One of my favorite features in Lightroom for local adjustments is the Auto Mask feature, which can save a ton of time when used in the right situations. This great trick will show you how to get way more mileage out of it to save even more time in your edits.
Your work is greater than a Graham cracker sized cell phone screen and you know it. When it comes time to select which paper you print on, you've got a lot of options. Let's take a closer look at a few things to consider when making your choice and examine one example up close.
Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO are the three most fundamental properties of photography, and understanding them inside and out when you first start shooting should be a high priority. This helpful video will tell you everything you need to know about the third property, ISO.
When I was starting in photography, I kept hearing peers and educators talking about their photographic style. I was totally lost. I had no idea what my style was, because as desperate as I was to define it, I hadn't yet discovered it. Discovered is the wrong word. My style wasn't yet.
Natural light photography is sought-after in lifestyle, fashion, lingerie, and many other photography genres. Anita Sadowska takes us through how she uses natural light in her small apartment and what decisions you need to make when you plan on using natural light.
A few months ago I wrote about the higher end luxury finds for your boudoir wardrobe closet. In those instances where a client has either brought unflattering pieces or that she is relying on your to help guide her in looks, having these backups are perfect to get more looks for bigger sales. While having a closet can be helpful, it also does not have to break the bank if you are just starting out or like to change things up constantly.
The cool thing about landscape photography is that there are generally a variety of appropriate settings for any specific scene or subject; it really comes down to your creative vision and the sort of final image you're looking to create. This great video talks about choosing settings to match what you're trying to portray.
Chances are you've seen this type of composition before. Well fortunately for you it's easy enough to do, so here's how to set it up.
There are a lot of times when you might want to change the color of something in an image, whether it's clothing, the sky, or something else. This great tutorial will show you how to do just that using only Lightroom.
One feature of our digital cameras that evolves with every single generation of sensors and processors is ISO performance. With astronomical ISO numbers now available, just how high should you push your ISO?
Whether you’re traveling abroad or exploring the streets where you live, it’s important to have confidence when shooting street photography. Photographer, Pierre T. Lambert shares a few tips to help you confidently capture images that you’ll be proud of.
Light painting has been a common method for automotive photography, but it is mostly demonstrated on car exteriors. On the other hand, shooting the interior of a car, by using the light painting method can give really good results that can be qualified as a high-end image. In this video, Moe Zainal shows his process from start to finish, including the retouching.
Working in studio presents a ton of lighting options, so how do you choose? Here are some examples of different light set ups that will give you variety in your work.
Are you thinking of turning your passion of photography or filmmaking into you main source of income? Perhaps you just made the switch or in the process of doing just that. In either case, here are five crucial tips you may want think over before going any further.
One of the trickiest things about being a portrait photographer is being able to come up with a variety of backgrounds in a small area in a short amount of time. Here are five tips to make it easier.
If I were shooting portraits on a desert island and could only take one lens with me, it would be hard to leave my 70-200mm behind. After picking up a Canon 16-35mm for a trip to Scotland, though, I've found myself using it more and more often when I have people in front of my lens.
Some blend modes in Photoshop are crucial to most any genre and are probably used daily by the majority of photographers, while others are much more specialized and rarely used. This great video examines one of the lesser used modes and shows how it can be employed to create powerful color grades.
If you are working with multiple layers in Photoshop, then you are probably aware of the significance of controlling layer groups when dealing with different blending modes and adjustment layers. Luckily, there is an often-ignored option called “pass through,” and changing that might widen your capabilities.
Working with clients on a day-to-day basis, it can be very easy to fall into a creative rut, using the same go-to posing, styling, and scenery for the simple reason we know what will sell during a client viewing appointment. For the business aspect, this is very efficient when selling images. For the artist, many feel the need for something more by pushing the creative limits. A little adventure is all it may take to get geared back up and into the creative mindset.
In the past few years, the growing number of wedding photographers and their vast range of prices have made finding your value as a photographer challenging. This series of articles will help you to navigate your prices to meet your goals and earn your worth as a wedding photographer.
