Recent Education Articles

Can You Photograph Reality?

Do you believe that your images are objective representations of reality? You might be mistaken. Here are a few arguments why.

A Beginner's Guide to Landscape Photography

The essence of photography often gets lost in the complexity of technology and techniques. However, the key to becoming an exceptional photographer might be more straightforward than you think: it's all about simplifying every aspect of your craft. This principle holds the potential to not only streamline your process but also to enhance the quality of your work.

A Five-Step Process to Shooting Moody Landscape Photos

A lot of landscape photos are vibrant, bright, and bursting with color, light, and life, but of course, that is not the only way to create a compelling image. Moody landscapes can be just as eye-catching, and this awesome video tutorial will show you a five-step process to creating them.

The Beginner's Guide to Culling and Why We Do It

The process of culling is used in every type of photography and is used by professionals and amateurs alike. Culling is simply the process of selecting the best images from a shoot to be edited and delivered to a client. When photographers first start out in the editing world, this process can seem like a waste of time or hard to figure out a best practice. So I’m going to explain why we cull and some of the best ways to do it.

Choosing the Best Lenses for Stunning Landscape Photography

Landscape photography is all about capturing the vast beauty of nature, from expansive vistas to colorful skies. Choosing the right lens can make a significant difference in how you capture these breathtaking scenes.

Create Killer Landscape Images Using Only Your Mobile Phone and Tablet

This is an essential watch if you love taking photos with your phone but aren't sure whether you can get a great image or not. In this video, Glyn Dewis shows how mobile photography is possible for everyone using Adobe's Lightroom and Photoshop Mobile software.

5 Common Mistakes Beginner Photographers Make

We are all unique people, but there are some mistakes that almost every new photographer makes at some point. Here are five common mistakes to watch out for in your own work.

How to Properly Critique a Photograph

Photographers love to critique. Or is it criticize? Or comment? Complain? Postulate? Pontificate? We seem to witness quite the gamut of behavior in response to one simple request: "CC, please."

The Most Underrated Skill in Landscape Photography: Scouting

Many things are required to be an excellent landscape photographer. Knowledge of your equipment, understanding the attributes of light, and an eye for composition are just a few of these skills. However, there is one skill that is often underrated.

10 Things Worth Knowing About Focus

There’s more to focusing than half-pressing the shutter release. Focus is one of the three most important technical variables in photography; it can make or break a photograph. Here are ten things, some basic, some more advanced, to help you shoot better photos.

The Better You Get at Photography, the Harder It Gets

It sounds counterintuitive, but there is a lot of truth to it: the better you get at photography, the harder it gets. Why is that? This excellent video discusses this seeming paradox and how you can avoid falling into a rut because of it.

An Interview With Master Photographer Benjamin Von Wong

Benjamin Von Wong's work is a tour de force of creativity, technical skill, and the ingenuity and planning ability to pull it all off. Learn more about how he began shooting, the evolution of his methods, and his advice on the creative process and working with others.

Lessons After 250,000 Photos

Improving your photography involves understanding the nuances of composition, lighting, subject matter, and timing. These elements work together to create compelling images. Nigel Danson shares insights from his experience of shooting over 250,000 photos and reflects on the journey from his early, less successful attempts to his current expertise.

How to Add Realistic Light Using Lightroom’s Intelligent Presets

This tutorial looks at using Adobe Lightroom Classic's intelligent masking and preset tools to create realistic light in post-production after you've already shot your images. Then, you can save the preset to use on any photo with just one click. This is essential for portrait and landscape photographers and will make your images better with less effort.
Five Tips for Photographing Skin: Prerequisites to Retouching

"How did you retouch that?" This is the common question I see most when I post my images online. Unfortunately, answering that question directly won't get photographers any closer to being able to replicate that style on their own. In order to broaden the dialog here are five things you must understand if you want to get skin looking beautiful in your portraits.

One Portrait Background to Rule Them All

Where studio portraiture often lacks in external interest and bokeh, it makes up for in image quality, clarity, and full light control. However, always shooting on a black or white backdrop is wildly limiting but having a whole host of different backdrops and changing them can be a pain in the proverbial. There is a much easier way to change your background completely in camera using only light and the right shade of gray.

What Lightroom Sky Adjustment Tool Should You Use?

Landscape photography often takes at least a bit of editing to produce a completed image, and as such, you will usually be doing some kind of editing work on the sky. Lightroom's newest version has a wide range of useful tools for doing this, and this excellent video tutorial will show you some of the options for selecting and adjusting a sky and the pros and cons of each.

Model Posing Cliches: Stale or Useful? Improve Your Model Photography With Tried and True Poses

Some model poses seem to pop up everywhere repeating across different mediums and across decades. Many photographers deride these posing cliches, but these cliches can be useful on fashion and other model shoots, especially when working with new models still learning how to move. They can help create serviceable images when you are stuck for ideas or when you need shoot a series of good looks in a short period of time.

Peter Hurley Explains How the Inverse Square Law Applies to Photography

The inverse square law is one of the most important yet misunderstood concepts in photography. On the surface, it basically says that the intensity of a light source will decrease as you move the light away from your subject, but how does that apply to the highlights and shadows in a portrait? In this small excerpt from the "Illuminating the Face" tutorial, Peter Hurley breaks down both the math and the practical application of the inverse square law.

A Beginner's Guide to Fast Lenses

Fast lenses are essential tools in photography. They allow you to capture more light, which can make a big difference in various shooting conditions. If you're new to the craft, check out this helpful video that will show you what you need to know.

How to Pose People Who Aren't Models

For many photographers, the majority of their subjects aren't models and aren't trained in posing. And so, it falls to the photographer to really be able to guide the subject to finding suitable looks. This great video gives you some quick tips on how to do just that.

The Best Shots of All Time in Film

Sometimes, we admire them for their cleverness, sometimes for the weight of the meaning they carry, and sometimes just for their beauty. Here are some of the best shots in film of all time.

Some Common Delusions and Lies in Landscape Photography

Landscape photography, like any other genre, is full of its own myths and misconceptions about how it's done and what a photographer needs to be successful. Here are some of the most common delusions about landscape photography.

A Message Every Photographer Needs to Hear

Creatives are inundated from all directions by messages meant to undermine their confidence in their work and to get them to focus on things other than the act of creating an image. If you find yourself a bit lost in the midst of all that right now, take a few minutes to watch this great video essay that contains an important message every photographer and filmmaker should hear.

Tips on How to Pose Newborn Babies

Have you ever wondered how baby photographers (no, not babies that are photographers) pose newborns? Have you wondered how they got those little writhing, crying, flailing bundles of joy to stay the heck still for at least 1/200th of a second? Well, the crew over at Redhead Photography seems to have found the right combination. In fact, the babies in this video are so malleable that it's a little bit unnerving.

The Story of Why Kodak Went From Photography Giant to Bankrupt

It really wasn't that long ago that Kodak was as ubiquitous in photography as the camera itself, and yet, nowadays, the company is sadly a shell of its former self. This great video examines just what happened to bring the former titan to its knees.