The Swiss flash manufacturer, Elinchrom, and the innovative video light maker, Light & Motion, announced today that they are joining forces to bring new game-changing products to the market. The news comes in right after Elinchrom made the Skyport Protocol open to other brands. Thus, it’s no surprise that the new partnership is unveiled along with two new wirelessly controllable video lights.
Photoshop offers so many different tools that achieving one simple task can be done in numerous ways. Finding the method that works best for you and the one that matches the result you have in mind is important. Greg Benz is back with a new tutorial and shows us how he uses the Perspective Warp tool to enhance his landscape photography.
When getting into video, filming may not be the biggest issue. Post-production plays a significant role and can be quite overwhelming. There is tons of software out there, and it’s difficult to know which is best for what. Learning how to use these programs is even worse when you are a photographer. The interface looks totally different than what we are used to with Photoshop, Lightroom, or even Capture One. So it’s always nice there are people such as Casey Faris producing comprehensive videos to help us out in getting started. If, like me, you can’t seem to get a perfect grading with Premiere or Final Cut Pro, this crash course on DaVinci Resolve is exactly what you need!
A few weeks ago Elinchrom announced their new adventure light, the ELB 1200. However, they didn’t release any pricing at the time, but they are now official. The Swiss flash manufacturer also recently added a few versatile light shapers to their already comprehensive range of products.
With digital photography, the ways to present our work have evolved and grown exponentially. Web galleries alone are numerous, and it can be difficult to find the one that matches your needs and expectations. But then, there are a few such as ShootProof that pretty much do everything most photographers need. From proofing to print ordering or even invoices and contract management, it’s a complete solution for the photographer who wants something easy to use. After a few weeks of trial, here’s my review of ShootProof.
In recent years, the radio flash transmitter market has grown extensively. Every camera brand and strobe manufacturer has come up with its own system, but as if that wasn’t enough, some brands specialize in designing their own as well. Today, Elinchrom is opening its Skyport protocol to third parties with the hope of creating a new industry standard and solving the cross-branding issues photographers are facing nowadays.
Importing files from a memory card onto a computer doesn’t seem to be a complicated task, and it shouldn’t be. However, it’s probably one of the most crucial parts of your workflow. If you forget a file on your card or format and reuse the wrong one, it can generate bigger issues than any photographer would like to face. Because let’s be honest, no one wants to tell a client that files have been lost… let alone a full job! There is a trick to avoid that kind of problem, and if you’ve never heard of it, you may be surprised by how simple it is!
While most photographers and retouchers use Capture One and Lightroom, the raw processing software market is actually much larger than just two options. One incredibly appealing alternative to the big names is Picktorial. Its third version is being released today, and it comes with quite a few exciting features and is available at a very reasonable price. I’d almost be tempted to say that it’s to Lightroom what Affinity Photo is to Photoshop.
Pratik Naik was featured on a recent Phase One webinar and showed some of the techniques he uses when processing commercial, beauty, and fashion images in Capture One. Most of what he demonstrated was centered around color and was extremely instructive, no matter the viewer’s level. The hour and a half long recording is now available on YouTube for free and worth a watch if you are serious about color edition and your raw processing.
Recently, I’ve found myself relying on cinematography educational content more and more to improve my photography work. The way light is constructed in movies and the thoughts a DP puts into framing their shots make the results look a tad more flattering and natural than what most photographers seem to be teaching and doing nowadays. So when someone such as Canadian Director of Photography Pierre Gill, who has worked on beautifully lit movies such as "Upside Down,” "Casanovas,” and "Polytechnique,” is giving out free tips, I sit down, listen, and, of course, share it with you.
Learning and improving our craft should be as important as producing content. Online educational resources have made training and workshops accessible to everyone worldwide. One fantastic example is this year’s CineSummit. If you are into cinematography, want to get into it, or even if you are just curious to learn more about content production, then this is for you!
