While most genres place a lot of emphasis on sharpness, it is often of particular importance in landscape photography. Should we be placing so much emphasis on it, though? Are there other factors that should take priority? This insightful video discusses the issue and all of the other factors besides sharpness that we should consider before we edit a landscape image.
In a previous article, I shared my favorite way of dealing with an overcast sky in photography. Today, we will focus on the opposite: clear skies. Those can also be a challenge for landscape photographers. But there are ways to take great photos under such conditions, and in this article, we'll explore several of them.
Along with aperture and ISO, shutter speed is one of the fundamental parameters that allow you to create balanced exposures and take creative control over your photos. If you are new to photography and interested in learning about how to use shutter speed more effectively, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you what you need to know.
The clean, white background portrait style is a classic look that will always be in demand for a wide range of clients and applications. However, it takes a bit of lighting savvy to create a pure white background while retaining crisp contrast and defining shadows on your subject.
Optimize and save a ton of space, speed up your computer, and make it easy to find your files.
Why Would You Need to Optimize Your Computer?Think of your computer’s hard drive like a big library with all your files being like books stored within. Isn’t it quicker to find the book you want with fewer things in the library?
Street photography is an exciting genre that can quickly sharpen your technical and creative skills, but it also is not for the faint of heart. If you are interested in street photography but find yourself a bit shy to tackle it, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features an experienced shooter giving five helpful tips for apprehensive photographers.
If you are new to photography, you have probably noticed professionals talking about the need for dual card slots a lot, sometimes so much so that they will refuse to buy a camera that only has a single card slot. Why is that so important? Do you really need two card slots?
This is an excellent time of year for photography. Here are some tips for getting better photos to help preserve your memories of these celebrations.
Photographers often look down on superzoom lenses, viewing them as too much of a compromise in image quality for the convenience they offer. However, they offer more than convenience, and with advances in image quality in recent years, they are much more viable than in the past. This great video essay discusses some of the reasons why you should consider adding one to your kit.
Many of us have pets at home, and what better way to put your photographic skills to use than to create memorable portraits of your furry friends? This great video tutorial will show you how to use one light to create portraits of your pet that capture all their happiness and personality.
I often hear people dismissing compositional rules, especially the Rule of Thirds. However, there is an excellent reason why rejecting them can often lead to failure. Therefore, adopting them will make you a better photographer.
No one really enjoys being out in heavy rain or other bad weather, and it can certainly be tempting to leave your gear in the bag and avoid heading outside. However, if you are willing to bundle up and brave the elements, you will often be rewarded with moody, compelling images that would not be possible in sunny skies.
Strobes have long been the choice of artificial lighting for photographers, but in recent years, there have been major advancements in the power and capabilities of constant lights, and some photographers have begun to use them for their work. This excellent video tutorial discusses the pros and cons of each to help you choose the right option for your work.
Wide angle lenses are highly useful tools that have a place in many genres, but they can also be quite challenging to create compelling images with. This excellent video tutorial features an experienced landscape photographer discussing one of the most common mistakes photographers make with wide angle lenses and how to fix it.
Many photographers find themselves spending hours in Lightroom performing many of the same tasks over and over, and as such, taking the time to make your workflow as efficient as possible will pay off in the long run. This excellent video tutorial features 10 of the most useful keyboard shortcuts in Lightroom to help you complete your edits more quickly.
One of the most challenging aspects of landscape photography is that we have no control over the light or the conditions. And while bad light and weather can be frustrating to experience, you should not let them stop you from making photos. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to create compelling landscape images even when the light and weather are not cooperating.
Do you know what the Luminance slider in Lightroom does and why it's so important that you do? Sure, you can slide it left and right and watch your image change before your eyes, but do you actually know what's happening and why this slider is so powerful?
There are a lot of ways for a photographer to make a composition. Although some won’t like to accept it, the rule of third often fits quite nicely. But no matter what you use as a basis for composition, we always use negative space. Most of us just don’t realize it.
As a sub-genre of landscape photography, forest work shares a lot of similarities with its larger parent genre, but there are some distinct differences one must be aware of to create the best possible shots. If you would like to improve your forest imagery, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you three helpful tips sure to improve your work.
With Adobe just releasing their latest iteration of Lightroom Classic, I thought now might be the time to look at how to optimize and speed up Adobe's favorite image management and editing application.
Along with aperture and shutter speed, ISO is one of the three fundamental parameters that control the balance of exposure in your images, and as such, mastering it is crucial to becoming a competent and confident photographer.
Lightroom is full of powerful tools for all types of photography. None of them are as effective as radial filters to create dramatic results like these.
While Photoshop is where the most serious editing generally takes place, you can accomplish quite a lot in Lightroom, especially with the newer versions of the program. If you would like to improve your Lightroom skills, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you three different ways to make your subject pop using the program.
A lot of photo editing focuses on adjusting the shadows and the highlights of an image, as they are the extremes of a photo and thus, what the eye is drawn to. That being said, a normal image consists mostly of midtones, so knowing how to select and edit them independently of the shadows and highlights is a crucial skill for any photographer.
