Photography Education

Landscape photography and wide-angle zoom lenses often go hand in hand. If you have ever used one of these lenses, you know there is a bit of the learning curve. 

When you're new to artificial lighting, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to understand how different modifiers and attachments can change how your subject looks. This great video will show you how several common modifiers and attachments make your subject look so you can choose the appropriate equipment for your shoot. 

Half the fun of working with studio strobes is that you are not constrained to the available light and can experiment with all sorts of things, like the position of the lights, the relative powers, the modifiers, and even the colors. This fun video will show you how working with color gels can produce unique and interesting results. 

Forest fires can drastically alter a landscape in just minutes, turning lush, green scenes into murky wastelands of muted colors. This excellent video follows a photographer as he ventures into the aftermath of one to photograph it. 

Composition is one of the most nebulous and yet important skills any photographer can have, and no photo can be successful without a proper composition. This great video will give you five tips and techniques to improve the compositions of your landscape images.  

Photoshop is a tremendously complex program full of all sorts of hidden features and shortcuts, and it can be a difficult to navigate around the application with all that complexity. This quick and great shortcut will show you a lesser known way to navigate around an image in Photoshop. 

One of the most basic yet effective ways you can improve an image is to shape the light through selective lightening and darkening. This great video tutorial will show you how to use radial filters to shape your subject and capture the viewer's attention using Lightroom. 

One of the most important steps of the editing process when it comes both to making your images look professional and adding a touch of personal style is color grading. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to complete the process on two different images using Capture One. 

90% of people in the creative industries have worked for free. In the world of photography and filmmaking, it's not unusual to work for nothing in return for exposure, experience, and getting a foot in the door — to the frustration of others. Whether you're the one moaning or the one undercutting, check out these ideas for how we can make things better. 

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. When it comes to sky replacements, if you're repeatedly making the same mistakes and forever unhappy with your results, these tips will help you. 

Architectural photography is an exacting discipline. Consequently, small mistakes can make a large impact on your body of work. In this article, I cover five common mistakes that I’ve observed in architectural photography.  

If there is any basic accessory almost every photographer should own, it's a 5-in-1 reflector. Versatile, portable, and cheap, I have one in my bag at all times. This excellent video will show you the many different uses for a 5-in-1 reflector and how you can employ one to improve your shots. 

Dog photography can be incredibly rewarding when you do it right, but it can also be quite frustrating when the little puppers are bouncing all around and paying attention in every direction except yours. This helpful video will give you some quick tips to improve your pictures of dogs and to increase your chances of getting the shot. 

In last week's article, we spent some time discussing methods of adding the illusion of depth to your images using compositional techniques. This week, we will take that a step further and look at adding depth to the content of your images.  

If you spend enough time on the internet, you might begin to get the impression that you have to be at epic locations to get portfolio-worthy images. But travel is expensive and time-consuming, and all those locations have been shot to the point of nearly being cliché.

We spend quite a bit of time studying how to perform more extreme edits, and while those techniques certainly come in handy quite a lot of the time, knowing how to create a simple, clean, natural-looking image is an important skill. Whether you're a beginner or more experienced, this great video will show you how to easily get that look in Lightroom. 

If you constantly struggle to come up with new ideas for your photography work, then your career could be in serious trouble. Try one of these seven strategies to help you get that next big idea and keep those creative juices flowing. 

With an optical viewfinder, you are literally looking through the lens, so you see exactly what will be in the frame. Now, we have reached the realm of the electronic viewfinder, the EVF. But there are some things you need to be aware of. 

With drone technology, aerial photography may seem easier than ever to achieve these days.  However, to the discerning eye, the quality just isn't there sometimes. This leaves photographers with only a few options to consider if they want to capture a scene from the sky. 

Knowing where and how to focus is one of the most crucial steps to getting crisp and sharp landscape photos. This helpful video will give you five tips and techniques on how to properly focus your landscape photos to get tack-sharp images.  

Creativity comes in many forms, but something that all disciplines have in common is that you need to practice — not just your technical skill, but the act of thinking differently.  

In-camera transitions can seem to be a very easy technique to shoot, but they require deeper understanding than you might think.

There is no doubt that the wide-angle zoom lens is the most popular for landscape photography and is my go-to lens in most of my work. It is however, not necessarily the easiest lens to use as it takes in a lot of the landscape. 

Combine sculpture, photography, and a powerful message to bring social change to the world and you get a series of impactful works that can bring awareness to important issues. In the case of this personal photography project, I covered my bathroom with over 3000 ibuprofen tablets to bring attention to the widespread problems with drugs and addiction.

When your personal life takes you into a new location, whether a few states over or even out of the country, your business does not have to suffer. Photographer Jonna Royer has a few tips to help smooth the transition and get you up and running faster. 