As we all know, in the photography world, things change and they change quickly. The thing that's been tremendously on the rise is the use of video. Here's how to get started editing video in Adobe Premiere.
You've bought the camera, you've mastered the techniques, you're ready for business. What are your prices? This helpful video will give you some good guidelines for pricing your photography services.
Photos with shallow depth of field are a very popular look in most genres involving people in some way, but they also require pricier lenses to shoot. This helpful tutorial will show you how to fake the effect using Photoshop.
Although it is popular to talk about mirrorless cameras these days, DSLR cameras are still alive, and with the help of some useful tricks, you can make the most of your DSLR. Especially if you own a Nikon camera, you might be surprised with these features that most photographers skip using.
One of the most useful Photoshop skills you can have is the ability to convincingly replace the sky in an image. This great tutorial will show how to do just that, from placing and masking the sky in to blending it effectively.
You may be familiar with portrait photography, but have you ever had the pleasure of experiencing the fine art form? If you haven’t, it’s time you did. Fine art portrait photography has exploded in the luxury portraiture photography market in recent years. The results are superbly evocative and make simply stunning wall art.
Last week photographers from around the world came together for the annual WPPI conference in Las Vegas. It is common to hear many photographers talk about their plans to hit the desert for incredible landscapes or portrait sessions in between classes and workshops. A few tips from pro boudoir photographers can help you the next time you are able to take the trip.
When I talk to a lot of photographers, they seem to think that business and creativity are at odds with each other. Being a salesperson and an artist just don't go together, right? I think we've just been mislead on what it really means to sell.
Whether you're shooting stills or moving images, lighting is just about everything when it comes down to it. This excellent guide will show you how lighting shapes and sculpts the face, adding dimension and helping you to tell a story, and how you can use it to better your own work.
Brian Rodgers Jr. has become the most popular and highly rated product photographer on Fstoppers, and today we are releasing his full-length product photography tutorial, “The Hero Shot.”
It may seem like it was only yesterday, but the upcoming total lunar eclipse is actually the first one in nearly three years. Taking place on the morning of January 31, it will be fully or partially visible to folks living in Asia, Australia, the Pacific, and North America. If you are in the United States, the farther north and west you live, the better. Here are five tips I’ve put together to help you prepare for capturing some epic shots.
One way to spice up your photography is to add gels to your lights so you can produce colorful and edgy looking imagery. Adding wild colors to your photos can offer a lot of creativity but gels can also be used in a much more subtle fashion to slightly alter the color of your background and sky. In today's video I want to share two simple techniques I use to help make my backgrounds on location look more interesting.
I can still remember the first time I saw the effects of bounce flash. The soft natural light looked unlike anything I had seen from my little point and shoot's direct flash, and the resulting image looked so natural. Soon afterward I was introduced to off camera flash and a variety of light modifiers. The results between all of these lighting techniques were not subtle and I became obsessed with finding my favorite tools to light people. In today's video, I explain how one single flash both on and off camera, and a few light modifiers can give you the perfect light quickly and easily.
Time is valuable. The next three minutes of this video could possibly save you a ton of time over the course of your editing career, and if there is absolutely anything I can do to speed up my Lightroom workflow, I’m all for it.
You’ve got the fancy camera, the biggest and baddest lenses, and the technical know-how to shoot beautiful imagery in your field of photography. What do you do now to get the cash flow rolling in? Do you try to branch out your network reach to try to get the “in” with potential clients, make countless cold calls and emails, or giving away work for free to bring attention to your business? Many very talented professionals get to this point in their career where they have the skills but not the knowledge of business to make money. If you’re finding yourself in this spot of your career, watch this video from Sheldon Evans now.
In addition to being the place where you perform a lot of edits on your photos, Lightroom is an excellent program for cataloging and organizing images. As you work over time, you're likely to have tens of thousands of images stored there, and it becomes crucial to carefully organize your photos so you can easily find and work with them. This great video will show you just how to do that along with some other helpful tips.
Finland-based commercial photographer Antti Karppinen shares what he thinks are the "7 Most Common Studio Portrait Light Mistakes" and how to fix them. Barring any creative differences, these are pretty good rules of thumb.
