It’s not about the camera, it’s about the light. Here to prove that is photographer Miguel Quiles. In the above video, Quiles proves you don’t need the best camera or lens to capture amazing results. You only need to understand how important light is and learn how to use it to your advantage.
Erik Kim is one of the best-known street photographers out there, today. In his continues efforts to shoot and share, Kim has put out the full presentation he used in his Introduction to Composition for Street Photography talk at Gulf Photo Plus 2014.
Once you've been shooting for a while (and becoming good at it) someone will inevitably ask you if you are interested in shooting something for a fee, either for a commercial or editorial job (but for the sake of discussion I am labeling any paid shoot as a commercial shoot).
In the world of analogue photography, the larger you go in format, the more time, discipline and resources it typically takes to capture and develop your photographs. And while the age-old technique of developing film takes due diligence no matter the format, large format photography in particular has a certain quality to the process that makes it stand out from the rest.
When it comes to headshots, Peter Hurley is one of the best in the business. It’s his meticulous attention to detail and process of directing the subject that has led him to where he is now. Sharing some of his insight, he has taken the time to speak with Frank Doorhof, for his 25th episode of his YouTube series.
The folks over at Constant Contact recently put together a handy little infographic that will help you better manage and properly 'dress up' your the growing collection of social media accounts.
Polarizing filters are a piece of gear that some photographers swear by and others don't touch. One reason why might be the various misconceptions and misunderstandings surrounding what polarizing filters do and what benefit they truly provide.
For landscape photographers, getting your entire scene in focus while keeping things as sharp as possible at the same time can be a challenge.
Well, I have to admit this has been a fun series. I’ve learned a whole lot. That’s what makes this so fun -- I get some results I don’t understand, get some help figuring out what is going on, and before I know it, I’ve learned something that explains other things I haven’t been able to understand.
Last week, the BBC College of Journalism opened up their training website to the public. Full of educational resources created by and for the internal BBC team, these professional videos and guides run through a number of circumstances and suggestions for approaching visual journalism.
“we still look relentlessly to technology for solutions to the very problems technology seems to cause [...]” – David Foster Wallace …
In the above video, Karl Taylor walks you through a four-step process that shows the before-and-after results of three variables when it comes to portraiture: studio lighting, make-up, and Photoshop.
A couple of weeks ago I got an email asking if we would be willing to take some lenses, remove the electronics, fix the aperture wide-open, and permanently lock them at infinity focus. It seems the person who needed this done was having trouble finding a legitimate repair shop or service center that was willing to do it.
Given my interest in lifelong learning and skill-development, I often ask people which new skills they’re looking to learn. The most common response? “I want to be a better photographer”.
As part of Nikon’s continuing effort to promote its gear and ambassadors while teaching you something at the same time, the company has put together yet another inspirational and educational video we felt was worth sharing with you.
Featuring outdoor and editorial photographer Corey Rich, the above video walks you through the process of setting up and shooting a night sky time-lapse.
When capturing a photograph, something many of us meticulously try to account for is the lighting -- more specifically, how much light is coming from what sources.
Here's a neat piece of photo trivia you can throw out the next time there's a lull in conversation at a party: Instagram wasn't originally called 'Instagram.' In fact, it wasn't even a photo sharing app. Instagram was initially called 'Burbn' (after the Whiskey) and it was a check in app ala Foursquare.
If the term "inverse square law of light" immediately sets you to hyperventilating as flashbacks of college physics begin playing in your mind's eye, take a few breaths into that paper bag, calm down, and click play on the video above.
Taking a picture has never been as easy as it is now. But just because you can snap a photo doesn’t mean you’re going to capture a photograph that’s thought provoking and tells a story the way many of the best images do.
Update on 12/16/21: This video has been removed by its creator.
There's no shortage of great photography resources out there for photographers of all levels who want to continue honing their skills, and joining their ranks today is a new video series from Olympus that is part marketing campaign and part learning opportunity.
The Assignment I was contacted on a Friday for this assignment which was to take place the following Tuesday. The shoot had to take place in the morning and be delivered to the contacts at People and Fortune by 12 noon. To meet the delivery time, I suggested we start shooting at 8am and I made plans to edit and deliver the photos on site. I arrived on site with an assistant an hour and a half early to scout the location and setup lighting. Because time was so tight, my goal was to come up with …
I will start off by saying I am partial to SanDisk memory cards, but I recently found a great write up on their website that is pretty much universal, explaining the difference between SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards. I wanted to share this information with everyone because sometimes it can be confusing trying to figure out which SD Card is best for you.
Tilt-shift lenses are nothing short of optical magic... or so it seems. But as their namesake implies, they actually achieve this 'magic' through the use of two clever movements in the lens.
One of the first things that we learn when we start taking photographs seriously is that ‘aperture’, the size of the hole in the lens through which light passes, controls depth of field.
