Adorama TV has been mixing up their youtube channel lately, and this week features the TTL acrobatics of Joe McNally. Joe walks you through a typical street portrait as he accentuates the natural ambient light with a single speedlight gelled red. The more useful tip Joe gives is how to control the spill of your large softlight with an "egg crate" or softbox grid. I'm still shocked he pulled this shot off using only the Nikon D800 pop up flash acting as commander.

If you’re making a film, obviously the focus needs to be on the story. It seems that’s become the popular counter to a lot of debates about the fine-tuning of an image. While Roger Deakin’s mentality of “the type of camera doesn’t matter” can hold true on most levels, if we’re going to take ourselves seriously as creatives we need to be actively making decisions about how and why we create. Why do you choose this over that? And how does it affect story? One of the most important decisions you make as a director of photography or cinematographer is about lenses.

With a concept of traveling back through your childhood and experiencing that care-free, fantasy world of "pure imagination," Permagrin Films has put together an incredible time-lapse music video. In the article below, there's a full behind-the-scenes video and the producers of the film answer a few of my questions in a brief interview.

What do you think of when you hear the term "composite"? Lots of hours with the Pen tool cutting out elements or fiddling around with the Refine Edge tool?

You may remember back in June when Austin Rogers posted the press release about the upcoming Cambo Actus, a view camera designed to work with mirrorless cameras. Well, it's finally here and the gang over at Capture Integration have put it through it's paces.

For the last few years photographers have been getting nervous about high res video cameras taking still photography jobs but we failed to see the biggest threat... robots! Apparently 12 of these robotic arms have been make to hold Nikon D4 cameras and shoot aerial photography at this year's Olympics Games. Luckily each of these cameras must still be controlled by a human photographer so we aren't going to lose our jobs yet.

With the video capabilities of DSLRs constantly increasing, we have come to expect a lot from new releases. The Canon 6D doesn't disappoint. Much like the newest Nikon D800 you'll have more creative control over depth of field as well as full manual control over exposure and audio levels. Check this sample footage from the recently announced Canon 6D. Do you think it competes with the Canon 7D or the 5DMK III?

Tutorials on using a 1-light setup for portrait photography are commonplace, and rightly so. There are several ways that a single light source can be positioned to create flattering lighting on a subject. You might think that switching to a 2-light setup would be twice as complicated. This isn’t the case. There are several 2-light arrangements that are easy to understand and quick to set up. Using 2 lights can make it easy for you to transition between a clean headshot and a dramatic portrait.

Every photographer has likely struggled with the implications of using social media. If you've ever felt lost, sad, or insecure because of social you are not alone and I hope this article might help find balance in your journey as a photographer.

On Tuesday this week Apple released their latest mobile operating system, iOS 11. Now Serif, the creators of photo editing software Affinity Photo, have also updated their iPad app to take advantage of the capabilities introduced in iOS 11 such as drag-and-dropping images to and from the new Files app.

There are many ways to sell prints online. In the last article of this series, we already looked at one of them that was free and easy to set up. But it might not be the right way to sell prints professionally. If branding and customer relations are important to you, a customized online store might be a better solution. In this article, I share how to set one up.

The best analogy for photographing well-photographed locations is to make covers of famous pieces of music. Just like a musician practices his guitar skills with “Nothing Else Matters” and makes his own version, a landscape photographer might do the same at Skogafoss in Iceland or Mesa Arch in Utah. When you are done practicing, or made enough covers of the same location, you might want to make your own original pieces.

It's 2018 and I have no idea where I'm supposed to share photos anymore. There was a time though, when Google+ and its booming photography community was the clear answer.