In one of my recent articles, I showed you how to create dynamic luminosity masks manually. In my opinion, it’s the best way to create masks based on brightness levels and confirming this idea is the introduction of a similar feature in Greg Benz’s panel, Lumenzia. The recent update of the luminosity masking panel added a couple of new features, including a "blend if" method for masking layers.
One of the differences between a great image and a snapshot is story telling. If your picture doesn’t narrate anything, it won’t serve any purpose. It’s crucial that your viewers understand what you tried to say with your work, but it's not always an easy task! Thanks to Joe McNally, we now have three tips to keep in mind for stronger journalistic images.
Joe McNally is one of those photographers that almost everyone in our industry knows. Perhaps you’ve seen his name in a Nat Geo, Life Magazine, or Sports Illustrated, or you’ve learned from his educational content, or maybe you simply have discovered him through his role as Nikon Ambassador. McNally is really everywhere. He’s one of those versatile photographers who can do everything from commercial to journalistic work! He’s the proof that specialization is great but not always required to be successful. Recently, he sat down with Chase Jarvis and shared his experience as a professional photographer.
There are tons of photography competitions out there, but not all are equal. In the wedding industry, I’ve found that the Junebug competitions always showcase some of the most inspiring, creative, and beautiful work out there. While the wedding season is about to start, the engagement one is coming to an end for many photographers. So it’s time to start picking your best shots and see if you have what it takes to have your work in the best of the best engagement selection of 2017!
Luminosity masks are well known amongst landscape and nightscape photographers but often underrated by many other creatives. They are an incredibly powerful tool and can help you apply adjustments only to certain areas of an image according to their luminosity. In past articles I wrote, I’ve shown different ways to create these masks. However, with time, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is one way that seems to always be the most effective and yield the most natural-looking results.
About a year ago, I shared a few tips to refine your wedding images delivery to your client with you. One of them was about using a branded flash drive with a box, making it look like a gift or a precious jewel. The only issue is, it can be costly to stock on those to keep up with the deliveries. However, until April 2nd PhotoFlashDrive.com is running a special offer and discounting many of their products.
After releasing a tutorial video together, Phase One and Pratik Naik are teaming up again but for a 60-minute webinar this time. It’s your chance to see and learn all the color tricks the beauty and fashion retoucher uses to get incredible results with any image using Capture One Pro.
Alien Skin Exposure has long been known as a plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom. But since Exposure X was released, it’s trying to compete with the big names in the raw processing department. The software has grown into a standalone app and isn’t just a plugin anymore. Today, Alien Skin is announcing an update for Exposure X2, making it more powerful than ever.
Going through retouching related Facebook groups, it seems like the frequency separation trend is fading away. Some people even call the images edited with split frequency "filtered" as if it was as bad as using some kind of filter. Instead, many are learning to grow some appreciation for the art of dodging and burning. It’s said that with the latter, you won’t lose skin texture and it’s not destructive. But if it really is this great, how can some people still manage to have a plastic-like effect on their model’s skin? Let’s have a look at the most common mistake that may keep your images from that sought after natural look.
We have featured a few techniques to reduce noise on night sky images using multiple exposures. For a change, Greg Benz shows us how we can achieve almost similar results with images we shot in a single exposure. The process is slightly more complex than when having multiple frames, but surprisingly, the final image is quite clean! So, let’s discover the workflow offered by the maker of Lumenzia.
Cold and moody processing is quite trendy lately. As I’ve been watching a lot of movies and cinematography tutorials, I began mimicking that cinematic feel in spite of myself. While lighting and makeup both play a big part in the final look, the post processing is critical as well. Here’s how to achieve it using Capture One!
Dodging and burning is an art in itself when used to clean up images. For example, when retouching beauty shots or portraits, it can take a really long time and require a high level of precision to yield beautiful results. What’s extremely frustrating is that our viewers and clients often don’t understand how much really goes into such work. Showing before and after isn’t really flattering, and showing each mask individually isn’t visually powerful enough. However, there’s one way to make it look abstract so that the model’s reputation isn’t hurt along the way, but visually strong enough that people realize the time put in.
