Perhaps second only to having a great subject is a great background. The importance of the background in an image is often overlooked by many photographers.
ISO and digital noise are often a cause for concern with photographers. In this video, I look at how much noise is acceptable in an image and how that varies depending on the application of the photograph.
If you are currently stuck at home and looking for something to shoot, now is a perfect time experiment with different creative ideas to keep your technical skills sharp and to continue to develop your style. This fantastic video will show you how you can set up, shoot, and edit an eye-catching mixed light portrait.
Luminar 4's AI features have made most of the headlines, but the application is also a fully featured editor that can handle all the most essential adjustments as well as more advanced and creative techniques. This excellent video will show you five ways to make your landscape photos pop using Luminar 4.
I think it is always wise to shoot in raw. The raw file format will store the maximum amount of image information. This can even be optimized when shooting with exposure to the right to make full use of the dynamic range of the camera. Although intended for JPEG photographers, a flat picture profile can have a benefit or raw shooters also.
There surely is nothing worse than coming home from a shoot and seeing you have missed focus or you have parts of your photo out of focus when you intended for it to be in focus.
Aperture is one of the most fundamental and crucial parameters in photography, and having a complete mastery of it will give you greater technical and creative control of your images. This excellent video will introduce you to aperture, what it does, how it works, and how you can use it to make better photos.
Replacing a sky used to be a tedious (though still often worthwhile) procedure, but in recent years, advancements in selection technology and even AI sky replacement tools have surfaced, making the job quite a bit easier. This great video will show you how to replace a sky using both Photoshop and Luminar 4.
Action cameras are a fantastic option for getting unique shots in places or situations in which you would not or could not place a normal camera. This great video will show you a range of creative ways you can mount your action camera to get shots from interesting perspectives that can really invigorate your work.
Color grading is one of the most important techniques for giving any video a professional touch and developing your own personal style. This helpful video tutorial features a cinematographer and colorist discussing a wide range of color grading techniques, theories, and examples and how you can apply them to your own work.
Lightroom is an intricate program with a wide variety of functions, and it can be easy to overlook some of its features. This fantastic video will show you three lesser-known Lightroom tricks that are really useful in a variety of scenarios.
Luminar 4 is a great alternative for editing landscape photos and particularly for exploring your creativity. This informative video will show you how you can use the program to enhance a landscape image.
Feathering a light source is one of the most fundamental techniques any photographer working with artificial light should know, as it is highly useful and versatile. This excellent video will show you how to use feathering to create better lighting for your portraiture work.
While most of us are sitting at home as non-essential personnel, many have come up with ways to keep the creativity flowing. Some are learning how to photograph wildlife, some leaning on their new love for macro, and some even testing out product photography for the first time. One photographer decided to test out some DIY options for products saving herself some money while she had the time on her hands.
Astrophotography is certainly a challenging genre that requires a good bit of effort, but capturing images of ultra-distant and beautiful objects can be an amazing experience. This awesome video follows the process of using a 2,000mm telescope to image an object 22,000 light-years away.
We often talk about how to kill the ambient light in a shot so you can fully control the lighting with flash, but sometimes, you actually want to use both natural and artificial light in a shot. This great video will show you how to balance both flash and ambient light for a balanced result.
With most of us stuck at home without our normal shoots to keep us busy, you might be looking for projects that can keep your technical skills sharp and the creative juices flowing. Macro photography is a fantastic genre to dive into right now, and this excellent video will show you five different projects you can try while you are at home.
If you haven’t been keeping up with your photography Instagram marketing, now’s the time to revisit. Instagram marketing can be incredibly fruitful for photography businesses. To make it work for yours, you must understand how to use Instagram productively. Let’s start off with some statistics…
The last supermoon of 2020 is on May 7, and it is a great chance to take an entrancing and unique image incorporating it into a landscape or cityscape of your choice. This excellent video will show you how to plan and take a supermoon photo worthy of framing and hanging on your wall.
No doubt, a lot of us are struggling right now and wrestling with uncertain futures, and it can be very helpful to hear a little guidance from an experienced professional. If that is something you could use, this excellent video features a longtime professional discussing the current situation and offering some honest advice on how you can survive this tough difficult time.
With the current situation leaving many photographers without the ability to continue shooting, you may have started to turn toward selling prints as a way to supplement your income. This excellent video will show you how you can turn your prints into a truly professional product that will seriously impress your customers.
You might be surprised by the sort of unique images you can create just by using common objects in a creative manner and adding a bit of unusual technique. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how a photographer combined shutter dragging with a bit of creative prop usage to shoot this fascinating portrait.
One of the best tests of a photographer's lighting skill is their ability to use natural light and strobes together in an organic and convincing manner. This fantastic video tutorial will walk you through the method of using gelled strobes and natural light together to create this portrait along with the editing process in Capture One and Photoshop.
