Blogging is a great way to share a series of photos from your work. Sadly though many of us don't do it any longer because let's be honest; it's a pain in the ass. Fortunately a new web service, Exposure, is out that looks beautiful and is a perfect replacement for those that loathe blogging.
One of my favorite books is Love Is A Killer App by Tim Sanders. In it we read that business love is “the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles (knowledge, network, and compassion) with your bizpartners.” One person who exemplifies this concept perfectly is Jasmine Star and her series of videos called Shooting Star. The videos are full of great advise for new as well as experienced wedding photographers ready to learn new tips that will help them grow their business.
A photographer in Wisconsin has stood up at least two brides according to CBS 58 News, after taking a deposit and giving no warning. Now they can't even get hold of the photographer for a refund.
With so many options out there for off-camera flash gear, how do you know which is best for you? More importantly, how do you learn how to use it in a real life situation? Maybe my techniques and approach are just what you've been waiting for!
Do you remember the last time you were shooting at a less than ideal time of day, or maybe a less than ideal location for light? Think back to it. What did you do?
This is by far one of the most gorgeous drone videos I've ever seen. Shot in California by Adam Rubin of Kaveret, its elegance and narrative beauty make it stand far above the crowded playing field.
When it comes to taking images of couples, one of the biggest struggles photographers deal with is posing. Since posing can make or break and good image, these five tips can take your posing to next level.
It wasn't that many years ago when our very own Lee Morris took me on one of his wedding gigs and totally opened my eyes to what wedding photography could be. I had this idea in my head that weddings were boring, cheesy and a photographic cinch to shoot. But when Lee introduced me to the idea of setting up killer seamless white photo booths at receptions, I realized they could be
I was driving to my studio on a Monday morning after a long wedding weekend, ready to bust through some culling and rock the socks off my clients with how fast I would turn around their images from their wedding, then I got a phone call. “Matt, there’s been a break in at the building, are you on your way?” My heart sank, my brain went into turbo mode, and my mouth got all clammy... you know that feeling before you’re about to throw up? That's exactly how I felt.
When Melissa Ngo stepped out onto Taft Point in Yosemite National Park with her fiancee, Charlie Vo, and saw him drop to one knee, present her with a Ring Pop, and ask for her hand in marriage, she was shocked — probably because they’d been engaged since February. She was shocked once again a couple weeks later when Vo asked her to confirm they were, in fact, the mystery couple captured in photographer Matthew Dippel’s viral photo that recently gained worldwide attention.
Katelyn James breaks down the essential (in my opinion) options you need to know and master on Canon's EOS R6 to be able to nail AF and eye-tracking options ensuring a sharp and tracked subject every time. Her style is easygoing and she's great to listen to and I love her videos and explanations which make sense and put everything into perspective.
The short days and long nights of winter have finally given way and spring is in full swing. For many photographers, this means one thing: wedding season. While wedding season is great, it can also be physically and mentally exhausting. I recently shot my first wedding of the season and want to share a few tips as well as things I would do differently next time around to help you plan ahead and prepare for any events you have coming up.
Now that wedding season is in full swing, I’d like to reflect on a few ways that you can take your current performance and boost it to the next level. I always hear people say that the wedding photography market is too saturated. True, there are a lot of photographers these days, but it’s possible to stand out if you can find ways to be creative, hustle, and connect with the right people.
A woman has described herself as “heartbroken” after she was one of 12 people to appear on Fox News to out a wedding photographer they say takes money but delivers blurry photos, if she even turns up at all. They all allegedly paid thousands, but had to threaten court action before receiving any photos and found what they did recover to be woefully inadequate.
Like a kid in a candy shop, I stood on the bright fresh green grass, eyes wide open watching the Arizona Cardinals on their practice field. I wore my media badge like an Olympic gold medal. This was my first time shooting professional sports and I was quite excited to be there. At the end of the day I walked away with some great photos, but even more important I learned a lesson in the art of mastering your craft.
We recently released our 14 hour tutorial on How To Become A Professional Wedding Photographer and as promised, we will be releasing excerpts from it for free over the next year. In this video I show you my go to method of lighting posed pictures in a church at weddings. I've tried every method of lighting but I find it easiest to light up the whole sanctuary with my Profoto D1 monolight.
