The "Exposure Donut" is a new way to understand manual exposure controls on a mirrorless camera. Created by British engineer and photographer Tim Helweg-Larsen, the Exposure Donut, or Expodo, is a software tool designed to simplify exposure on mirrorless cameras.
I have one overarching tip for you today and it’s a big one. The only wrong way to learn photography is to stop learning. Whether you’re classically trained or self-taught, the key is to always be learning and growing.
I recently realized I have a problem: I buy too many books, especially photography books. Not those cheap kindle ones but those beautiful printed and expensive books, which ended up decorating my wall, or coffee table, and, in my case, possibly many coffee tables.
Syrian photographer Serbest Salih has set up a mobile photography school that introduces vulnerable Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish children to analog photography.
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.
Without light, there is no picture. Knowing how to use light to your advantage can help you in any genre of photography, from landscape to portrait.
Want some free photography education by top professional photographers? Nikon has got you covered. The brand just made all of its online classes free for the holiday season.
What a strange year this has been, right? Yet, curiously, this has also been a year in which I have probably taken the greatest leaps in my photography for some time. Because when you are doing something new, or have been pushed into a new way of life, you can either freeze and panic... or you can use it as an opportunity to try new things. To innovate.
The photographer's "journey" is, generally speaking, a pretty predictable thing. We all go through certain "phases" as we pick up and learn this craft—some more gracefully than others—and so, in the spirit of lighthearted candor, photographer and YouTuber Evan Ranft has decided to share his take on the 8 major phases of being a photographer.
Photographer William Gilbert recently decided to start a YouTube channel, but rather than asking you to "smash that like button," he chose to kickstart the channel with 20 minutes of "wholesome goodness" instead. He decided to teach his 7- and 9-year-old niece and nephew how to shoot and develop 35mm film.
TikTok, the video-based social media app, usually conjures visions of teens mimicking the latest dance craze, but it’s probably better described as short attention span YouTube. In 2017, ByteDance, the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok, acquired the Musical.ly app, which had gained a toehold with an under-18 demographic by becoming a replacement for the comedy-oriented Vine app along with a burgeoning lip-synching community.
"What lens did you use for that picture?" The only question less helpful to a growing photographer is probably, “What settings did you use for that picture?” Not because I think they are helping a newbie “cheat”, or because I might think it is copying, or ever -- God forbid! -- because I have some secret combination of shutter and aperture that is magic for me. It’s because it really doesn't matter.
A major change -- and learning curve -- for me this year has been my switch from Nikon to Sony. I’ve already documented the story of my switch to Sony, but what I have since discovered is the huge possibilities -- or as some of us might call it the “confusion of options” -- that comes with owning a Sony Alpha camera.
Adobe has announced the May 2019 release of Lightroom CC, and two of the more notable additions to the app are built-in interactive tutorials and a new Defringe tool.
In December 2014, I decided that I wanted to practice shooting the night sky in order to expand my photography skills. Of course, I made every possible mistake. My compositions were completely off, I severely underexposed or blew out the sky and the images were not sharp.
When you purchase a new camera, how much time do you spend reading the manual? I find most camera manuals rather difficult to follow along with, and I for one very rarely use them. What’s interesting is that camera manuals only describe the technical “how to” side of things, like how to turn on your camera or how to attach a lens, but it doesn’t tell you how to truly become comfortable with your camera.
I’ve been feeling for a while now that something has been lacking from my street photography. I seem to have settled into a “style” or “way of seeing” that features themes of solitude and isolation, monotone color palettes, and generally bland scenes – in line with my descriptions of “New-Wave Street Photography”.
I can’t help but notice all those articles proclaiming mistakes we should try to avoid in order to become a better photographer. Admittedly, I have issues with such an approach. First of all: I hate the word “should”. Basically we “should” nothing. Secondly, there is not much learning in avoiding mistakes — we learn best from our mistakes and the more bittersweet they are the more carved into our memory they become.
Want to learn photography from Harvard? (Yes, that Harvard.) It turns out you can easily do so, even without being a student. The oldest institution of higher learning in the United States offers a free 12-module online digital photography class.
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." — Henri Cartier Bresson
Want to learn the basics of photography for free from the comfort of your own home? There are many ways to do so these days, but a new one you might want to check out is Photoskop.
It's a newly launched free-to-use website that helps people explore and learn about the world of photography through visual and interactive modules.
Want to learn newborn photography but don't have any newborns to photograph? StandInBaby is a new product designed just for you. It's the world's first fully articulated, lifelike, and camera ready dummy baby that's designed to help photographers learn how to pose newborns.
Understanding the exposure triangle of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO is one of the first steps in learning photography. To help people wrap their heads around the concept, photographer Tony Catalano has created the Interactive Exposure Tool, an online tool for experimenting with how changing camera settings affects the resulting photo of a scene.
