Posing professional models can be easy, but how do you get the best poses from someone who’s not used to being in front of the camera? Creating a rapport with your subject that puts them at ease is crucial, and having a small repertoire of posing options can be an incredibly useful part of the process.
It’s one of my favorite photography tools: the simple colored gel. Not only can it improve the color balance of your image, it can dramatically boost your visual impact when used to add touches of color to your shot.
Canon's pro body cameras have a number of ways to fine tune the autofocus system, however much of it is behind a few button presses, switches, or menus. This is how to set up direct button access to multiple autofocus modes.
An argument for using either a UV filter or lens hood is for protecting the lens and especially the front element. Last winter, I experienced just how important a lens hood is.
If you look at normal lenses, then look at cinema lenses of comparable aperture and focal length, you might be shocked by their prices over their counterparts. This fun video examines just why cinema lenses are so expensive.
Nathan Elson, a commercial photographer from Calgary, Canada, just posted a great no-nonsense tutorial outlining his basic lighting set-up. Oh, FYI, there's also a great contest that Elson has put together with Strobepro. Go take a look.
Dedicated monolights are certainly highly useful for portrait work, but they're also relatively expensive and rather bulky. However, almost every photographer owns a speedlight, and you might wonder if you can use it in place of a monolight for on-location portrait work. This great video shows you the benefits and drawbacks of shooting with a speedlight outside.
With the digital age stacking techniques make it possible to shoot a star trail in the middle of a city. But when I got my hands on a great medium format camera, I also ran into a problem: the star trail had strange patterns in the stacked image. Fortunately I found out why this is, and how to avoid it.
Since starting landscape photography over 30 years ago, getting great composition has been the holy grail. Finding a subject or great light is often a matter of timing and patience, but getting the perfect composition is the art in photography.
Technique, skill, creativity, and yes, gear can all affect the quality of your photographs. But there's one thing many photographers overlook when out in the field that will quickly improve your photography without costing you a dime or requiring any practice or specialized skills.
The venerable East Coast photography exhibition makes it first trip to the West Coast.
One of the keys to you becoming the best photographer possible is working well in every season and using the different colors and moods to your advantage. Here's how to improve your photography during Spring.
Stepping up to a telephoto lens can be a jarring experience for bird photography hopefuls. With such a limited field of view while looking through the camera's viewfinder, how are you ever supposed to find anything?
When I first started out using speedlights for flash photography, there weren’t many options aside from Canon and Nikon. As a result, I’ve amassed a large collection of Speedlights (and Speedlites), but now that I also shoot mirrorless bodies, are my SB-700s and 600EX-RTs any good?
The answer is a definite yes, though with some caveats.
Want to know a secret? You know those images that look like they’re all natural light? Well, lots of the images are produced using some sort of flash or second light source. The flash isn’t used to replace the natural light, but rather to complement the natural light and fill in where that natural light just can’t pull its weight.
Tips and tricks are thrown around left and right. Here are nine tips you want to ignore.
In his latest video, James Popsys share nine tips he thinks are worth ignoring.
Do you ever find yourself wanting to add a little pop of extra flare to your images, such as a backlit lens flare or maybe soft sunlight beaming in? This quick and effective method will show you how to create custom flares for your images in minutes.
Hasselblad was one of the first that used super resolution techniques. Today it can be found in many cameras, producing resolutions that are up to four times higher than the pixel count of the sensor. You can also do this with your camera. This is how it works.
If you're new to photography and you want to know how professional photographers get their colors looking the way they do, this video will show you how. Lightroom is a powerful photo-editing piece of software and also one of the most used across the photography industry.
Seascape photography is an important part of landscape imagery that can be done anytime of the year. If you are struggling with taking good seascape images, you should have a look at this video.
Michael Sasser sits down for a education filled interview with Victoria Caroline on how she successfully books twelve travel shoot in four nights. They discuss also what is important for copy writing on social media to engage with clients.
Photographers provide a very useful service, and because of that, you will probably often be asked to provide those services for friends and family, and they might want a discount (or even want you to work for free). When that happens, should you indulge them? This great video explores that exact question.
Photoshop's eyedropper tool is highly useful for selecting exact colors for a variety of uses while you're in the program. But did you know that you can also use it to select colors outside the program? This great video will show you a quick trick for selecting colors outside Photoshop.
For many going into a photography career, the untraditional nature of the job can lead loved ones to be concerned or even disapproving of the choice. This great video examines that dilemma, telling the creator's personal story and offering ideas on how you can deal with that issue.
