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The logo. That simple stylized image that is supposed to help people to recognize you. It's one of the first marketing moves you do when you see yourself as a not-just-a-camera-owner-anymore. But why do you do it?

Do you ever have trouble talking with your subjects during a shoot? Not sure what to say to them to get that perfect facial expression? No need to worry, Peter Hurley is here with "Hurleyisms."

A major concern I hear from boudoir photographers is the lack of a formal studio space for shooting. While I do have a downtown studio in a historic area of Palatka, Florida, if I am traveling there is not always that option of finding a shared area. Understanding how to create your own studio space in hotels, vacation homes, or Airbnbs can bring your boudoir business front and center to potential clients.

It's common as professional photographers to spend so much time researching the latest technical tips and advice that the space within our mental hard drives originally intended for common sense runs low. We can become so focused on the latest and greatest that mundane day-to-day tasks sometimes suffer. Here are a few pointers (or reminders) that may help you free up some of that precious mental hard drive space and fill your calendar with the types of clients you want to be booking as we look toward the upcoming year.

Whenever I am working with models on a shoot, I always have their best interests at heart. You may say I care too much about my models, but I am alright with that. No one badmouths a caring photographer. I have seen firsthand how some models are treated badly on set and it saddens me to see how bad attitude from photographers can ruin the photographer-model relationship and also lead to bad photos. Knowing how to build a relationship upon meeting your model and engaging in a photoshoot with the latter is a must and I asked a couple of models for advice to write this article.

Crushing blacks is a popular trend in Photoshop for achieving a more film-like matte effect that pairs well with vintage styling. It won't work with every image, but if it's a look you are after, photographer Mathieu Stern has put together a video suggesting three ways you can go about achieving and customizing the effect. In this article I will add on one more quick method in addition to the video which will give you plenty of options to play around with this effect and see which method works best with your workflow.

Recently I've concluded that most professional photographers actually believe that telephoto lenses compress the subject and background in an image and that simply is not true. 

For a long time as a photographer, I did not have access to a studio nor did I have the necessary lights to help create a studio setup indoors. And let’s not talk about renting studios! So, in absence of a studio, I came up with one easy way to create the studio feel, which you will find is pretty cheap.

Photoshop is an amazing tool that most photographers find themselves using on a daily basis. It has countless features, and with the new Photoshop CC, more are added with each update. As a beginner to the program, it can get a little overwhelming on where to start learning all of the complex elements. In this, video you will see 10 of the features you need to know.  

If like me, you’re tired of those overprocessed portraits shot during golden hour or at sunset that crowd your online portfolios or your Instagram feed, then perhaps you should consider rising early for your portrait session.

I’m a huge advocate of gelling your flash. It’s one of those things that a lot of photographers just discovering off-camera lighting will often fly right past without much thought (I know I did). Even after you get that first stack or plastic bag of gels, knowing how to apply them can be a little intimidating. Enter Michigan-based Photographer Rob Hall’s expert instructions on how you should or could be using your color temperature blue (CTB) gels.

A beauty dish can be extremely versatile if you learn how to control the way it modifies light. Most photographers simply use beauty dishes to light the face, but you can use it to light full length photos if you know how to position the light correctly. In this video, I’ll demonstrate three ways to use a beauty dish for beauty and fashion photography.

A few months ago we shared that Instagram began to roll out some pretty powerful analytic tools called "Insights," though as many of you might have gathered it's not available to the masses just yet. Select users have their hands on the tools currently and they are able to track things like impressions, total reach, clicks to the link in your bio, and even what percentage of your followers are male or female. The tools expand further down into regions of the world your followers are from, including the exact city. Here is how to get them right now, for free.

The first time I saw streaky clouds and silky smooth water, I knew I needed to learn how to do that. However, after buying my first neutral density filter, I realized it wasn't so easy to do. It was really hard to focus, and some photos were too dark, while others were too bright. And why were the middle of so many photos pink? Hopefully, this article will help you avoid some of the mistakes that I made as a long exposure beginner.

For most beginners, distinguishing hues, or noticing over saturated areas, can be an issue. Even some most advanced retouchers still have problems color correcting their images. Reaching the point where our eyes see colors properly takes time and a lot of practice. Fortunately enough, visual help layers in Photoshop can aid us separate luminosity, hue, and saturation. In this article, I will show you how to isolate the latter two to facilitate your color correction.

If you ever do any sort of composite work, chances are that you'll need to add shadows. They're one of the biggest aspects of making a composite image convincing, and yet, they're also very subtle and tricky to pull off. Phlearn is here with a great tutorial to get you started.

As the northern autumn draws closer, bizarre little creatures pop up all over the temperate forest. On the forest floor, underneath hedgerows and on trees, alive or the ones who have fallen. Fungi are the cleaning crew of the forest as they take care of layers of fallen deadwood and provide nutrients back to the forest. Surely they are great subjects for macro photography. Like everyone else, I’m looking to find their reproductive organs: Mushrooms. They let our imagination run wild as these little toadstools hint of fantasy worlds when photographed in a certain way. This is how I recreate my own little fantasy world.

Earlier this year, Pentax released the K-1, its first foray into the digital full-frame market and a camera surrounded by a healthy dose of excitement and intrigue. I've had the chance to use it and some of the new system lenses for the past month. It's a fun and highly capable system that could be just the ticket for many photographers.

I'm a big admirer of Lindsay Adler and her work, and I spoke to her recently regarding her most valuable career mistake. As you can imagine, my ears pricked up when I heard Lindsay was doing a walkthrough of how she conducts a fashion shoot from preparation all the way through to post-production.

Light painting is one of the rights of passage photographers have to try at some juncture. I enjoyed playing around with it in the early days, but what surprised me is I have used the techniques commercially on several occasions; from creating better backgrounds to my portraits in dark locations to capturing English Heritage sites. The importance of knowing how to light paint isn't necessary per se, but it does help you understand how light works and how your camera exposes a scene.

Without composition there is just visual chaos with no beginning or end, no direction or cycle, no shape or difference between dark and light. This series is the go-to resource for compelling visual storytelling in landscape photography as it provides a condensed overview of all the elements that make up a stunning image. This week: Advanced tools that will nick the attention of the viewer and guide them carefully through your photograph.

Flying a drone indoors is always a challenge. You have to remain absolutely calm and collected, and generally, I highly recommend not flying a drone indoors, especially if you're new to them in general.  That's also the warning that Filmmakers Guillaume Juin and Joris Favraud give anyone wanting to recreate this feat. They are a pair of rather brazen drone operators if I've ever seen any, coming together to form their company BigFly. Normally, the risk of flying a drone inside of a structure is already high, but usually, the highest risk is to the safety of your equipment, as the ease with which your drone could come into contact with any number of disastrous endings is increased exponentially.

Freckles are in. As more and more brands and publications start opting to hire models with realistic “imperfections,” we’re bound to see more and more ads with speckled skin. Score one for realistic expectations! However, lighting freckles isn't easy, as most broad light sources will flatten the tone in the skin. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to bring back and enhance freckles in Adobe Lightroom.

I stumbled across this video that was posted by B&H back in 2012 and was quickly amazed by the amount of information I was able to gather in terms of composition techniques. When starting out in photography, most people learn the rule of thirds, take off running, and never look back. Give this video a watch, and you will open an entire new world of tools for your image creation.

Your online portfolio is one of the most critical tools you have at your disposal when looking to make a sale. Clients are looking to your website as a sign of both your skill and professionalism. The customer wants to find a photographer who is the perfect fit so your website needs to be built to enable that feeling. Below are four priorities that photographers often overlook when designing their websites.