Some of my favorite creative photography techniques to use are those that allow us to capture moments in ways we could never see using just our eyes. One technique, in particular, that I turn to for capturing unique portraits involves using long exposure, aka shutter drag. Long exposure portraits open up a number of creative possibilities and often result in “wow” moments with my clients. Putting the technique to use does require some skill and preparation, but it’s easy enough to master once you know the basics.

The morning of a shoot has arrived and you are running around frantically loading gear trying to make sure that you haven’t forgotten a lens, power cable, or battery that will be the key to making the shoot a success. In the haste of focusing on gear, it can be too easy to forget to load a few simple tools that can come to your rescue and make sure everyone is as happy as possible throughout the shoot.

A while ago we wrote about the Kickstarter project aimed at bringing the historic Petzval Lens to modern day 35mm DSLRs. Shortly after another Kickstarter was launched to bring this Petzval to the medium format crowd. While off the shelf options such as these can appeal to the masses there remain a few inventive photographers such as Dr. Dirk HR Spennemann who prefer to mix their passion for photography and history with some good old ingenuity to bring us a project simply called "The Antique Camera Simulator".

Color banding is a problem we encounter when retouching many of our images or making them ready for print, but in many of the cases we just ignore it hoping no one will notice. In this long and detailed video, photographer / illustrator Lee Varis explains why banding appears in our photos, how we can recognize it, and shows the best methods we can use to fix it.

Navajo National Parks will stop running photo tours of the famous Upper Antelope Canyon due to strong negative reviews. The last tour will run next week.

Style Me Pretty, arguably one of the most influential websites in the wedding industry has announced today that the popular wedding inspiration website would be going dark permanently on April 30th. Here’s what we know.

Sigma today announced the new generation of high image quality compact cameras “SIGMA dp” that incorporates a newly developed Foveon X3 direct image sensor (generation name: “Quattro”). Sigma is saying it is unique and without peer among image sensors, the Foveon direct image sensor is similar to traditional color film in that its multiple layers capture all of the information that visible light transmits.

When manufacturers give specifications of lenses, there is a lot of detail that is meaningless to many consumers of their products. When we writers review them, we tend to give the same information. Here’s a method I think would be much more helpful to most photographers.

One of the new features included in the latest batch of updates to Adobe products is the “Discover” tab in Lightroom CC. The insights it gives into the editing process can be incredibly useful for those wanting to learn how to use the software.

I've always been one to complain about poorly rendered computer graphics in modern movies. I thought I could easily pick out what was real and what was rendered on a computer. This video makes a compelling argument that there is such a thing is "good" CGI.

We are constantly pressured into buying the latest cameras. As the bottom has fallen out of the camera market, maybe it’s time that camera manufacturers had a rethink about what they offer us. Nevertheless, there are good reasons for and against both upgrading and changing your system.

Following on from my article about the seven elements of art and how they can perfect your photography, I thought I would share a summary of the principles of art. Knowing how they work can make all the difference to how well your compositions work.

For the last 2 years I've made my living shooting architecture with DSLRs, mostly short videos of California's fanciest multifamily apartment communities. When my client Synergy Corporate Housing asked me to continue that mission with all of their international properties in 10 major cities across 8 European countries, the first thing I thought when I saw the 32-day itinerary was, "bring a Hasselblad."

It happens at basically every wedding I shoot. I walk into the room to start taking images of the bride getting ready, and the bride offers me a mimosa. After I leave to take images of the guys getting ready, I walk in and the groom offers me a beer. Then, the ceremony is about to start, and a groomsman offers me a shot out of the flask he has in his jacket. Lastly, we are at the reception and both sets of parents and the entire wedding party are offering drinks. I have to assume that most wedding photographers are faced with at least one of these events at every job. So, the question is: do you accept?