Community Photos

In this Adobe Photoshop Playbook video, Bryan O'Neil Hughes suggests a variety of options to help you tackle noise when processing your photographs. Due to the improvement of pixel quality, noise isn't usually so much of an issue. However, it still can be a problem especially in your low light images. 

There is great satisfaction in landing that amazing shoot with an A-List client, but even the perfect gig can sometimes leave us wanting more. Often the answer lies only within a project of your own conception. Adventure photographer/director Tim Kemple shares with us how he's fueled by personal projects, and why they are often more important than any paid assignment.

Lars Schneider, an adventure and landscape photographer from Germany, spent two months on the road with his family traveling across the Southwestern US. This video documents his trip, but I also interviewed Lars about the challenges and rewards of running a photography business on the road, while at the same time taking care of a family. 

Photographer Neave Bozorgi’s work captures the seemingly effortless beauty of his subjects, evoking a sense of undone glamour and sun-soaked easiness synonymous with the urban west coast. I talked with Bozorgi about the evolution of his work since his start in 2011, and where he’s headed next. 

If you think you've got a quick trigger finger, then you haven't used the new Strike Finder Touch (SFT) by Ubertronix. This sleek remote trigger boasts the ability to trigger your camera  shutter in less than 1 millisecond. The device has 5 different modes: Time Lapse, Lightning (or high speed flash), laser, sound and motion.

I have only been shooting photography for a little over 3 years now. Things have progressed so quickly during that period of time that I haven't really had the chance to look back at the evolution of my photography. I had to think thing long and hard about the investments I have made over the 3 years and the things that really changed the game for me.

Earlier this year Lytro and 500px announced a partnership that would allow images shot with the Lytro cameras to be shared, viewed and interacted with on 500px. Today that partnership took full form as Lytro is now on 500px, with a set of images taken on the new Illum ready to view right now.

Jeff Rojas is challenging you to see just how much retouching you can finish in 6 minutes. Dubbed the Dirty Edit Challenge, Jeff explains that sometimes you don't need to go overboard for certain clients. Maybe you're not getting paid enough, or maybe you have a ton of images that need retouching.

What is Auto Exposure Bracketing? (AEB) is the setting on many DSLR cameras which allows you to take three different exposed images in quick succession. Often one image is under exposed, the second is mid range and the last is over exposed.

In this valuable tutorial Glyn Dewis takes a quick snapshot and shows you how to pull detail from highlights and shadows to make it a beautiful image. Dewis mentions some great workflow tips and tricks in Adobe Lightroom as well as how to bring your image over, non destructively, to Photoshop camera raw. 

[via Glyn Dewis - Youtube]

In this brilliant tutorial from Phlearn, Aaron Nace shows you how to create an artistic, composite image to replicate the double exposure effect. Despite being a little complex, the instruction is easy to follow.

Inspiration spurs creativity and it is often you find a photograph or artist that influences your practice. In this Photoshop tutorial Ben Secret helps you recreate the look and feel of an image by matching contrast, tone and saturation. With these brilliant tips get a handle on colour and tone through imitation, but then have fun adding your own unique style.

Keeping your photographs organized by means of keywording is not a new idea but a new app is changing the idea of keyword organization. Polymo lets you add your keywords before you shoot, and adds all of the photos into its own "smart album."  

It is no surprise, we have a trash problem in America. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that the average American produces more than 4 lbs of trash per day, which has doubled since the 1960's. Gregg Segal decided to tackle this problem, by photographing a series of people lying in their own trash in efforts to show the waste in our daily lives. 

Regret is the worst feeling in the world but as humans, we feel it.

Sometimes aperture and depth of field can be a little tricky to get your head around, especially when you’re a new photographer. Matt Granger gives a quick run down of appropriate aperture settings to get the shot you are looking for. Granger mentions the possible aperture settings that will help you with focus as well as where your lens might perform at its best 

All this week at the PRO EDU studio in St. Louis, Michael Woloszynowicz has been hard at work showing off his techniques for an upcoming tutorial series on creating fashion and editorial photography.

