walkthrough

I did my first surreal photoshoot with a model this past weekend. Here's a breakdown of the process from start to finish.

It’s fun to print big, but when a client recently asked me to create an image more than four stories tall I have to admit it was really outside of my usual perspective.

My friend Gustaf Drevin and I are the Editor and Creative Director (respectively) of Medicor, the student union magazine of the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet. Long before we even got involved with the publication, we had dreamed up this ‘fantasy’ issue where we would have a huge cover story featuring Hans Rosling, the founder of Gapminder and one of TIME's 100 most influential people in 2012.

We would have a minimalistic design, and we would have great photos; we even wanted to have a launch party with Bill Gates, but that’s a story for another time. After Gustaf became the editor for Medicor, we finally got the chance to realise our fantasy. This is the story of how we got Hans Rosling on the cover of Medicor.

Photographer Jeff Cable has come a long way from his first few gigs shooting Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in San Francisco. Mostly sports-related, his résumé now includes images from the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, a stint as the official Team USA Hockey photographer during the 2010 games in Vancouver and the Team USA Water Polo photographer during the 2012 games in London.

In this B&H Event Space seminar, however, he's not going to just scroll through a bunch of pictures and talk about how he composed or shot them. Instead, he's sharing some thoughts on post-processing: specifically, the 15 features in Photoshop that he believes every photographer should know.

Given the recent leaps Magic Lantern has been making regarding mind-blowing RAW video capabilities for both old and new Canon cameras, there are probably a lot of Canon owners out there who are thinking of giving the custom firmware a try for the first time.

However, before you go installing one of the nightly builds (the unstable ones that can actually do RAW video), we would suggest installing the current stable build and getting to know the ins and outs of Magic Lantern first. With that in mind, here's a quick tutorial put together by Dave Dugdale from Learning DSLR Video that walks you through the steps of installing Magic Lantern for the first time.

Hey everyone! I’m really excited to share a personal story with you all. This past weekend I asked my partner to marry me. After weeks of planning, the time had come to decide how I was going to capture the moment.

Unfortunately some of my colleague photographers were unavailable and so the thought of doing it myself crossed my mind. I felt ready for the challenge: photographing my own proposal! (As if it wasn’t enough to plan for the actual proposal, I now had to plan on how to capture it.)

Earlier this week, Sony announced its new Xperia ZR waterproof smartphone that can double as an everyday underwater camera. After we reported on the story, we were contacted by reader Jeffery Richt, who shot the marketing photographs for Sony. The video above is a behind-the-scenes video showing how the underwater shoot went down.

You know that moment when you agree to do a favor for a friend, and it turns into something a bit... well... more? This past weekend I ended up taking headshots of 80 people during six non-stop hours of shooting. Here is the story of what happened, things I learned from it, and some random thoughts on the experience.

In this article, I will share a behind-the-scenes look at how I created photos of fried chicken for one of the world's most iconic brands: KFC.

My studio had already been shooting nearly all of KFC's print work for more than a year when their in-house creative group first contacted us. Turns out they found us through a Google search, and didn't even realize we had done work for KFC until they saw some of the images on our website.

In this post, I will share some of my techniques and experiences of backing up photos using a tablet while traveling.

Like most other landscape/nature/travel photographers, when I am on a multi-day or multi-week photo tour, I face the problem of backing up my photos from the memory cards. A laptop computer is a nature choice for most people. With a laptop, we can copy files between the memory cards, laptop disk drive, and external disks. We can even do some light editing.

Winter can be a dull season for macro photographers. Many of the usual subjects are desolate, lifeless or invisible. However, there is one subject that's often in abundance outdoors (depending on where you live): snowflakes. There have been many strategies for photographing these ice crystals over the past century, but the simple stage of an old mitten is ideal.

When I started planning a series titled DreamWorld, one of the first characters that came to me was a dryad: a nature spirit representing our connection with nature. I saw her as a strong, benevolent queen, keeping watch over the woodland creatures and protecting them. The first concept I came up with that made my heart pitter-patter with excitement was the idea of building a huge crown for her from sticks and branches. I had no idea how I was going to accomplish this, but I had a vision. And I have learned over the years that having a vision will pave the way to making it a reality, regardless of if I know how that will come about.