I have done photography for seven years and full time for the past three years. In that three-year period, I have mainly focused on landscape photography. I have learned a ton about photography in that period.
There is a very distinct and fundamental difference between being a successful photographer and being successful in the business of photography. This helpful video will give you three tips to ensure you're successful when you start a photography business.
Looking for the perfect beauty shot? In this video, Daniel Norton takes us through his way of lighting the subject in order to achieve the "beauty shot".
Pitching can seem like a really scary thing to start doing. But I fully believe that anyone can pitch effectively, they just need to know how to! So today, I’m going to break down how to get started.
Have you ever needed to shoot jewelry on location, like wedding rings during a wedding? Then you may know about the difficulties of acquiring a good image.
Color is one of the most most versatile and expressive ways to shape your images to convey emotion, grandeur, or whatever it is you'd like your viewer to feel and see. This helpful video discusses seven ways you can both modify and improve the color in your landscape images.
One of the most essential skills any new photographer should learn is how to shoot in manual mode. This helpful video will show you everything you need to know to start successfully shooting in manual mode.
One of the most fundamental yet impactful decisions you can make regarding the post-processing of a photograph is whether to render it in color or in black and white. The choice of which is not always clear for a given image, however, but this great video seeks to provide some guidelines for choosing between the two.
Sharpness: it's what we all want from our photos and it's something many of us obsess over. If your shot out of camera isn't quite as razor edge as you'd like, there are quite a few ways to get more sharpness in post-production. This method is by far my favorite.
Portrait photography can be a tricky genre full of nuance, and posing can be one of the most difficult aspects. This helpful video will show you a variety of portrait poses and tricks and tips to get the most out of your subjects and to produce better images.
When you think of astrophotography, you probably think of expensive equatorial mounts, pricey wide aperture lenses, and top-of-the-line full frame cameras with excellent high ISO performance.
To get sharper images, there are some easy steps to take into consideration before and during the shoot, and no, you can't fix it in Photoshop.
Do you dream of walking into your boring office job, upending your desk, and flipping the bird at your horrified boss as you tell him you're starting your own photography business? You might want to hold off on taking action. Here's why.
Creatives often suffer from some sort of anxiety, and it can be a serious impairment to our ability to get work done and to grow both our abilities and our careers. This important video details one photographer's struggles with anxiety.
Tilt-shift lenses are highly specialized pieces of equipment that many photographers will go their entire careers without ever touching. As such, you might wonder why those weird lenses are so expensive in the first place. This interesting video explores just that question.
For the next month, SLR Lounge is offering 30% off of their full training systems. If you're looking for complete systems to help you succeed in your business or improve your photography, then this is a great chance to jump in.
Spring is now in full swing, and it's one of the best times to get out with your camera and photograph the awakening of nature. This great video will give you 12 tips to improve your spring landscape photography as well as some fun image ideas.
Capturing emotion in your photos is one of the most crucial things you can do to create compelling imagery, and yet, it's one of the things we talk about the least. This great video examines the importance of capturing emotion in landscape photography and how you can go about doing it yourself.
You can never have enough tips to improve your work. This helpful video will give you 10 simple tips to not only improve your landscape photography, but to enjoy it more as well!
No photographer is perfect, and we all makes mistakes from time to time that detract from the quality and power of our images. This helpful video details five such mistakes and what you can do to fix them to create more powerful and emotive photos.
In the last decade or so, video resolutions have exploded and show no signs of stopping, particularly as 8K is starting to make its way to market. But at what point have you reached more resolution than you really need? This great video takes a look at the history of video resolutions and what you need as a filmmaker.
One of the central principles we hear over and over in photography is the importance of pre-visualizing shots and planning one's work in advance. And while those are absolutely important, it's also just as beneficial to keep an open mind and to be willing to adjust to the conditions you've been given to come away with the best possible image.
V-flats are one of those studio tools that almost every photographer should have, as their price and versatility make them almost indispensable when working with artificial light. This helpful video will show you three separate beauty lighting setups using v-flats.
When you think of epic landscape images, the light you imagine is probably golden and dramatic, with arching shadows and radiant glow. And while that sort of light can certainly create beautiful, entrancing imagery, overcast skies can create their own sort of mood, and they're well worth embracing.
Light and airy photos are one of the most popular looks nowadays for weddings, lifestyle portraits, and more. This excellent video will show you how to edit your images to get that look using nothing more than Lightroom.
Being a wedding photographer is tough enough, but there are some small steps you can take to make your job easier that really add up in the long run. This helpful video will give your four lesser discussed ideas to make your wedding photography life just a little better.