If you think that your fashion imagery has to be all about young models, think again. Being trendy today is focusing on seniors. And what we might consider their imperfections is what is making them so appealing.

Readers have enjoyed my past blogs on editing from home, making a better demo reel, and other video-editing articles, so now I’m sharing with you my favorite editing tricks that I find make for better cuts and ultimately make videos easier to watch.

Controlling your image is a valid quest for any photographer, as we all want to protect our brand. Seeing one’s work altered without permission can be frustrating, as can discovering your work on blogs that are void of any credit. The first response for most photographers is to watermark their images, ensuring that their logo or website graces every image that hits the internet. In today’s landscape, is watermarking your photographs the best way to protect them? Let's review both sides of this debate, and explore the current state of the watermark in photography.

What ever happened to loving a camera for the camera? Why does everything we buy have to fill a utilitarian hole? What happened to a love for the craft and as much as for the tool? There has been a lot of chatter around the Nikon Df and if we as photographers need it. It's gone so far as to suggest that it represents all that is wrong with photography these days. I want to argue the opposite. I want to argue it represents what many of us have lost as photographers: joy in the craft.

Blair Bunting is a good friend of mine, and by far one of the best commercial portrait photographers out there today. He just published a blog post regarding the highly lauded (while simultaneously seriously attacked) new MacBook pro with retina display. While the display is absolutely breathtaking, it has a serious disadvantage. Is the display too good?

Last weekend, my buddy David Cross who works with our friends over at BorrowLenses sent me a text that he was building something unusual and really cool. When he sent me the photos after he finished his project, I was immediately excited. His DIY ring light (which they are calling the spider light, tentatively) not only leaves really unusual catch lights, but is easy and fun to build. Ok, so it's not really a "ring" light, but it casts similar light and I don't know what else to compare it to. So let us show you how to make yours!

We have been sold on the biggest myth of all time; In order to succeed at anything and have a lustrous career you must spend 4 years in an overinflated educational institution and spend a small fortune, which doesn’t include costly textbooks, supplies and living expenses. All in exchange for a fancy sheet of paper we call a degree… a piece of paper that gives us instant credit and a golden ticket to the gravy train. Right?

Renowned actor Norman Reedus, best known for his portrayal as Daryl Dixon in the television series The Walking Dead, is also an international artist and photographer. Step inside the inventive mind of Reedus by taking a look at his recently published book, The Sun’s Coming Up… Like a Big Bald Head. It is filled with dark and gruesome images that exist somewhere between Reedus's reality and our own.

This year Patrick and I were invited to Gulf Photo Plus in Dubai to film a behind the scenes look of what it's really like to go to this exotic workshop. The experience itself was one of the highlights of my life but the most memorable moment for me was the few minutes I had with each of the instructors. I decided to interview them about the pitfalls of their careers and what it takes to become successful as a photographer.

As your photography archive grows, so does the need to handle and protect that data. What happens if your computer doesn’t boot, or an image file won’t open? What if your home or studio gets robbed, or worse, catches fire? What if your backup drive fails, or your laptop gets stolen? These are all questions I ask myself when planning my backup strategy.

Trevor Sherwin recently traveled to Kenya, and decided to use this opportunity to create some amazing images for his portfolio. Most people who travel to the area tend to focus on the wildlife, but Trevor wanted to focus on something else - people. He wanted to create dramatic portraits of the local tribes in a way that shows both the people and the location. Check out his great video explaining his method of shooting.

Throughout the course of my creative career, I’ve overdrawn my bank account a lot, shed tears over stress, and stared in the mirror for hours in dejection. I’ve made my share of professional and personal mistakes and certainly learned the hard way from all of those choices. I’ve lost, I’ve won, I’ve sacrificed, and I’m blessed to have earned.

Holy butts. Sometimes the fact that I'm an artist and I'm allowed to get weird slips my mind. I don't have a boss, I'm allowed to create what I want, I'm allowed to try new things for the sake of playing, and I'm even allowed to start a blog post by saying "Holy butts." That rocks.

In this tutorial I will show you how to setup your studio strobes for full length portraits as we shoot an editorial style lighting setup. First we will look at the entire gear list we used and you can use for a similar setup, from the backdrop to the studio heads. I will breakdown our lighting. with lighting diagrams and explanation of WHY we are placing our lights where we are. Also, in this video tutorial we share some Behind The Scenes from our shoot day.

I’ve learned a lot over the past 15 years as a professional artist. I’ve learned a lot about fear, failure, and success. I’ve been fortunate enough to mentor and educate thousands of photographers all over the world. Even as a young four-year photographer who many would still consider “green,” I’ve taught photographers from all walks of life, all levels of advancement, and even some who had reached a level of comfortable success.

