Tips

Why Photographers Fail

Recently there has been a spate of very sad, and ultimately defeatist articles decrying the “death of photography.” We have no shortage of examples. Seriously.

5 SEO Pro Tips for Your Photo Website

Whether you’re just starting your photography career or have years of experience, being found in search engines is critical to accomplishing your goals. In this post, we'll be sharing 5 helpful SEO tips that can help your photography website place well in search engines.

Quick Tip: Refining Local Adjustments in Lightroom

Making local adjustments in Lightroom can be a great way to bring attention to a specific part of your image, but they lack an opacity slider to retroactively change the strength of the effect. This 4-minute video shows you how to tweak the impact of your adjustments after they’ve been applied.

How to Stop Lens Creep for Free Using a Rubber Band

"Lens creep" is that really annoying thing in which your lens slips and zooms itself out of position. It happens on all sorts of zoom lenses that have an externally moving part rather than an internal one. In this quick 2-minute tip by Dr Jake, an ordinary rubber band is the answer to all of your lens creep woes.

How to Photograph Glassware on a Pure White Background

Glassware makes for beautifully contrasting shapes on a white background. Taken under studio lighting, this high-key style of photography looks really impressive. If you're into product photography, then this 8-minute tutorial by photographer Dustin Dolby of workphlo is one you will want to watch.

This is How Much Photo Editing Can Impact Portraits

I’ve been doing professional portrait and fashion photography for over 3 years now, but from the very beginning I have always considered myself an “aspiring photographer,” because you never stop improving and looking for new challenges.

A Rubber Band Can Take the Stress Off Your Camera’s Tether Cable

If you often shoot with your camera tethered, there are commercial solutions out there for taking the stress off your camera and cable and protecting the cord from getting yanked out. But if you'd rather not spend your hard-earned money on such a product, an ordinary rubber band can do the same thing.

Shooting 10 Powerful Street Photos in One Ugly Location

When I started out in photography, I always thought: if I could shoot in New York City, Tokyo, Paris or Amsterdam, my street photos would be much better... But it turns out that it's all about your imagination, creativity, and patience.

How to Optimize Photos For Facebook

Saving images for the web, and specifically Facebook, can require a little bit of extra attention to get them looking sharp. This 10 minute video from Francisco Hernandez of FJH Photography explores some sharpening, sizing, and exporting tips to ensure your images look their best on Facebook.

7 Ways to Make Your Photos More Interesting

When I first started taking photos, I knew the importance of finding what "good" really looked like. I knew that there were a million people out there that claimed to be more successful than they were, and that my taste wasn't refined enough and that I wasn't experienced enough to know the difference between them and those that were truly great.

Improve Your Astrophotography Focus With a Bahtinov Mask

Finding razor-sharp focus when shooting astrophotography can be hard – stars appear as point light sources, and there are no detailed surfaces to aid the eye in achieving focus. The Bahtinov Mask is a widely used tool that cleverly uses diffraction as a focusing aid.

Throw Away Your Best Work, or: How to Create a Portfolio

My best photos aren't in my portfolio. Or, maybe I should more accurately say, photos that were my best at one point in time, have now been discarded from my portfolio because they have been replaced by newer, better work. It didn't happen all at once. One by one, they dropped like flies to be replaced by newer and better flies.

5 Steps to Land a Collaboration with an Instagram Influencer

In this article, I’m going to be breaking down very tactical and easy steps to help you land more collaborations with Instagram influencers. If you follow this guide, using the framework and template that I've provided, you will find success.

Here’s the Number One Challenge for Photographers

One camera, one lens, one film/preset, one year. The "Number One Challenge" is as simple as that, and at the same time incredibly difficult as well. This challenge, at the end of it, promises to change your approach and style as a photographer.

Helpful Advice on Getting Your Photos Printed Professionally

Have you ever had your photos professionally printed? It’s one thing to have your images stored away on a computer or SD card somewhere, but taking that final step and having them printed out for you to display gives them a new life. Photographer Sean Tucker visited his local print house and returned with some advice on printing your photos, which he shares in this 10 minute video.

Why Exercise Makes You a Better Photographer

I was nervous and excited. I had just left my 9 to 5 cubicle career and jumped head-first into full-time photography. Over the next 2 months, I would be traveling all over the world with a friend in order to build my portfolio. At this point, though, my sedentary lifestyle had caught up to me and I was about 25lbs overweight.

