walkthrough

Tips for Beginners in Real Estate Photography

If you've been interested in trying your hand at real estate photography for some spare cash between assignments, this short video guide by photographer Troy Nikolic a great place to start.

A Photographer’s Lightroom Workflow in a Real-Time Walkthrough

If you're just getting started in Lightroom and have an hour to spare, here's a video you might want to watch to learn some handy tips and techniques. Ohio-based portrait and commercial photographer Nick Fancher, author of Studio Anywhere, walks us through his Lightroom workflow in real-time. It's a detailed look at how Fancher culls and color grades his photos after a shoot.

How to Develop Color Negative Film at Home in 10 Minutes

Developing your own color negative film at home might not be as scary as you think. With a simple developing kit, a few accessories, and a short tutorial, the folks at the Film Photography Project will show you how to do it in just 10 minutes.

How to Use Moonlight as Your Main Light Source

Using the moon as your main light source for late-night photography can be beautiful, surreal... and challenging. But photographer Karl Taylor has a neat trick up his sleeve that can save you hours worth of test shooting in this situation—the trick is called "math."

How to Build and Shoot With a DIY Rain Machine

Below is a walk through of how I created ONE image for my portfolio, I will add some of the other images, but I don't have them in my portfolio. This is because this was the start of a series of images and I had set out to come out with only one from each shoot.

Shooting the Moon with a Raspberry Pi Camera and Canon EF Lens

Shooting the moon has been a little obsession of mine for a very long time (ever since I started photography). I guess it is my love of impossible images, science fiction, and science fact that drove me to want to take photographs of the moon.

Mastering Composition to Get More Keepers

Mastering composition is the best way to get more keepers in your street photography. That makes sense, right? If you know how to make a visually pleasing image, then you can discipline yourself to capture the remarkable photos that tell a story.

Lighting Through a Window: People in Still Life in the Style of 1600s Dutch Painters

A few months ago I was working on putting together a still life shoot with a fantastic stylist and a friend of mine, Kiki Tse. She had come up with this beautiful idea for a shoot: to represent a person in a still life context by the use of some of their personal effects.

To know someone's possessions; to see a navigational chart from their grandad; an amulet with a photo of their late sister without ever seeing a face to attach this narrative to invites the viewer to form their own account devoid of judgement of background, race, age or physical appearance.

‘A Dream’: Turning a Landscape Into a Dreamscape in Photoshop

This surreal photo-manipulation is titled "A Dream," and it was created using a single photograph that was edited in Photoshop. In this post I'll provide a step-by-step walkthrough of how it was made to show you how you can make a similar image yourself.

How to Stack Photos for Epic Milky Way Landscapes

If you are willing to get up early or stay up super late, Milky Way season is back in North America! Above is a shot I made on February 14th, 2016, in Sedona, Arizona. This image was taken at 5:45 AM, just prior to sunrise. Something I tried for the first time with this photo is taking 10 consecutive shots of the sky at a higher ISO (5000) and shorter shutter speed (15s), and then stacking the photos, which gives you awesome pinpoint stars with minimal noise.

Here's a walkthrough of how I made the shot.

How I Captured Lightning Striking the Tallest Building in the World

My name name is Rustam Azmi, and I'm a photographer based in Dubai. I recently captured this photo of lightning striking the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest skyscraper. In this post I'll share a little about how the shot was made.

I Shot Polaroid-style Celebrity Portraits at This Year’s Sundance Film Festival

As a staff photographer at the Los Angles Times, the majority of my assignments are celebrity portraits, often taken in non-descript hotel rooms during harried press junkets. Eight years of trying to photograph as many different looks as possible in the 5-to-10-minute windows we’re granted, usually without an assistant, have given me plenty of practice for the chaos that comes with a major film festival.

This year marked our fourth L.A. Times photo studio at the Sundance Film Festival. Celebrities and their entourages file through our studio nonstop over the first five days of the festival and one of the biggest challenges I feel every year is creating a body of work that sits apart from what the other publications are doing in the same environment.

Why Photos of Arizona’s Famous Antelope Canyon All Look the Same

So what is it really like to shoot The Antelope?

The slot canyons of Page, Arizona are on Navajo lands. By law, only native Navajo can conduct business on the property. This has resulted in a number of resident outfitters running operations to visit the twisty, narrow, photogenic canyons. It is strictly controlled by the Navajo Parks and Recreation Department, which serves to protect the area from overuse and preserve its history.

How I Shot a Star Wars-Themed ‘Last Supper’ Photo

Sometimes, photography is about being brilliant at lighting, or capturing a decisive moment, but often it's as much about collaborating with other talented people to realize a vision as it is about your own skills.

The idea of recreating Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper using characters from Star Wars had been in my head for over a year before I was finally able to make it real.

