You might think your progression is slow, you might think you suck and will never be as good as your idols. It takes time to learn photography and here I show you my development.
In last week’s article, I took you through the four best investments that I’ve made since becoming a professional photographer. But, since there are two sides to every coin, I guess it's only fair to also tell you where I’ve gone wrong.
Looking to use some of this downtime to ramp up your photography business? Professional Photographers of America is offering up education for free.
With many of us in isolation and with limited space, you might need to get creative when it comes to shooting photographs at home. If you need some ideas for how to get started, check out this short video which shows you how to put a shower curtain to really good use.
If your subject is far away, you can use a longer focal length to bring it closer. When the subject is very large, a shorter focal length can capture it al at once. But did you know the focal length can also be used in another way?
Long-time friend of Fstoppers, Pye Jirsa, goes over how to properly light a scene for the punchy and dramatic look, or the balanced and natural look when using flash.
Sometimes, you can find great advice for photographers in unexpected places. I found that writers and photographers share a sizable overlap in an area that's famously addressed in writing, but a little less so in photography.
If you’ve never dared to explore the Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity (HSL) panel in Adobe Lightroom, don’t worry, you’re probably not alone. This short video is an excellent introduction to help you learn where to start.
As visual artists, one of the most powerful tools we have to tell our story is color. In todays article, learn the importance of using contrasting colors to create depth in your frame and draw your audiences eye straight to the subject.
Posing can be a tricky thing to master, and there are special considerations you have to make when you are on a swimwear or boudoir shoot. This excellent video will give you lots of helpful lighting and posing tips for both swimwear and boudoir photography.
Photography can be very time-consuming. Over the years, I have picked up a few workarounds, so hopefully ,you can avoid the hours and days that I have pilfered away. These are my five time-saving tips.
A few weeks ago, Pye Jirsa from SLR Lounge traveled back down to Puerto Rico to battle Lee and I for the "World's Best Photographer" award. Today, we have the results and the full behind the scenes video of the shoot-off. Brace yourself; things do not go as expected.
We live in interesting times when everything is expected to look good, show high numbers, and have flashy abbreviated job titles. What actually lies beneath the shiny plastic cover is often something rather humble.
Pye from SLR Lounge is once again visiting us in Puerto Rico. In this four-minute video, we each teach a quick and easy two-light setup.
Shooting in low light can be tricky for lots of reasons ranging from needing slower shutter speeds to having difficulty acquiring focus. If that is something you struggle with in your own work, this helpful video will give you some great tips to improve your low-light photography.
Beauty lighting is a genre full of a range of nuance and subtlety, and one of the best ways to explore that is through the use of lighting modifiers. This excellent video will show the differences between a reflector, beauty dish, and scrim, along with a wide variety of sample images showing their uses.
Being a technically proficient and creatively inspired photographer is only a small part of becoming a successful professional, which requires many skills beyond what you do behind the camera. If you want to cross into the realm of being a professional, this excellent video will give you nine helpful tips to get you started.
Pretty much everybody learns how to edit photos using a mouse, but as a photographer becomes more advanced, they will often switch to using a pen tablet to work on their images. If you have not yet made the switch, this helpful video will show you seven reasons why you might want to consider picking up a tablet for your editing work.
Dodging and burning and frequency separation are two of the most commonly used techniques for retouching skin, but they both have their own sets of pros and cons that may make one or the other the better choice for your own work. This excellent video will show you the results you can achieve with both methods and will detail what it is like working with them.
“A wide angle lens is the best for landscape photography.” Does that sound familiar? I am continuously surprised by how little I use the wide angle lens.
For photographers of a certain age, the decision of whether to work in 8-bit or 16-bit is as easy as the decision between playing Nintendo and Super Nintendo in 1991. More colors led to more realistic graphics and better gameplay. The 16-bit Super Nintendo was king. The same principle holds true when working on your images in Photoshop.
For many photographers, space can be an issue when it comes to your shooting area. It can be difficult to obtain a variety of looks when you are working with just one room. However, with just a few small changes, you can give your clients more than enough to chose from to create an album.
Ever take a picture that seems to tick all the boxes and yet still feels like it's missing something? Maybe a filter or two could be just what your photography needs.
Traveling for work is like viewing an impressionist painting : From a distance it looks beautiful, but up close it can look like a complete mess.
It’s always interesting to see how gelled lighting can shape the aesthetic of a portrait, especially when we can match that colored gel with a small amount of post production to create an interesting background to a scene. Here’s a quick photography breakdown and post processing tutorial that will help you create a neon sign inspired portrait with just a few complementary colored gels and Photoshop.
As a commercial photographer who tethers at every shoot, I’ve always relied on Tether Tools cords as part of my workflow. So, I was excited to hear that they had launched a wireless offering and wanted to put the new Air Direct through the paces.
