Sally Mann is an American photographer who has pushed the limits of black and white fine art. Early in her career, Sally captured both real and staged moments of her children's youth that quickly became subject of much controversy. Immediate Family, a collection of images of her children under the age of 10, showcased mainly normal, happy childhood moments. However other images featured her kids unclothed with themes of depression, anxiety, and even death. Obviously Sally's work sparked strong emotions, and the debate about what is exploitation and what is art became synonymous with her name. The acclaimed What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann is an interesting documentary that focuses on Sally's work and how she approaches her craft. Now a praised nature photographer, Sally discusses her contraversal early images as well as many of her current projects including landscapes in the deep south and portraits of her husband as he deals with muscular dystrophy. Check out Sally Mann's bookstore for great reading material from this revolutionary photographer. Click the full post for the full documentary.
As a portrait photographer, I am always trying to make people feel comfortable in front of my camera so I can capture a real emotion from them. But what if I was able to make people feel so uncomfortable in front of the camera that I could guarantee an interesting portrait every time? This is the idea behind my latest series: The Stun Gun Photoshoot. I've edited two different videos as well as a behind the scenes in the full post below.
DJI, maker of the world's best consumer and professional camera drones, recently announced the brand new Avata 2 FPV drone. They were able to send me one to test out, and in this video, I ask the question: "is the Avada 2 worth upgrading from the original Avata drone?"
Innovators and philosophers like Elon Musk and Sam Harris have been theorizing what our world will look like once artificial intelligence completely takes over our everyday lives. We aren't quite there, but if you've ever dreamed of a day when all your skin retouching might be completed using AI and neural networks, well, the future is a lot closer than you might think.
The day has finally come when photographers can sync their powerful off-camera flashes with their Apple iPhone using Profoto's new AirX syncing system. Being the skeptic I am, I had to see for myself if using 500 Ws of powerful strobe light with your cell phone was simply a gimmick or potentially an industry game-changer. Today, I'm left swallowing my pride.
One way to spice up your photography is to add gels to your lights so you can produce colorful and edgy looking imagery. Adding wild colors to your photos can offer a lot of creativity but gels can also be used in a much more subtle fashion to slightly alter the color of your background and sky. In today's video I want to share two simple techniques I use to help make my backgrounds on location look more interesting.
This video was featured on the Fstoppers Forum and it had me laughing from the beginning. Luckily there is also a behind the scenes video that explains how in the world they created all of this "HD Porn". I would have never thought in a million years you could mix Iron Maiden, the most ridiculous looking poodle, the largest bubble machine I've ever seen, and flashing neon lights to produce an entertaining commercial for Sony high definition products. Then again I'm not paid the big bucks to think this outside the box either. Enjoy the final commercial below and then head over to full post to see how everything was put together.
AI art-generating programs are progressively getting better and better at creating hyper-realistic images. For the last few months, I have been using AI to create headshot images of completely fake people with the lighting style of a few famous photographers. In this social experiement, I wanted to see if the average person could tell the difference between images of real people photographed by real photographers verses imaginary people created entirely with artificial intelligence. Take my quiz and view the results in what I call "Real vs AI Headshots."
One of the worst gut wrenching feelings any content producer can face is opening up a memory card only to find that a file is corrupt or missing altogether. Recently we sold most of our Nikon gear and switched over to the new Panasonic GH5 cameras because of their better video features, superior image stabilization, and overall smaller size. Unfortunately we have found that unlike our Nikon cameras, the GH5 can corrupt files pretty easily if you are using their battery grip. In this video, I show you how these files can easily corrupt as well as a few software options you can use to recover any files corrupted during a loss of power.
When it comes to shaping the light sources photographers use, there are a lot of modifiers available. Each lighting modifier has it's own characteristics which can make it difficult to determine the best light for your project. Karl Taylor has produced one of the best videos I've ever seen showing exactly how the light fall off, contrast, and specularity differs between the parabolic reflectors, beauty dish, and large octabox softbox.
As someone who produces a lot of timelapses and video content for YouTube, nothing excites me more than testing out a new piece of gear. So, when edelkrone asked me to review their latest motorized slider and panning head unit, I jumped at the opportunity to see what this kit could do.
One of the most useful lenses any photographer can own is an ultra wide-angle zoom lens. One of my favorite zooms in this category is the Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 lens. Tamron recently released the upgraded G2 version of their already great SP model and I wanted to see if this redesigned lens was worth the upgrade.
No matter if you photograph headshots, weddings, portraits, or sports, one of the most important skills you can have as a photographer is picking out interesting yet non-distracting backgrounds. Many photographers prefer shooting with fast prime lenses but in today's short photography tutorial, I'm going to show you why I prefer the power and versatility of a telephoto lens.
Over the last three years, I have built out four new photography studios, and each time, I find better and better ways to streamline my spaces. In this video, I want to share with you one of the coolest ways to mount your seamless paper or Gravity backdrops.
In a world filled with portable speedlights and 3200 watt power packs, photographers might overlook another critical feature of their studio lights: flash duration. Basically flash duration is the time your strobe light contributes to the exposure of your photograph (flash actually can act as "constant light"). Earlier this year, we posted about Broncolor's flash duration compared to Profoto, but how does a much cheaper strobe like the Einstein compare? The results are pretty remarkable!