Last summer, my friend Andy and I, and his six year-old son, were out location scouting. As we drove around, the three of us were playing a very intense game of word association. One of us would say a word, and the others would quickly say the first word that came to mind. As we neared a potential location, Andy called out, “Key West” to which I mindlessly responded, “Jimmy Buffett…” In that instant, I realized that everything I thought I knew about marketing myself as a photographer was completely and utterly wrong.

I have only been shooting photography for a little over 3 years now. Things have progressed so quickly during that period of time that I haven't really had the chance to look back at the evolution of my photography. I had to think thing long and hard about the investments I have made over the 3 years and the things that really changed the game for me.

The best camera is the right one for your particular job. But what are some of the less than obvious reasons why we pick up one camera instead of another?

I remember meeting Peter Hurley for the first time. I walked into his studio and saw him shooting a client's headshot with 4 Kino Flo hot lights (normally used for video). I asked him why and he said "The quality of light is just better than strobe. It fills the pores on a human face differently." At the time I was intrigued, but I no longer believe it.

Photographers and artists alike are extremely passionate people. With strict deadlines and hectic schedules, we all have the tendency to jump the gun and act or open our mouth before taking a step back from the situation. There is one word which you will be hearing a lot throughout this article. It is a trait at the core of what we do and it’s very much a necessary virtue: patience.

Although it would seem like common sense, proper motivation is key toward not only getting things done, but getting things done well. This is true in any creative field and this is especially true, it seems, in the over-saturated everybody-with-a-camera-is-a-photographer world we live in.

I’m a big believer that you don’t need expensive equipment and a complicated lighting set up to create beautiful images. Some of my favorite images were captured with a really simple lighting setup and with little or no lighting equipment at all. Sometimes too much emphasis is often put on equipment and we can easily get caught up in complicated lighting and expensive gear.

If you are like me then you might not always get caught up in some of the super technical aspects of photography. One aspect of photography I recently investigated was the loss of sharpness caused by Diffraction. Last night while playing with the new Nikon D800 camera I examined lens diffraction and how diffraction can seriously affect the sharpness of your photography.

In an industry saturated with educational materials, navigating the minefield to find which resources are valuable, and worthy of your hard earned money, can be rough. As a photographer, I have purchased countless tutorials, books, and magazines. I have poured through blogs, YouTube videos, attended numerous workshops and endured some questionable Facebook Live sessions. When I tell you I have discovered a gem, it isn't because this is my first time mining.

A few months ago, I took an overnight bus from Pokhara, Nepal, to Kathmandu. Arriving at five in the morning was not a part of the plan; nor was losing a night’s worth of sleep to dangerous curves, heavy rainfall, imminent landslides, and music that blared until shortly before arrival in the city. When I got there, I wasn't in too pleasant of a mood.

Recently Facebook made some changes to it’s Edgerank algorithm and in so doing, without warning might have just killed your reach on your posts by 50% or more. I witnessed the change when on October 4th I posted an album from a shoot and expected the current expected reach of 3000-4000 views but after 24 hours the album had only 86 total views. I was quite concerned by the news and thought at first it must have been a glitch before actually discovering Facebook had changed things up yet again and business page owners are in an uproar about it. I'll share my experience below, some interesting finds and what I am doing about it to continue reaching my fans.

Brought to our attention by Photography Bay, Amazon has patented a most ingenious invention: a completely revolutionary way to get a "true white" background on an image in-camera, without any post processing. We didn't understand how it was done, but now the US Patent Office has helped us all by posting this granted patent complete with plenty of diagrams supplied by Amazon's brilliant inventors.

I’m a bit of a dreamer. I’m also a huge aviation geek, and I often catch myself browsing the web at 2am looking up articles on aviation and aviation history. So when I found Anthony Toth and learned more about his life’s work, I knew that I had my next personal photography project in mind. As I'm mostly an architectural photographer, I got bored of waiting around for an airline to hire me to photograph their next ad campaign, so I decided to hire myself into my dream gig.

I don’t know about you guys, but when Sigma announced the 24-105mm f/4 lens last year, I got very excited. The Canon 24-105mm f/4 was one of my favorite video lenses early on. It’s an extremely versatile focal length that, besides the slow f/4 constant aperture, was largely pretty usable in nearly any environment. Sadly, the lens was only good for video because it just wasn’t very sharp. That’s why Sigma’s attempt got me so jazzed. Based on prior experience with their Art line, I had high expectations for Sigma's new zoom lens.

Erik Almas, one of the best commercial composite photographers, has recently teamed up with the team at PRO EDU to create a fully comprehensive tutorial on his complete shooting and retouching process. In this video Almas takes us through an hour-long tutorial, retouching and completing the backplate for one of his tutorial images. I'm always impressed when photographers and retouchers, especially those at the top of our industry, open the doors and reveal their entire process and Almas has done no less here.