Photographers and videographers have more choice in capable gear than ever before, with something out there for everyone. Now that most manufacturers have well-established mirrorless lines, it may be worth asking yourself whether a DSLR or mirrorless setup is right for you in 2020.
One of the most fundamental and useful things Photoshop can do is change the color of objects in a convincing manner. This excellent video tutorial will show you two different ways you can change the color of walls in Photoshop.
Setting the proper exposure for a video is different than it is for a still image, but of course, it is just as crucial to get it right as it is with a photo. This fantastic video will show you how to properly expose a video consistently no matter the situation.
Knowing how to objectively evaluate your own work is crucial to growing as a photographer and continuing to offer the best possible images to your clients. This fantastic video will give you a five-step process to evaluating the quality of your photos and understanding where you need to improve.
If you are new to photography, you are probably realizing you can quickly sink a lot of money into this pursuit. Here are five things you should avoid wasting money on.
Recent updates to Lightroom Classic have brought a new level of control over local adjustments: Range Masks. Within this, the Color Range Mask allows you to be clumsy with your adjustment brushes while targeting very specific parts of your image. Here’s a detailed look at how it works.
I know a lot of us can't go outside right now to shoot panoramas due to quarantines and self-isolation, but perhaps you have some panoramic shots you took months back on a trip somewhere, buried away on a hard drive in the cupboard. Now's a good time to dust them off and get to work!
When it comes to DIY hacks, there are some absolute beauties out there that demonstrate the wonderfully creative imaginations that people have. It’s no different when it comes to photography, and these hacks I’m going to share with you today might be some of the most outrageous you’ve ever heard.
There are so many things to keep in mind doing landscape photography and a complicated scene is often one of them. With a minimalist approach, you bypass a lot of that confusion and end up with often much more attractive photos.
Camera equipment is quite expensive, and investing in a new body or lens is no small decision. If that is something you are currently considering, this fantastic video will give you a lot of perspective on both the purchasing process and what we really need as photographers.
Video editing takes a lot of time and effort, and anywhere you can make your workflow a bit more efficient can really add up in the long run. This great video will give you five helpful tips for editing more quickly in Adobe Premiere.
Most of the time, we think of Lightroom as a place for cataloging and global edits, but it also has some great local adjustment capabilities that can really put the finishing touches on an image. This excellent video will show you how to take advantage of those local adjustment features to improve your landscape images.
When you think of lenses for landscape photography, you likely think of wide focal lengths made for capturing a large amount of a scene in the frame. And while those are certainly useful, a good telephoto zoom can be just as useful. This fantastic video will show you seven different ways a 70-200mm lens can improve your landscape photography.
Frequency separation tends to have a bit of a controversial reputation, but when used carefully, it can be a great technique for specific retouching situations. This excellent video will show you how you can use frequency separation for retouching in Photoshop.
Nearly every modern camera has different metering modes to measure the amount of available light. It is possible to measure the average across the image, or just a part of the image. Do you use all of these metering modes? Or is it better to limit the use to only one?
Foggy forest photos are a beautiful and ethereal interplay between the sharp, defined, and intricate lines and geometry of trees and the nebulous fog. With the challenging conditions, they can be a bit tricky to shoot, however, but this great video will give you a wide range of helpful tips to get fantastic shots.
Justin and Kirby share some great tips on how to pose normal people. What do you do when your subject isn't an experienced model? Give them lots of encouragement, and show them the poses you have in mind.
Jessica Kobeissi and Kayleigh June share some quick and actionable portrait tips that don't need any special equipment — what's not to love!
Fighting off cabin fever while stuck indoors is hard to do. Trying to be creative can also be a real challenge. Check out this video full of tips to break you out of your isolation woes.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how I created this stylized female boxer composite portrait image in Photoshop.
Just when you think you’ve got your head around light paths and optics, along comes a scientist to make you think again. Here’s how you can build your own lens that can see an object that, according to your brain, is hidden by what’s in front of it.
In this video walkthrough watch, as I show you how to use the Portrait Enhance features in Luminar 4.2.
Artificial lighting can open up a wide world of creative possibilities and looks not possible with just natural light, but it can also be a bit tedious to work with when you have to set up more complex designs. So, why not maximize the number of looks you can get out of one lighting setup? This excellent video will show you how to get lots of different shots without changing the setup.
Landscape photography is a vast genre with a wide range of different subjects and creative avenues you can pursue. This fantastic video shows the often overlooked and beautiful subjects you can find in the forest during the springtime.
If you have been putting off learning how to work with artificial light and are currently stuck at home, now is an excellent time to break out your speedlight and start working on the basics. This excellent video will explain how flash helps to freeze motion and get you up and running in no time.
If like so many of us you find yourself at home with a lot of time on your hands, consider using that time to experiment with different art papers and print some of your favorite images from your hard drives.
One of the best exercises you can do as a photographer is to try to copy the work of masters. Even though you obviously will not use a copied photograph in your portfolio, the techniques you learn will be invaluable to your own work.
