Photography Education

Whether you just picked up your first camera or you've been shooting for years and hit a plateau, there's always more to learn. This section is where Fstoppers publishes educational content aimed at genuinely improving your photography — not just gear tips, but the foundational understanding of light, composition, and visual thinking that makes the difference between a competent photographer and a compelling one.

The Importance of Knowing and Photographing Your Local Landscapes

When you look at landscape photography online, you will probably notice that, for the most part, it is of extraordinary locations that are difficult and pricey to reach, at best. And beyond that, you have further issues to contend with, such as distinguishing your images among the thousands of others created at the spot.

How to Color Grade Images in Lightroom

Color grading is a subtle art, and yet, it is one of the most powerful ways to give your image a professional look, convey a certain mood, and establish a recognizable personal style.

Make Your Own Film Presets With This Simple Tutorial

The nostalgia of film and the decades gone is fascinating so no wonder film presets and looks are popular to buy for your editing software. They’re pretty easy to make yourself if you put a little bit of time into understanding what elements in editing make the film look different from digital. Follow my tutorial to make your own vintage film presets for Capture One, Lightroom or PhotoShop.

How to Edit Skies in Landscape Photos in Lightroom

The way you edit the sky can have a tremendous impact on not just the quality of a landscape images, but the mood it conveys to the viewer. Lightroom offers a lot of power and versatility for editing skies, and this fantastic video tutorial will show you how to take advantage of those capabilities to create better and more precise edits.  

One of the Biggest Pitfalls of Being a Professional Photographer

Without a doubt, finding success as a professional photographer takes solid technique and a strong creative voice, but those alone are not sufficient. Becoming a successful professional takes quite a bit of business savvy, including the ability to monetize your work, anticipate market trends, and understand how to convert one-time clients into loyal returning customers.

5 Common Landscape Photography Mistakes

Landscape photography is a challenging genre that takes a combination of strong technical skills, planning ahead, a keen awareness of conditions, and often, a smidgen of luck. As such, there are a lot of places where things can go a bit wrong and end up derailing your images. This great video tutorial details five such mistakes and how to fix them or avoid them altogether. 

Why Film Directors Avoid Deep Focus in Cinematography

You may notice that most cinematography has a shallow depth of field. There are lots of reasons for this, and in this video, one filmmaker goes through the pros and cons of using it and why it is often avoided. 

Photographers and The Cost Of Living Crisis: Can We Really Survive?

In the land of the photographer, times are harder than ever before, with companies ending their contracts at lower levels and shoots being less available, with budgets cut and a huge number of working photographers facing hard times. With all this uncertainty in the world, can we really survive doing what we love and live comfortably?

 

How to Retouch Lips in Photoshop

We spend a lot of time working on perfecting our retouching technique when it comes to hair, skin, and eyes, but just like those aforementioned aspects, the lips are also a crucial part of the face, and as such, they deserve equal attention in the post-processing phase.

How to Create Better Landscape Photo Compositions

Landscape photography takes a wide variety of skills and techniques in order to find success, and often, just a bit of luck thrown in. However, one skills that tends to elude photographers more than any other is composition.

The Importance of the Everyday: Why I Shoot Street as a Pro

Street photography is a realm of photography that carries enormous weight. A genre derived from some of the world's photographic pioneers — the big names. The generations taking cameras to the front lines of war, documenting death, destruction, humility, and the human spirit, and bringing it home to document the everyday.

The DIY Food Photography Setup: The Gear You Shouldn't Bypass

It's annoying, I know. You thought you had it figured out. You thought you'd ticked every box, but I guarantee you didn't. I certainly didn't and haven't to this day! The amount of gear we use as photographers is ridiculous. It makes even the smallest of shoots a test in organization, packing, loading, unloading, setting up, packing down, and remembering to do it all again.

Helpful Practical Photography Tips

Want some easy and immediately actionable advice that will improve both your images and your workflow in no time? This is the video for you. This helpful tutorial features 10 helpful tips, tricks, and accessories that will make you a better photographer in no time.  