Adventure photographer and Nikon ambassador Kamil Tamiola of Alpine Photography recently shot a project titled "Cascades of Light." He traveled to the Cascate di Lillaz icefall in Cogne, Italy with professional ice climber Jeff Mercier.

His goal was to capture adventure images of ice climbing in a different light -- literally. Instead of shooting with natural light, he decided to light the scene artificially during both night and day.

Up. That’s all you need to say. Last November, we took on a project with Wired UK magazine to photograph Richard Branson’s latest venture in attempting to conquer the final frontier: space. We spent the good part of a week in the deserts of New Mexico and California, photographing the spaces and places, the infrastructure, the people, and ultimately Sir Richard himself.

Here's a video that may be very interesting to you if you've never tried your hand at creating a tintype with wet plate collodion photography. Oklahoma City-based photographer Mark Zimmerman recently strapped a GoPro Hero 3 to his head and went through the entire process of creating a wet-plate photo on aluminum, from flowing the collodion in the beginning, through exposing it using his large format camera, and ending with a finished tintype photo of a camera.

A number of years ago, England-based photographer Dave Miller wanted an at-home darkroom, but didn't have the luxury of converting a spare room in his house into one. He did, however, have a nice garden area that wasn't being used, so he decided to upgrade the grassy area with a shed -- a darkroom shed.

If you have your 35mm film processed and printed at your local lab, have you ever wondered how it's done? In this post, I'll take you on a behind-the-scenes tour on the entire process.

One of my favorite recent projects was a deceptively simple image of an ant on black. Black is easy enough to arrange for the upper portions of a photo. Just make sure foreground lighting is powerful enough to overwhelm the ambient light. Black all around is a challenge, however.

The photograph above is reportedly the world's largest piece of long-exposure light art. It was created by light painter Michael Bosanko in a 35,000-square-foot aircraft hangar in Coventry airport in October 2012.

French photographer Serge Ramelli made this short 30-minute tutorial that teaches the basics …

I recently captured the macro liquid splash photograph above, and found that it came out looking like it was computer generated. Here's a brief description of how the photo was created.

Faking the look of old films is becoming ubiquitous in the world of mobile photo sharing apps, but so far the popular apps have stuck with various films and not older photographic processes. If you want to create a photograph that mimics the look of a wet plate, it's actually pretty easy to do in Photoshop.

Back in March, a client for whom I’ve done some light consulting work asked me if it was possible to capture a 360-degree-image that can be rotated afterwards. I said of course, but didn’t think that much about the consequences -- it's a project that would wake me up at nights for the next few months.

Back in 2011 and 2012, Paris-based photographer Max Riché shot a creative series of portraits of athletes (including several Olympians) in the French National Sports Institute. Titled "Becoming an Athlete," the project featured a strobed-style look that shows the athletes progressing from ordinary people to world-class athletes, all within single frames.

Riché has just released the behind-the-scenes video above that shows how he created the photographs.

It has been a long time since I have asked for something photo related for my birthday. I usually don’t ask, just because I’m very particular about what equipment I use, and my friends and family know it. But this year, it was different. I thought about dabbling in some old school photography, so I asked for a Polaroid 600 camera. My fiancée stepped up to the plate and delivered, gifting me an awesome 1983 Polaroid Sun 600 LMS. I had some fun with my first pack of film, but then it was time to start pushing the envelope.

An idea hit me one day, and I knew I had to try something that I’ve never seen done before: shooting off camera flash with an older Polaroid 600 instant camera.

Slovenia-based professional photographer Borut Peterlin was recently tasked with shooting a portrait of painter/illustrator/author Milan Erič for influential Slovenian magazine Mladina. Peterlin decided that he wanted to create a wet plate collodion photo, but spent weeks worrying about whether he would be able to accomplish it given the tight schedule of the on-location shoot.

I was recently offered the opportunity to direct a filler piece by Filler Magazine that involved telling a beautiful love story through fashion and dance. I also shot a series of artistic still photographs in which I used shutter drag to add motion-blur to the images. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the shoot.

When Space Shuttle Endeavour was making low level flyovers of famous landmarks across the United States a couple of months ago, Adobe Lightroom Quality Engineer Ben Warde was able to photograph it flying by the Golden Gate Bridge. The 10-minute video above shows how Warde post-processed one of his best shots from that day using basic Lightroom adjustments. While the information may be basic for many of you, it should be helpful for people who are just starting out with programs like Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw, or Aperture.

