Education

When it comes to photographing animals, one of the most technically difficult images to capture is the running action shot. This style of photography often captures the most comical expressions, and is a necessary skill for artists who specialize in photographing dogs. Choosing the appropriate lens, camera settings, and lighting environment will ensure that you will be able to consistently nail your action images time after time.

You don't need a ton of gear to produce dramatic portraits. By using focal length and lighting to your advantage you really can add so much more power to your images.

If you've got scattered clips of your videos hiding in disparate corners of your hard drive, it might be time to bring them together and create a demo reel to show off all your best work. This helpful tutorial will show you how to do just that.

We talk a ton about different lighting setups and how they affect tonal transitions, strength of shadows, etc., but rarely do we investigate how the way we work with our lights affects our subjects' pupil size, and yet, that plays a large role in a person's perception of a portrait.

Inspiration is something we all wrestle with as creatives. Where do our ideas come from? Why can’t we simply come up with them on the fly? Why do we wake up at three o’clock in the morning with the perfect shoot planned out? How can we get more of these kinds of ideas? Let’s look at a few things that I do to keep myself inspired and ready to create.

Landscape photography is a weird genre: there are no people, and unlike something like product photography, it's pretty much up to you to choose what to shoot and how to shoot it. So, it can often feel a bit nebulous as to how one navigates a world veritably inundated with imagery, particularly when standards are sky-high. This helpful video will give you some great pointers to get you on your way.

Large-scale film productions take an incredible amount of work by a veritable plethora of talented people fulfilling numerous roles to pull off. It's easy to overlook just how much goes on behind the scenes as the credits roll past, but this great video explains who does what and just how much goes into making a successful film.

A little earlier this month we published a review of ACDSee Pro for iOS. Some people seem not to understand fully the purpose of being able to edit pictures on a smartphone, so to make it clearer, I decided to follow up with a tutorial. The goal is to show you the possibilities offered by ACDSee Pro but also give you some ideas on how to use such an app while on the go.

When editing video in Premiere Pro, many people confuse Source Patching with Track Targeting. While both are located in the same location of the Timeline and look very similar, the two are, in fact, quite different. Each performs its own distinct function, and trying to understand what exactly that is can prove to be daunting for new users of Premiere. Even after playing around with the program for several years, I still didn't fully understand the ins and out of these two important features of the Timeline panel. Let's have a closer look and learn the specific differences between Source Patching and Track Targeting.

Summer is here, and those of us who spent a cold winter indoors are venturing outside, only to come back in extra crispy a few hours later. Here's how to quickly remove sunburn in Photoshop and restore natural-looking skin.

Lightroom's local adjustment sliders are a great way to do things like add a graduated filter to a landscape shot or draw attention to your subject with a subtle vignette. Sometimes though, you want to change the strength of your adjustment after the fact, which is where this great tip will help.

If there's one thing I learned in music school, it's that while school can certainly make you a more introspective and informed artist, it does little to prepare you for the actual life of being a creative, where you somehow have to translate all the theory and experimentation into real, practical ability that gets you noticed and earns you income. This helpful video will show you some of the skills you need to do just that.

Science tells us there are somewhere north of 13.1 billion ways to convert an image to black and white. It's time to add another method to your arsenal, but this one is pretty cool. Here's how to use Channel Calculations to convert a color image to black and white in Photoshop.

No, keep your iPhone in your pocket and forget about the duck lips. We're not talking about selfies; we're talking about self-portraits. Step to the other side of the camera and learn how to take better shots of yourself.

The lo-fi, retro film look has regained a lot of traction in the last few years. There are two ways to get it: buy an old film camera on eBay or learn how to manipulate your digital images to achieve a similar look. Here's a great tutorial on the latter method.

We talk a lot about how to light the face for more flattering portraits or to achieve a desired effect, but rarely do we talk about how to light to project a specific emotion. And yet, light is one of the most powerful photographic tools at our disposal. Check out this great tutorial that details how to use different methods of lighting to convey emotion.

As much as I love comedies, nothing beats a good tension scene for me. A film's ability to make us emotionally or intellectually invest ourselves to the point that the outcome of a single scene has us on the edge of our seats is really remarkable. Here are ten such examples of tension in film.