Photoshop is a massive and nuanced program, for which there are many ways to accomplish any one task. However, one of the most useful techniques to know is luminosity masks, which are powerful and versatile additions to your editing arsenal. This helpful video will get you started with them. 

What's the most important thing to master in photography? I asked this question to ten photographers and eight gave the same answer: composition. More than gear or technical know-how, understanding composition and avoiding common errors that many people make will help you improve your photography more than anything else.

Lightroom's Dehaze tool can be a lifesaver in certain cases, bringing back photos that you might not have been able to recover otherwise. But that doesn't mean you should always use it whenever you see a bit of fog or haze in your photos. This great video shows you the ins and outs of the tool and discusses the best and worst cases for its usage.  

If you don't use a tripod, you're doing your photography a great disservice. But how do you know which tripod is best for your particular needs and circumstances? 

Check out these time-lapse selections from Google Earth Engine that run from 1984 to 2018.

If you recently updated to the latest version of Lightroom, you may have noticed a new slider near the top of the Develop module: Texture. With many different ways to add this sort of effect to a photo already in the program, you might be wondering if and how this new slider is different.

A lot goes into making a video look professional, and one of the final and most important steps is the color grade. It's easy to make a mistake here, and this great video will highlight four such missteps that new videographers often make when it comes time to color grade. 

There is certainly quite a lot that you can accomplish with natural light, but you're at the mercy of the weather outside, and sometimes, adding a bit of flash can go a long way to augment the light at hand or to even reshape it entirely. This great video will show you some different ways to use a flash to create a variety of looks when you're shooting portraits outdoors. 

Incorporating a body of water into a landscape photo is one of the best ways to add visual interest, create a flow that leads the viewer's eye across the image, and drastically alter the mood you're trying to create. This excellent video will give you seven tips to improve your seascape images. 

Bad light? No tripod? No problem. These techniques will help you get razor-sharp images without the need for perfect conditions or optimum gear. 

One of the more subtle but powerful ways to create impact in your images is to give them the feeling of greater depth. This excellent video discusses six methods you can use to create more dimensionality in your landscape images for a greater impact on the viewer. 

Blending modes are one of the most foundational features in Photoshop and something that almost anyone working with the program should understand well. This in-depth video will show you the ins and outs of every single blending mode, allowing you to better understand when to use each one and how they can help you achieve your desired results. 

Lightroom is an intricate program full of hidden features and tricks that can both improve your images and make your workflow far more efficient if you know how to use them properly. This great video will show you five hidden features and tricks you might not have known about before. 

In the last 10 years, manufacturers have introduced a new level of control to cameras: auto ISO plus the option to set a minimum shutter speed. If you’ve never tried using your camera with this setup, you may want to give it a go, as it could completely change how you shoot. 

If you're fortunate enough to be somewhere in the world where you have the chance to photograph the northern lights, you'll want to be prepared to take some beautiful images. Hopefully, the tips and tricks in this video help to set you up for success. 

My recent article focused on what skills you should focus on if you want to turn professional as a photographer. In this follow-up, I will discuss what I believe to be the next and crucial step before you make the leap: preparation.  

Some photos look like paintings. Not because they have some dreadful filter or effect applied, but because their use of light and composition is ethereal. In this video, Vinny Le Pes breaks down what is happening in these incredible images. 

Photoshop has numerous tools at its disposal that can perform a multitude of advanced functions, many of which are highly automated. But those automatic functions don't always perform perfectly, and sometimes, you'll need to fall back on a tried and true method: the Clone Stamp tool. This great video will show you exactly what you need to know about the powerful tool. 

We here at Fstoppers post many inks to useful video tutorials that have helped us create better images, and we hope they've helped you, fair reader, as well. After watching so many tutorials, maybe you feel like you're ready to begin sharing your knowledge, too.

Whether you’re shooting headshots at a Fortune 500 company or taking photographs of a family member for Mother’s Day, there’s one piece of gear you should definitely have in your kit for every portrait session. 

An easy lighting setup for any photographer to have in their arsenal that creates a highly sought-after look would have to be three point lighting. It’s classic, it’s easy, and you can achieve several highly stylized looks in only mere seconds by moving a light or two. 

Composition is one of the most nebulous and difficult concepts to discuss and work on in photography, but it's also one of the most important to master. This great video will give you four tips to help improve your compositions. 

Many times the question arises on how to run a family and a business without losing your sanity. After speaking with one entrepreneur who is successfully managing the balance, we shared a few tips to keep the pressure down and the success rate high.  

More and more photographers are either switching to or beginning to add video to their services, and while there are lots of similarities between shooting photos and shooting photos, there are enough differences that it's important to take the time to learn to do it properly.

Most photographers enjoy playing with new gear; after all, a lot of us are gadget nerds, and modern cameras can be rather nifty little technological boxes. Before you get ready to drop a bunch of money on a brand new camera, though, be sure to ask yourself these questions to make sure you're making the right decision.