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Articles from Fred van Leeuwen

5 Ways to Shoot Landscapes in Summer

Landscape photography in the summer can be frustrating, especially when shooting woodlands and forests. The forest is thick with green foliage, and parts of the bright blue sky shine through the canopy, creating hotspots in your image. But surely landscape photographers don't stow their cameras away for six months every year, so there must be an alternative?

 

Why Your Technically Perfect Landscape Photos Still Feel Empty

Photography is currently undergoing a crisis of distinctiveness. Landscape photography, in particular, falls victim to mediocrity: a convergence toward a homogenized aesthetic. In today’s world, where algorithms reward consistency over unique culture, the cookie-cutter approach to landscape photography has become a currency rather than an art form. 

10 Ways to Make Wide Angle Woodland Photography Work in Winter

What do you do when you're planning a shoot in the woodlands during winter, but you live in a region that doesn't see much snow or fog? You walk for hours in this unforgiving environment, trying to find a decent composition, and you end up feeling frustrated that nothing is working. 

Is the ZWO Seestar S30 Pro the Ultimate Beginner Smart Telescope?

These days, it’s becoming easier and more affordable to photograph our night sky. The introduction of smart telescopes has opened the door for keen amateurs and hobbyists to get started in astrophotography at a fraction of the cost of a high-end professional setup. The ZWO Seestar S30 Pro is making the growing smart telescope space even better. 

5 Essential Tips to Improve Your Autumn Landscape Photos

Every year, photographers start flocking to forests, woodlands, and landscapes known for their beauty at the start of fall. The almost luminous greens of summer begin to fade into brilliant orange, red, and yellow as the air turns colder. Autumn is that short-lived season that tests the patience and timing of every photographer.

Canon’s Hidden Gem: The 135mm f/2 and Why You Should Own It

Modern mirrorless lenses are beautifully crafted technological masterpieces. Yet, these lenses come at an expense. What if investing in older technology provides a comparable, if not more pleasing, result at a fraction of the price of its modern-day equivalent? 

Move Over Lightroom, Luminar Neo Is The One

I've always been skeptical about the introduction of AI into popular applications such as Photoshop; however, as time went on, I started experimenting with specific features, and eventually, Luminar Neo emerged as a standalone and plugin app for Photoshop and Lightroom. Naturally, my curiosity was piqued, and I had to test it out.

A Photographer’s Safety Net: We Review Stellar Photo Recovery 12

As a photographer, your photo library is one of the most important things to keep safe and backed up. Of course, you can have backups on multiple drives, cloud storage, and servers, but hardware can still fail. The risk is exceptionally high during or after a shoot, between the time you take the SD card out of the camera and plug it into your card reader.

Transform Your Architectural Photos Into Fine Art With Photoshop

Have you ever found yourself with many snapshots of buildings and architectural features of a city you visited while traveling? Perhaps you looked at these photos thinking they're just ordinary snapshots. What if there were a way you could transform these photos into architectural fine art pieces using Photoshop? 

5 Essential Techniques for Advanced Landscape Photography

When starting with photography, you'll find many tips and techniques to understand, from the basics of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO to composition and lighting. However, today, we will focus on five techniques worth checking out when you embark on your first landscape photography trip. 

Why Sound Can Be More Important Than Your Video

As a photographer, I'm starting to use video more often, whether to work on a client's project or promote my work using video. Most, if not all, mirrorless cameras on the market today can also produce high-quality 4K video. However, there is one factor that needs to be taken into account when making a video: sound.

Do You Really Need Fancy Gear To Shoot Panoramas?

When I first discovered photography, I was immediately drawn to landscape photography. From day one, I started trawling through photography-related sites and looking at how other photographers captured the world. However, I discovered panoramic landscapes when my photography college lecturer brought a Fujifilm GX617 to class one day. When I saw what it could produce, I was hooked.

The Trials and Tribulations of Experimenting With Infrared Photography

A few months ago, I explored a new photography challenge and invested in an infrared filter for landscape photography. I could've bought an already converted used camera, but after looking at what was available on the used market and specialist conversion services, investing in a filter seemed to be at a more appealing price point and the best of both worlds.

5 Reasons Why Filters Matter: A Review of NiSi's Long-Exposure Circular Filter Kit

When it comes to photography, there are a few fundamental basics one needs to cover before shooting. Besides needing a camera, decent battery life, and a reliable and solid support system, you need filters to combat the daylight sun's harshness, introduce contrast, remove the annoying infrared noise, and polarize the sky or any reflections.

What I've Learned From Starting a YouTube Channel

As photographers, it's vital not to keep all our eggs in one basket, but to expand our means of income by setting up different revenue streams, one of the most popular of those streams being YouTube. But is it still possible to make money from it in 2020?  

How to Feel Fulfilled by Your Work: Shoot for Yourself First

Around four months ago, amidst a harsh lockdown here in South Africa, I moved from the big city to a small coastal town, Betty's Bay, nestled between the Overberg mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. There was no work coming in, and there was no budget to rent additional gear for any shoots.

Learn to Tell a Story Through the Use of Color

Since the introduction of color in film, photographers and filmmakers have been using it to subconsciously tell a story, to make the viewer of a photographer or film feel a certain way, or to further elaborate on a story. How do we, as photographers and filmmakers, use color to our advantage and utilize the full potential without going overboard?  

Save Time by Creating a Time-Lapse in Photoshop

Creating a time-lapse can be one of the most time-consuming practices in photography. Due to the nature of time-lapse, you spend a while finding a suitable composition, set up your camera and wait.  

Filmmaker Creates Inspiring Shortfilm by Himself During Quarantine

This year has forced many photographers and filmmakers to take an extended break from their day jobs and stay home. The newfound stresses that come with quarantine have left a lot of us uninspired, while others have used this time to pursue projects they couldn't find time for before.

Getting Started With Macro Photography

The world of macro photography can become endless once you venture down that path. There are so many new textures, creatures, and plants to discover. You can quickly lose hours by photographing the miniature world, but how do you get started? 

How to Shoot and Stitch a Panoramic Image

I know a lot of us can't go outside right now to shoot panoramas due to quarantines and self-isolation, but perhaps you have some panoramic shots you took months back on a trip somewhere, buried away on a hard drive in the cupboard. Now's a good time to dust them off and get to work! 

The Photographer's Guide to Buying Your First Dedicated Video Camera

If you're a photographer interested in exploring video, there is a plethora of options available for you right now. Since the launch of the Canon 5D Mark II around a decade ago, video functionality has been a growing part of every DSLR and mirrorless camera to date. But there's always a trade-off when it comes to hybrid cameras.

Using Lockdown to Improve Your Photography in Five Simple Steps

By now, most of the countries around the world are under full lockdown or about to undergo lockdown. At the time of writing, my country (South Africa) would be one of the latest to undergo lockdown. Tensions seem to increase the day before the actual event, as people question what they'll be doing with themselves while locked in a house for three weeks or longer.

Goodbye Adobe Premiere, Hello Da Vinci Resolve

If you’re a video editor working on Adobe’s Premiere Pro, you’re probably well aware of all the frustrations that come with using Adobe’s answer to video editing daily. The sluggish playback, the generic error issues, random crashes, and in some cases corrupted project files.