How to Shoot Clean Glassware with Speedlights on a Black Background
In this tutorial, we share our lighting setup for a piece of glass stemware using minimal gear. To mimic this shot, you will need a black background, stripboxes, and speedlights.
In this tutorial, we share our lighting setup for a piece of glass stemware using minimal gear. To mimic this shot, you will need a black background, stripboxes, and speedlights.
Unless you’ve just emerged from a nuclear fallout bunker, you’ve likely already heard about Lightroom’s impressive new masking tools that Adobe announced at their annual Adobe Max conference. In fact, PetaPixel’s Ryan Mense wrote a wonderful hands-on article covering the expanse of these new masking tools.
Whether you are a working professional or a weekend hobbyist, the thrill of using truly exquisite gear is unmatched. We all work with what we have while salivating over what we cannot, and no matter how old we get, fancy toys never lose their luster. Do we need them? Probably not. Will we ever purchase them? Not likely. Will we spend hours staring at them? You bet. Nothing is as intoxicating to a photographer as good, outrageously expensive glass.
For years, Apple's iPhone Live Photos has offered the coolest camera trick. With one click and no tripod, I could easily transform a body of water into a long exposure like dreamy shot, with long flowing water.
Parabolic light has become increasingly popular among fashion and portrait photographers. With so many options to choose from, a photographer may get lost or not understand the modifiers at all.
The professional growth of a photographer, and therefore the maturity of his or her projects, passes through several phases. Different phases require different skills from the photographer. In each phase the work and the goal of photography change, the maturity of his or her work grows.
Blaine Harrington began his career in photography in the 1970s after a brief stint racing motocross. His connections to the racing world led to assignments covering races around the country and in Europe – piquing his curiosity about travel.
When it comes to headshots, there is perhaps no better source of information and guidance than the man who has made an empire out of the practice. In this five minute video on the, Peter Hurley quickly breaks down his favorite tips to light the perfect headshot.
Looking to improve your food photos ahead of this holiday season? If you stick to a few simple tips, there’s no reason why your photos shouldn’t go from no-go to "wow."
The European Space Agency (ESA) captured a video of a "violent mass of fast-moving plasma" that was spit out by the sun. This coronal mass ejection (CME) can cause interference with communications and GPS systems on Earth, but can also deliver some incredible light shows.
It was the kind of summer day that your mind instantly recalls when you hear the words “summer day”. Warm, sunny, gorgeous. William Meredith’s daughters, as was their habit when a day felt this good, lounging in the backyard, sunning in their swimsuits. All was peaceful -- until the girls entered the house, warning their father of an intruder in their backyard.
One of the most frustrating things I see is photographers limiting their knowledge of light to one modifier. So much so, that there are people who can build whole portfolios with just one single type of light. While this is not wrong, it must get boring for the viewer after some time. That is why I went searching for some of the most unusual light shaping tools.
Diffused and soft light are often used interchangeably among photographers. Indeed, to an untrained eye, the two can sometimes appear to be the same. Furthermore, modifiers such as softboxes that give both soft and diffused light make it hard to spot the difference. Nonetheless, diffused light is not necessarily soft, and soft light is not necessarily diffused.
How does renowned portrait photographer Albert Watson light his photos? With a foolproof three-light setup that makes his photos look amazing, of course! Except... he doesn't. In fact, setups are very far from what professional photographers do when they light their work. Here is what mindset photographers have when they light.
Chances are, if you’ve ever tried to document your travels with a camera, you’ve taken some cliché, if not really cheesy travel photos. I certainly have, and I’m embarrassed to show those photos to friends and family after my trips.
Should photographers sell their unedited RAW files to a client? Is there any benefit in doing so? These questions are discussed in this eight-minute video from David Bergman and Adorama.
If I can afford to, I always try to spend time in shops where I know there is a good selection of photo books. The books offer me inspiration for my photographs as well as the way I present my own work in printed publications.
Have a passion for photography and are thinking of turning it into a full-time profession? That’s an admirable and ambitious goal, and while it sounds exciting, the reality is that running a photography business is very different from pursuing photography as a hobby.
In December of last year, Hubble captured a photo of a distant galaxy that, thanks to gravitational lensing, appeared almost as a perfect "Einstein Ring." A year later, astronomers revealed what they learned from examining the photo.
I am writing this article because I see a lot of photographers asking the same questions over and over and thought it would be nice to give you all the tools to answer your own questions. Or at least the 2% of you who search before asking questions.
In this 15 minute video, we break down a step-by-step approach to capturing the images needed to composite an attractive cosmetic drip.
Social media is a vital part of how a business promotes itself, and having a wide variety of social media tools at your disposal is important. While you can link all your social media accounts together to create one post appearing on all of them, this strategy ignores unique opportunities each platform offers to its audience.
If you're in the market for a new digital camera, make sure you do your research, and it's generally recommended that you go with a reputable brand. There are cameras out there that look absolutely fantastic on paper but are almost certainly not what you're looking for.
UV photography has been used by dermatological laboratories since the era of film photography. This technique was then used by the R&D centers to show the protective properties of dermatological and cosmetic products against UV radiation from the Sun.