As much as composition, proper exposure, and location can affect how good your subjects look in a photo, posing plays a very crucial and often overlooked role -- well, overlooked until you realize that all of your portraits look awkward and unnatural.
Recognize the photo above? Titled "Jennifer in Paradise," it holds a special place in the history of digital photography: it's the world's first Photoshopped picture.
We all know that light is the crucial element in photography. Understanding how it behaves and the factors that influence it is mandatory.
Most camera gear is built with longevity and strenuous activity in mind, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the best possible care of your gear. To that end, Canon’s service and support team recently put out this video showing the best practices for making sure that you properly and thoroughly clean and check your gear so it can keep working for as long as possible.
The first post I made on sensor-stack thickness wallowed deeply in PhotoGeekery. This one is meant to be of practical use so I’ll try to leave the Geek stuff out. We’ll start with the simple facts.
The Electro-Optic Camera was designed and constructed by Eastman Kodak Company under a U.S. Government contract in 1987 and 1988. Kodak's Microelectronics Technology Division (MTD) had announced the first megapixel CCD in 1986. In 1987, a government customer asked Kodak's Federal Systems Division (FSD) to build a prototype camera around the new CCD. It was a true skunk works project with a very small team. Ken Cupery was the project manager. I (Jim McGarvey) was the lead engineer. MTD engineer …
Behind every great photograph is a well-crafted creative workflow, and if you haven't honed yours yet, then this seminar by photographer Robert Rodriguez Jr. will help you nail it down. In a little over an hour, he details the four steps he uses in Lightroom's Develop module to go from RAW file to final, edited image.
Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens was recently invited to shoot at Luke Air Force Base (again) and he didn't want to miss turning this into an educational opportunity. And so, in the behind the scenes video above, he shows you how he was able to dynamically light up a portrait that involved a fighter pilot and an entire fight jet using only four 400 Watt strobes.
NOTE: This is a Geek Post. If you aren’t into geeky photo measurements, or into adapting lenses from one brand of camera to another, you’ll not be interested.
As one of the best-known and respected portrait photographers in the business, Tamara Lackey certainly knows her stuff when it comes to capturing life’s most intimate moments. In this video, part of her series in collaboration with Nikon, Lackey shows you how to shoot a quality romantic portrait session.
While the clone stamp tool is one of the most vital and frequently-used tools available within Photoshop, it’s also one that few know how to use most effectively. Here to help fix that is Aaron Nace of the Phlearn team, who graciously dedicated a quarter of an hour to showing you how to make the most of this tool.
Whether it's photography or video quality we're talking about, the discussion almost always revolves around some aspect of resolution. The number of megapixels, or the pixel density, or the pixel size (last one doesn't necessarily have anything to do with resolution, but you get the gist).
This week, 24 incredible, powerful, haunting photographs will be going up on the auction block at Bonhams in New York. These are photographs that are newly-discovered, and many of them have never been seen before as they were taken with a faulty camera and never made it in front of the public eye.
TIME’s Behind the Picture recently dove into the fascinating story behind how some of the most iconic photographs of World War II almost never were. Narrated by John Morris, Editor of LIFE magazine during WWII, Morris tells the story behind the photographs captured by Robert Capa on Omaha Beach during the D-Day invasion.
Using the bones of a dying giant and a healthy dose of innovation, Sony built one of the most forward thinking lines of high-end cameras available in recent memory.
Keliy Anderson-Staley is an assistant professor of photography at the University of Houston. Her work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, the California Museum of Photography and the Portland Museum of Art, and is currently on view at the Houston Center for Photography.
There’s no such thing as too many resources when it comes to learning how to take a good photograph. And here to prove this statement is a neat little pseudo-interactive web guide put together by Shutterfly for those among us who are just starting out.
In this third -- and final? -- installment of his "camera companies are lying to you about crop factor" series that has caused such a stir, Tony Northrup hopes to silence the critics, make some corrections, and overall bring this debate to a close.
In 1863, at the age of forty-eight, Julia Margaret Cameron received her first camera. A mother of six children, the gift quickly spawned a hobby that turned into a life-long passion, and her approach to photography is one that still influences photographers to this day.
Put together by photographer Steve Perry, the video tutorial above shares a collection of useful tips, advice and examples that help explain how to best think of and use focal lengths when you're out capturing landscape photography.
No matter how many hours you spend in Photoshop each day, it’s inevitable there’s a feature or utility within the app you’re yet to use or are completely unaware of. Such was the case for this neat little tip by Digitalchemy that we just stumbled upon, which shows you how to import a collection of photographs into Photoshop, each as a new layer in the same file.
Defined by Google as, “the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens,” Bokeh is a term that has become much more prominent in the past ten years or so than ever before, thanks to the photography community.
This article was reprinted with express permission from Thomas O'Brien and Muench Workshops …
Promoting FujiFilm’s new X-T1, renowned photographer Zack Arias traveled around the mystical streets of Marrakech to highlight the camera’s capabilities, all the while sharing a plethora of fantastic street photography tips.