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?
Camera movement can convey a lot more than you may think. Whether it’s intentional or not doesn’t matter. Your audience will feel a certain way depending on how you are moving the camera. So, before you go out and shoot your next video, be sure to watch Film Riot's latest tutorial in which they talk about the different movements possible and what you could use them for.
When asking people what they hate retouching the most, usually the answer is anything hair related. It requires a tremendous amount of precision and a lot of time. Something retoucher Pratik Naik seems to have, at least according to this video in which he fixes eyelashes to perfection while keeping them natural looking. Have you ever wondered how high-end retouchers achieve such result? Then you should definitely watch this time-lapse.
With the recent addition of albums to Instagram, photographers have a fantastic opportunity to add videos such as behind the scenes, short vlogs, or even short clips along with their images. However, if you are like me, cinematography is kind of a new world. While setting up the camera to film isn’t incredibly complicated, editing the content afterward is like learning Photoshop all over again: a nightmare! Thanks to YouTube and amazing people like Ben Brown, getting a grasp of Adobe Premiere’s basics isn’t too difficult.
It’s not every day that you get a chance to learn from the best in our industry for free. Even if that’s just a 20-minute long tutorial, there’s always something to take away! Phase One teamed up with retoucher Pratik Naik to offer you a simple and comprehensive video on color toning in Capture One.
When looking at retouchers’ portfolios, you can separate the great ones from the rest by looking at their color correction. For example, when skin tones are not uniform, it makes the makeup artist look terrible just as much as the retoucher. There are multiple ways to correct color issues, but let’s see one that’s incredibly fast and easy to use for small localized issues, no matter what your photographic genre of choice is.
Broncolor is often referred as the top high-end flash manufacturer. Their units are all assembled by hand in Switzerland, and the Siros L is no exception to the rule. However, the latest addition to their product line is much cheaper than their other battery-powered flash, and it’s a monobloc unit, just like the Profoto B1. I had the opportunity to use one for a few weeks to give you my impressions!
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to shoot in -18°F? Action Photographer David Robinson brought a free runner, Jason Paul, along with him to China to experience it, and now shares his story with us. At first, you may wonder what a free runner and such cold weather have in common, and you would be entirely right to do so. But wait until you discover the pictures to see how beautiful the combination of an icy landscape and this sport is.
Most of the new portable flash units released in the past few years have been 200-600Ws strobes. Not many manufacturers decided to bet on powerful packs. They seem to focus heavily on HS, HSS, TTL, or simply lighter units instead. However, there are photographers who require power and Elinchrom listened to them. The ELB 1200 is not without reminding us of the aging Ranger RX, but they only share the power output, the brand name, and very few features. The Elinchrom ELB 1200 is a new product in itself and one that action photographers will love without a doubt.
If photography is an art, so is retouching. While there are school teaching photography classes, fewer offer retouching programs. Many photographers starting out seem to be looking at the same tutorials over and over again, without ever actually getting anything out of it. Frequency separation, dodging and burning, or curves will only get you so far before you hit a wall. In past the two years, I’ve been looking at other crafts to step up my retouching work. Here are five things I have spent time on that you should look into and why.
TTL, HS, and HSS have pretty much become a standard across the flash industry today. Every manufacturer is releasing new units on a regular basis with more features than any photographer could ask for or even need in. Following the trend, Nissin just announced a new TTL transmitter, the Air10s.
Grids are probably amongst the best pieces of equipment a photographer using flash can own. Alas, they are often either underrated or misunderstood. On one of my recent shoots, I decided to create a lighting setup with grids on every single strobe. My goal was to create a somewhat complex setup, that once broken down step by step would be easy to recreate by any photographer starting out in studio photography.
