As always, I get comfortable in my workflow then something new comes along that I didn't know I needed. This can of course be a good thing as long as we aren't closed minded to change. Today I'm going over an awesome new feature of the new NBP Freqsep Control update version 2.1.
I've always been a fan of odd lenses and crazy rendering from some vintage lenses. I have even gone further than most and used vintage lenses on my Sony exclusively on actual customer sessions, and I have been pleased with the results. Today, I want to talk about how much difference modern lens technology really makes in actual real-world usage.
Today I'll be going over the NBP Ultrasharp plugin and how to use it for your workflow. Normally I am not too excited about new apps or plugins unless they really do provide something I couldn't previously do, or makes something I can already do faster and easier.
As a photographer who definitely likes to push the thin depth of field envelope, the announcement of the 105mm f/1.4 Art from Sigma was a dream come true. With the release date getting pushed back numerous times and my hopes dashed with each delay announcement, I am pleased to review the real world working features of this magical piece of glass.
It’s clear that there has been a tremendous upswing in the number of photographers across all markets. But also with that trend has seen a staggering number of people jumping into teaching and selling workshops.
I have been using The ColourMapX panel extensively and a caveat of it led me to further dig into something I rarely used before, clipping adjustment layers to other adjustment layers. Doing so greatly enhances my experience with this panel, but honestly with any type of adjustment.
Today I want to talk about business maintenance and some of the less fun aspects of your business but important nonetheless. New Year's is a great time to go through and look at all your channels, social media, website, etc and see if there's anything that needs cleaning up or adjusting.
Whenever updating software, it is wise to be careful and make sure everything works as expected. Updating Photoshop had recently caused me a pretty serious issue that reminds us of how much our workflow can be affected by something as simple as a software update.
I have mentioned before that I am always seeking new ways to improve. Today, I want to share one of my daily initiatives that I religiously employ, and that’s my daily color exploration.
I have found a few different times in the past that some features of Adobe Bridge randomly go missing, namely the Photoshop menu.
Color has always been one of the most important elements of my work. The NBP ColourmapX Photoshop panel came just in time for me as I have been doing this work by hand and the panel both saves me time as well as improves the quality of my color analyzing.
After reading thoughts on Victoria's Secret getting negative feedback for their choice of models, I have some thoughts on the matter as well and how it affects our cultural view of models and of course, the style that we photographers shoot. There're some critics who feel that Victoria's Secret should include plus-size or transgender models in their fashion show.
One of the features about Canon that I've always liked is that they offer f/1.2 lenses where most everyone else offers f/1.4. I am a bokeh junkie, so that extra little bit really does offer a different look to the background.
Continuing on my reviews of the Sigma Art line which is becoming slowly available for native Sony E mount, today I'm going over my thoughts on the 20mm f/1.4 Art in that native E mount.
For many years, Premiere Pro has been the select video editor of choice as it integrates obviously very well with the entire Creative Suite. We'll go over some of the new features here.
I have always been obsessed with color. Skin tones are one of the most challenging things for many people if you are picky, because there are so many factors that can affect them.
Today I’ll be talking about the Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art lens for Sony E mount. As with my prior review of the 35mm version, I will be going over the topics that are relevant to me which are sharpness, focusing, bokeh, and usability.
SSL has become the preferred way for all sites to be displayed as opposed to only being used for shopping carts and pages where you would enter personal data. For some time, there's been a transition from http to https, and it was a choice mostly based on the intended activities of your website viewers.
It’s certainly well known that the Sigma Art line is beloved by many, and one of the great benefits of shooting with Sony is the ability to use most any lenses with adapters. As well as the adapters work, I could hardly contain my excitement when the Art line began to arrive in native Sony E-mount and today we’ll be going over the venerable 35mm f/1.4 Art.
We all know that Nikon and Canon are fueling up for a big battle for the mirrorless wars, with Nikon firing the first salvo in the form of the Z6 and Z7. But it just does not interest me.
There are plenty of ways in which video and photography technique overlap. One of my favorite ways to increase interest is to add things in the foreground, and with video, this can really add a lot of motion to the scene via a parallax type effect, while for photography, it can add depth.
The company behind Oprema Jena has filed for bankruptcy and applied for de-listing from the German stock exchange. The crowdfunded designs for resurrecting some of the classic lenses that made bokeh character famous are likely to never come to fruition now.
Hair retouching is something that most retouchers and photographers cringe to think about. It's also something that we really need to be fluent in because the situation will come up where there will be things you need to fix. The Hair Retouching course by Retouching Academy with Michael Woloszynowicz is a full overview of the variety of hair issues and how to fix them.
After much anticipation, the Syrp Magic Carpet Pro is here. This is a professional-grade, manual slider that can handle up to a whopping 70 lbs and will be beefy and strong for most possible uses.
There are many options available obtaining smooth motion and my favorite is the Cinetics Lynx. We'll dive into some features of this beautiful slider and go over some usage and my thoughts.
Everyone knows I am a workflow nut, and for a content creator who posts many cell phone images, the concept of downloading them to your computer then retouching and grading them and sending back to your phone is simply not efficient. Today we will be looking at the VSCO X app for mobile devices and how I like to use it for that very purpose.
One of the great benefits of buying gear online is the ability to buy cameras, expensive lenses, etc. and not have to pay sales tax (if ordered from out of state). That all appears to be changing now.
Many folks have been speculating based on rumors about the function that creates disdain in the hearts of most all social media business users: the Instagram algorithm. Speculations have been things like the infamous "shadow ban", chronological feed, and business profile views. Instagram puts these rumors to rest with an official update.
As I always discuss, I am looking constantly for every way to streamline every little detail of my workflow as much as possible. Today I want to talk about what you do after you run your actions. It's a very simple thing that I rarely see anyone do.
We are all addicted to tutorials; at least, I know I am. I'm also addicted to food, so I need to double up my free time. My goal was to come up with an easy way to watch all the tutorials on my iPad. Sure, you could copy the tutorial files onto your iPad, but if you are like me and have a lot more content than would fit on the iPad and don't want to keep putting on and taking it off, there is a better way!
Later recently released the ability through the API permissions granted by Instagram to automatically post your content without using the push-notification, copy-and-paste method that was all hated but reluctantly accepted as our best option.
In general, we always discuss how our industry is changing and how we should do things differently to prosper. This is not only limited to our industry of photography: take the industry of education for example. Not all that long ago, college was considered the thing to do to be respected and move forward in your chosen profession.
For many years the real king of detail, sharpness, color, and DOF has been a 16-bit medium format system, such as Phase One. The larger the film (or sensor) the better the quality has been. Naturally, with my quest for maximum quality in every way, the path led me to medium format. Along with an obsession to be like Joey L for a longer period of time than I care to admit, it only seemed like the next step was to make the switch to medium format.
Syrp's original Genie was an amazing success, built from an overwhelmingly popular Kickstarter campaign and exceeding its goal multiple times over in just five days. Today, building on that success and implementing some incredible new features, filmmakers can be delighted that the Genie II is in production and preorders are open now.
As we all know, in the photography world, things change and they change quickly. The thing that's been tremendously on the rise is the use of video. Here's how to get started editing video in Adobe Premiere.