If you're new to Photoshop, the Pen Tool can make about as much sense as a ketchup-flavored popsicle. Nonetheless, it's one of the most useful tools in the entire program, and it's definitely worth taking the time to learn how to use it. This great tutorial will get you up and running.

Macro photography enthusiasts often rejoice at the sight of a rainy day, knowing that having beads of water in their compositions can completely change the mood of a close-up image. In this video, Ray Scott of Visual Art Photography Tutorials demonstrates how to incorporate a single water droplet as the dominant compositional element in your macro images.

One of the biggest leaps you can make as a beginning portrait photographer is taking control of your lighting. It can be daunting at first, but having that skill down is well worth the time and effort. This helpful video will get you started.

Creating a good brand is a tricky and subtle thing, and most of us don't have the benefit of a marketing team at our beck and call. Luckily, there's this helpful video to get you on the right path to having a stronger and more recognizable brand.

When you're just starting out in photography, one of the first things you'll probably wonder about is the difference between prime and zoom lenses. Check out this helpful video that details the characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of both types.

The trailer has me excited. Passionate artists opening up and taking the time to share their work with us. Five photographers, Keith Carter, Graciela Iturbide, David Brookover, Lourdes Grobet, and Pedro Meyer are interviewed, and the amazing part about it is that the whole series was funded by the photographic community. Ted Forbes is theman behind The Art Of Photography YouTube channel, and this video is shared by him. I'm not sure what role he played in it, but I believe it will be significant, as it's one of the good channels to watch for us photographers.

Chase Jarvis has been getting real with a lot of topics on his show The Daily Creative. He's been answering questions from callers all over the world and doing it in an honest, straightforward way. If you haven't been following this, I recommend you start below and then head over to watch a whole lot more direct advice from one of the photography industry greats. In this week's episode, entitled "Dabbling Gets You Nowhere," Jarvis takes a question from my good friend Jason Teale that I think is something a lot of us struggle with.

Outsourcing is quickly becoming a standard practice. More and more photographers are using outsourcing services full time, while others are using them during the busy part of their season. While outsourcing has become more common in the industry, there are still some questions as to it’s worth. Photographers not familiar with the service see ups and downs to incorporating this type of service, and sometimes it can be hard to see which side wins. After my last article reviewing ProImageEditors, people wanted to know if it was worth it.

If you've got a drone, you know that it opens up a near-infinite number of new possibilities, but with those also come a unique set of challenges. This quick and helpful video will show you six tips to get more cinematic looking aerial footage.

Shooting high-quality video has never been easier and cheaper than it is today. Most digital cameras offer at least high definition 1080p quality and considering the applications of video from a business standpoint, it seems foolish not to offer this service as part of your photography business.

If you're a Hitchcock fan, you're no doubt aware of the dolly zoom, also known as the "Vertigo effect." It's dazzlingly disorienting, but it also requires a zoom lens and the physical ability to move the lens in space, things that aren't always simultaneously possible, such as if you're shooting with a drone. Here's how to fake the effect in Premiere Pro.

If you work in Lightroom quite a bit, I'm sure you've encountered a situation in which you wanted to compare two images or keep one open while working on another. Lightroom offers a few ways to do this, but using the Second Window function might be one of the more helpful ways to do it, particularly if you're working with multiple displays.

Ah, the 90s, when if you wanted to jump a bus across a freeway in your movie, you didn't use CGI; you jumped an actual bus. Go behind the scenes of one the most famous stunts in action movie history and learn why we it keeps us on the edge of our seats despite its absurdity.

After working in Adobe Premiere Pro for several years now, I've learned a number of useful keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts help me with a variety of things, from navigation, trimming, and organization, just to name a few. It was only recently that I found my favorite shortcuts, the powerful Q and W keys. You can perform a variety of useful trims with these two keys. They work by themselves or in conjunction with modifier keys. I’ve come to realize that I use these two shortcuts every time I'm in Premiere Pro, and they've truly saved me hours upon hours of time.

A little handshake can go a long way.

The traditional workflow to edit a portrait from start to finish usually requires a few different apps. But why complicate things and not just try and rely on one single software to get to the final result? Last month I reviewed ACDSee Ultimate 10 and thought it’d be a good idea to follow up with a tutorial showing how far you can go by using exclusively this photo editing solution to retouch a portrait. Discover all my steps and see how this alternative could perhaps suits your workflow better than your current one.

