Pretty much everybody learns how to edit photos using a mouse, but as a photographer becomes more advanced, they will often switch to using a pen tablet to work on their images. If you have not yet made the switch, this helpful video will show you seven reasons why you might want to consider picking up a tablet for your editing work.
Dodging and burning and frequency separation are two of the most commonly used techniques for retouching skin, but they both have their own sets of pros and cons that may make one or the other the better choice for your own work. This excellent video will show you the results you can achieve with both methods and will detail what it is like working with them.
A good landscape scene often affords a wide variety of potential compositions, and it can be difficult to know how to evaluate them all and find the one that will create the best photo. If that is something you struggle with, this excellent video will give you some helpful tips for finding the best compositions for your landscape images.
Many visual artists have extreme talent, but no idea how to even charge. What's too much? What's too little? In too many cases, they stop the debate and don't charge for their services altogether. My goal is to start the wheel and get your business in motion. This post and video will give you a starting point.
There are some simple yet crucial things that a photographer must learn about the craft that may be seemingly useless at first but helps one move forward much faster.
There is a multitude of advanced retouching tools and techniques out there for working on portraits, but believe it or not, many of the world's top retouchers prefer a much simpler technique: dodging and burning. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to use dodging and burning for retouching skin in Photoshop.
There is a lot of pressure to conform to certain styles, techniques, subject matter, and manners of shooting in photography, but at the end of the day, you answer to yourself and no one else. If you struggle with this, you should watch this thought-provoking video that discusses the importance of staying true to yourself as a photographer.
If there's one thing I've learned over time, it's that there are often different ways to accomplish the same task. Likewise, every Lightroom user does things in different ways. That doesn't make it wrong; it's just different.
Photography is certainly not a cheap endeavor, and it can be difficult to know where to invest your money to maximize your chances of success. Gear is undoubtedly fun, but there is more to success than just that new camera, and this great video explores where you should consider investing your money beyond just equipment.
Landscape photography is a genre that takes the confluence of many factors to create a successful image, and a mistake in any of those factors can throw off the entire process. This excellent video discusses five common mistakes landscape photographers make and how you can fix them.
As your career progresses and you accumulate more and more images, you will be more likely to start breaking off into multiple Lightroom catalogs. Eventually, however, you might need to recombine catalogs. This excellent video will show you how to combine multiple Lightroom catalogs while ensuring that everything stays the way it should.
Wide angle lenses are the bread and butter choice for numerous landscape photographers, but they also come with their own unique set of challenges. If you struggle with getting good images with your wide angle lens, this great video will walk you through the process of creating a couple photos using one.
Part of telling a coherent story through video is having a strong command of camera angles and how they can affect the information and emotion you convey to the viewer. This excellent video will show you 12 essential camera angles, what they are used for, and how to properly film them.
No photographer is perfect, and no one comes home with great images after every single shoot. It is important to remember that things go wrong sometimes, and this great video explores what happens when you simply have a bad day.
One of the advantages to mirrorless cameras is the ability to see an exposure preview of the final photo while composing through the viewfinder or rear LCD screen. Tools like the histogram, focus peaking, and others can also be updated in real time and overlaid on the screen to make more informed decisions. This video, however, unwraps my favorite in-camera tool for Sony cameras.
From rodeo, to baseball, to lacrosse, to soccer, sports photography is an incredibly varied genre with something in it for almost everybody. If you are looking to improve your sports images, you should definitely watch this video in which a seasoned sports photographer critiques a vast range of images and offers a ton of helpful tips and advice.
Whether you are doing it professionally or simply looking to use your skills to capture lasting memories, family portraiture can be a challenging but rewarding genre. This helpful video will show you both how to light and pose family portraits.
Panorama photos are huge, sharp, and fascinating. In this article, I will show an easy way to automatically stitch a panorama in CameraRaw and finish them off in Photoshop.
Lightroom has become even better and more powerful the past few years and knowing all the little tips and tricks in the software with each new update can be a class in itself. Here’s five techniques you may not know that the Adobe raw processor can do to help you make better images faster and easier.
Is there ever a reason to shoot JPEG over raw when photographing people and clients? Let’s have a quick discussion about when it may be beneficial to photograph in JPEG or raw and why you might choose a lower quality file at capture versus the full digital negative.
Waterfalls are one of the most popular subjects for landscape photographers, as they offer the chance to create dramatic images that capture the viewer's imagination. If you are interested in improving your waterfall photos, this great video will give you 10 helpful tips to get you on your way.
Editing is your chance to add your personal touch to an image, and perhaps nowhere is that more possible than the manipulation of color. This excellent video features two professional photographers discussing one's creative use of color to give his photos a strong identity and how you can apply the principles to your own photos.
It can be a lot of fun to deviate from the standard shoot and explore your creative side a bit. If you are looking to invigorate your photos a bit, this excellent video will show you two different looks based on a Valentine's Day theme and how they were shot.
