Recent Education Articles

Five Signs You're Becoming a Better Photographer

Photography can be a slow process, with lots to learn and improve upon and many mistakes made along the way. As such, it can be hard to tell if and how you're improving. Here are five signs that you are becoming a better photographer.

Accidents Happen: Take Care of Your Equipment

When you go out taking pictures, you grab your camera or camera bag, you might set up a tripod, and start shooting. Often, that goes without any problems, but not always. Imagine what happens when your equipment takes an unexpected fall because something fails.

The One Email Trick That All Photographers Should Be Doing

Email is not going to stop being a vital tool for photographers anytime soon. It's for this reason that you should be making the most of each and every one you send. If you want to stand out, get more work, and look professional when corresponding online, this article is for you.

What Is Color, and How Does It Work in a Camera?

Color is complicated and incredibly important to what we do as photographers. Even if we shoot in black and white, we have to know how colors will be rendered by our film/sensor in order to create contrast. Let's dive into the technical details of what color is and how cameras capture it.

Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet

Here is some exciting news for any macro photographer out there, Don Komarechka is working on a new book called Macro Photography: The Universe at Our Feet.

What Is the Most a Photographer Can Charge a Client?

Not knowing how much to charge as a photographer is a surefire way of giving you and your business a major headache. Here are a few pointers which you should never forget when working out what you are worth.

Photography and Video Gear, Should You Buy or Rent?

The fast pace of changing technology is not slowing down. Add to the mix new mirrorless systems, VR, 8K it’s starting to make more and more sense to rent camera bodies, or does it?

One of the Most Common Mistakes Beginner Photographers Make

When you're new to photography, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the various technical parameters and artistic guidelines you have to keep in mind simultaneously. Well, I'm here to add another one to the list, but I promise that it will improve your shots drastically.

Three Ways to Make Skin Look Smoother in Videos

The nice thing about still photography is that you can easily retouch a photo and fix any skin blemishes before you present it to the world. But it's not as easy with video, and it's important to take care to render your subject's skin in a flattering fashion before you even begin recording. This helpful video will show you three ways to improve the smoothness of your subjects' skin on camera.

A to Z of Photography: Bronica and Burtynsky

Continuing our A to Z foray into the world of photography, we move on to B. What better place to start than an iconic manufacturer in the form of Bronica and Burtynsky?

Do Not Be Lazy in Landscape Photography

Predicting the weather is next to impossible, but you can optimize your chances of a successful shoot quite a lot. Do not be lazy about that optimization. I was lazy and it lead to one of my biggest fails in my career as a landscape photographer.

Five Helpful Tips for Better Portrait Photography

Portrait photography takes both technical competence and the ability to work with people, making it a challenging but rewarding genre. This great video will give you five helpful tips to improve your portraits.

Three Easy Posing Tips for Engagement Shoots

If you've ever shot a couple or a subject who doesn't much care for having their photo taken, you become immediately and acutely aware of how important your direction is. Here are three easy posing tips for engagement photos.

Creating Natural Poses for a Couple Photoshoot

One of the best signs of a photographer who's good at posing is the ability to make the poses look natural and unforced. This great video follows a photographer on an at-home photoshoot with a couple and will show you some helpful posing ideas and tips to improve your own work.

When Should You Upgrade Your Camera Gear?

A lot of photographers and videographers longingly look at new gear, trying to rationalize dropping a lot of money on the latest and greatest cameras and lenses. But when do you really need to actually upgrade? This great video offers some useful questions and guidelines to help you make the correct decision.

Follow a Wedding From the Viewpoint of the Photographer

Wedding photography is a notoriously difficult genre, full of fast-paced action and challenging scenarios. This fun and interesting video shows a wedding photographer's point of view on the big day and offers some helpful tips and tricks along the way.

OPTIC: Outdoor, Photo/Video, Travel, Imaging Conference in NYC

If you are an avid outdoor photographer like myself and will be in the New York area next week, you’ll be delighted to know B&H Photo and Video is holding their annual OPTIC Outdoor, Photo/Video, Travel Imaging Conference this coming June 2-5.

Three Helpful Photography Business Pricing Strategies

One of the most difficult but important aspects of running a photography business is knowing how to price yourself. This helpful video will give you three pricing strategies to help you work toward becoming financially stable and successful in photography.

Learn How to Shoot This Awesome Beauty Image

Beauty photography is a fun genre that takes both creative vision and technical skill and precision to achieve successful results. This excellent video will teach you how to shoot a classic beauty image from lighting to post-processing and more.

Why I Purposely Underexpose All My Raw Images

By now it’s common knowledge that when shooting film, it’s important to not underexpose to hold on to shadows, and for digital it’s key to save the highlights. I’m going to advocate, however, that with modern digital sensors, it’s prudent to shoot underexposed all the time.

Things a Landscape Photographer Wishes He Had Learned Sooner

Landscape photography can be a tricky genre to work in, particularly since you don't have control of the light or the elements. There are lots of lessons to learn, and to save you time and aggravation, this great video features an experienced landscape photographer talking about lessons he wishes he had learned sooner.

