Drones are awesome. Much more than just being fun novelties you might see buzzing around your neighbor’s backyard piloted by a young child, they are amazing creative tools that allow for camera shots that you simply cannot get in any other way, and are used in everything from music videos to live sports to the biggest blockbuster films.
For starters, I love the fast-paced John Wick series, and I think that Keanu Reeves is just a badass in general. Now I don’t use this word often, but everything about these movies is pure cinematic gold — the lighting, composition, camera movement, etc. (But, that’s just my opinion.) So, I decided to recreate this cinematic John Wick Chapter 2 movie poster, and show you exactly how I did it!
A passport is almost always a necessity when traveling outside your country, and a photograph is required along with identity documents, filling out a form, and paying a fee when applying. The photograph is potentially the most challenging part of the process. The good news is that the photo can be taken and printed at home as long as careful attention is given to the rules.
Apple makes it relatively easy to hide photos that are stored on an iPhone and this feature can be quite important when the phone might be used by anyone other than the owner of the device.
It will come as shock to no one that digital cameras are as complex as the manufacturing processes that make them. Thanks to the wizardry of Steven Sasson, our photographic pursuits are inextricably linked to the cold mass of integrated circuits, photovoltaic diodes, and the other discrete components that make up our modern tools.
Resizing images in Adobe Photoshop sounds like it should be a trivial and simple operation, and for many uses and users, it is. It’s when one starts looking closely at the details in a resized image that it becomes apparent you should be looking into the options of the resize image dialogue box.
Need to download a photo from Instagram? Perhaps you uploaded a photo long ago and have since lost the original file, or perhaps you are interested in downloading a public domain space photo from NASA to use as your phone's wallpaper. Whatever the reason, the good news is that it is easy to download Instagram photos.
Removing unwanted objects and text out of an image to clean up your photo used to require special software and skills, but these days AI has led to features like Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop that lets anyone do it in just a few clicks. If you do not have a Photoshop subscription, there is a free Web and mobile app called Cleanup.pictures you can use.
"Flambient" real estate photography involves combining flash and ambient light for beautiful, high-end results. In this article, I will show how you can capture great real estate images using high dynamic range (HDR) and flash techniques.
Like most photographers, I love black-and-white infrared images. There is a purity and intensity to a well-crafted monochrome image, and there are many software options out there to help convert an image to black-and-white.
Google recently added Google Lens to its Chrome desktop Web browser. While it is a great tool, it replaced the "Search Google for image" option when right-clicking a photo. Here's a guide on how to continue doing reverse image searches with a right-click if you have lost it.
Almost anything can be used as a light modifier. As long as it interacts with light in one way or another, it can be considered a light modifier. In this article, I will show you how to build a do-it-yourself (DIY) softbox with things you likely already have around at home.
Darktable, RawTherapee, digiKam are undeniably powerful applications for processing RAW files. But while they offer a plethora of advanced editing and processing tools, using them to get the result you want requires and patience and some effort. But who has time for that?
Can you think back to a time you were taking photos in a dinner scene and they just look "flash-y"? Why does flash never look natural? Well, in order to make flash look natural, you have to make flash part of the natural lighting scenario. Here’s how.
Want to create a "small world" or "tiny planet" image in which a landscape photo (often a panorama) is turned into what looks like a miniature planet? Here's an easy-to-follow 2-minute tutorial that will teach you how to make one in Photoshop.
Don’t toss a photo just because the lighting isn’t the best. You may be able to bring it back alive in post-production. As photographers, we face countless different scenarios and it's nearly impossible to get the perfect shot 100% of the time.
If you ever find yourself stuck indoors and in need of a fun and educational project, try building yourself a camera obscura. Here's a 7-minute video by Fotodiox showing how you can put together a small DIY one with ordinary craft store supplies.
Since Milky Way Core season is in full swing, in this article I am going to level up and discuss one of my favorite topics: star trackers.
Google Street View cameras have now captured over 170 billion photos from 10 million miles around the globe. But if you're not comfortable with the fact that anyone can "visit" your home digitally, did you know you can request to have it blurred from public view?