ESPN's Body Issue 2014 is out -- and the results are stunning. Every one of the 59 images in the "Bodies We Want" piece is a beautiful portrait of the pinnacle of the human form. There is no doubt these are professional atheletes with perfect, sculpted bodies. No puffed-up editing, no extraneous fluff. This is the real deal: clean, sharp, and on point.

Lighting is key. It has an influence on just about everything we do when making an image. Light will affect what time of day we shoot, where we place our subject, our shutter speed, our aperture, how we edit the images, blah blah blah. You get the idea, right? Understanding and controlling light is crucial to the success of your work.

DJI has been a major player in the quadcopter arena for quite some time. While there are MANY other brands out there, DJI has set out to make flying easy, especially for those with no experience. Now it will be even easier to start flying thanks to the addition of Autonomous flight. They call it Ground Station. 

Rebecca Brown is a 21 years old filmmaker, artist and a Youtuber (100,000 subscribers and millions of views) from England. For the past 6.5 years she photographed herself (almost) everyday wherever she was each day, and recently compiled it all to one time-lapse video.

I’m a huge fan of Annie Leibovitz and the imagery she has captured over the past few decades. Being a self-taught photographer, I looked to her work time and time again for inspiration and motivation.

Photographer Karen Glaser is best described as a photographer of water. Declining to be “pigeonholed,” Glaser pulls from the genres of landscape, underwater, fine art, street, and documentary photography in her approach to capturing the complicated, beautiful, and diverse aquatic landscapes of Florida. 

The combination of two visually striking methods resulted in this surreal video by Vincent Brady. After checking the video, read on for some more information on the rig Vincent used to shoot with, and some insight on the programs he used to painstakingly stitch his images together for the final timelapse video. 

Not everyday do you get a chance to take a photo that can make a difference in someone's life, or in my case help bring down governments. At age 21 I took a self portrait of myself screaming and posted it online and over the past few years that image has been stolen and used around the world thousands of times.

"For the last four years this has been true: the top three search terms that clients are using on Getty Images are woman, family and business in that order." - Pamela Grossman, Director of Visual Trends at Getty Images. This is very powerful information for strategic business marketing, but it means even more on a societal level.

This past week I've been sleep deprived, socially inactive, and holding a camera in my hands for more than I ever have in my entire life. You see, this past week I've been working with PRO EDU to film my first tutorial series to go on sale at the Fstoppers store this summer.

Facebook has officially released their new app, Slingshot, which was accidentally leaked/teased to the app store early last week and then quickly removed. The concept of this app is to share photos via message with friends, similar to the well known app Snapchat, but Facebook says they put a different approach to this app that will make it stand out and not be the same. 

When someone tells a photographer that “their camera must be really good,” chances are the photographer will respond with an eye roll. The debate surrounding gear verses skill in the photography world is a tired albeit consistent discussion. Let’s not kid ourselves, gear does in fact matter. However, does a photographer need top of the line equipment to produce mind-blowing images?

Last week we had the pleasure of hosting over 100 photographers at our workshop at the Atlantis in the Bahamas. Our opening party was hosted at Fathoms where we set up a photobooth in front of "The Digg." The tank holds over 100 venomous Indo-Pacific Ocean Lionfish, 500 piranhas, iridescent jellyfish and six-foot Moray Eels.

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) previewed a new operating system for the Mac as well as iOS 8 for the iPhone, which comes with a host of new features due out this fall. While many features of Apple's new iOS releases leave out older devices, this one will improve your iPhone's camera (past, current, and future) with some great features we've all been too patient to see.

Instagram has just released some of its most significant photo editing features that we have seen from them since the release of video sharing. Instagram is making it clear that it has no plans of fading out in the near future.

Lomography has officially began a Kickstarter project to try and fund their first release an instant film camera. Multiple colors, lens choices, exposure settings, and more! With 30 days to go on they currently have $32,000 raised of their $100,000 goal. The settings for this camera look pretty cool and, I think, worth backing. 

