howto

The Secret to Amazing Cityscape Photos: A Magic 15-Minute Window

After shooting cities all around the globe for the past 15 years, I managed to publish seven coffee table books featuring cities like Paris, Venice, Los Angeles, and New York. I learned the hard way when was the best time to shoot and want to save you the time and effort so you can make the best photos of cityscapes possible.

Action Packed: Photographing Mountain Bikers with the EOS R5

For most photographers, it’s been an interesting past year and my experience is no exception. My regular work shooting for commercial clients and agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area was upended by the Coronavirus pandemic, and keeping busy has meant constantly shifting gears to keep the calendar full.

The Ultimate Guide to Fashion Shoots: From Idea to Magazine Submission

Have you ever wondered what it takes to create great fashion work that wows everyone? In this guide, I will break down all the steps you need to take in order to produce something that is of high quality. I'm aware of how hard it is to make fashion work, so in this guide, I am talking about the nitty-gritty, from idea to magazine submission.

How to Take Gorgeous Smartphone Photos of the Lyrid Meteor Shower

The Lyrid meteor shower happens every year from April 16 through April 26, with the peak occurring typically around April 22. Taking great photos of the event does not require a high-end camera though, and you can get some great results with your smartphone by following these simple tips.

How to Shoot Milky Way Photos with Image Stacking to Clean Up Noise

Aloha, and welcome back to my astrophotography tutorial write-ups. I wrote an article last month on the basics of photographing the Milky Way core season. Today I am going to continue this series and tell you about a game-changing technique that you have probably may have already heard about: image stacking.

How To Get Your Photography Featured in Magazines

To many photographers, getting your work printed in a magazine is the holy grail, especially if you manage to make the front cover. Sure, posting on Instagram or Facebook is great but actually seeing your work in print... to me, there is no better feeling.

Lighting Setups Are Nonsense — Here’s How You Really Learn Light

When starting out, you will inevitably stumble upon someone telling you to use a three-light setup for portraits and a beauty dish for fashion photography. I think that’s a whole bunch of nonsense. Lighting setups don’t teach you light -- they only confuse you and derail you from progressing.

How to Photograph the Milky Way: The Preparation

Milky Way photos should first and foremost do one thing: fascinate. When the viewer's gaze loses itself in the vastness of the motif and he begins to dream, the photographer has achieved his goal.

How to Make a Digital Polaroid Camera for Cheap Thermal Instant Photos

In this article, I'm going to tell you the story of my latest camera creation: a digital Polaroid camera that combines a receipt printer with a Raspberry Pi. To build it I took an old Polaroid Minute Maker camera, stripped out its guts, and replaced the innards with a digital camera, an E Ink display, a receipt printer, and an SNES controller to operate the camera.

Eight Photoshop Visual Pranks To Try on April Fools’ Day

Tomorrow is April Fools' Day, and with such a bummer of a year leading up to this point (and things are only now just starting to look better in a few places), everyone could use some laughs. To that end, photographer Richard Wakefield shows how you can create eight visual jokes in Photoshop.

Answering an Age-Old Question: What Makes a Great Print?

When I attempt to make a great photographic print, what do I look for? What process do I go through to make the image as perfect as possible? I have spent 40 years making my exhibition-quality Cibachrome prints and I’d like to explain what goes into making a superlative photographic print.

How to Pronounce German Camera and Lens Brands ‘Correctly’

Germany has a long history of producing some of the best cameras and lenses ever to appear in the history of photography, but German brand names can be a bit tricky to pronounce. In this 8.5-minute video, photographer Maximilian Heinrich of Analog Insights shares the native German speaker's pronunciation of some well-known brands.

How to Photograph the Milky Way Core Season

Milky Way core season is right around the corner. I wrote this quickie guide on how to photograph our galaxy for anyone interested in going out to do some astrophotography this season!

How to Make Solid Developer Cubes for Easier Darkroom Film Processing

Over the past year, it seems the whole world has been on hold due to the rampages of COVID-19. In the Facebook groups I’m in, many users were seeing shortages in analog photography supplies. Some online stores stopped shipping Rodinal (a caustic liquid) and other products were just nowhere to be found.

Why You Should Use a 100-400mm Lens for Landscape Photos

Photographer Michael Shainblum is known for some truly impressive landscape images and in previous videos has strongly advocated for the use of telephoto lenses. In this 10-minute video, he shows how he captured two days worth of images with mainly a Sigma 100-400mm.

Photographing Rainbow Eyes By Using Birefringence

One of the many fascinating effects of cross-polarization is called “birefringence”, which is responsible for the psychedelic gradients in the seen here.

5 Books that Will Help You Conquer Creative Block

It happens to the best of us... and in 2020 it happens all the time: creative block. Whether it's a lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation, a lack of free time, or some combination of all three, we've all hit that wall where it feels like every one of our ideas is stale, everyone else is better or more prolific than us, and there's no real reason to keep trying.

Foundation Tips for Maternity Photo Shoot Posing

In this video and article, we’re going to work through some of the nuances of maternity portraits in regards to lighting and posing. If you’re interested in learning more about how to capture maternity portraits, be sure to check out the full workshop over at SLR Lounge.

How to Build a Fake Sun That Looks Unbelievably Realistic

Want to shoot indoor "natural light" photos... at night? All you have to do is build yourself an artificial sun. That sounds wild, but it's actually neither too difficult nor too expensive -- this 24-minute tutorial by DIY Perks will teach you exactly how it can be done.

How to Take Photos Like the Great Joel Meyerowitz

Photographer and YouTuber Frederik Trovatten has just released episode three of his popular "How to take photos like..." series. He started with Vivian Maier, moved on to Robert Frank, and this week he's breaking down the style and philosophy of the great Joel Meyerowitz.

Tutorial: Make Your Own Hard-Cover Photography Portfolio

When I started freelancing as a professional photographer, I knew I had to put together a printed portfolio. Unfortunately, I found it very hard to find useful resources on the Internet on how to actually do this. As I had some experience in bookbinding I managed to bind my first book by myself, but after three books I realized that in this stage of my career, I needed to have something a little more flexible.

How to Get Professional Results with Photoshop’s AI Sky Replacement Tool

One of the major updates to the latest version of Photoshop is the addition of Sky Replacement: a tool that has the potential to save you a ton of time when editing your landscape images. But as Aaron Nace explains in this video, this AI-powered tool requires a bit of thought if you want to get professional results.

How to Capture Professional Whiskey Product Shots with Only One Light

Photographer Dustin Dolby is back with a new no-frills product photography tutorials that his viewers have been asking him to do for ages: whiskey. In this walkthrough video, he takes you step-by-step through the entire process of capturing and editing together a professional whiskey bottle product shot using only one light.

How to Shoot Otherworldly Macro Photos of Soap Bubbles

There are certain subjects in the macro world, which are so fascinating and absorbing that almost every macro photographer will point a camera at them at some point. No matter how many photos you take or see of these subjects, their charm does not seem to wear off.

How to Use Photoshop to Turn Video Into Long Exposure Photos

As you may very well know, long exposure photography is a method by which you expose a sensor to a scene for an extended period of time. But in this 15-minute video, PiXimperfect asks the question, then isn't a video just a long exposure? Well, not really, but you can use a video to make long exposure photos.

Photo Idea: How to Capture Creative Reflection Portraits

Capturing cool reflection portraits might seem like a breeze—you just put someone behind some glass and go ham, right? But as photographer Matt Granger explains in this tutorial, even a basic understanding of the "key variables" involved can open up more options for you.