How I Shot Snowy Christmas Portraits in My Studio

I recently shot a series of snowy portraits... inside my studio. This shoot was originally just intended to be for my own Christmas card, The idea was to do something fun, dreamy, and Christmas-related (with a Santa hat and fun poses) that I could send to friends, family and clients. As the year was coming to an end, a fun photo shoot was very welcomed. And, ironically, we didn't have snow at this point in Brussels, which is very unusual.

Lighting Portraits with a Prism Gobo, DIY Barn Doors, and Window Blinds

Photographer Nick Fancher often does high-quality shoots with simple locations and do-it-yourself gear -- he published a book on the subject earlier this year that's titled Studio Anywhere. For a recent portrait shoot, Fancher visited his model's apartment and shaped light using a custom prism gobo, DIY barn doors, and the blinds on the model's door.

My Lightroom Post-Production Workflow After a Day Behind the Lens

This post is a basic rundown of how things work behind my lens, after a big day of shooting. In this case, it's mountain biking. However, whether you're shooting a party, a bike race, a wedding or flowers in the garden, all post-production works the same way.

Post-production can be confusing, though, and it's easy to get lost in a whole bunch of windows and options, missing important adjustments and taking hours longer than you could. I hope this little guide can help you achieve what you want from your photos, in less time, and with greater confidence.

Tutorial: Lightroom’s HDR Photo Merge and a Look at Its Pros and Cons

HDR photo merging has been around for a while, but only recently has it been implemented inside Adobe’s Lightroom. In this article I will show a brief tutorial on how to use it inside LR and explain the pros and cons of this technique based on my own experience and photographic technique.

Video: Creating a Star Wars Wedding Photo with 12 Hours of Photoshop

Photographer Tanya Musgrave shoots weddings professionally, but she also dabbles with photo manipulation on the side as a hobby. A groom she worked with recently asked her to do a special Star Wars photo based on the Battle of Hoth seen in The Empire Strikes Back. So, Musgrave shot a special photo on the way of the ceremony and then did the rest of the magic in Photoshop.

The 3-minute video above is a time-lapse of the long editing process.

A Portrait Shoot at 13,500 Feet Above Ground

“What single moment defines a skydiver?” This is the question I kept asking myself as I prepared to photograph Sarah. At the time of this shoot, I only had a few tandem jumps (attached to an instructor.) But still, that "moment" -- for me at least -- had always been getting in the door before a jump. You can put the gear on, you can ride the plane up, but getting to the door is where you really have to face yourself. And so it was this moment that I chose for our shoot: at the door, arms overhead, eyes fixed on the beyond.

A Day in the Life of Street Photographer John Free

Los Angeles-based street photographer John Free just published this inspiring 14-minute video in which he discusses and demonstrates his street photography mindset and technique. It offers a glimpse into a day in the life of a man who has been doing and teaching street photography for over 30 years now.

How to Copyright Your Photos in 2024

When your finger presses down on a camera's shutter button and captures a photograph, that photo is instantly copyrighted with you as the rightful owner. However, there are benefits to formally registering your work with the United States Copyright Office. Today, we are going to take a look at the process involved in registering your visual artwork, along with the benefits of doing so and why you may want to consider it for photos you value.

DIY: Making a Simple but Elegant Leather Hand Strap for a DSLR

I recently went to great lengths to solve a simple problem. I have a Manfrotto monopod that requires a little screw to attach my camera to the monopod. Without it, I can't use it. The screws are cheap and no big deal... but, they are too easy to lose.

Shooting Son Doong in 360°

As me and my team left for Vietnam this January, we had a goal: to make an interactive reportage about the world’s largest cave for National Geographic. This included several things no one had ever attempted before: lighting up and capturing the largest caverns that exist on this Earth. In 360 degrees.

What could go wrong, right?

Speed Editing a RAW Landscape Photo in 5 Minutes with Photoshop

If you're just starting out in Photoshop, Adobe Camera Raw, and/or landscape photography, here's a video you may find enlightening. Landscape photographer Joshua Cripps offers a quick walkthrough of his post-processing methods, turning a straight-out-of-camera RAW photo of a lake scene into a finished shot.

Start to Finish: Post-Processing a Photo of Sandhill Cranes in Flight

On March 23, I was in Kearney, Nebraska to view and photograph the annual migration of the Sandhill cranes. These birds are graceful, awkward, beautiful and kooky all at the same time. They fly with grace, but while on the ground sometimes exhibit some of the funniest behaviors you'll see from a bird. With a wingspan of up to 7 feet, these birds aren't the biggest, but they're some of the biggest most of us will get to see.

Turning a Small Hotel Suite Into a Photo Studio for a Portrait of Pharrell Williams

I had a fun, cool portrait shoot with Pharrell Williams recently in a small suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Most of my celebrity portrait assignments are in hotel rooms and the first thing you have to consider when you arrive is: How do I turn a room I've seen a thousand times into a photo studio?