Common Scams Photographers Should Watch Out For

Photography is a common hobby and profession in which high amounts of money and valuable equipment frequently change hands, making it a popular target for scammers. This excellent video essay details some of the most common scams in the industry and how to recognize and avoid them to ensure you are not taken advantage of.  

Why Just Mastering Photography Technique Isn't Good Enough

The technical side of photography takes a lot of committed study and practice to master, and it is something to be proud of when you have gained the skills to stride confidently into a variety of scenarios and produce adept images. Nonetheless, just that alone is not enough to find success and recognition, particularly in the professional realm.

5 Important Rules Every New Photographer Should Learn

Learning photography is a complex process that takes the confluence of a variety of skills and knowledge sets in order to find success. And while there is certainly a ton of specific information you will need to learn, if you follow the five simple rules contained in this helpful video tutorial, you will find yourself ahead of the curve in no time at all. 

Important Advice for New Photographers

Being a new photographer, whether you have aims of going pro or you simply enjoy the hobby, comes with a lot of challenges you need to overcome to find success and contentment with the craft. If you are just getting started and looking for some guidance, check out this helpful video tutorial that features an experienced photographer sharing some important advice.  

How to Add Realistic Light Using Lightroom’s Intelligent Presets

This tutorial looks at using Adobe Lightroom Classic's intelligent masking and preset tools to create realistic light in post-production after you've already shot your images. Then, you can save the preset to use on any photo with just one click. This is essential for portrait and landscape photographers and will make your images better with less effort. 

How to Get Rid of Dark Circles Under Eyes Using Photoshop

By far, one of the common retouching requests photographers receive when editing portraits is to lighten dark circles under the eyes. Thankfully, it is not an especially difficult problem to address, and this excellent video tutorial will show you everything you need to do to lighten those circles in a convincing and high-quality manner.  

How to Enhance Eyes Using Photoshop

The eyes are one of the most important of any portrait, and as such, they deserve a little bit of extra attention when you are in the post-processing stage of your work. If you would like to improve your portraits, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you how to brighten and enhance the eyes in a portrait for natural, compelling results.  

The Future of In-person Photography Education

Photography education is a constantly fluctuating space, ever evolving from one approach to the next in an effort to differentiate from the pack. The Photo Creators Conference is the next evolution in the chain.  

How to Use a Wide Angle Lens for Landscape Photography

Wide angle lenses are the tool of choice of countless landscape photographers, but they can be particularly tricky to work with, especially when it comes to composition. If you are new to landscape photography and hoping to improve, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you how to use a wide angle lens for creating effective and compelling landscape images.  

How to Create Beauty Lighting With Speedlights

When it comes to studio lighting, you might think that you need powerful monolights or pack and head systems, but you can accomplish quite a bit with speedlights. This great video tutorial will show you how to do just that using affordable and easy-to-use speedlights.  

Use These Simple Steps to Ensure Sharp Photos

If you're a beginner to photography, your images might seem far softer than those you see from your favorite photographers and it can be difficult to identify why. Well, the answer might be in this video, and if not, you'll come away with some sage advice on getting sharp images. 

A Beginner's Guide to Working With Flash

Working with flash intimidates a lot of photographers, but it is well worth taking the time to learn it, as it will make you a vastly more versatile photographer and enable new creative opportunities that simply would not be possible with only natural light.

The First Lens Landscape Photographers Should Buy

If you are interested in landscape photography, you might think that the first lens you should pick up is an ultra-wide angle zoom. Those can certainly be useful tools, but there might be a better first lens. This excellent video will show you a potentially better choice.  

An Important Lesson for Every Photographer

Being a photographer, whether a hobbyist or professional, is a complex endeavor in today's world, and it can be easy to be sidetracked by a wide range of issues or red herrings. If you sometimes find yourself struggling with that, check out this important video that is a useful reminder of what matters in photography and what the real nature of progress is.  

Some Helpful Advice for Beginners Regarding Shutter Speed

Along with aperture and ISO, shutter speed is one of the three fundamental parameters that determine the overall exposure and look of a photo. Shutter speed has both a technical and creative aspect, as you can also leverage it for making effects that would not be visible to the naked eye.