You may not realize it, but your brain is waging a battle against itself every time you watch a film. Every film is its own universe with its own laws, and how those laws compare to those outside that universe determine how your brain interacts with the film and evaluates it against reality. But if you're making your own work, it might be worth stepping outside the norms.

Successful video editing is a confluence of creative vision, technical skills, and practical problem solving, so it's no wonder that it takes a lot of dedication and practice to become skilled at it. To help you jumpstart that process, here are five skills you need to have to be a successful video editor.

If you struggle with self-confidence before or during a shoot, you know it can have a very real effect on how you perform and the images you take. Try these positive affirmations specifically for photographers and videographers to help you get control of your thoughts.

One of the main reasons why I love photographing dogs outdoors is the challenge of creating beautiful backdrops from the natural surroundings. One of my favorite ways to photograph dogs on location is to use a wide-angle lens to allow the sky to be the dominant background feature. When photographing dogs during the golden hour, incorporating a single speedlight or strobe in your outdoor dog portraits will allow you to effectively use the sun as a backlight and create eye-catching compositions at sunset.

B-roll is important stuff. It keeps your viewer's experience from becoming stagnant, and it can be used to explain or elaborate on the main footage. It's entirely its own art to shoot, and this helpful tutorial will give you great tips to get more and better b-roll footage for your video work.

You've fired up Premiere Pro. You've watched the entire JJ Abrams repertoire... twice. You're ready. Here's how to add convincing and tasteful lens flares to your videos.

Perhaps no single photo is more symbolic of America’s troubles during the Great Depression than Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother.” Depicting an itinerant farm worker, Florence Owens Thompson, and five of her children apparently in the grips of despair on the side of the road, this single image came to surmise an entire era.

Adding to your arsenal of camera movements is always a good thing to do. If you just bought your first gimbal, this great tutorial will show you 13 essential movements that will add more visual interest to your work.

Cleaning hair in post-production is without a doubt retouchers’ and photographers’ worst nightmare. It takes up a lot of time, energy, and precision, but more importantly, there are so many techniques out there that often we forget about even the most basic ones. In this very comprehensive video, Aaron Nace from Phlearn shows how to retouch hair in the most simple way possible.

Even if it's not your normal genre, shooting still life photos can be a great way to practice lighting, composition, and building images with compelling stories. This helpful video gives seven quick tips for shooting better still life images.

Photography, especially some of the more niche genres, can be an exceedingly hard thing to stay motivated in. Hear from a large format landscape photographer on how he stays motivated in a tough-to-make-it world.

Whether you are a photographer or a videographer, special effects are one way to separate your work from the crowd. Not everyone is willing to put in the time or effort, and many don’t know how to get it done. If you are amongst the ones missing the knowledge, don’t worry, Film Riot has got you covered with a new tutorial on how to create a fake bullet with Play-Doh, a bit of post-processing, and a few makeup products.

It took me several years of editing video before I became comfortable venturing out to use some of Premiere Pro's editing tools. The problem is that you can accomplish almost everything you need with the Selection tool, and some editors are comfortable doing just that. You can perform simple trims, move clips around, and add transitions all using just the Selection tool. To be honest, you never really need to use any of the tools provided in Premiere Pro. However, by exploring tools such as Ripple Edit, Rolling Edit, Track Selection, Rate Stretch, Slip, and Slide, I’ve ended up saving myself countless hours in the edit suite.

Sometimes the who, what, and how is surpassed by the when. Timing can be everything. It’s a fact of life, even if a rather cruel one.

When you're first starting in filmmaking, the veritable plethora of techniques, equipment, skills, and the like you have to have can seem like an impossible bunch to conquer. Being younger is yet another challenge. This video gives some helpful tips and advice to younger up and coming filmmakers.

Some photographers are lucky enough to work large shoots that have directors or production managers who manage the logistics of the shoot, leaving the photographer free to focus on creating images but, often, photographers are running large scale shoots without the benefit of a production manager. Instead of just shooting and directing models and grips, the photographer becomes responsible for the whole team, which can include models, grips, assistants, stylists, makeup artists, hair stylists, set dressers, etc. Under these circumstances, with everyone’s safety riding on your shoulders, there are dangers you need to be prepared for.