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.

Living in the live music capital of Texas, there is no shortage of opportunities to experience incredible shows while taking some memorable shots. Capturing the excitement can be tricky, however, as dim lighting and moving subjects don’t usually play well together. Here are some tips for making the most of your next concert.

My recent article focused on what skills you should focus on if you want to turn professional as a photographer. In this follow-up, I will discuss what I believe to be the next and crucial step before you make the leap: preparation.

If you are reading articles on Fstoppers, it’s a sure sign that you want to improve your photography. You have the potential to become fabulous, and there are proven steps you can take to help you on that journey.

Being a photographer can be a bit of a slog in between the tedium of day-to-day work and dealing with the various issues that often arise. Here are four things you should try doing to become a happier and more satisfied photographer.

If you want your photos to stand out with a bold, cinematic feel, creating a darker aesthetic can help you achieve that. Here's how to achieve that in Lightroom.

Filmmaking is a tough thing; you need to be thinking on multiple levels simultaneously, and any one mistake can derail the final product. This great video will walk you through 15 such mistakes and how to recognize and avoid them.

Are you making the most of your landscape shots? Sometimes, even with the best gear, we don’t always capture the scene as well as we could.

Coming to you from Brian Matiash, this insightful video offers a detailed look at the process of improving a landscape shot from start to finish. Matiash walks through his decisions at the location and how they translate into his editing workflow. He starts by explaining the limitations of his camera setup, including the Sony a7R Mark III and a 12-24mm lens, and how those choices affected his composition. The lens’s ultra-wide angle...

Like many photographers, I love to see interesting astrophotography. There are plenty of stunning examples out there, usually featuring the Milky Way over a dramatic landscape. Also, like many photographers, I've tried my hand at astrophotography and have not quite gotten the same results. Unlike many other wannabe astrophotographers, my images make me feel happy.

Modern cameras are incredibly powerful tools, but there are still limitations to what they can do, some imposed by the current state of technology and some forever imposed by the laws of physics. That does not mean you are simply out of luck, though, as there are ways to work around these limitations. Often, this is done via bracketing, and this excellent video tutorial will show you some of the different kinds of bracketing, why they are valuable, and how to use them.

Hair photography can be a pain to shoot. Having a good hair stylist is incredibly important to make sure you don’t end up spending more time than you should behind the desk for the retouching. When it comes to hair, you’ll already have to spend more time than you’ll like.

In this video, Photographer Andrea Belluso uses strip softboxes to create dramatic portraits of his friend and pilot along with a gliding airplane. Strip softboxes create soft light with a long highlight on the aircraft body.

The question of how much editing is too much is one that every photographer asks. Understanding the boundaries and ethics of photo editing is crucial for both the integrity of the work and the trust of one's audience.

Becoming a successful professional photographer takes a lot of skill behind the camera, of course, but that is not all it takes. In fact, it takes a lot more than just being a skilled photographer to actually make a living from it. This fantastic video tutorial will show you nine essentials that will help you grow your photography business and increase your chances of success.

You might think that Photoshop is the place for more advanced edits, and while that is generally true, it often surprises people just how much you can get done using only Lightroom. This excellent video will show you five great editing tricks to take your images further when working in Lightroom.

To get sharper images, there are some easy steps to take into consideration before and during the shoot, and no, you can't fix it in Photoshop.

Last year, right around this time, Patrick and I booked a flight to Mexico to film Mike Kelley photographing the most expensive house ever sold in Playa Del Carmen. It certainly had the potential to be an incredible trip. The day before we were set to leave I decided to go out kiteboarding and I ended up breaking my tibia internally at my knee. For some reason I still went to Playa Del Carmen the next day.

Long telephoto lenses are excellent at capturing the rich, intimate details of animals, but there’s a learning curve to using them. Before you miss another shot by not finding your subjects in the viewfinder in time, check out this video.

Using masking techniques in Adobe Lightroom, you can guide the viewer’s eye and create a dynamic feel that makes a photo stand out. This tutorial dives into how to enhance depth and contrast in your images, transforming a flat-looking shot into one that feels alive and immersive.

Often, I get asked how a shot was done underwater due to the objects that are with the client. Recently, I started using GoPros to obtain behind the scenes footage to help better explain positioning and lighting on various sessions. "The Archer" was one image that caused most people to ask: "Did she really shoot the arrow at you?"

Last week’s article introduced my take on the reasons photographers and videographers lose prospective clients. I focused on two common pricing errors plus the importance of a human connection, and this week, I’m examining three other important reasons.

The ancient axiom "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" has long been regarded as wise advice. My father always said, "better safe than sorry," which saved me more times than I can count.

Landscape photography can take a tremendous commitment of time and effort, and even then, you are not guaranteed to come home with the shot you had hoped for. And so, when that happens, it can be easy to become discouraged and eventually find yourself in a creative rut. What can you do when that happens? This excellent video tutorial features an experienced landscape photographer sharing his thoughts.

Even though digital storage is as cheap, we all want to save money wherever we can. What is actually the difference between those super cheap SD cards you see in various internet ads and the expensive ones?

There is a hidden force that can elevate your photography massively. I know about it because, after 35 years in photography, I stumbled upon it accidentally. And I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

In the early 1980s, famed fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon embarked on a project to create a collection of portraits that aimed to depict the people of the American West in a raw and unembellished manner. With this project, "The American West," his intention was to move away from the glamorous world of fashion photography and instead focus on the everyday individuals who inhabited the American West.

Half the fun of artificial lighting is the number of different ways you can experiment with strange effects to embrace your creativity. This great video will show you how you can use common objects to create entrancing lighting effects and eye-catching portraits.

Masking is one of the most powerful tools in photo editing, especially when you're looking to bring out specific areas or elements in your images. If you’re not already using masking in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, you’re missing out on some of the most precise control you can have over your edits.

I’ve attended plenty of workshops in my time as a photographer. I’ve attended classes taught by Joe McNally, David Hobby, Joel Grimes, and more. I’ve assisted some of the best photographers in a variety of fields, and watched dozens of tutorials put out by some really top-tier shooters. It’s pretty safe to safe to say that I have had a solid amount of training through a variety of sources, but no amount of classes or YouTube videos will ever compare to the five months I spent interning at a large newspaper.

If you're in a pinch, on a budget, or just want to have some fun experimenting, you might find that a bed sheet can make an excellent photographic backdrop. Check out this great video that walks you through the process with some examples.