The value of video production in today’s fast-paced environment should not be understated. In fact, many would argue that anyone hoping to make it as a photographer in today’s world better know how to shoot video in addition.
A great way to hone your videography skills is to get frustrated while editing video. As you may know, there are plenty of ways to get frustrated while editing. For example, let’s say you want to include a particular clip in your sequence. When you try to use the shot you realize that the videographer didn’t hold the shot for long enough, and now the clip is too short to use.
Is this an age-old debate? Probably not, but I hear many voices touting the need for photographers to self-promote in order expand their client base. At the same time, I get many invitations to networking events for photographers with the intention of building their businesses. Are these the same thing, or not
Tattoos can be a very unique way to add something that makes your subject stand out. This neat tutorial will show you how to take a design and convincingly place it on your subject in Photoshop.
One of the most fundamentals features in Photoshop is the Pen Tool. It's a bit less intuitive than some other features, however, and it often presents some difficulty for first-time users. This video will get you up and running with it in 30 quick minutes.
Makeup artists can be indispensable to raising the production value of a photoshoot. They make models fit the brief, they introduce important elements to the color palette, they make clients feel fantastic, and they bring the magic to conceptual photographs.
As a dog photographer, one critical post-processing skill is the ability to remove leashes from your images. It is often the single most time-consuming step of editing your dog portraits. I have tried many techniques for removing leashes, and I find this one to be the fastest while producing great results.
We've all heard it hundreds of times: unless you're a journalist zooming off shots to an editor as the action happens, you should be shooting in raw. But why is it so vital to the quality of your images? Watch this video for a great explanation.
A sharp, well-defined jawline is a very popular look in portraits that can really increase the interest of your images and draw the viewer's eye to your subject. This video will show you how to achieve that look with a few quick adjustments in just one minute.
While the technology we use every day swiftly marches towards the pursuit of perfection, cinematographers everywhere have found a friend in lenses with character. Few looks allow cinematographers to express that pursuit of unique character more than anamorphic lenses.
It was my first wedding to shoot and I had never shot one before. I get stressed out really easily, so doing this was a bad idea for me all the way around. I missed shots, I missed a set of groups, and my lighting for the reception was terrible.
If you ever feel like you're stuck in a creative rut, or having a hard time progressing in your field, know that you're not alone. Any professional photographer will tell you about all of the failures and challenges they had to overcome in order to reach new heights.
The "Orange and Teal" look is immensely popular for videos of all shapes and sizes, from YouTube travel videos to Hollywood blockbusters. It not only adds depth and color contrast to a shot but also gives footage a pleasing, warm golden hour look and feel.
Many digital photographers appreciate the look of film, but don't own the necessary equipment to shoot it, whether that is due to the hassle or the cost. There are many ways to mimic the look in post-production, however, and this great tutorial will show you such methods to do it.
As photographers, we may not always think about taking pictures of ourselves, but having a current headshot is extremely important. Think of it as your own personal little billboard that allows people to see your ability as a photographer. After all, if you don't have a good picture of yourself on your website, what would make anybody believe that you can take quality pictures of anyone else?
Today, I’d like to talk about three key elements that I feel make up each and every photograph we take. Of course they are not the only elements, but I feel that they are the most important. Specific shoots, like fashion or automotive commercials, require all sorts of preparation and specific skills. However, at the photographic level, three key elements still apply.
So you bought a gimbal! Great! But now you're wondering why your gear is still coming out slightly shaky and why the gimbal isn't doing as promised and creating a buttery-smooth video for you like magic! Odds are you're not quite using it right. But thanks to Christian Santiago, we can get a great virtual lesson on what you should be doing to shoot like the pros.
Importing photos after a shoot is often one of the more boring parts of an assignment and getting it done as quickly and easily as possible is often the name of the game. This has unfortunately led to a lot of Lightroom users not really using the Import function to its full potential.
I’ve been to the New York State fair for more years than I can count. It’s a great time. There are carnival rides, animals, music, and lots to photograph. Oh, and of course, corn dogs. But in recent years, I’ve found myself carrying less and less photographic gear to the fair and just enjoying the moment. Except that I wasn’t really enjoying the moment because I wasn’t making photos.
Primarily, I'm a NYC Wedding Photographer. However, I also photograph business headshots in my NJ Studio as well. I love doing this as a side-gig that brings me extra money for practically no work at all. To be honest, I wasn't really all about it when D.C. Headshot Photographer Moshe Zusman told me I should start implementing it into my business.
We have featured Adrian Sommeling quite a few times over the summer and with reason. His composite photography work, or digital art if you prefer, is stunning and his videos give tons of inside tips to improve our very own work. In his latest creation, he Photoshopped his son and himself playing with foam guns replaying the famous bullet time Matrix scene.
The Nikon D850 is all over every photography blog and for good reason.
Being a professional photographer is an expensive game. Even really basic equipment is hard on the pocket. A lot of us (myself included) get this nagging doubt that our current kit is holding us back. I'm also guilty of getting gear envy when I see other photographers behind the scenes shots on instagram.
Part of the fun and challenge of landscape photography is that while you can choose your compositions, you don't get the privilege of modifying your subject. Sometimes, you come across a scene that begs to be photographed, but doesn't readily lend itself to a composition. This video examines such situations and how to shoot them.