Product photographers are some of the highest earning professionals in the photography field, and they command their prices with the value they bring to other businesses while creating imagery that engages consumers to purchase those business’ products. If you want a piece of that e-commerce photography pie but are still sweating on where to start, then it’s time to get a crash course that will possible jumpstart your beginnings into this profitable space.
The visual arts have a long history with the naked form. What could be more natural than nakedness, more natural than how we entered the world? Or are we kidding ourselves, and is boudoir just softcore porn?
The wide angle is often the lens of choice for a lot of landscape photographers, but it can be a tricky piece of glass to work with. This excellent video will give you lots of helpful tips to improve your landscape images when you are shooting with a wide angle lens.
It might seem like a strange idea to encourage people to copy other photographers, but there can be a huge benefit in doing so, particularly for newer photographers. This excellent video discusses why you might want to take time to emulate other photographers more often.
YouTube video suggestions can be very hit or miss as far as their relevance and quality, but they did lead me to this brand new photography channel that goes above and beyond almost everything else being published on the platform.
Lighting in a studio environment is tough enough, but shooting on-location portraits presents its own set of challenges. This excellent video takes you behind the scenes on an on-location portrait shoot for a magazine and details the problems the photographer had to deal with and how he solved them.
Product photography is a fun genre that will challenge you to really fine-tune your lighting and post-processing skills. This excellent video will show you the process of building up an eye-catching image of a black product on a black background.
How do the big movie production companies get us to believe the scene is taken in one long shot when memory cards get full and film runs out? This video shows 4 ways of making the viewer believe it's shot this way in movies such as Academy Award Winning "1917," and maybe you could use it too.
Most photographers forgo using umbrellas for one reason or another, generally opting for other more advanced and expensive modifiers for their work. However, you might be surprised by the professional-level images you can produce with umbrellas. This excellent video will show you the stunning photos you can create using umbrellas and how they are made.
Sometimes, getting the shot you want requires a lot more than simply pressing the shutter. I took a reasonable approach with little expectations and ended up with a small success story and some great shots.
Posing for the camera my not come easily to everyone. If you understand the basics of posing but still find yourself looking for a way to improve the shots, here are a few tips you can use.
Image banding is a lesser-discussed phenomenon in photography, but it can leave annoying artifacts that can degrade the quality of your photos or ever outright ruin them in some circumstances. This informative video discusses three types of image banding, including why they occur and what you can do to mitigate or entirely eliminate them in your own work.
Posing can be one of the trickiest aspects of photography for many people and takes a lot of work to truly master and feel confident at. If posing is something you personally struggle with, this helpful video will give you lots of tips and examples specifically for working with men.
Lightroom has features that go unused by many users simply because they aren't out front in plain view. The filter bar is one of those features and is a great tool that you might be able to put to good use.
I've used a ton of different microphones over the years, but Rode's latest creations are two of the cheapest and feature-rich mics I've ever used.
Sadly, there is no linear relation between the effort to get a photo and the quality of it. However, if there was, mountain landscape photography would be of the highest quality. In this article, I will share five tips to upping your photography quality in the mountains.
Photography can be a tricky thing to get into, with lots of different factors you have to master all at once to be successful. This great video discusses seven things an experienced photographer wishes he had known when he first started.
Many aspiring photographers get intimidated by landscape photography because of their unfamiliarity to filters. While filters are not 100% essential to learning landscape, understanding this topic before making choices can lead you towards better gear decisions.
A lot of things are said about photography that are not always correct. Many photographers might get the wrong idea about a lot of things. Are you one of those photographers?
V-flats are some of the most flexible and useful accessories a studio photographer can have. This great video will show you five different portrait lighting setups you can create using v-flats in studio.
Traditionally, portrait lenses fall somewhere around 85-135mm, perhaps a little wider at times. But that does not mean you should totally discount ultra-wide angle lenses; in fact, in certain situations, they can be just the right piece of gear to help you create something more unique than the standard shot. Nonetheless, they require some special considerations. This great video will give you six tips to ensure you can get the best wide angle portraits possible.
If you are not proficient in artificial lighting, it can see a bit like its own world with its own language. Never fear, though, this great video will get you up to speed on what studio strobes are, how they work, and how to integrate them into your personal workflow.
Creative ideas do not always flow as easily as we'd like sometime. If you're suffering from photographer's block, these creative ideas are for you.
Do you understand the differences in color spaces? Have you ever exported a photo out of Adobe Photoshop after some editing, and once you upload it online, the colors appear to be completely different? Perhaps the colors now look muted and dull?
![Isn't Boudoir Just Softcore Porn? [NSFW]](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/lead/2020/02/3e78f1f384363239aa9be0fcd25437a5.jpg)
