Photography Education

Photographer Evan Ranft has years of experience when it comes to shooting products at home. Here are seven excellent tips to help you lift your game. 

Are you walking the right path? 

No doubt, Photoshop is the place to go if you want to do the most precise local edits, but a lot of the time, you will just want to finish a photo in Lightroom without going through the time and effort involved with working in Photoshop.

Looking for a way to take your editing to the next level? Range masks not only save a trip into Photoshop, they also simplify an extremely powerful tool that will improve your editing, no matter what genre you shoot. 

Fashion photography often makes use of complex setups with multiple lights, but that does not mean you can't create compelling images using just a single light. This excellent video tutorial will show you four different ways to use a single light for creating fashion imagery. 

Running a successful photography business takes a ton of work, and it is important to keep things well organized to make your life easier. This helpful video discusses five tips for organizing your photo business to keep things running as smoothly as possible.  

Children's portraits are a fantastic time to embrace your creativity to make a photo that shows the happiness of childhood. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to light, shoot, and edit a children's portrait from start to finish.  

Growing as a photographer is a tricky thing, as it takes continual development and mastery of numerous technical skills along with simultaneously growing as a creative and finding your voice. If that is something you are struggling with, this excellent video essay discusses five mistakes you might be making that could be holding you back.  

Because of the pandemic forest photography is more popular than ever. Forest photography is also one of the really hard genres of nature photography to be successful at. Fog and good conditions are usually necessary for success, but they are just not enough. 

Looking to shoot portraits but need to acquire some lighting gear? What should you get, strobes or continuous lights? While both offer their pros and cons, here are a few reasons why you shouldn't use continuous lights for your portrait photography. 

Lens breathing is a common problem (particularly in video work), and understanding it can help you to take better control of your work. This excellent video tutorial will show you what lens breathing is and why you should be aware of it, particularly if you shoot video. 

Most landscape images take a fair amount of editing to produce a finished result, and with all that post-processing, you often run the risk of going a bit too far. If that is something you sometimes struggle with, this excellent video tutorial discusses six signs that you have overedited a landscape image so you can fix them before you export your photo. 

When starting out in photography, almost everyone makes mistakes. Here are 10 mistakes when it comes to using strobes and continuous lights.  

Lighting can be a challenge to learn, and you might think you need complex multi-light setups to obtain professional results. And while there will always be a place for those, you might be surprised by what you can accomplish with just a single-light setup. This excellent video tutorial will show you five different lighting setups you can create with only a single light.  

Traditionally, umbrellas are considered to be the lowest end of lighting modifiers, with beauty dishes being one of the more expensive and professional options. However, you might be surprised by how close you can get to the beauty dish look using a small shoot-through umbrella, and this excellent video will show you how.  

Replacing the sky can be a powerful and valuable tool for photographers in a wide range of genres ranging from real estate to landscapes or weddings. When there is water is the shot, this can significantly complicate the process, but this fantastic tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop to add realistic reflections for a more complete photo. 

Ever pulled the images off your camera, zoomed in to 100%, and been a little disappointed with the results? Ever had a hard time figuring out what went wrong? In this series, we’re looking at 11 common causes of poor clarity and how to address each. With a little practice, you’ll be able to glance at an image and know how to fix it. 

You've heard of the exposure triangle, which is the relationship between the three main camera settings in order to take a well-balanced exposure, but there's a fourth dimension that also has a huge impact on what your photos look like. 

It takes the mastery of a lot of different skills and techniques to produce a proficient landscape photograph, and it can take a long time to get them all down. This excellent video will help you get there faster, however, with seven great tips to improve your landscape photography.  

Visiting a location for the first time can be quite overwhelming as a landscape photographer, especially when you might be arriving in the dark for sunrise. In this article, I go over a few quick tips on ways to productively scout a location during your first visit. 

Lightroom offers us many powerful tools to adjust the brightness of some regions of a photograph. In this article, we will find out what the Basic Adjustments and the Tone Curve have in common – and what’s the difference between them. 

There is a lot of conflicting information about how humans perceive the world. Some people say that the human eye cannot perceive more than 60 frames per second, while the abundance of high refresh rate monitors and phones seems to contradict that. So, just how high resolution and how fast is the human eye? 

Upgrading your computer or hard drive can be a stressful experience, regardless of your knowledge level. Whether you're installing a larger drive or moving your data over to a new machine, you'll want to make sure you do it properly. Here are some tips if you need to move your Lightroom Classic data. 

Weddings are just as much about the detail shots as they are about capturing the people involved in the day. And perhaps no detail shot is more important than the rings, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you how to capture them in an elegant way that will create a fantastic memory for the couple.  

Making images "pop" is something most photographers strive for, but there is a fine line between eye-catching and gaudy. This great video tutorial will show you three ways to make your photos pop using tools in Lightroom.  

