Inspiration

Professional photographers Daniel and Rachel of Mango Street have published a helpful video that covers the 8 most common mistakes that they see beginner photographers make. In other words: these are the 8 reasons why your photos suck, and how to fix them.

It’s heavy, expensive, does not have image stabilization, and is impractical for most photographers. It also happens to be one of the best zoom lenses ever made.

Steve Giralt is a legend in the world of food photography and videography. His creations are absolutely jaw dropping, and in a recent behind-the-scenes video, Vox got a chance to see the master at work in his studio full of custom-built rigs and $200,000 camera robots.

Renowned commercial and fine art photographer Tim Tadder recently captured a new collection of striking, technicolor portraits in which he shows bald, black-paint-coated subjects in the process of being covered in multiple primary colors of thick paint. The juxtaposition is stunning.

Robert Frank was a Swiss photographer and documentary filmmaker whose 1958 book titled The Americans has been heralded as perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century. In this 16-minute video, photographer Frederik Trovatten shows you how to mimic Frank's style.

Selected from over 49,000 entries globally, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition sees some of the most spectacular images of animals in their natural habitat. This year's winner, Sergey Gorshkov, took the top honors with his image of a Siberian tigress hugging an ancient Manchurian fir tree.

The winners of the second annual Close-Up Photographer of the Year contest were announced recently, showcasing some of the best "close-up, macro & micro photography" from around the globe and inspiring all of us to take a closer look at the tiny worlds that surround us.

Here's a quick tip from talented photographer, filmmaker, and YouTube star Peter McKinnon. In his latest "two-minute Tuesday" video, he showed how adding a simple overlay onto some black foam core can take a basic top-down product shot to the next level.

My father was the archetypal collector. He had dozens of cameras and optical devices. Tens of thousands of LP record albums, and eventually even more CDs and DVDs. There were always books, in particular series of books. And art books. He bordered on being a hoarder, but with great taste.

Portrait photographer Oded Wagenstein recently sat down with Canon to share the most important lesson he's learned over the course of his career. Namely: how to build meaningful relationships with strangers and capture more authentic portraits as a result.

Have you ever met a photographer who thinks their work is incredible, but you don't agree? Perhaps they're actually really bad? In this 9-minute video, Scott Choucino explains how and why this happens, and how you can avoid it.

In my last article, I wrote in depth about my emotional connection to the subjects that I photograph and my artistic process in creating imagery. As I said before, to me photography is much more than capturing a single moment in time. I want to portray the sensory experiences that I have when I am immersed in nature or wilderness and pour that into an image that tells a story related to those experiences.

If you're interested in photographing landscapes, you should know there are multiple ways to make your images more interesting – some that only require a bit of imagination. In this 26-minute video, Canadian film photographer Kyle McDougall covers four techniques he uses to make his landscape images better.

Last week, the UK's Royal Society of Biology unveiled the winners of its annual photo contest. And while you've probably never heard of this particular contest before, this year's winning image has earned the contest a place in the headlines.

Film photographer and YouTuber Willem Verbeeck recently set out on a fun project that will appeal to portrait photographers, film lovers, Polaroid fans, and large format shooters alike. He teamed up with a camera store to shoot 8x10 polaroid portraits of strangers in Brooklyn.

If you ever wanted to get a quick history of cameras and their use by NASA, YouTuber Scott Manly put together an excellent resource. In this 14-minute video, Manly explains the history of cameras used in the Space Program, what they were, and the changes manufacturers eventually made at NASA's request.

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.

Summer and Fall are wonderful for photographing the Milky Way here in Hawai'i. We have many locations with dark skies and breathtaking scenery too. In October, the brightest part of the Milky Way (galactic core) is near the horizon at sunset; by November it'll be below the horizon when it gets dark.

When photographers are just starting out in their careers, they tend to make the same set of mistakes that cost them work and, therefore, money. In this short 4.5-minute video, photographer Scott Choucino cites five mistakes that held his career back and urges you not to make them yourself.

Of the many creative photographic genres, it is perhaps portrait photography where two camps—the representative and the artistic—can be most clearly observed. Whilst the former requires context through captions and backstory to elevate it, in the later, the absence of such requires creative aptitude. Attempting to merge both camps in one photograph can often diminish its effectiveness.

Armed with her Rolleiflex, a roll of TRI-X 400 (or Ektachrome) film stock, and her bold character, the late Vivian Maier made herself legendary with her dramatic street photography. Her street portraiture in particular is riveting thanks to the expressions on her subjects. As Frederik Trovatten puts it in this 13-minute video, "she takes the photo she wants to take whether the subject wants to be a part of it or not."