With over a trillion photos created every year now, one feature that could help people make sense of their massive photo collections could be object recognition and automatic tagging. If your camera and photo management software can figure out what's in your shots, it'll make searching through old photos much more easy and intuitive.
Companies and researchers are working hard on pushing this field forward. Photo sharing services are already adding auto-tagging to their systems -- Flickr and Google had to work out some early "racist" bugs -- and now we're getting a glimpse of what the technology could look like live, in cameras.
The first known photograph was captured in 1826 when light reacted with a particular type of asphalt known as Bitumen of Judea. Since that first natural light photo, photographers have introduced artificial flash lighting to photos through all kinds of different ways. In this post, we're taking a look at a brief history of the camera flash -- from its humble beginnings with explosive powder and burning metal up through the latest LED lights -- to see how far it has come.
As the new NFL season is getting underway, Sports Shooter Academy has posted …
Photography can be a thrilling way to explore the world around us, but sometimes we need a bit of inspiration to get moving. ‘The Bigger Picture Cards’ are a way to not only get inspired but to also learn new photographic skills along the way. Sold as a $15 set of flashcards, the deck includes 50 cards to get you out and shooting. Just draw your selection, accept your challenge, and you are on your way to learning by doing.
Want to learn from Lynda's paid photography and videography tutorials for free? It turns out you can at many public libraries around the country. The popular online learning company recently began to team up with libraries to provide patrons with high-quality training resources at no extra charge.
A few weeks ago, we shared what 7 top photographers said they wished they had learned in school. Unsurprisingly, many mentioned a desire to have learned more about business and marketing. But beyond the selection of course subject, there is a more fundamental aspect of learning in the 21st century that should be addressed.
Recently, I attended a lecture by Dr. Yong Zhao, a renown researcher in education, who has espoused many progressive ideas about the education system and how it is failing us. His thoughts made me reconsider the role of school for photographers and other creatives. Here’s what you really should be learning in photo school.
Really want to get the most out of your new GoPro? You're in luck, because GoPro recently turned to their own in-house production team and asked them to create a series of tutorials called the GoPro Field Guide.
This collection of videos -- made by the same guys who follow some of the top extreme athletes in the world around and film their insane antics -- will help you get the hang of that little action cam and really take advantage of everything it can do.
To paraphrase the great Oprah Winfrey, “You get a photography eBook, YOU get a photography eBook, EVERYBODY gets photography …
Photography is a hobby that generally takes plenty of hands-on experience to nail down. Sure, the basics of photography, such as composition and the exposure triangle can be learned through reading and research, but to truly improve on your photography, you need to get out in the field and just shoot... or do you?
There's no shortage of great photography resources out there for photographers of all levels who want to continue honing their skills, and joining their ranks today is a new video series from Olympus that is part marketing campaign and part learning opportunity.
“If you can’t do it right, do it big.” These are just a few of the wise words shared by renowned photographer Marc Hauser in the above mini documentary by Chris Cascarano.
He’s shot for the likes of Rolling Stones Magazine, Pepsi and Playboy (just to name a few) and the concise words of wisdom he shares in this video are worth writing down no matter where you are in your photography career.
Who says you can’t learn from video games? Shown off in the above video is a preview of an upcoming first-person simulation game that takes the concept of the first person shooter in a much more photographic direction.
Almost a year after Zack Arias first announced that he was working on an educational project called DEDPXL (pronounced dead pixel), the project has gone live on the web and is ready for you take a look at.
As a photographer, you will sooner or later bump into the phrase "the decisive moment". The decisive moment is a concept made popular by the street photographer, photojournalist, and Magnum co-founder Henri Cartier-Bresson. The decisive moment refers to capturing an event that is ephemeral and spontaneous, where the image represents the essence of the event itself.
Being so close to the release of the 2013 Arizona State University Football campaign, I wanted to take an opportunity on to talk about an image that I created many years ago while still a student at ASU. When many people ask me where I believe I crossed the line from hobbyist to professional, I tell them of this campaign, and actually place the beginning on a single image. The fact that the image still lives on my website is a testament to how much I enjoy it and how much it means to me. It is the photo that opened many doors in my career, yet very few people know the background behind its creation.
Check out this awesome exposure triangle graphic found in this Exposure Guide tutorial on the fundamentals of exposure:
Gamification -- the application of game design elements to non-game contexts -- is a pretty hot idea right now in the online startup world. More and more startups are introducing things like badgets, achievements, leaderboards, points, and progress bars to encourage users to do things such as visit new businesses, answer questions, and, of course, play games. One particularly interesting application of gameification is in the area of education, using fun to motivate learning.
Lunchbox is a stealthy startup that's planning to introduce this kind of learning to the world of photography.