Ever wonder where those gritty posters promoting hyped boxing matches come from? Check out this behind-the-scenes video in which New York-based photographer Monte Isom offers a brief glimpse into how he recently photographed boxers Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Márquez for their upcoming fight (Pacquiao vs. Marquez IV).

The 2012 election season is now over, and photojournalists who have been scrambling for many months on the campaign trail can now take a breather and reflect on their experiences. Reuters sent us the video above in which Reuters White House photographer Jason Reed offers a short 2-minute-long behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to photograph Barack Obama as he hustled around the nation, "from riding in motorcades through the streets of Manhattan to flying in Air Force One."

Here's a nice little video in which photographer Matthew Jordan Smith tells the story of a portrait session he had years ago with American actor/dancer/singer Gregory Hines. After finding himself in a sticky situation with a subject that wouldn't offer the personality and emotion Smith wanted to capture, he reached deep into the knowledge of Hines that he had accumulated through his research; one particular fact saved the shoot.

Here's an interesting video in which renowned photojournalist Steve McCurry shares some thoughts on documentary portraiture. Titled Close Up: Photographers at Work, the video takes us behind-the-scenes with McCurry as he shoots some candid portraits on the street and then reviews some of his most prized shots captured over the course of his career. (There's a brief glimpse of the original film slides of his iconic Afghan Girl photo.)

Over the past couple of years, German photographer Markus Reugels has attracted quite a bit of attention for his high-speed photographs of water drop splashes. His project, titled "Liquid Splashes", consists of split-second photos that make colorful splashes look like tiny glass sculptures hovering in the air above a mirror. In the video above, Reugels introduces himself and his work, and takes us on a behind-the-scenes tour showing how he goes about creating his beautiful photographs.

Earlier this year we received a call from across the Atlantic Ocean. The editors at Wired UK magazine had an incredibly ambitious project ahead of them that they asked us to be a part of: one week, four photographers, over thirty photo-shoots, and a triple gate-fold cover featuring sixteen of the brightest and most inspiring minds in the world at the MIT Media Lab. How could we say no?

Photographer Gary Land was recently hired by Nissan to shoot a series of car advertisement photographs featuring the famous Heisman Trophy-winning football players Charles Woodson, Bo Jackson, Robert Griffin III, and Herschel Walker. Luckily for all of us, the team produced a series of behind-the-scenes videos offering short glimpses into how the photographs were created, the gear they used, and tricks they came up with to their turn ideas into reality.

In daguerreotype photography, the first commercially successful photographic process, a positive image is recorded directly onto a silvered copper plate. Although mercury is traditionally used to develop the plate, there's a way of creating daguerreotypes called the Becquerel method that eschews mercury in favor of non-lethal ingredients.

Last week, a seascape photo I made showed up on link-sharing powerhouse Reddit. It caused a bit of a stir since it is a copyrighted image and was rehosted and posted without my permission. A lot of the photographers in r/photography and r/pics (where it was originally posted by a user) made it known that it was I who had created the work. I’m very grateful for both the exposure that posting gave me, and even more grateful for the support I received from my fellow photographers and Redditors.

After the image was posted, I noticed a lot of people claiming that there was no chance this was taken in Ocean City, New Jersey. I also received a long slew of messages asking me how I made this image. I thought I’d both prove it was and explain my process here for anyone who is interested.

Earlier this year, we shared some amazing work by Swedish retoucher Sanna Dullaway, who takes historical B&W photographs and colorizes them. YouTube user IColoredItForYou is another master of restoring, retouching, and colorizing, but what's awesome about his work is that he creates behind-the-scenes videos showing how the edits are done. The above time-lapse video shows how he recently used Photoshop to colorize Margaret Bourke-White's famous 1937 photograph, titled "Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky".

Back in November of last year, we featured a project by photographer Max …

Think you're good with Photoshop? Graphic designer Alexander Koshelkov created this amazing time-lapse video showing how he created an epic plane crash image in Photoshop using elements found in other photographs (e.g. freeways, an airplane, destroyed engines and cars). The project took Koshelkov nearly 4.5 hours and required 244 separate layers.