5 Helpful Tips to Improve Your Portrait Photography Portfolio

Your portfolio is your calling card and is the place where most potential customers will make the decision to pursue hiring you or not. As such, your portfolio deserves a lot of careful consideration. This helpful video tutorial features an experienced photographer sharing five tips to help you improve the quality of your portrait portfolio.  

5 More Photo Editing Mistakes to Avoid

In a recent article, I shared a selection of easy-to-avoid photo editing mistakes. Today, it's time for five more. Some of them might sound obvious, while others are more subtle. What they all have in common: they can ruin an otherwise great edit. 

Settings You Should Change on Your Camera

Modern cameras are tremendously complex and intricate machines, and as such, there are often settings that may not be the best choice for your work and may even cause you to miss a shot or not come home with the best quality images.

Why Landscape Photographers Should Embrace All Light

When it comes to landscape photography, many photographers like to stick to the golden light that is only available around sunrise and sunset, when warm, dramatic rays of sunlight cascade through the frame. However, if you only shoot during those times, you are missing out on a ton of photo opportunities.

How to Stop Blown Highlights and Get the Perfect Exposure

Balancing the exposure of a complex scene can be tricky, particularly when the dynamic range is wide. In this video, learn the basics of avoiding blown highlights ruining your landscape and nailing the perfect exposure instead. 

10 Landscape Photography Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Landscape photography is a challenging genre that requires good technique, planning, creative visions, and sometimes, just a bit of luck. If you would like to improve your landscape photography, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features an experienced photographer sharing 10 common mistakes landscape shooters make and how to fix them or avoid them altogether.  

How to Improve the Color of Foliage in Landscape Photos

When it comes to landscape photography, foliage is often one of the most important components of an image, and as such, it deserves a lot of close attention, particularly when it comes to color. If you would like to improve your landscape photos, check out this great video tutorial that will show you how to leverage Photoshop to create more accurate and vibrant foliage.  

7 Tips to Improve Your Photography as a Beginner

There are many simple and effective techniques that you can utilize to improve your photography when you're just starting out. Check out these seven simple tips to help you improve your photography as a beginner. 

A Helpful Photoshop Portrait Retouching Tutorial

The majority of portrait photographs are only half finished once the shutter button is pressed; almost every image will require some degree of post-processing to be complete. This helpful video tutorial will show you an effective, professional-level retouching workflow using frequency separation and dodging and burning that will help you create compelling, polished results.  

7 Tips for Taking Sharp Landscape Photographs

In landscape photography, sharpness is often one of the top priorities, and photographers will go to great lengths to ensure that their photos are crisp. If you are new to landscape photography and ready to improve, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features an experienced shooter sharing seven useful tips sure to improve the sharpness of your images.  

A Simple and Effective One-light Portrait Photography Setup

A lot of portrait photographers are scared of working with artificial lighting, but it is a skill that is well worth learning, as it will make you a more capable and versatile photographer and better enable you to realize all your creative visions (and those of your clients).

Three Useful Lightroom Tips You Might Not Have Seen Before

While it used to be that Photoshop was the place for any sort of advanced photo editing, in recent iterations, Lightroom has become impressively intricate and capable. In fact, you can now do a lot of things in the program you used to have to switch to Photoshop for, and often, you can perform them more efficiently in Lightroom.

Avoid These Five Photo Editing Mistakes

Photo editing is a powerful tool that allows you to transform your images in many ways, from enhancing the atmosphere in a photo to increase of image quality. However, common editing mistakes can negatively impact the final result. In this article, we'll explore five of those. 

Helpful Advice for Taking Sharp Landscape Photos

While different genres place different levels of emphasis on getting sharp images, landscape photography generally demands a higher-than-average priority be placed on consistent sharpness.

3 Easy Posing Techniques for People Sitting on the Ground

Of all the things that go into making a compelling image, posing is perhaps the thing that photographers struggle with the most. If that is something you have trouble with, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you three easy posing techniques for when your subject is sitting on the ground or floor.  

Rain Photoshoot Tips for Unique and Captivating Photos

Rain in the forecast can be a disappointment for photographers and their clients, especially if they planned an outdoor photoshoot. Rain can ruin the vision for perfect, directional lighting that was originally planned, making it difficult to capture the desired mood or atmosphere.