education

How to Use Props to Add Depth to Your Food Photography

Props are a vital part of most food photography. They can help you add interest and story to your scene, but they can also help you add depth. To that end, here are a few tips to help you use props to add depth to your images.

20 Essential Photography Tips For Beginner Photographers

Starting out in photography can be really confusing. There is so much stuff to learn, so many things to do, and so many resources to read, not to mention the insane amount of people screaming opinions at you all the time. It’s hard to fight through all the noise.

How to Best Photograph Food with a Straight-On Perspective

The straight-on angle is great for food photography because it gives your subject a sense of grandeur and can make it jump out of the picture. This angle is well suited to foods that are tall or layered as from this angle you can get a better idea of its scale or better reveal those layers.

How to Shoot In Natural Light Without Modifiers Like a Pro

Shooting in natural light can be quite difficult. In fact, many photographers gravitate towards studio photography to avoid natural light completely. However, natural light can be manipulated in a way that will produce great work.

Action Packed: Photographing Mountain Bikers with the EOS R5

For most photographers, it’s been an interesting past year and my experience is no exception. My regular work shooting for commercial clients and agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area was upended by the Coronavirus pandemic, and keeping busy has meant constantly shifting gears to keep the calendar full.

Is it Too Early to Resume In-Person Photography Events?

Since February 2020, the entire world has been experiencing what is likely a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. No country was spared, and here at home in the United States, we somehow managed to be one of the most infected countries on the planet. More than a year later, where do we stand?



What it Takes to Not Fail at Photography

When I was young, I had a vivid imagination but no real inclination towards art and creativity. I distinctly remember having trouble keeping my crayons within the lines of any coloring book I attempted. Fast forward to today and I’m 35 and have been a full-time professional photographer for seven years and a shooter for 13 years.

How to Take Photos Like the Great Joel Meyerowitz

Photographer and YouTuber Frederik Trovatten has just released episode three of his popular "How to take photos like..." series. He started with Vivian Maier, moved on to Robert Frank, and this week he's breaking down the style and philosophy of the great Joel Meyerowitz.

6 Lessons Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach the Modern Photographer

I love looking in detail at another photographer’s work. To immerse yourself in someone else’s creativity—to see what their ideas spark inside of you, what excites you, what makes you sit up and think 'Wow, that’s really cool!'—that’s all great fuel for your own photography.

4 Things I’ve Learnt About Photography in 2020 (so far)

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.

Photog Breaks Down the 8 ‘Phases’ of Becoming a Photographer

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 Teaches a 7 and 9-Year-Old How to Shoot and Develop Film

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.

This Full Astrophotography Workshop is Now Available for Free on YouTube

Ian Norman and Diana Southern over at Lonely Speck just uploaded their full 2016 astrophotography workshop to YouTube for free. This incredible resource covers everything from getting the shot, to basic editing, image stacking, and panorama stitching. They even included the Q&A from the end of the meetup!

Take a 40-Minute Tour Through the History of Photography

Great Britain's Royal Institution has put together a fascinating "tour through the history of photography." Using his own camera collection as a jumping off point, chemist Andrew Szydlo takes you through a sort of "crash course" on the history of photography in 41 minutes.

Diffraction Explained: Why Your Lens is Worse at f/22 than f/8

It's common knowledge that most lenses are at their best (i.e. sharpest) between f/5.6 and f/8, depending on the lens. But why is that? Why does stopping down further actually make the image softer? This is what YouTuber ZY Productions explains in the video above.

Adobe Launches New Video Series of 60-Second Lightroom Tutorials

If you're looking to hone your Lightroom CC and Lightroom Mobile skills, Adobe has launched a new series of bite-sized video tutorials that you might be interested in. The series is called "In a Lightroom Minute," and it's made up of 60-second (give or take) tutorials that cover a wide variety of topics.

The 2020 Adobe 99U Conference Will Be Held Online, for Free

Adobe's annual 99U conference is usually an expensive, in-person event in New York City for creatives who want to get some hands-on education and inspiration from experts across artistic disciplines. But this year, the event is moving online, and it's going to be free for everybody.

Catchlights: The Small Detail that Can Make or Break Your Portraits

Photographer Joe Edelman has put together a helpful beginner's guide that explains one of the most important (and easy to overlook) details in portrait photography: catchlights. These specular highlights can make or break your photo, and in this video, Edelman covers all of the basic "dos" and "donts" of catchlights in portraiture.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Take Your Next Travel Photo

It’s the fifth in a string of beautiful days, in a place a world away from our daily life back home. The sky is wide and blue. The air is thick with scents of food we’ve yet to try, and a language we don’t understand. But friendly smiles allow us to navigate our way through this country that is settling into our hearts.

How the Kids Are Learning Photography on TikTok

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.

11 Secrets to Up Your Night Street Photography Game

I’m going to share with you 11 secrets that will help you up your night street photography game. These tips are based on what I teach paying customers on my London Soho Night Street Photography workshops, but don’t worry if you’re coming to one, I have many more secrets!

Photographer Turns Huge Shipping Container into Working Camera

For three weeks earlier this year, if you visited Northernhay Gardens in Exeter, UK, you would have found one of the largest and most unusual cameras in the world. It's called the Container Camera, and the large-format-camera-and-darkroom-in-a-shipping-container was created by photographer and educator Brendan Barry.

Is Photography the Best Educator? Here’s Why I Think So

It’s been said that in 2017, everyone is a photographer, and from the unrelenting firehose of pictures that fill every inch of digital real estate and social media these days, I can see why folks would think that.

Why the Technical Stuff Matters

Along with normal how-to articles and essays, I’ve always liked reading and writing very technical, nitty-gritty articles about photography—sometimes, articles on topics that rarely come up while actually taking pictures.