If you're just starting out in photography, learning the fundamental principles, techniques, and concepts can feel daunting. To help beginners out, the private photo sharing service KatchUp has created a handy and easy-to-follow infographic that can help bring you up to speed.
Here's a fascinating (but very heady) video by Computerphile, which recently sat down with image analyst Dr. Mike Pound of the University of Nottingham to talk about the subject of digital image steganography.
Steganography is the practice of hiding one piece of content inside another. In this case, Pound talks about the idea of being able to kind all kinds of content inside digital photograph files.
The Photoshop Training Channel published this great 9-minute video with 5 useful Photoshop tricks that the majority of casual Photoshop users probably have never learned before.
A couple of years ago, when I switched careers and moved into photography full time, I did a lot of research on multiple aspects of running a photography business. One of those areas, digital asset management (DAM), deals with, well, managing your digital assets, your image files.
I discovered Adobe’s open standard Digital Negative Graphics (DNG) file format. There are a number of advantages to converting your proprietary raw files (CR2, NEF, etc.) to DNG files, including file size, embedded file verification, future compatibility, and speed.
Early on in my street photography career, I went on YouTube and searched for some inspiration on other street photographers. I came across the work and approach of Bruce Gilden, who absolutely blew me away. He would photograph people at very close proximities (about an arm's-length away), while shooting with a flash on a 28mm lens.
If you’re unfamiliar with the subject of polarizing filters in photography, here’s an educational video that can bring you …
Have you ever wondered how film projectors are able to turn still frames on film into moving images in …
Light-painting photographer Darren Pearson released this 3.5-minute video tutorial on how to paint …
Traditional SLR cameras do phase detection autofocus by directing light onto AF sensors in the camera’s mirror box. Some …
Purchasing a new lens for your kit can be an expensive endeavor and the more information you know before making a purchase is always useful. You may have noticed that lens manufacturer sites tend to include what is known as a Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) chart.
One piece of advice you’ve probably heard regarding printed photos is to never leave them in direct sunlight, which …
Popular YouTube personality Michael Stevens of VSauce posted this interesting 12-minute video yesterday explaining the optical science behind the "Moon Terminator Illusion" and the "Dolly Zoom Effect" (AKA the Hitchcock zoom).
If you're looking to learn to program, there are free interactive online courses such as Codecademy and CodeSchool you can use. Programmer and photographer Cody Meyer wanted to give the photography world a similar kind of resource, so he created Camera Instructor. It's a new web-based photography school that aims to teach photography skills for free through interactive videos and exercises.
If you’re a Nikon shooter who wants a better grasp of how your camera’s autofocus settings work, check out …
Want to see how CMOS and CCD image sensors work and how they differ from each other? Photographer and animator Raymond Sirí created a couple of simple animations showing the basic idea of how these two sensor technologies go about capturing light, reading it, and storing the information.
The animation above showing CMOS sensor tech was used in a trial against Canon, Sirí says.
Editor's note: Elena Shumilova is a mother and photographer based in Russia who became a viral sensation online after sharing her remarkable photos of her children. Just two years after first picking up a camera, her photos were viewed over 60 million times by people around the world. In this article, Shumilova shares how she captures her beautiful and nostalgic pictures.
Note: This article is written for commercial photographers, not consumer photographers. A consumer shooter has a different list of challenges, and since I am not a consumer photographer, I won’t be addressing them.
Well it has certainly been a hectic week. Two proposals, a shoot, designing and writing -- and that was only Monday, heh.
It reminded me of how many channels I have, and I wonder if it may be possible to actually have too many. Can one have too many things one does? Possibly. Perhaps. Probably.
Here’s a helpful little infographic that has been floating around the Web. It’s a simple look at how the …
Photoshop teacher Howard Pinsky shares this quick 9-minute video tutorial on how you …
If you're just starting out in post-processing digital photos, you may feel overwhelmed with all the different terms and concepts involved in tweaking your shots. To help make things easier to understand, the browser-based photo editing service Polarr has created a helpful interactive website that explains common jargon with interactive demos.
A while back I got my hands on my first tilt-shift lens. Since then I have carried it with me nearly every day, grocery shopping and subway riding – you name it. It’s quite a special and fascinating piece of glass even having aged 43 years.