The daguerrotype was one of the earliest means of capturing images onto a surface and was the first photographic process available to the public. Using a piece of silver-coated copper and a 35mm film camera, this videos shows you how to make your own. 

This lens is an essential part of my photography kit and one, which I would not go out into nature without. In this article, I want to show how you can master and get the most out of your 24-105mm zoom lens and hopefully inspire you to use it more in your landscape photography. 

Posing can be quite difficult for a lot of photographers to master, especially because it is a bit more nebulous than other more objective concepts like the correct exposure settings. This excellent video tutorial demonstrates a range of common posing mistakes in seated portraits and what you can do to fix them.  

Most of us love images with vibrant, intense colors that pop off the screen and entrance our viewers. Getting that look in a tasteful manner takes a lot more than simply pumping the saturation slider to garish levels, however. This excellent video tutorial will show you some helpful techniques for making colors pop in a tasteful way using Photoshop. 

We're all watching the latest videos where the YouTube creators have been given the gear to review and for us to learn from. But are they really creators? To create is to make something that wasn't there before. But let's go in a bit deeper.  

A photo is a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional world. Although there is no longer any depth present, it is possible to add a sense of depth to it. I have gathered eight methods that can help you to add depth to your landscape photo. 

Ever gotten your images off the camera, zoomed into 100%, and been a little disappointed with the results? Ever had a hard time figuring out what went wrong? In this series, we’re looking at 11 common causes of poor clarity and how to address each. With a little practice, you’ll be able to glance at an image and know how to fix it. 

In this video tutorial, watch as Dean Samed shows you how he created a homage to Attack on Titan in Photoshop. This is a full walkthrough of the entire process and definitely worth the watch to see another photo manipulator's workflow. 

Many of you have likely used the radial filter tool in Lightroom before, but have you ever used it to paint light on your images? In this video, I go over how to create light in your image to add local contrast and completely change an image from dull to portfolio worthy.  

In this video tutorial watch as Abbey Esparza shows you how to create a digital face paint effect in Photoshop. There are many ways to do this, but this is one way I have not come across before. 

A photographer's website is their calling card and one of the most crucial aspects of their business. As such, it is important to carefully consider every aspect of yours. This excellent video discusses three ways you might be going wrong with your website. 

Winter is just about here in the Northern Hemisphere (there is a bad storm raging outside as I write this), and it brings with it a bunch of new creative possibilities. As you get ready for the snow to fly, check out these seven fantastic tips for better winter photos.  

Photography, like any creative pursuit, requires a degree of confidence in your abilities in order to find success. It is totally normal to go through periods in which you lose that confidence, however. So, what do you do then? This great video essay discusses what you can do to rebuild your confidence. 

Shooting portraits outside of the studio requires a keen eye for finding good locations. If that is something you struggle with a bit, this excellent video tutorial will teach you how to find locations that make for stronger portraits. 

Everyone has the capability to take incredible photos with the phone these days. Yet, most people lack the training of photography fundamentals that would turn their iPhone photos into works of art. Enter the newest landscape photography course from iPhone Photo Academy. 

Of all the genres in photography, beauty work often has some of the most precise, intricate, and carefully sculpted lighting setups out there. Nonetheless, that does not mean you can't shoot beauty images using natural light, and that may even be preferable in certain situations. This fantastic video tutorial discusses seven tips for shooting better natural light beauty images. 

Though Instagram has changed quite a lot in the last few years (and not particularly for the better), it still remains an important place for displaying your work and attracting potential clients. This excellent video discusses how to rethink how you use the app and approach it in a way that will generate growth in the coming year. 

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.

Lightroom is a deceptively complex program with a wide variety of settings that can impact both your workflow and the quality of your images. This excellent video details some lesser-known settings in the application that you should nonetheless be aware of. 

Working with models can make your job a bit easier, but for those of us who shoot portraits of people who are not models, having a firm grasp of posing is crucial. This excellent video will teach you how to pose normal people and still get professional images.  

Running a photography business can be a risky and nerve-racking venture, and it helps you to have all of the business advice you can before you dive into things. This excellent video essay discusses how one photographer nearly lost his business and offers seven essentials for building and running a successful photography business.  

What do you actually need to know to do landscape photography? 

If you’re ready to upgrade from your kit lens and you’re wondering what to choose, consider getting yourself a fast — yet affordable — prime lens. Here’s an overview of the most popular options which should give you an idea of what will best suit your photography. 

Figuring out how to price your photography services can be really tricky and a bit nerve-racking, especially when you are thinking of raising your prices. If that is something you are thinking of doing, this excellent video discusses how you can do so without losing your clients in the process. 

The level you set your prices at is crucial to your business, of course, but so is the perception of your brand. One issue many photographers overlook, however, is how their prices impact the perception of their brand. This excellent video examines the topic.