In the era of the “selfie”, of the relentless click-and-publish images on social media, of the mega sensors replete with megapixels, we are witnessing an unpredictable resurgence of many ancient photographic devices and techniques.
Want to learn how to shoot tack-sharp landscape photos? Photographer Dave Morrow made this solid 27-minute guide that teaches his personal focusing strategy. He believes it's the "most in-depth guide to back button focus and hyperfocal distance currently on YouTube."
Photographer Jonathan Usher of Wellington, New Zealand, recently created this photo of the Milky Way rising from the horizon near his city. But get this: he wasn't using a tripod or any other stabilization -- not even a rock. It's a "60-second exposure" shot handheld.
Smooth Trans Focus (STF) was invented by Minolta in the 1980s and became available in the Minolta 135mm f/2.8 STF in 1999. The special design of the lens with an Apodization (APD) filter allows for the smoothing of out-of-focus areas, or bokeh. The APD filter reduces the light transmitted through a lens, but the strength is gradually decreased toward the center of the filter.
There are different techniques you can use in Photoshop to brighten up a dark and dull portrait. This 4-minute tutorial by PHLEARN shows a 2-minute technique that avoids desaturated, unnatural skin tones.
Photoshops High Pass filter can be an effective photo sharpening tool, but its effect can be too drastic for certain areas of your photo. Here's a 9-minute tutorial from photoshopCAFE that looks at how to more effectively use Photoshop's "High Pass" filter for sharpening.
Here's a 5-minute tutorial by photography artist Antti Karppinen that shares a technique for effectively dodging and burning your photo using the Gaussian Blur adjustment in Photoshop.
Just starting out in photography and want to learn how to blur your backgrounds when shooting portraits? Here's a 4-minute video from Sheldon Evans that looks at how you can create a beautiful bokeh in your photos.
Shooting photos of birds in flight can be a difficult challenge in wildlife photography. Here's a 6-minute tutorial by Nature TTL that offers tips on this sub-genre. Considered by some to be one of the hardest forms of wildlife photography, freezing the high-speed action of a bird whizzing past you is rewarding when you succeed.
Looking to add some drama or action to your photos but not quite sure how? Look no further… In simple terms, camera panning (or motion tracking as some people call it) is a technique where you follow a moving subject, shooting with a slower shutter speed to create a feeling of speed or action.
Once you've matched the color tones in a composite photo, you can then move on to matching the saturation for proper realism. Here is a 5-minute tutorial from Antti Karppinen that shows how you can do so using Photoshop.
One of the most common difficulties with compositing photos is having the color tones of the different parts of the image match. This can be tricky to achieve, but this 10-minute tutorial by Photoshop expert Antti Karppinen shows a powerful way you can do it using a Selective Color adjustment mask.
There are many tips and tricks in Photoshop that can make editing life easier if you know how to use them. Here's a 13-minute tutorial by PiXimperfect that teaches how you can easily identify and remove blemishes in portraits using a black-and-white adjustment layer.
The use of slit-scan photography is actually quite old. It is often called line-scan, photo finish, or streak photography. Slit-scan photography has a rich and colorful history rooted in chemical analog photography. This technique is often used to visualize high-speed events such as missiles and bullets, although it is probably best known as photo finish photography used to determine the outcome of races.
Is there an unwanted color cast spoiling your photo? Correcting this is really simple when you use the curves tool, as demonstrated by PiXimperfect in this 7-minute tutorial.
In this 9-minute tutorial from photography Andrew Boey of Beyond Photography, learn how to use a white wall to create any color backdrop you want by using just a speedlight and a colored gel.
There are plenty of ways you can color correct an image, but here's a technique you might not have learned before. this technique from In this 6-minute tutorial by f64 Academy, learn how inverting the colors in your photos can help you effectively remove color casts.
One way portrait photographers like Annie Leibovitz light large-scale group photos is by lighting smaller groups by themselves and then compositing everyone together into a large group. Photographer Barry Harley recently employed this technique with relatively affordable gear for a group photo with friends while on vacation.
Focus stacking is a technique typically used in macro shots to achieve a large depth of field. It’s a relatively simple concept: take many images focused at slightly different distances and combine the sharp portions to a single image in post. This 6-minute video from landscape photographer Mark Denney will show you how to utilise the technique in landscape photography.
Here's a 4-minute video by the Photoshop Training Channel on how to use Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill tool with an advanced technique for those times in which it doesn't work quite as well as you had hoped.
Have you ever used Photoshop’s Calculations Tool? It allows you to quickly blend two images together with optional blend modes and opacity. This 10 minute video from PIXimperfect explains how the tool works, and how it can be used to quickly convert a color image to black and white.
Dutch photographer Robin de Puy recently shot a series of beautiful portraits with unusual camera "equipment." Instead of using a typical lens made of metal (or plastic) and glass, she shot the photos using a single drop of water as her lens.
Can’t get enough of yourself? Here’s a 10-minute video from Peter McKinnon in which he shows how to create clones of yourself in photos using Photoshop and in videos using Premiere Pro.
Adjusting colors of specific elements in a photograph can be used to bring harmony to an image or to add creative flair. Here’s a 5-minute video that shows how to match colors in Photoshop.
The "dolly zoom," also known as the "Hitchcock zoom" or "Vertigo effect," is a filmmaking technique that involves changing a zoom lens' angle of view while moving the camera toward or away from a subject to keep their relative size in the frame the same. Here's a 4-minute video by Now You See It that explains this technique and how (and why) it's used.
Eye Stocker published this simple 5-minute Photoshop video tutorial that shows how you can color grade any photo using only solid color adjustment layers and the Blend If feature.
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.
My latest photo series, Pyramids In The Sky, was inspired when my wife and I visited the Mayan Ruins of Chacchoben while on a cruise in 2015. I have always been intrigued by ancient civilizations and how they were able to build these massive structures, seeing the pyramids in person was an inspiring experience.
Natural Rotations is a photo series by Surrey, England-based photographer Simon Painter. Each of the images was created by spinning the camera while an exposure is in progress.
We're all familiar with the fuzzy circles that bokeh creates usually behind our main subject, but this lesson is about creating bokeh in front of the subject. And that is what Mark Wallace is about to show us in the 6-minute video above. This episode of Adorama TV is about getting a kind of outdoor feel and adding depth to your indoor portraits.