Articles from Levi Keplar

Pholio is a hard drive that is able to collect all of your photos and videos from multiple devices into one place and then index them using modern technology. Pholio claims that most of our personal photos are in digital limbo. What they mean by this is that between computers, phones, tablets, and hard drives, our photos are kept in multiple different places. In the abundance of photos stashed across several devices, users often will not be aware of, or are unable to find photos and videos that are important to them. Pholio was created to help solve this issue.

Do you know what keywords are and the best way to add them to your photos? What about what options to select when you are exporting your images? Have you ever heard of the painter tool? In this final part of my three-part series on Lightroom for beginners, I will cover the final steps to take after applying your final edits to your images.

In Part 1 of this series, I explained the basics of how Lightroom works, the best way to import your photos, and the different options you have when culling your images. In Part 2, I want to show you the essentials of the Develop module. This module is the area of Lightroom where you can color correct, crop, straighten, sharpen, and perform several other adjustments as well.

Scuba Diving magazine just released the winners of their 13th annual underwater photography competition. This year’s “Through Your Lens” contest features incredible images taken over this past year from photographers throughout the world.

It is easy to feel overwhelmed with the many different features of Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom has so many possibilities, that even after years of using it, I still am consistently learning something new. I have found that there are so many new photographers who either feel too overwhelmed to start learning the intensive software, or they still aren’t confident that they have been using it correctly. Because of this, I wanted to create a simple beginner’s guide to using Lightroom. This is the first of what will be a multiple part series of articles on Lightroom basics.

Alien Skin, creator of the award-winning photo editing software Exposure, recently announced the upcoming release of the newest version of its popular product, Exposure X3. If you are unfamiliar with Exposure, it is a non-destructive raw photo editor designed to be an all-in-one software for editing and organizing your photos. It is probably most well known for the hundreds of presets included in the software that can emulate analog film, as well as dozens of other modern styles.

I love Lightroom. It is an amazing tool that is able to do almost everything that I need when I edit, and do so in an organized way. The one problem that we’ve all had with it though is the lagging speed that can be infuriating. This past year, I spent a considerable amount of time with one goal: to do anything I could to speed up my editing process. I can honestly say that after implementing the following tips, my Lightroom is running as fast as ever and I rarely notice the lag that would torture me before. Here is a step-by-step guide to what I did.

Sandisk continues to push forward with the release of their record breaking Sandisk Ultra 400GB microSDXC UHS-I Card. Now owned by Western Digital, Sandisk once again topped their previous record-breaking 200GB & 256GB models released in the prior two years. 

When was the last time you backed up your iPhone photos? For many people, taking the time to back up what are often some of our most cherished photos rarely gets done consistently. Sandisk recently tried to solve this problem with the release of their iXpand Base, a flash drive and charger made specifically for iPhones.

A little over a year ago, I came to a point of wanting to take the next step in growing my photography business. To me, opening a studio space made the most sense. The ability to have a dedicated place to work, meet clients, and sell prints out of, as well as wanting a way to make my business appear more legitimate, all factored in to why I believed a studio space was the next step. I recently finished up my first year of having a studio, and although it has been successful and definitely worth it, I wish I would have had a better idea of the costs you can forget about when budgeting for a space.

Last month, Godox announced that they were working on a flash unit that was specifically designed for smartphones. Now, they've made the Godox A1 available for presale. We already knew that the A1 would be capable of being used as an off-camera flash, a constant video light, or as a trigger for other Godox flashes. With the release of the product, we now have more specifics about the flash.

I find it interesting how often I see new photographers make the exact same editing mistakes I made when I started out. Every photographer who has at least a few years of experience can look back at some of their first sessions and find a number of things that they continually did wrong. I recently took a look at some sessions from my first year of photography, as well as asking a few other photographers to do the same, and continually found the same common issues.

As a photographer, understanding the need and the process for copyrighting images can be overwhelming. Binded, the online company formerly known as Blockai, just released a tool that greatly simplifies the photography copyright process for no additional fee.

National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year has announced their 2017 winner. The prestigious competition brought over 15,000 entries from 30 different countries. This year’s grand prize winner was Sergio Tapiro Velasco of Mexico. His photo, “The Power of Nature,” captures an erupting volcano while it is simultaneous being struck by lightning.

In a world saturated with photography, you have to find ways to stand out. If you are able to put in the extra skill and effort to make something that is unique, it can quickly gain attention. Backlighting is one technique I use to accomplish this. Initially, backlighting seemed like a difficult task. Extra equipment, more work, and setting up stands and lights all made it so intimidating as a new photographer. Now that I am years in, I can honestly say that my backlit shots have captured more attention and sold more jobs than any other one thing in my business.

Chinese lighting manufacturer Godox has just released a few details about their most recent project: an off-camera flash for your smartphone. The Godox A1 is more than just a constant light, offering several options in what they are calling their first “phone flash system.”

Have you ever considered how significantly confidence can affect your photography? Creative people are often a largely unconfident group. At any given time we might be dealing with the fear of missing an important moment, anxiously thinking about an upcoming session, running the worst possible scenarios through our minds, or delivering our photos to a client and dreading that email that says how much they hate them. We are still in the process of improving, constantly comparing our work to others, and because of the number of negative thoughts we have, we often feel like frauds.