There are many articles and videos on how to do certain things in Lightroom, but how often do you read about something that you shouldn't do? Let's cover a few of them.
It's always good when you can learn about different styles of photography by practicing them at the same time. It's even better when they are genres of photography you can do any time, at any location, and can be done without offending people.
Super wide-angle lenses can expand the field of vision in your images, but they often come with an unwanted side effect — lens distortion. The good news is distortion can easily be fixed in Photoshop with this tool.
Product photography is quite technical. Having the right gear is not enough. You also need creative ideas. Learn from my mistakes to shoot better product photographs.
While there are a lot of advanced and intricate techniques for working with your images, one of the simplest but most effective methods for accentuating your subject in Lightroom is the radial filter. This helpful video will show you how the radial filter works and how to use it to help emphasize your subjects in Lightroom.
Posing can be a tricky thing for a lot of photographer, and it can twice as tough when you are doing it with a couple. If you find you have trouble posing couples in a natural way, this great video will show you five reasons why your couples portraits might be a bit awkward.
Does that mean all art is subjective, and then, that any image is good if I say it’s good? Not so fast...
Video editing can be a really time-consuming task, and as such, it is important to learn not just how to do something, but how to do it in the most efficient way possible. This excellent video will give you 10 tips to help you edit more quickly in Premiere Pro.
Failure is something every creative has to deal with, no matter how talented they are or how far along they are in their careers. Whether it is rejection or a personal project that did not work out as expected, failure is something we will always deal with and something that we should learn to embrace.
Much of landscape photography is being in the right place at the right time. Some photographers know these places and times based on their extensive experience. The more knowledge you have, the better the chances that you'll be in that right place at the right time.
One of my favorite disciplines of landscape photography is to photograph waterfalls. If you go through my portfolio there is a waterfall or two in there. Here I share nine useful tips to photograph them.
Posing for the camera my not come easily to everyone. If you understand the basics of posing but still find yourself looking for a way to improve the shots, here are a few tips you can use.
Action photography will challenge your skills as a photographer, but one thing you should pay particular attention to is your autofocus settings. If you are new to the pursuit and want to increase your chances of getting the shot, this helpful video will show you the basics of autofocus settings for action photography.
We do not always have the luxury of shooting in stunning locations, which can make it difficult to take great portraits. Nonetheless, you can still take compelling portraits even in drab locations with a little bit of know-how. This excellent video will walk you through the process as a photographer shoots in such a location.
Traveling with photography gear can be rather nerve-wracking and a bit of a logistical nightmare. Fstoppers alumni Clay Cook wrote an ultra-comprehensive guide based on his extensive experience traveling for work, and he offers numerous tips and guidelines for helping you get to your destination and enjoy your trip as much as possible, while accomplishing all your professional goals.
If you feel like your landscape photos are good, but could use a boost to get to the next level, this is the right video for you.
Whichever application you might encounter it in, the tone curve can be a little intimidating if you’re new to editing. This excellent short video from Mango Street gives you a great introduction to how it works in Lightroom, what it can be used for, and how to achieve some creative results.
The wide angle is often the lens of choice for a lot of landscape photographers, but it can be a tricky piece of glass to work with. This excellent video will give you lots of helpful tips to improve your landscape images when you are shooting with a wide angle lens.
Members of the mysterious and magical craft of photography may have mentioned that mastering manual mode may be the most meandering path to making magnificent masterpieces. There's a shortcut, though.
Being a master of your craft sometimes means taking exciting and memorable portraits in not-so-interesting locations and circumstances. Here are six simple tricks to help make your portraits more creative while removing distracting elements and creating more engagement.
It might seem like a strange idea to encourage people to copy other photographers, but there can be a huge benefit in doing so, particularly for newer photographers. This excellent video discusses why you might want to take time to emulate other photographers more often.
Sometimes, getting the shot you want requires a lot more than simply pressing the shutter. I took a reasonable approach with little expectations and ended up with a small success story and some great shots.
Lighting in a studio environment is tough enough, but shooting on-location portraits presents its own set of challenges. This excellent video takes you behind the scenes on an on-location portrait shoot for a magazine and details the problems the photographer had to deal with and how he solved them.
Product photography is a fun genre that will challenge you to really fine-tune your lighting and post-processing skills. This excellent video will show you the process of building up an eye-catching image of a black product on a black background.
Dodging and burning is one of the most fundamental and useful techniques in photography, and it is applicable in quite a wide range of genres. This great video will show you four different ways to dodge and burn your images using Photoshop.
Photo and video work is just like any industry: they come with plenty of difficult people who can make your life a pain in the neck. Unfortunately, you do not always get the choice of who you work with. This excellent video discusses what you can do when you are stuck with difficult cast or crew.
One of the things I have always loved about landscape photography is the way the same scene can be rendered in vastly different ways by various types of light. This great video discusses the many different types of light you will encounter in landscape photography and offers some helpful tips for working with them along with some example images.
