For those of you who shoot video, want to get better at shooting video, edit your own video, or edit video shot by others, this article is all about you wonderful guys and gals. As someone who is editing a lot, I thought this short video was fantastic.
If you’ve ever wondered how much time a good make up artist can really save you in post on your stills images, you might want to take a look at the absolutely stunning before and after shots in this article. Believe it or not, no Photoshop was used in the making of any of these images, this is all done the old fashioned way - straight out of camera.
Sometimes it's useful to stop, take stock and just remember why it is we shoot what we do, and what we are trying to do with our work.
Whatever type of photography you focus on, I doubt there are many of us that aren’t mesmerized every time we pick up and thumb through a copy of National Geographic magazine. Over it’s lifetime, it's become synonymous with capturing images of people, places and wildlife that show us the undiscovered or hidden side of our increasingly homogenized world.
Have you ever found yourself thinking: “If only I had <insert expensive camera body/lens/lighting gear>, I would be shooting better images/be winning bigger jobs/get better and higher paying clients”?
Whether we shoot stills, video or both, better utilizing light is probably the single quickest and most effective way to boost the quality of our work. I recently came across the beautiful work of cinematographer and DP Matthias Koenigswieser.
Strapping a GoPro to a moving object has become 'the thing' over the years. More recently, we've begun to see spectacular aerial footage of GoPro's mounted to small remote control drones, such as this video shot over New York City earlier this year.
New technology really doesn't do much for me, I have to be honest. Until I see it applied in a creative way, at which point everything changes. When you place new tech in the hands of inspired, creative minds to see what they can come up with, it can produce fascinating results.
Grand Theft Auto 5, which launched yesterday, is the most expensive video game ever produced, at a cost of $250 million of production and marketing costs. It also set records for day one sales. Most of the short time I played over the last day was spent inside the house one of the one of the main protagonists.
Did you catch the big news coming out of Apple this week? I’m not talking about the new phone announcements. I’m talking about Phil Schiller, Senior VP Marketing for Apple claiming that you no longer need to learn about photography to take better pictures, you just have to buy the new iPhone because (apparently) it does it all for us.
Because most of us fear rejection to some degree, speaking to a complete stranger and asking them for something, let alone asking if you can photograph them, tends to be pretty challenging.
Salience is the name of the five minute short that will probably be remembered as one of the most innovative, experimental (and beautiful) short films of the year.
I grew up as part of the generation of photographers that developed film (or had a lab develop it) and mounted photos in family albums. At the time, I would remember thinking it wasn't a particularly special exercise or the photos themselves weren't particularly amazing.
Umbrellas have been a staple light modifier for decades. But if you’ve ever wondered why there are so many types, or how the light quality from your strobe is affected by the size, lining, fabric or shape of the umbrella, then this post is for you.
I wrote recently about the importance of developing your own style. One of the worst things any creative professional can do is to get sucked into thinking about what work we should be doing or how we should be doing it. When was the last time you looked at someone else’s work and thought “Wow that’s really good. I really need to be doing something like that”?
When was the last time you looked back at an image and noticed something about the lighting that you wished you could tweak or alter slightly? I’m sure most of us have been in this position at one time or another. Up until now, it’s simply not been possible to even imagine being able to do this. Welcome to the strange new world of “computational lighting design”
It’s interesting times for those of us shooting photo and video. I enjoy highlighting photographers or videographers who are utilizing elements of both stills and motion work, and are pushing the creative envelope by integrating them so that the end result is more than just the sum of the individual parts.
In continuing to bring you low cost or free resources to improve your photography, I’d like to introduce you to The Candid Frame (TCF), a podcast that features interviews of different photographers that’s been running since 2006. TCF is hosted by Ibarionex Perrello, a photographer, writer and educator based in Southern California.
The music we use in our work, whether for videos or slide shows for stills images, is an integral part of the narrative and story we are trying tell. The genre, artist and music track we choose, sets the tone for the entire story we wish to tell.
We can often get swept up in the world of digital video. Topics like 'What it will mean for the future of photography when we can pull stills from video?' occupy a lot of time and thinking.
There is one thing above any piece of gear or software that can improve the quality of our image making. Best of all, it's free. Call me cheap, but I'm constantly trying to think of ways and means to improve my work for either no or low financial cost. I want to try and showcase some ways we can improve without necessarily buying new stuff and this article kicks that thinking off.