Photographing male models can be a challenging but rewarding experience for a photographer. In order to create stunning and memorable images, it's essential to direct the model and guide them into confident poses that showcase their best features.
Here are 20 quick, essential tips on how to keep your photography business running and up to date in an age where technology changes day to day.
With all the different aspects that go into creating a successful image, landscape photography can be a daunting genre to get started in. If you are new to the genre and looking to improve, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you seven common mistakes new photographers make and how to fix them or avoid them in the first place.
TikTok studio rentals are going to be a huge trend in the future for photo studios looking to increase their profitability. With such a competitive market, it can be difficult for photo studios to succeed.
In landscape photography, we do not get control over the light on the scene, but just like any other genre, light can make or break an image. Knowing how to read the light, predict its evolution, and wait for it to be just right is crucial to creating successful images. This great video tutorial will show you why just how much of a difference it can make.
Hop on Instagram or the like, and you will find plenty of nearly identical photos of famous locations, often to the point that it would be essentially impossible to create an image of such a place that would actually stand out from the crowd. So, is it even worth taking the time and putting in the effort and resources to make such images?
One of the wonderful things about landscape photography is that there are so many ways to photograph a single scene, and because of that, one location can yield dozens of photographs. If you are not taking the time to explore your creative voice through experimentation, though, you might be missing out on a lot of opportunities.
A question to ask yourself before composing your landscape photos is: what's the subject? Having a clear answer to that will help you create good photographs. But there are situations where no matter how you position your camera, some elements in the frame will distract from the main subject. In this article, I share editing techniques you can use to alleviate that problem.
While many pros working in studios will use complex multi-light setups for portraits, when you are shooting on location, it is often much better to employ a single light that allows you to be a bit more nimble. And with a bit of lighting savvy, you can still create fantastic professional-level portraits.
We often hear about how gear does not matter, and while that is a well-meaning sentiment, the truth is a bit more nuanced than that. In fact, the right piece of gear can actually make you a better photographer. This great video essay discusses why that is and will help you find a little inspiration along the way.
When it comes to post-processing, one of the most useful tools at your disposal is the luminosity mask, which can help you create more precise and efficient edits. If you have not tried luminosity masks if your work before, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you the ins and outs of creating and using them.
The rule of thirds is the first thing that is taught about composition in photography. It seems to have some similarities with the golden ratio, but in reality, it’s something completely different. Let’s have a closer look at the history of these so-called rules to get a better understanding.
Wedding photography is one of the most demanding and difficult genres, requiring strong technical and creative capabilities, the ability to quickly and effectively solve problems, and strong interpersonal skills.
Do you take your camera for a walk? In this second article on that topic, we will be considering why it is good for you and your photography in ways you might not think, why you could leave the telephoto lens behind, and how to improve at photographing animate subjects even with a shorter lens.
Landscape photography can be tricky, complex, and frustrating, but it can also be tremendously rewarding. If you'd like to improve your own work, check out this excellent video interview that offers a lot of insightful advice sure to help you on your way.
Walking photography should be a genre of its own; it is the most popular form. There are simple things you can do that will ensure you come home from your walk with better photos than before. This is the first of two articles looking at ways to improve those images.
Have you ever seen images and wondered how they create an editorial look that you just can't seem to recreate? It's clean, it's crisp, it may be edgy or sleek... you can't quite put your finger on it, but whatever "it" is, you want it for your work. Here are a few tips, from composition to post-production, that will upgrade your images and give you a more professional look.
As a medium, photography is all about sight. If you can’t see it, you can’t really take a photograph of it. The alternative is, of course, things like art, music, or prose where you don’t need to see something to make something about it.
Landscape photography is a challenging genre that requires a balance of technical abilities, creative vision, the ability to predict and adapt to evolving conditions, and a lot of persistence.
Waterfalls are some of the most popular landscape photography subjects, offering the ability to add a sense of motion to otherwise still scenes and to leverage natural leading lines to bring your viewers' eyes through the scene.
Since Lightroom and Photoshop introduced their automatic sky selections, changes to the sky in landscape and architecture photos have become very easy. But, how good are those automatic selections? If you edit photos for web representation alone, they are mostly good enough. But if you intend to print your photos, you might want to improve them, which is what I show in this article.
If you are new to working with artificial light, you might look at some of the complex multi-light setups seasoned professionals use and feel a bit overwhelmed or discouraged.
When you are new to photography, you spend most of your time focusing on the image-making process, but as you start to charge for your work, there are important fundamentals of business you must learn as well, one of the most crucial being the contract. This important video discusses why you should really have a contract, even if you think you don't need one.
Wedding photography is notorious for being a demanding, high-stakes genre, and as such, it is natural that with that comes a fair amount of stress. Nonetheless, that does not mean you can't do certain things to reduce that stress.
There are many different techniques for getting consistently sharp images, but I think this one is the best of them all. Take a look to find out why.
While Photoshop remains the place where the most complex and intricate edits are done, Lightroom has become far more capable in recent iterations, and you can now finish many photos without ever leaving the program. This excellent video tutorial features an experienced landscape photographer sharing how to edit photos from start to finish in Lightroom.