You just bought your first drone! Woot! Now what? Flying a drone is a vastly different way of thinking and shooting, and it takes a bit of getting used to. This helpful video will get you up and running so you can shoot those epic aerial shots.
Silhouette portraits are always fun to experiment with, and it’s easy to assume that we are limited to sunrise and sunset for capturing this type of image. With knowledge of camera exposure settings and a single off-camera flash, this style of portrait can be produced at any time of day or night.
Is your Instagram really working for you? We all know how important a tool such a social media is to help create a brand and attract clients who may want to hire you. If you're finding that your account is struggling to grow then you might be making some of these many mistakes.
With a little work, it's possibly to create fairly convincing lens blur using Photoshop. This tutorial will show you just how to do just that.
When you rely on creativity for work, a battle with the absence of these abilities can be detrimental, especially when you’re freelance. No matter what type of creative work you do, there will come a time when you feel like your powers have dried up and you are no longer capable.
There are often things that are helpful to workflow, no matter how minor they are. One of my favorite customizations to a new install of Photoshop is the cursor customization. When watching a tutorial and I see the instructor clicking through a menu instead of using a shortcut key for something as simple as duplicating a layer, I can understand the reason why.
Super recognizers are people with extraordinarily good face recognition ability. It is estimated that less than 2 percent of the population are super-recognizers. Are photographers any more likely to possess this superpower?
In August 2015, I quit all working commitments and took the leap in to full-time photographer. In March 2016, I wrote an article of advice about being a photographer I wish I'd known earlier after I began to scrutinize my performance under the new, professional microscope.
If you're looking to try out film for the first time, the veritable myriad of choices can be a smidgen overwhelming. This remarkably comprehensive guide will tell you everything you need to know about all the 35mm ISO 400 options on the market right now.
David DuChemin has become very well known for his so called “sermons” on vision. He has written books about it, including the beautifully crafted "VisionMongers." He is a champion of exploring art over exploring gear, and even his YouTube show uses his motto in its title, “Vision is Better.” In Episode 61, he goes into a common misconception about vision and style.
One of my biggest pet peeves is working with wedding videographers that treat their craft like it’s photography. In doing that, a lot of talented people sell their art form, and the art form of their peers, short. So what can you do to focus your videography and cinematography skills and make your wedding videos more refined? Think like a filmmaker.
Giving your portraits a cold, dramatic finish is a neat way to give them an alternate look that makes them stand out a bit. This helpful tutorial will show you how to take a standard portrait and transform it, and it does it using only Lightroom.
A good portfolio is never finished. Portfolios, books, albums, or websites, however a photographer's body of work is contained, it should be ever-evolving and developing even after a photographer has started working on professional projects. Any perception that a photographer can leave a portfolio static once work starts flowing in is a dangerous one.
When I first decided to try converting some of my photos to black and white, it seemed very hard to get good results. I would often rely on using the desaturate adjustment in Adobe Photoshop that I learned in high school 20 years ago. This makes for some very flat and gray looking images. From there I found better results by using tools like Photoshop actions and Nik Silver Efex.
You’ve got a solid website, your photography skills are on point, you’ve been around for awhile, but you still aren’t getting any clients. Peers’ businesses are booming, you know there are plenty of clients to go around, and yet, you’re still struggling to get by with your photography business.
When you're working in Photoshop, it can be easy to run astray of staying organized. This helpful video talks about why a consistent workflow is key to top-notch images.
If you're just getting started with artificial light, one of the most challenging scenarios you'll probably undertake is mixing natural light and your strobes convincingly. This helpful video will give you some quick tips, as well as a neat trick for eking out a bit more shooting time during golden hour.
A color calibrator was perhaps the best non-photographic photographic purchase I've ever made. If you're not calibrating your displays, this helpful video will show you exactly why you should reconsider that.
Photography requires repetitive tasks that can often become habit forming. When we find a way of doing something that works, we repeat those steps to get the desired result. We get locked into certain styles and certain ways of thinking.
Modern wedding clients expect a lot out of the videographers they hire. No more can you simply be a person with a camera. As professional equipment gets more affordable, the quality standards that people expect have increased as well. This is especially true when you’re editing.
One of the challenges wedding photographers encounter is how to structure pricing for their services. One common mistake is to include a free engagement session in all wedding packages. There are a few reasons why you should offer engagement sessions only as an add-on to wedding packages.
Infrared photography can be an absolute blast, but it normally takes some specialized equipment and post-processing to pull off. This video shows you how to try it out relatively cheaply and easily to see if it's right for you.
Color casts are one of the most common issues you'll have to tackle when editing photos. Unfortunately, the fix isn't always as simple as adjusting the white balance and/or tint, as casts may appear at varying intensities in different areas and luminosity ranges of your image. This helpful video shows you a more advanced way to tackle them.
Popular landscape photography locations can be a bit of conundrum in some sense: they're likely popular because they offer great images, but that reputation means it can be difficult to produce original work from them. This vlog follows one photographer as he seeks out those compositions in one of the most popular locations in the world.
My passion for photography stemmed from a series of trips I had taken overseas and a desire to capture the beauty of those places with more finesse. Landscapes were a natural draw for me and it didn’t take long to come across the concept of exposure blending.
In his latest photography tutorial, noted French photographer (and prolific video tutorial maker) Serge Ramelli demonstrates how to quickly and effectively replace a sky in Photoshop.