Just a few days before multiple historians went on the record with WIRED to explain why people shouldn't be colorizing old footage and photos, yet another video that does exactly that went viral online. This time, the subject was the iconic film 'Bataille de boules de neige' from 1886.

It's autumn again, and I thought I'd share some tips (and possibly inspiration) for your autumn photography.

Capturing creative photos of miniature worlds is definitely not a new idea, but you don't need to be a small-world master like Tatsuya Tanaka to give this kind of photography a shot. As this COOPH tutorial shows you, all you need is some creativity, a few mini figures, and a smartphone.

Photographer Brendan Barry—known the world over for turning just about anything you can think of into a functional camera—recently completed one of his most ambitious projects. He turned a room Custom House in Exeter, UK into a giant camera, which he then used to shoot and develop some massive ultra-large format photos.

Photographer Skander Khlif traveled to the North African country of Tunisia this past summer and spent days traveling along the coast. Along the way, he turned his lens on the joy of kids there growing up next to the sea and playing in the water as a way of life.

The prestigious Siena Awards Festival has officially unveiled the winners of the 2020 Drone Photo Awards, and while there is the occasional "stereotypical" drone shot sprinkled in, this year's crop of winners include some truly stunning shots and fresh perspectives on the world from above.

Every last Sunday of the month, we bring together a collection of easy reading articles from analytical to how-to to photo-features in no particular order that did not make our regular daily coverage.

I’ve been enjoying bird photography from my custom-made floating hide for 3 years now. Being in the water with a variety of birds from waterfowl to wading birds and even Black Skimmers flying by my head has been an amazing experience. It becomes a much more connecting experience both to the natural areas I am in as well as my subject.

The Marine Corps’ latest ad is a masterclass in cinematography, advertising, and visual allegory. It is the result of Oscar-winning talent and keen insight by a sophisticated advertising agency. Such mastery of the cinematic language warrants a deeper look.

The relationship between man and dog is unlike man’s relationship with any other animal on the planet. When it comes to animal photography, you can find many books, online lessons, or YouTube videos showing you and teaching you how to photograph animals... so that they look like animals. This article is not going to be the typical wildlife photography manual where you sneak up on a dog in a nature documentary style or take a shot with an 800mm lens hidden in the mud.

Photographer Taylor Jackson made this 7-minute short film titled "Bad Photographer" that may resonate with you if you find yourself often struggling with self-doubt and negative thoughts about your work.

What do you get when you combine apocalyptic, real-life drone footage of the red skies over San Francisco with the score from the movie Blade Runner: 2049? You get a viral sensation that somehow perfectly encompasses the current feeling on the west coast of the United States.

Landscape photographer and YouTuber Mads Peter Iversen is back with another helpful tips video. This time, he's covering a very important subject that many beginners fail to properly appreciate when they're just starting out: how to create depth in your landscape imagery.

Even the most mundane, unremarkable, or sometimes disgusting phenomena take on a totally new life when viewed at a supermacro scale. Case in point, a new timelapse film dubbed "The Rise of Molds" captures the mesmerizing growth of a subject we've all at one time or another cut out of a slice of bread or scrubbed off our bathroom walls: mold.

Photographer Sara Melotti's career started with a meteoric rise in the world of fashion photography. But 3 years into a job that took her to some of the most glamorous places on Earth, she realized that she was contributing to an industry that she simply didn't believe in any more. That's how her project Quest for Beauty was born.

Photographers can learn a lot about composition and color theory from great cinematography. Case in point: in this video, filmmaker Sareesh Sudhakaran of Wolfcrow explains how great movies will often use the 'Three Color Rule' to capture and keep a viewer's attention.

The winners of the 2nd annual Minimalist Photography Awards were announced just last week, and if you're looking for proof that "less is more" when it comes to photography... you've come to the right place. Many of the winners are masterful examples of simplicity in composition.

NYC-based photographer Dani Diamond took a V-Flat and his portrait skills out to the Jersey Shore and shot fashion photos of complete strangers he ran into. You can see the project and results in this 6.5-minute video by AdoramaTV.

Photographer Erik Wahlstrom made this 9-minute video on the life and work of photographer Gordon Parks. It's also a video that explores the question: "Can a photograph make a difference?"

The National Hockey League (NHL) recently released a behind the scenes video that shows you what it's like being an official NHL photographer inside one of the league's COVID "bubbles." These photographers shoot as many as three games per day, and keep a grueling schedule of shooting, editing, sending off images, and then shooting some more.

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.