I am sure we have all had those days where you stare at an image and just start moving sliders up and down to see what they do. What happens if I take this slider all the way up and this slider all the way down? For the most part, the results are entertaining, but not really aesthetically pleasing. But every once in a while, you can stumble onto something pretty awesome.
Professional photographer Stacey Oliver had the moment of her career at a routine wedding shoot when this happened....
On September 12th, Matt and Heather Koehler were set to get married in Michigan. Just before they were about to walk down the aisle, they found out that the photographer that they had hired to shoot their wedding was a no-show. With nothing else to do but move forward, they went through the rest of their wedding without a professional photographer.
The thought of a full day of wedding photography, with its many layers, can surely be overwhelming. And with that said check out this behind the scenes, wedding day tour to place your mind at ease.
Some of my favorite creative photography techniques to use are those that allow us to capture moments in ways we could never see using just our eyes. One technique, in particular, that I turn to for capturing unique portraits involves using long exposure, aka shutter drag. Long exposure portraits open up a number of creative possibilities and often result in “wow” moments with my clients. Putting the technique to use does require some skill and preparation, but it’s easy enough to master once you know the basics.
Style Me Pretty, arguably one of the most influential websites in the wedding industry has announced today that the popular wedding inspiration website would be going dark permanently on April 30th. Here’s what we know.
It happens at basically every wedding I shoot. I walk into the room to start taking images of the bride getting ready, and the bride offers me a mimosa. After I leave to take images of the guys getting ready, I walk in and the groom offers me a beer. Then, the ceremony is about to start, and a groomsman offers me a shot out of the flask he has in his jacket. Lastly, we are at the reception and both sets of parents and the entire wedding party are offering drinks. I have to assume that most wedding photographers are faced with at least one of these events at every job. So, the question is: do you accept?
A little over a year ago, I got to live out one of my worst nightmares. I had a day where the personification of my anxiety sprouted legs and ambled right into the middle of a wedding ceremony that I was photographing. Mr. Anxiety-Incarnate snuck into a church, and like a biblical plague, snuck right back out and took something precious with him. Never to be seen again was $12,000 worth of gear that was stored in my roller bag. That’s right, I lived out the photographer’s terrifying dream equivalent to showing up to a high school class naked.
Posing your subjects can be one of the most challenging tasks you have to face on shoot-day. If the person in front of your camera is not a supermodel who knows all the tricks, chances are you'll have to direct and pose that person (or people) in order to get pleasing images that make them look at their best. If you're in the business of photographing people, you should clear your schedule and watch this 2-hour B&H class as soon as possible.
Hey there, Ben Sasso here! Learning new things is one of my favorite parts of what I do, and I want to be able to pass that on. If you're looking for some quick and basic natural lighting tips to play with on your next shoot, you're in the right place. Check out five easy tips! Hope you enjoy!
What's the best way to optimize photos so that I can deliver quality to my clients while reducing the file size for faster uploads into the cloud? This has been a question I’ve been thinking about for sometime. I have tinkered with settings in Lightroom to try and find the right export recipe but it wasn’t till another photographer told me about JpegMini that I finally felt I had the solution. Using image optimization technology they developed, JpegMini was able to deliver maximum quality at minimum file size. I ran it through some tests and here are my results.
It's always nice when you find a client who knows exactly what they want and have no issue communicating that to the photographer, but is this bride going too far by refusing to pay her wedding photographer the final payment unless they capture everything on her five-page checklist?
I can't think of a more high-pressure job than photographing the royal wedding, but Alexi Lubomirski took the challenge and delivered in spades. This neat interview sees him detail the 25 minutes he had to capture six portraits and the challenges he faced during that time.
When starting out in wedding photography, one of the most common questions that gets asked is, “What lens is a must have for my first wedding?” The most popular answers to this question are all over the map. They range from 50mm to 85mm to 70-200mm and so on. What you likely never see on the list is something like a 20mm lens, but for me, I will always have one of these lenses in my bag.
As all wedding and portrait photographers have experienced, things often don't go as planned. Two common scenarios are, 1) timeline delays that cut into your ideal outdoor shooting times and 2) rainy or cloudy weather that covers the sun, making the popular backlit look impossible to achieve with natural light. When either of these two things happens, we at Lin and Jirsa Photography use the following five ways to recreate or fake the sun. We hope these tips will come in handy and allow you to wow your clients despite less than ideal circumstances.