24 Hours in the Forest for Only 1 Photo: A Lesson in Patience

With well over 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, landscape photographer Thomas Heaton is popular for his behind-the-scenes window into life in the outdoors. On the recent shoot seen in the 11-minute video above, with incredible patience and dedication, Heaton spends 24 hours in the forest to capture just 1 image.

Get Your Creative Juices Flowing with the Boring Room Challenge

Every photographer and filmmaker will likely one day find they have some kind of creative block, and breaking through this can be a total nightmare. One of the best ways to do this is to force yourself to be creative in a really dull, plain situation. In this challenge by Brandon Li, a boring hotel room becomes the setting for a dramatic film sequence.

A 3-Part Guide to Nailing Exposure In-Camera

Shooting RAW gives you a lot of latitude to make exposure adjustments in post, but it’s still vital to understand how to correctly expose a scene to avoid clipping highlights and destroying shadows. This 3-part series from photographer Greg Benz will teach you everything you need to know to get the shot.

30 Composition Styles for Taking Good Pictures

Ever since I decided to start learning photography, I’ve been looking for a good catalog of composition ideas. Once you figure out the mechanics of how a DSLR works, getting good at the composition of your photos seems to be the 80/20 of rapidly improving at photography.

7 Quick Tips to Revolutionize Your Still Life Photos

It's difficult to stand out from the crowd in still life photography. When someone picks up a camera for the first time, still life is probably the initial thing they try. Therefore the internet is packed full of still life images, but these tips will help to give your photos an edge.

Shoot Better Golden Hour Portraits by Harnessing the Sun

The golden hour is popular amongst landscape photographers, but it is definitely worth utilising this for outdoor portraiture. By positioning the sun behind or in front of the subject, the lighting is changed dramatically. It's just like having a giant light on in the studio, but it is golden and delicious in the evening.

8 Tips for Shooting an Award-Winning Tornado Photo

I’ve been photographing extreme weather for 25 years. After publishing tips on how to photograph lightning here back in March, I was asked to share any tips I have in capturing an award-winning tornado image. So, here I go…

PSA: Deleting Old Lightroom Data Can Clear Up a TON of Space

Photos take up a lot of storage space. That’s just something that us photographers have to deal with. That said, there’s no reason to waste space on our computers. So here's a tip: deleting old, unneeded Lightroom data can clear up a ton of space.

14 Hidden Lightroom Shortcuts That Use the Alt/Option Key

Did you know that there are lots of hidden Lightroom shortcuts? Some of the app’s most useful shortcuts are tucked away in places you might never look. As a result you may be unaware of them until someone points them out to you. Here are 14 you might want to know.

This One Thing Will Make Your Photos Better: Storytelling

Here's an inspiring video by Mango Street about one of the most important things you can learn to do as a photographer, which is storytelling. In addition to organically capturing moments as they happen, you can also conceptualize and execute an idea that inspires you, and Rachel and Daniel show how it's done in the 5.5-minute video above.

Going Open Source to Make Your Own Loupedeck Alternative

There is an extremely talented landscape photographer called Thomas Heaton whose YouTube videos I find very instructive and entertaining. Recently he featured a new product he was sent to try out: the Loupedeck, a physical console that lets you control Lightroom (the main software I use to sort, catalog and edit my photographs).

Here’s the Right Way to Wrap Cords and Cables

There are few things in life more frustrating than tangled cords and rope, and you may run into both during a photo shoot. In under 5 minutes, this video from PremiumBeat will teach you how to properly wrap your cables to keep them tidy and save time.

Shooting the Holi Festival in India with a Fuji X-T2 and Underwater Housing

When packing your gear bag for a two-week street photography trip, the last thing you might think to bring is an underwater housing. Most of the time you would be completely right to leave that item at home. But if your trip happens to be going to India during the celebration of Holi, an underwater housing may just be the protection you need.

7 Photoshop Tricks That Are Hidden in Plain Sight

Adobe’s Photoshop is such a complex piece of software that even professionals find new features and settings every now and then. This 7-minute video from Colin Smith of PhotoshopCAFE explores 7 Photoshop tricks that may be new to you even if you've been using PS for a long time.