During an initial meeting with local publication NFocus Magazine, the Editor-In-Chief asked for a unique aesthetic on Louisville's theater and arts community and wanted a massive group shot, but not your traditional group shot. I threw out the idea to shoot actors and their "characters" from directly overhead on a theater floor, as if they were action figures laid out and organized.

Photography-related groups on Facebook are growing exponentially along with the exploding industry. As with many things in life, there are pros and cons when participating in these groups. One can experience valuable feedback, expertise and positive reinforcement from peers, while also experiencing nitpickers and people who pull you down.

There's something special about taking a picture on film. That said, film also lent itself to a lot of error: a botched exposure, missed focus and light leaks could all serve to ruin an otherwise lovely image.

I always tether. Whether it's for a client or fashion editorial, the CamRanger has played a very important role in capturing rock solid images. But, before the wonderful technology of wireless tethering came into the picture, I always tethered to a workstation. However, that came with the annoyance of a long tether cable dangling off your camera.

In an instant, one can feel as though they are in another world. As a landscape photographer you have the power to transport someone in the blink of an eye and send them on a journey into your photography to see the incredible world we live in. Creating amazing landscapes goes far beyond just snapping photos using the HDR setting on an iPhone.

Ten years ago, time-lapse photography wasn't really a big thing. Fast forward to now, and it's everywhere. GoPros and point and shoot cameras come equipped with easy options and can be stuck on anything from panning egg timers to $6000+ time lapse rigs.

It is official! Leica has announced their new Leica T-System camera which is available for pre-order at B&H right now! The camera really does have a lot of nice features that are packed into it and Leica seems to be pushing the phrase "easy to use, hard to forget" on their website.

Although it would seem like common sense, proper motivation is key toward not only getting things done, but getting things done well. This is true in any creative field and this is especially true, it seems, in the over-saturated everybody-with-a-camera-is-a-photographer world we live in. 

I’m a bit of a dreamer. I’m also a huge aviation geek, and I often catch myself browsing the web at 2am looking up articles on aviation and aviation history. So when I found Anthony Toth and learned more about his life’s work, I knew that I had my next personal photography project in mind.

About 2 weeks ago we told you the story of Eliza O’Neill, a 4-year old who was recently was diagnosed with a degenerative genetic disease called Sanfilippo syndrome. Without the right treatment Eliza won't make it in to her teens. This week, some industry leaders and known photographers donated their photos to raise more funds.  

In 1991, NASA sent out a hacked Nikon F3 with a Kodak digital back out into space. The camera was called the Kodak Hawkeye II. I was born in 1993 and even in that time, this kind of technology was almost unheard of. 

Brandon Cawood, from Dalton GA, has taken appreciating first responders to the next level. What began as a personal project to photograph local EMS personnel, soon blew up and went viral. Cawood captures priceless moments in the daily lives of firefighters, police and other public safety personnel. He has a movie poster style and pulls it off in a flawless manner. 

Monte Isom, NYC-based sports, entertainment, and advertising photographer just shared a look behind-the-scenes at his most recent shoot for the World Cup. The video takes you all the way through his preproduction and makeup, to shooting with a pretty good look at his lighting setup.

Zoom, focus, spray and pray. That seems to be the M.O. of many photographers who shoot runway. I admit, I was one of those photographers. The one who scours through thousands of images at the end of the night, wishing they had shot more strategically. And, after two hours of culling, flagging three images per look, they’d be lucky if only one was tack sharp.

It's not the first time I'm sharing Michael Shainblums work and it won't be the last time. Timelapses are one of the most time consuming forms of photography and only a dedicated person with patience can produce quality results as often as Michael. 

As a working photographer, my gear is obviously very important to me. My most-used lenses, Canon’s 35L and 50L, are both long time favorites and are glued to my camera almost 24/7. For many reasons, I’ve been a fan of Canon’s prime lenses for a number of years, taking both the good, the bad, and the price tag that they each have to offer.

Even the best photographers need inspiration. 500px is a beautiful playground for some of the best photographers in the industry, and also one of the most powerful tools for motivation. There’s no sifting through rubbish to find quality work in your feed, which is often a problem with various social media platforms, like Facebook.