Astrophotography is a fun genre with a wealth of knowledge that you could easily spend years diving into. Many landscape photographers like to incorporate the night sky into their work and just need a practical understanding of how to process it in single exposures. This great video will show you just how to do that.
I’ve written extensively about it before, but, like most business lessons, the message bears repeating. In a marketplace simply inundated with competition from around the globe, it has never been more important for photographers to find their specific niche in the marketplace.
Who's ready to go to Home Depot and undertake an easy weekend DIY project to improve your studio work? This helpful video will show you how to construct your own v-flats, a highly useful and versatile (and cheap) tool every studio photographer should have.
Knowing how to visualize a shot in your head before you take it is an important step in the creative process, else you're simply firing off shots and hoping for a good edit to come out of the process. This great video follows a landscape photographer from pre-visualization all the way to printed photo.
Adobe Lightroom was a pretty slick piece of software to begin with, but over the past several updates it has become an incredibly powerful tool for photographers. Of all the different controls and tools available within the software, the Detail panel has become one of my favorites. If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop, you can find the same set of controls that we're talking about today which of course is within Lightroom. Adobe has been streamlining their systems for a long enough time now that handling raw files, although from a cataloging perspective is quite different, is almost identical between Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop.
It’s obvious that color is important in our work; Hand selecting that perfect blend can take our images from decent to legendary. And it's not just photographers that notice the color mishaps. Everyone is influenced by colors. Our eyes are always naturally observing and comparing them. Color is so impactful on the masses that they are meticulously chosen for ads that reach millions of faces a day, there's no reason why you shouldn't start using the same tactics in your work.
A freelance lifestyle is a goal that many aspire towards in photography and videography. It’s a goal I achieved this time exactly one year ago. After a brief honeymoon period, I quickly learned some important lessons that I’d like to share with those who look to be making the leap across the great divide.
Whether you’re a veteran freelancer or just starting out, it is important to continuously asses and audit your process. A decade and a half of experience getting washed around as a freelance photographer has taught me many difficult lessons about art, life, and growing a business doing what I love. Being successful is measured in more detail than just being Insta-famous, being a YouTube sensation, or selling single pieces for large sums of money. Even the most notable artists have had to grapple with the more organizational and administrative elements of their work and coming to terms with the reality of their goals. In most cases, it is these details that make the difference between failure and success. Hopefully these five tips can help you as you grow your personal business with larger than life ambitions.
As photographers, we have but one raw material to work with: light. You will hear this time and time again, you need to learn to see that light and learn how your camera sees it. Knowing what to look for is just the beginning. Figuring out how to use light, or more importantly how you will use it, is the larger part of your photographic journey. Today, I’d like to run you through five types of light I love and use often.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed with the many different features of Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom has so many possibilities, that even after years of using it, I still am consistently learning something new. I have found that there are so many new photographers who either feel too overwhelmed to start learning the intensive software, or they still aren’t confident that they have been using it correctly. Because of this, I wanted to create a simple beginner’s guide to using Lightroom. This is the first of what will be a multiple part series of articles on Lightroom basics.
So much of a landscape image is in how you edit it; many different personalities and effects can shine through the same scene when processed by different photographers. If dramatic skies are something you favor, this helpful tutorial will show you a neat trick for bringing out more detail and creating moodier looks in Photoshop.
In his latest photography tutorial, noted French photographer (and prolific video tutorial maker) Serge Ramelli demonstrates how to quickly and effectively replace a sky in Photoshop.
We often aim to capture great expressions when cueing and posing subjects, but we sometimes overlook basic elements that may distract our viewers. In particular, natural pointers like our arms, hands, fingers, legs, and feet command a strong presence within images, but we don’t always recognize the power of their presence in the moment. While we surrender some control during truly candid moments, we should make every part of an image purposeful and keep natural pointers in check when posing.
It's important to remember that we are here to analyze and understand, but not be overly critical. While these tips/techniques are great in understanding the visual weight and posing elements within an image, they are not reasons to throw out what would otherwise be a great photograph.
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