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.
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.
Here's an interesting portraiture tip you may not have considered before: what you wear as a photographer can affect how your portraits turn out due to the reflected light. That's what's shown in this simple 43-second video by the Koldunov Brothers.
Street photography can seem daunting. The idea of photographing strangers and intruding on their privacy might make you nervous, but this video by Eduardo Goye is full of tips for how to overcome this.
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.
Landscape photographer Thomas Heaton has set aside his gear for a moment to lay down some words of wisdom in this 11-minute video. In it he presents 5 great tips on how to further your landscape photography career.
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.
Here's a short and sweet 1-minute video by photographer Serge Ramelli containing some great tips for photographing fireworks.
"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.
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.
Photographer Jesse James Allen has created a touching tribute to his photography mentor, Charles Howse. In the 6-minute video above, Howse shares an insight into what makes a "great image."
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.
Here's something not everyone thinks about: the intensity of light that you shoot your portraits in doesn't just affect the exposure, but it also affects the pupil size of your model.
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.
It goes without saying that lighting is an incredible important aspect to any genre of photography. But in portraiture, light can be used to create, or enhance, emotion in a photo.
Want to shoot some opportunistic car photos but only have your smartphone on hand? In the 6-minute video above, COOPH has 12 tips & tricks that you can apply instantly to spruce up your automobile images.
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.
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.
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.
In Lightroom, the backslash key can be used in the Develop module to toggle the Before/After view. But you can actually do more: here’s a 50-second video that shows you how to customize which "Before" view is shown.
Jay P. Morgan of Slanted Lens has a quick tip about maximizing the distance of your C-Stand, and it goes against what you may have learned in school. In this 4 minute video, he demonstrates the method and why he uses it.
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.
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.
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.
What makes a pro photographer a pro? How do you do it? Do you just wake up one day and the photo gods anoint you a pro? Do you have to pass the pro photography exam and get some sort of certificate?
Here’s a short 5-minute video from photographer Ed Verosky focusing on lighting portraits. In 5 minutes, he walks through his top five tips to help beginners improve their portrait lighting.
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.
A radial gradient can be used almost like a spotlight, directing the eye of the viewer where you want in an image. In this 10-minute video from f64 Academy, learn how to use the tool in harmony with blend modes and opacities to control the effect.
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.
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.
Apple announced High Sierra, the next version of their macOS, at the Worldwide Developer Conference last week. The final version will be available later this fall.
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.
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.
There’s little in portrait photography less flattering than a double chin. This concise video tutorial from the Koldunov Brothers demonstrates 5 techniques for reducing double chins, to significantly improve the portrait.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Off the top of your head, do you know how much more light f/2.8 lets in compared to f/5.6? Do you know the f-stop number that comes after 11? This 1.5-minute video reveals the simple pattern used by the scale.
Here's a 5-minute video by Tony & Chelsea Northrup that will teach you how to use Photoshop to stack multiple exposures of a moving silhouetted subject. The end result is a unique effect that conveys motion in an otherwise still image.
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.
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.
One thing I've realized over the past few years as a professional wedding photographer is there are not many people, guides, or information out there on how you should approach a career as a pro wedding photographer.
Shooting portraits under the midday sun is less-than-ideal because of the harsh shadows it can create. In this quick video, Manny Ortiz shows how to remove those shadows and create beautiful portraits using a single fill light.
In this useful little tutorial, wedding photographer Bob Davis demonstrates how, with just a small amount of kit, you can combine speedlights with basic light modifiers to mimic two totally different natural light 'looks' in seconds.