Spirit photography was an important development within bereavement rituals of the early 1860s.
There are literally hundreds of different flashes on the market. With brands competing for attention and offering some very unique features, it is often hard to decide which flash to pick. What is more, buying a flash is sometimes like buying a whole lighting system. If someone buys Profoto they are likely to stick with it for a long time because it’s part of a lighting system, not just one flash.
Saildrone and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have released the first video footage gathered by an unmanned surface drone (USV) from inside a major hurricane while it moved across the Atlantic Ocean.
Here are a few tips to help you improve, or maybe get started with, drink photography. Drinks can be quite tricky: you have unpredictable liquids and glasses with reflections, so these tips may come in handy. Just remember, like all of my advice, these aren't die-hard rules, but instead they are just a few things that you can choose to consider with your photography.
The Hubble Space Telescope in concert with the Atacama Large millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile found what NASA describes as odd: early, massive, "dead" galaxies that have run out of the fuel necessary to continue to make stars.
Syrian photographer Serbest Salih has set up a mobile photography school that introduces vulnerable Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish children to analog photography.
If you're tired of the unrealistic beauty standards set by all the edited pictures on Instagram and long for a return to "the good old days," here is some bad news: people have been "Photoshopping" portraits for just about as long as photography has been around.
Why is it so difficult to compare one light to another? It would be bad enough to say that watts, LUX, watt-seconds, and guide numbers aren’t directly comparable. And unless you’ve been around lights for a long time, these measurements won’t even make intuitive sense.
Fashion photography is one of the most lucrative but also one of the hardest genres to pursue on a professional level. Good fashion work can’t be done with a one-man band. Eventually, every fashion photographer learns the importance of such things the hard way. Here are some things that I wish I knew when photographing my first fashion and beauty images.
Losing priceless digital photographs is something that all too many people experience these days. If you want to make sure you store your digital files properly, read this guide on the best ways to backup your photos for a lifetime.
Astronaut Thomas Pesquet has shared numerous beautiful photos of Earth taken from the International Space Station, but contrary to popular belief, making these photos isn't as simple as just hanging out in the space station's cupola.
What is an aspherical lens and what does it do? Canon has shared a video that explains the problems engineers face in lens design and how the company solved them using aspherical lenses.
1991. What a great time to be alive. Seeing movies like Robin Hood and Hook in the theatres, and hearing hits like "Joyride" by Roxette or "Losing My Religion" by REM are some of my favorite pop culture memories of that time. Not to mention watching TV shows like Home Improvement, America’s Funniest Home Videos, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
In 2014, I started my project Applied Metaphysics – Ground Truth on exemplary still life. The goal was to produce very large prints (2 to 9 square meters and more) at a high resolution so that people could look at them very closely.
How do photographers freeze motion? With shutter speed, of course! This is something fundamental that everyone starting out in photography learns to do. If you’re shooting sports, for example, just crank the ISO up, set a high shutter speed, and expect a good frozen-in-time image. However, when using a flash, things are a little different. In fact, shutter speed is by far the worst way to freeze motion. Here’s why.
By removing color, we change how the viewer’s eyes see the photograph. No longer dependent upon color cues, we must find our visual information in the physical characteristics of shape, form, texture, and lines.
Last week, Canon launched its latest high-end photojournalist-focused mirrorless camera, the EOS R3. It is capable of firing up to 30 frames per second in electronic shutter mode -- and the sound of it doing so is wild.
In this nine-minute video from Workphlo, photographer Dustin Dolby explains how to light catalog quality reflective product photos using just a single Speedlight.
The American Museum of Natural History has published a helpful video that explains how the human brain processes color and shines a light on the importance of color accuracy in technology.
Photography is evolving -- Dramatically! I am talking about advances with smartphones, mirrorless cameras, and AI technology -- this is an exciting time to be a photographer. But there must be a better way than watt-seconds to compare lights.
Kuwait is known for its oil, the Gulf War, the Daguet division, and the “Desert Storm” operation. But what most people are not privy to is its rich history, heritage, and architecture.
I'm photographer Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens, and in this video and article, I'm going to look at photo conferences, photo/video conferences. Are they dead? Are they going to happen this year? Is it kind of the nail in the coffin for conferences? Because they were sliding before. Where exactly are they at? What’s going to happen and what can you expect coming in 2021 and 2022?
“The Sony Alpha 1 is like driving a Formula 1 racecar," says photographer Nick Didlick. "Give the race car too much gas going into a corner and you're going to spin out of control. With the Alpha 1, shoot too early and you will have endless amounts of data at 30fps on a 50-megapixel camera.” The secret for both is timing.
To commemorate 20 years of the tragic September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, photojournalist Richard Drew looks back on the split-second moment in which he captured "The Falling Man," an iconic and powerful photograph that brings back the horrors of that day.
If you’re just starting out with strobes, there’s more choice than ever to overwhelm you with! In this guide, we will help you systematically narrow down which lights are going to work best for your type of photography.
What is the most important aspect of a camera to consider when looking to buy a new one? In this video, Engadget put camera sensors in the spotlight and reviewed how they have improved and what role they play in today's photographic equipment.