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.
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.
Summer and Fall are wonderful for photographing the Milky Way here in Hawai'i. We have many locations with dark skies and breathtaking scenery too. In October, the brightest part of the Milky Way (galactic core) is near the horizon at sunset; by November it'll be below the horizon when it gets dark.
Automotive photographer Dave Cox (AKA ShootingDave) recently put together a handy step-by-step tutorial that shows you exactly how he uses light painting to capture dramatic car photos when working in a tight space like a workshop. By combining six exposures into one, he's able to capture a beautiful and surprisingly natural looking photo.
Unmesh Dinda over at PIXimperfect has released another exceptional photo editing tutorial that you'll want to bookmark if you shoot portraits. In this video, he shows you a detailed step-by-step method for removing glare from glasses in Photoshop—something all of us have probably had to do at one point or another.
Dustin Dolby of Workphlo is back with another helpful product photography tutorial. Using only minimal gear, Dolby will show you how to create professional-grade 360° product photos—an increasingly sought-after skill for e-commerce photography.
The filmmakers over at Threefold have created a DIY battery charging board with a very useful twist: it's portable. And in the video above, they break down exactly how you can build your own version to suit your on-the-go creative needs.
In this post, I'll share how I do quick and easy color cast removal using Photoshop. I will provide some examples to show you that it can work for a wide range of images. The color cast removal process I will explain may not be a universal solution but it seems to be very resilient.
Product photographer Dustin Dolby is back with another workphlo tutorial that tackles a difficult subject in simple terms: how to shoot reflective products using only a single light source.
Shooting street photography without a project in mind is like shopping for food when you’re hungry. You might get a few nice treats, but ultimately you get back and find there is nothing to sustain you.
It's Valentine's Day and a good opportunity to grab some flowers and celebrate our love for photography with another creative project. I didn’t want to miss my chance, so I grabbed some red roses and in today’s post I will share my set-up for a Valentine's Day 'Refracted Rose' photo.
Professional photographer Karl Taylor has put together a short-but-very-useful tutorial that will show you how you can calibrate your lens autofocus without buying a special calibration chart or tool. All you need are a few household items, your camera, and your tripod.
Handheld focus stacking is a brilliant solution for many scenarios. It saves you all the troubles of using a focusing rail in the field and provides a maximum of flexibility. Whenever you need more depth of field than you can get with trading off image quality, this is the way to work around it.
There are all sorts of tools out there for making cinemagraphs and "plotagraphs" by animating certain parts of your still photos, but you don't need any of them. This short tutorial shows you how to create these animations using Adobe Photoshop.
This article is for all of the new photographers new to lighting and to all who think they are limited by their lack of gear! I will show you how you can create this whiskey image with just one light, in-camera, and with no editing.
How do you go about shooting one of the rarest sports cars in the world? Here's a 17-minute tutorial in which automotive photographer Mike D'Ambrosio shares the 5 steps of his "night flare" style while shooting a $2.75 million Maserati MC12.
When it comes to online educational content, there aren’t many photographers out there willing to share their mistakes when trying to create a photo. I think it’s fair to say that there are easily far more who only share their best work online and for good reason; as educators, you want to create an image of a photographer who makes little to no mistakes at all.
Highly stylized looks offer a great learning opportunity to the beginner or intermediate product photographer. When items are placed on a composite-heavy background, there are certain considerations we can make in-camera to avoid a headache in Photoshop.
The crown of the (Ant)arctic. Known in the northern hemisphere as the Aurora Borealis (northern lights and as the Aurora Australis in the southern hemisphere, these brightly colored bands of moving and waving light are a majestic display in the night sky.
Here's a concise beginner's step-by-step guide on how to capture long exposure photographs.
Lately, I’ve seen lots of cinematic looks on Instagram. There are mostly cold tones with a rare spark of a warm look. And so I have decided to have a look, do some magic, and produce a free Lightroom landscape preset for you. I know, there are lots of Lightroom presets for travel photography, but in reality, I couldn’t find anything usable that also came with an explanation. So, read on to learn how to create cinematic photography yourself.