips on how to do just that.
Makeup artists are an invaluable part of the creative team for many photographers. In fact, there are certain genres of photography that rely so heavily on makeup artists that we simply couldn't work without them. Unfortunately, there seems to be a few serious problems cropping up between makeup artists and photographers.
Implementing gels into your photography is a really simple and effective way to make sure your images really stand out from the rest of the crowd. There are a ton of different ways to use gels to create some absolutely stunning imagery, but in this post I am just going to show you a few ways that you can use them to add color to your background to produce really dynamic portraits.
In this article, I'm going to go through the settings I use to get the best results from my drone photography. These settings can be applied to all DJI drones, Phantom 3, Phantom 4, Mavic, and Inspire, as long as you use the DJI app or Litchi. Let me fly through the basic stuff.
Meeting face-to-face with a potential client is the best way to introduce them to your work. Here are just a few helpful tips to help you turn that handshake into a profitable relationship.
Their title may mislead you into think this is just another step one, two, three, posing tutorial but lifestyle and wedding photographers Rachel Gulotta and Daniel Inskeep along with Carlton Banks (a.k.a. Mango Street Lab) are quick to point out that it's directing, as opposed to posing, that gets results. If you follow the wisdom provided in these five simple insights you'll find your subjects falling into their own natural rhythms, resulting in more meaningful images with little to no need to tell subject "A" to put their hand here, and subject "B" there.
One of the most common Lightroom complaints is that it runs too slowly. However, there are steps you can take to improve your experience. This great video outlines seven such tricks.
Compositing images well is one of those skills that can really flex your photographic prowess by calling on a multitude of techniques, all of which you have to have a sound basis in to create a convincing final product. This great tutorial will show you all the steps.
There’s no phrase I dislike more in the photo world than "I’m a natural light photographer." Believe me, I love natural light more than anything. It’s simple and easy to work with, and you don’t need to worry about bringing a ton of gear with you. But very rarely will just unmodified natural light work. It’s the unfortunate truth of photography (unless you’re a landscape photographer, you lucky bastards). Most photographers will use a flash to do what natural light can’t. Sadly, many don’t use it to great effect. If you want your portraits, or any image with mixed lighting to look better, there are a few key things to keep in mind when you’re on location.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to walk into almost any photographic situation armed with a whole vocabulary of lighting techniques and be able to quickly select exactly the type of lighting you want for the main light of your photo? By understanding six key qualities of light you can create your own vocabulary of lighting to draw upon and apply for your desired effect in fashion photos, formal, and lifestyle portraits and beyond. Angle, Size, Distance, Shape, Duration, and Color are each qualities of light that photographers can combine and manipulate these qualities in setting the look of their photograph for impact beyond just illumination.
I hear a lot of photographers talk about tone curve shapes: the s-curve for contrast, for crushing blacks, etc. But really taking advantage of tone curves is less about memorizing shapes that produce specific results and more about understanding exactly what they do. This great video will get you up to speed in no time.
It’s that time of year again, and no, I don’t mean last night's Super Bowl. Tax season is upon us and for many creative professionals it can either be a joyous occasion or one filled with dread.