Hard Light From a Softbox: Creating Compelling Portraits with Daniel Norton

Photographers love soft light and the “wrap around” quality that large modifiers can deliver. We contemplate the large parabolic softbox we need to purchase or the huge umbrella that will help us make window light anywhere. For impactful portraits that are just as compelling maybe it’s time you took a look at hard lighting.

A Guide on How to Photograph Rainbows

A rainbow is arguably the most beautiful optical light effect created by sunlight. It is formed by millions of raindrops that break the sunlight into different colors. Shooting a rainbow is fairly easy, but there are some nice things to know about.

How to Make Your Instagram Feed More Enjoyable and Useful


About 1 billion people use Instagram each month, that’s 1/8th of the world population. The top four countries other than the United Sates are Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Russia. That’s a huge variety of languages, cultures and perspectives, yet the most followed people on Instagram are celebrities.

The Most Fundamental Lighting Positions

When you are new to working with artificial light, one of the toughest parts is learning where to actually place the light for proper images. This helpful video will show you several fundamental lighting positions that can help jumpstart your work with strobes.

Six Tips Photographing With a Wide-Angle Zoom

Landscape photography and wide-angle zoom lenses often go hand in hand. If you have ever used one of these lenses, you know there is a bit of the learning curve.

How Different Lighting Modifiers Render Your Subjects

When you're new to artificial lighting, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to understand how different modifiers and attachments can change how your subject looks. This great video will show you how several common modifiers and attachments make your subject look so you can choose the appropriate equipment for your shoot.

The Fun and Versatility of Gels in Studio Photography

Half the fun of working with studio strobes is that you are not constrained to the available light and can experiment with all sorts of things, like the position of the lights, the relative powers, the modifiers, and even the colors. This fun video will show you how working with color gels can produce unique and interesting results.

Photographing the Aftermath of a Forest Fire

Forest fires can drastically alter a landscape in just minutes, turning lush, green scenes into murky wastelands of muted colors. This excellent video follows a photographer as he ventures into the aftermath of one to photograph it.

A Quick and Easy Zoom Trick for Moving Around an Image in Photoshop

Photoshop is a tremendously complex program full of all sorts of hidden features and shortcuts, and it can be a difficult to navigate around the application with all that complexity. This quick and great shortcut will show you a lesser known way to navigate around an image in Photoshop.

How to Use Radial Filters to Selectively Lighten an Image in Lightroom

One of the most basic yet effective ways you can improve an image is to shape the light through selective lightening and darkening. This great video tutorial will show you how to use radial filters to shape your subject and capture the viewer's attention using Lightroom.

A Guide to Color Grading in Capture One

One of the most important steps of the editing process when it comes both to making your images look professional and adding a touch of personal style is color grading. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to complete the process on two different images using Capture One.

If You're Going to Work for Free, Read This First

90% of people in the creative industries have worked for free. In the world of photography and filmmaking, it's not unusual to work for nothing in return for exposure, experience, and getting a foot in the door — to the frustration of others. Whether you're the one moaning or the one undercutting, check out these ideas for how we can make things better.

Do Your Sky Replacements Look Crap? Here Are Some Reasons Why

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. When it comes to sky replacements, if you're repeatedly making the same mistakes and forever unhappy with your results, these tips will help you.

The Versatility of a 5-in-1 Reflector

If there is any basic accessory almost every photographer should own, it's a 5-in-1 reflector. Versatile, portable, and cheap, I have one in my bag at all times. This excellent video will show you the many different uses for a 5-in-1 reflector and how you can employ one to improve your shots.

Helpful Dog Photography Tips in Just 90 Seconds

Dog photography can be incredibly rewarding when you do it right, but it can also be quite frustrating when the little puppers are bouncing all around and paying attention in every direction except yours. This helpful video will give you some quick tips to improve your pictures of dogs and to increase your chances of getting the shot.

Add a Deeper Kind of Depth to Your Photographs

In last week's article, we spent some time discussing methods of adding the illusion of depth to your images using compositional techniques. This week, we will take that a step further and look at adding depth to the content of your images.

Are You up for the Boring Hometown Photography Challenge?

If you spend enough time on the internet, you might begin to get the impression that you have to be at epic locations to get portfolio-worthy images. But travel is expensive and time-consuming, and all those locations have been shot to the point of nearly being cliché. Instead of dropping a bunch of money to travel to a faraway location, give the "boring" hometown photography challenge a try instead.

How to Edit Photos for a Natural Look in Lightroom

We spend quite a bit of time studying how to perform more extreme edits, and while those techniques certainly come in handy quite a lot of the time, knowing how to create a simple, clean, natural-looking image is an important skill. Whether you're a beginner or more experienced, this great video will show you how to easily get that look in Lightroom.

Never Get Photographer's Block Again With These Seven Strategies

If you constantly struggle to come up with new ideas for your photography work, then your career could be in serious trouble. Try one of these seven strategies to help you get that next big idea and keep those creative juices flowing.