Recent Education Articles

How To Nail Your Exposure in Bird Photography Every Time

With fast action and rapidly changing backdrops, getting the correct exposure can be a real challenge in bird photography. With the right techniques and a bit of practice, however, you can ensure consistently correct exposures, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you everything you need to know.

A Quick Guide to Making Your Subject Stand Out From the Background Using Rim Lights

When you're first starting out with studio lighting, it's easy to become focused on getting the key light just right, but if you become too fixated on that, you can overlook the importance of the rim light. This great video will show you how to use a rim light to separate your subject from the background.

How to Get Great Landscape Photos Even in Bad Light and Weather

One of the most challenging aspects of landscape photography is that we have no control over the light or the conditions. And while bad light and weather can be frustrating to experience, you should not let them stop you from making photos. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to create compelling landscape images even when the light and weather are not cooperating.

Three Wedding Photography Tips I Wish I Knew Sooner

I've spent years picking up odd tips, completing online courses, researching techniques, and now, I'm confident in sharing some of that knowledge with the world. Of course, I'm still learning and will continue to pick up tips for the rest of my career. For now, though, I'll share some I wish I had known sooner.

How to Retouch Hair in Photoshop Efficiently and Quickly

Cleaning hair in post-production is without a doubt retouchers’ and photographers’ worst nightmare. It takes up a lot of time, energy, and precision, but more importantly, there are so many techniques out there that often we forget about even the most basic ones. In this very comprehensive video, Aaron Nace from Phlearn shows how to retouch hair in the most simple way possible.

Roger Deakins Tells Us How He Chooses Lenses

How do you go about choosing lenses for what you're going to shoot? In this video, Roger Deakins shares his methods. The rules aren't made up by filmmakers. It's about how you want your audience to experience the shot.

A Beginner's Guide to Smart Objects in Photoshop

If you're new to Photoshop, you may have heard of these mythical things called "Smart Objects." This helpful tutorial walks you through a very practical application of them to help you understand their role in image editing.

Should You Use an HSS Flash or an ND Filter?

If you want to shoot outdoor portraits with a shallow depth of field using artificial lighting, you are going to run into issues of overexposure due to the limitation imposed by the sync speed of your camera. There are two solutions to this: high-speed sync or using an ND filter, and this great video shows you the workflow using each as well as their respective pros and cons.

Three Quick Reasons Photography Leads May Not Be Booking You

Potential leads may not book you for many reasons. Maybe you are out of budget completely for them, maybe your style is not on par with what they wanted, or perhaps it was just not the right time for them. Knowing how to work with your leads can help create a solid stream of clients to book you solid throughout the year.

Editing Landscape Photos in Lightroom: Basics to Advanced Techniques

Editing is a critical part of landscape photography, letting you shape images into representations of what you saw—or imagined—in the moment. Whether you aim for realistic refinement or experimental creativity, post-processing helps you discover what matters most in your work.

Color Editing With Capture One Dissected in This 90-Minute Long Webinar

Pratik Naik was featured on a recent Phase One webinar and showed some of the techniques he uses when processing commercial, beauty, and fashion images in Capture One. Most of what he demonstrated was centered around color and was extremely instructive, no matter the viewer’s level. The hour and a half long recording is now available on YouTube for free and worth a watch if you are serious about color edition and your raw processing.

What a Professional Photographer Wishes He Knew Before He Got Started

Being a successful professional photographer takes the confluence of a wide variety of skills, and it is easy to make some mistakes along the way. It helps to know what you might be facing before you get started. This excellent video essay discusses some things a professional wishes he knew before he got started.

Four Tips for Getting More out of Your Landscape Photography Trips

Landscape photography trips can be a big time and money commitment, but if you don't do the proper planning and analysis beforehand, you can end up coming home without the shots you wanted. This great video talks about four things to do before you head out the door to give yourself a greater chance of success.

A Guide to Creating More Engaging Looks With Cinematic Lighting

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.

How to Get the Film Look Without Breaking the Bank

Getting the big budget look is something a lot of us want, but most of us would prefer not to spend Hollywood levels of cash to get it. This great tutorial will show you just how to get that look without breaking the bank.

Creating Amazing Photographs in Small Spaces

While the idea of having the best available studio and equipment remains, well, an idea or dream for many of us, creating great images in the comfort of your own home does not have to be.

Common Photography Portfolio Mistakes to Avoid

Whether you're looking to advance your career or simply improve your craft, the way you present your work speaks volumes. A polished portfolio distinguishes you from the amateurs, showing not only your technical skills but also your ability to curate. Understanding which shots to include—and more importantly, which to leave out—is a crucial step in this process.

Learning to See and How It Will Improve Your Landscape Photos

Becoming a proficient landscape photographer takes a tremendous amount of technical skill both behind the camera and at your computer, but even flawless technique is not enough to make a compelling image. It takes creative vision as well, but that is something that is a bit more difficult to learn. This great video tutorial discusses the idea of learning to see in landscape photography and building your creative vision.

A Reminder of the Joy of Photography

No doubt, the last few years have been stressful for many of us, and it can be difficult to remember how to destress and find peace and contentment again. Photography should be an escape, however, and this great video reminds us of that.

Exposure Bracketing for Better Images

Bracketing is one of those photography terms you’ve probably heard but might not fully understand. It involves taking multiple photos of the same scene at different exposures, usually one correctly exposed, one brighter, and one darker. Here's why and how to do it.

How to Use Photoshop to Remove Distracting Objects From an Image

One of the most fundamental and useful capabilities of Photoshop is the ability to remove distracting elements convincingly and efficiently, something that can improve or even save a wide range of photos. If you are new to Photoshop, this helpful video will show you how to use a combination of the Spot Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools to remove distractions from your images.

How Can You Enter Photography’s Circle of Success? Here Are Seven Ways

Getting to grips with the fundamentals of photography, such as camera and exposure control, composition, and relating a story, is essential. Sadly, there are other factors that get in that cause you to fail. Here’s why it is important to break free of those and become a successful photographer.

Could The Keys To Success Actually Lie In Studying Failure?

How do you achieve long term success? Whether you want to grow a huge photography or video business, or just improve your skills, it would pay to look at the dramatic failures of others rather than just the “success stories”. Why? Because long term success is the result of resilience and determination in the face of constant failure and almost insurmountable odds, and if we understand - and embrace - this philosophy, we can overcome almost anything.

The Science Behind Disappointing Photos and How to Fix Them

Have you ever taken a photo of a breathtaking scene, only to find that the image doesn’t match what you remember? The colors seem dull, the depth is missing, and the overall impact just isn’t there. This is a common problem, and it comes down to the fundamental differences between how our eyes and brains process a scene versus what a camera can capture.

26 Helpful Landscape Photography Tips

Landscape photography takes a confluence of skill, creative vision, lots of planning, and sometimes, just a bit of luck to produce winning images. This great video will give you 26 helpful tips to improve your landscape images and make the shooting process a bit easier and more effective.

In Defense of Art School Graduates

What’s wrong with our industry that we are so quick to belittle formal education? Whenever the topic of an art degree arises, there’s an angry mob that amasses, collectively chanting how “useless” a degree is in photography and that the best school to learn from is the University of Hard Knocks. To really understand this issue, we have to first step back and look at the value of art and why photographers are so polarized on the term. Then, we have to recognize that “art school graduates” are not the real problem; it’s the dismissive attitudes toward them that are.

How to Light Paint an Image in Post-Production

“This shot just looks flat.” Even an image shot during dramatic lighting can look dull after global adjustments. But with some inspiration from light painting, you can bring the image to life in post-production.