What’s great about photography and videography is that in most cases you can work wherever you are and thus move freely around the globe. Chris Hau understood that and managed to travel for free using his photography. In this video, he shares his experience and story with you to try giving you tips and inspiration to do the same in 2018.
The Internet is full of articles and videos telling you what technique will revolutionize the way you add sharpness to your images, but almost none of them tell you the most crucial step to take before sharpening, no matter the technique. In this article, I’ll show you this simple yet essential action to make your sharpening genuinely efficient.
When shooting tethered, it’s easy to get lost in files and make things more complicated than they should. However, with Capture One there is an easy way to stay on top of things and cut your image selection time drastically.
If you want to learn to edit beauty, editorial, or fashion images like a pro, be sure to watch this video featuring Tina Eisen on how to such pictures with Capture One.
Capture One has evolved over the past few years to become the powerhouse it is now. With its newest release, it turns into even more efficient software, thanks to the addition of Capture One Studio.
Getting perfect skin tones can be quite time consuming and difficult. Because everyone's skin complexion is different, the corrections needed will be different every time. Even so, there are some recurring problems such as over-saturated reds in darker tones. A great makeup goes a long way in helping with redness, but sometimes it is not enough. The best example is the red seen in the ears when the model is backlit. Because of the nature of skin and the human body, the ears are going to turn red and no makeup will totally solve that. So let’s see how we can correct that very effectively and quickly using Photoshop.
Dodge and burn, frequency separation, and other techniques used by high-end retouchers are great but time-consuming. Shooting and retouching weddings, as well as fashion and beauty, I sometimes find myself spending way too much time on wedding retouching. Being used to cleaning skin with dodge and burn for beauty, I tend to do the same with weddings. Which, as you can guess, is not very profitable. The same thing goes for proofing portrait sessions. I like to give lightly retouched proof images instead of pure raw files. So for weddings and portraits proofs I had to come up with a quick way to clean skin without making my images look too bad. Here is how I do it.
A couple of weeks ago, Elinchrom released the Skyport HS, a new iteration of the very old and rudimentary Skyport. The Skyport HS seems to have everything a strobist could hope for, from the laser grid to focus in low-light conditions to the Hi-Sync mode. This new radio trigger is a welcome addition to Elinchrom's product line. At least, it is on paper. The Swiss company was kind enough to lend me a unit before it was even released so that I could play with it and review it for you.
When looking for new creative ideas, it seems like everything has already been done by someone. But there are still people, like Jay Philbrick, that manage to create pictures never seen or even never thought of before.
After the successful release of the Skyport Transmitter Plus HS that brought Hi-Sync capabilities to the Elinchrom lineup, the Swiss flash manufacturer now introduces the new Skyport Plus System. While many thought the Skyport Plus HS was the replacement of the old Skyport, it was not. The transmitter announced today is the real replacement.
As photographers and retouchers, we are often required to travel. But travel eats up a lot of time and thus it is crucial to optimize one’s workflow. While gear is not everything in our industry, it still maintains a critical place, especially to help save time. Spending more and more time on the road, I recently had to take a look at my editing workflow and find new solutions to make it better and faster. In this article, I’ll share with you some of the accessories I use or have since discovered to cut my retouching and keep me sane.
Phase One introduces its third feature update for the XF camera system. The freshly released firmware adds a couple of new features, including the world’s first complete electronic shutter in medium format photography. The Danish manufacturer proves once again its devotion to offering its customers a future-proof system that can evolve with time and professional photographers’ needs.
In the past few years, flash manufacturers have put a lot of efforts to let cameras’ x-sync fade into obsolescence. However, the current solutions are not perfect and aren’t always intuitive to use for non-tech-savvy photographers. In 2016, I made a comparison between Hi-Sync and HSS. Since then, I have had the chance to play with a Phase One XF and give the beautiful Schneider Kreuznach leaf shutter lenses a try. With more experience using Hi-Sync as well, I thought a follow-up article was well overdue. So let’s dive in and see what solutions are currently available to go past the x-sync limitation.
There are many different ways to learn photography. For me, one of the biggest keys to improving my craft has always been observational learning. I find that watching others do things I’d like to do is both inspiring and educational. It’s one of the reasons why I try to watch at least a couple of behind the scenes videos every day. What better way to learn something than from the best, such as fashion and beauty photographer Patrick Demarchelier?