I’ve always found photos of star trails -- the arcs the stars paint across the sky as the earth turns -- fascinating. They’re one of the things that we can “see” with a camera that we can’t see with our eyes. Technology has changed how we shoot star trails, making star trail shots in locations we previously thought impossible possible.
Want to give your photographs a “Hollywood movie” look? Here’s a fantastic 25-minute tutorial on how to do cinematic …
UK-based glamour photographer Markp created this short video tutorial on how he sharpens …
Want to understand the concept of depth of field better? Polish photographer and programmer Michael Bemowski has created a fantastic and feature-rich online depth of field calculator and bokeh simulator that can help you wrap your mind around what's going on when you change things like focal length and aperture.
Here's a great video on photographic composition, created by The Cooperative of Photography using tips and photographs by legendary photojournalist Steve McCurry. Each of the 9 composition tips is illustrated with examples from McCurry's impressive body of work.
Here’s a tutorial by New York City-based photographer Jeff Rojas that offers a …
Note: This is part two of a series on depth of field. you can read part one here.
This video is seen from a third person point-of-view, perpendicular to that of what the camera user would see. Depth of field is a phenomenon of near and far, forward and backward from the point of focus. Changing our point of view rotates the axis of the depth of the field 90˚ so that we may view it laterally across the X axis. This helps us better understand the optic principles at play. The overlays in this video visually quantify the changing depth of field at the given lens setting.
Want a better understanding of how Photoshop’s sharpening filters work and how to best use them? Here’s a tutorial …
There comes a point in a photographer’s life when publishing a book seems like a logical step. The coffee table book represents a platonic ideal for a photo project that is both long-term and worthy of considerations by others. Yet, even with the advent of high quality on-demand solutions like Blurb, book publishing is still fraught with challenges. Here are three different approaches to book publishing in the 21st century.
An ignite is a type of event in which presenters are given 5 minutes to talk about a subject in just 20 slides. Each slide is shown for only 15 seconds before the slideshow is automatically advanced. It's a rapid fire of learning and inspiration that has the motto: "Enlighten us, but make it quick!"
In 2010, photographer Kevin Kubota launched a Photographers Ignite event at WPPI, and the show has since become a staple of the expo.
Photographer Stu Maschwitz of Prolost recently paid a visit to the Bay Area Lightroom User Group and tried something he's always wanted to do: Lightroom Iron Chef.
He took 29 audience-submitted photographs and post-processed them in Lightroom in front of a live audience of more than 100 people, all while providing a running commentary of what he's doing and why.
We’ve seen it in plenty of thriller/crime solver TV shows and movies: upon reviewing some grainy and very low-resolution surveillance footage, someone inevitably asks the technician, “can you zoom in on that and enhance it?” Then, with the quick press of a few masterfully placed keystrokes and bleepy computer sounds, the image is suddenly enhanced with vastly increased resolution and a key plot device is revealed.
The key to mastering photography is not to follow the rules but to understand them. Understanding the photographic principles that define photography is a barrier that must be broken to truly unlock your full potential as a photographer.
The problems that plague beginners are the same problems faced by the pros, that is controlling your image with the exposure triangle; shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. This article will focus on understanding depth of field (DOF).
Photographer Steve Perry of Backcountry Gallery sent in this 14-minute video he recently …
If you're just starting out in Adobe Lightroom and would like some guidance on how you can use the software to improve your photographs, here's a free lesson that may be of interest to you. Photography instructor Tim Grey shares his top 10 tips for optimizing photographs in Lightroom.
The talk runs for nearly 2 hours, so you'll need to carve a chunk out of your day to watch it, but it could be helpful for anyone in need of a primer on some basic tools.
London-based interdisciplinary photographer Sean Tucker has created a helpful three-part video tutorial that teaches the basics of shooting larger products in a studio in front of a white background.
If you've been itching to try your hand at shooting a hyperlapse video, the short and sweet video tutorial above may be a nice place to start your journey. It was made by Cal Thomson, the same guy who created the popular time-lapse tutorial that we featured earlier this month.
You may know Gary Fong due to his eponymous line of products for photographers, but pay a visit to his website and you'll find that he has been very active in the world of instruction as well.
Today, Fong launched a new online product that's designed to help camera owners become familiar with their gear in ways that owner's manuals fall short in. It's a new series of virtual cameras for interactive learning.
UK-based videographer Cal Thomson recently got into astrophotography and creating time-lapses of the …