The joy of photographing on the street comes from close and engaging photos. Displaying the human nature and emotions in a way that the audience can relive these moments requires the photographer to be close and engaging as well. Unfortunately for a lot of us, it is not easy to stand out from the masses and overcome artificial social boundaries.
A month ago I had never seen a lunar fog bow; now I have seen three. I got to see my first lunar fog bow on December 17th, and last night I got to see two more of these elusive phenomena. We had lots of fog around the city of Östersund and since it was the night of the full moon, I drove around chasing locations where I could see this beautiful phenomenon.
Photographer and DP Peter McKinnon is not an "iPhoneographer", but that hasn't stopped some of his fans from asking for tips on taking better smartphone photos. Since he's not one to disappoint, he created this useful tutorial to appease the smartphone shutterbugs out there.
When I was 20, I was dissatisfied with my photography. I felt like I was being limited by where I lived. I thought if I wanted to become a better street photographer, I needed to live in Europe—to photograph the romantic streets of Paris, the back-alleys of Prague, and the bustling streets of London.
Unlike with most genres of photography, still life requires two levels of composition: composing your frame, and composing your props. The latter is commonly called photo styling, and this short video offers three simple tips for upping your photo styling game.
When it comes to printing your images and that elusive DPI (dots per inch) number, the ultimate question is: "how big is big enough?" Whether you're exporting for billboards, magazines, or fine art prints, this video explains what DPI you should be using and why.
Moving from using only natural light to flash photography is a big step for an outdoor photographer, but before you ditch ambient light entirely, give this video a look. As photographer Francisco Hernandez explains, you'll often get more pleasing results by pulling some ambient light back in.
There's a Gmail add-on feature that photographers and others always seem to benefit from once they find out about it. I've been using it since it has been available and it has been amazing. If there are any responses that you continually re-write over and over again, Gmail's "Canned Responses" feature is there to help.
I took the best photo of my life today. I came down from the mountain and loaded it up on my computer. When I brought the photos up on my screen, they were just trees. Bummer. But it felt so good; looked so good on my camera’s LCD. What’s the deal with that?
What's the 'recipe' for a great photograph? As we embark on this new 365-day journey called "2017," our friends at COOPH teamed up with photographer Craig Semetko to answer this question; and he believes it all comes down to 4 key elements: Design, Information, Emotion, and Timing.
If there is one genre of street photography I specialize in, it is street portraiture. I love talking with my subjects, engaging with them, and focusing on their faces. If I started shooting street portraits all over again, this is the advice I would give myself.
Have you ever asked yourself what the best focal length for your first (or your next) prime lens should be? If you use mostly zoom lenses, Adobe Lightroom may be able to help.
We recently shared the story of a photographer who had hard drives containing virtually all her professional work stolen from her home shortly before Christmas. If you don't want this type of devastating data loss to happen to you, look into the 3-2-1 strategy of backups.
As each new year approaches, people usually start thinking about what they can do better or improve in the new year. As a professional landscape photographer, I thought it would be fun to give some tips to people starting out with landscape photography.
My name is Sam Vox. I am a freelance photographer from Tanzania. I became a full-time photographer because of my Instagram account. In this post, I'll share how I grew my Instagram account without using any online services.
I covered an event some months ago over a period of a few days during which, as you can imagine, many hundreds of photos were taken. Due to the popularity of this event, (we've covered it over a number of years, thankfully) I knew the folks that were a part of it were really going to be anxious to see, share, print, etc.
After sharing his 8 camera hacks in 90 seconds, Toronto-based photographer Peter McKinnon is back again with another helpful video for beginners. In the 6-minute one above, he shares 5 basic tips that can help you instantly improve your photos.
I'm a photography addict...and happy to admit it! So how did this addiction take hold? Well, it's all down to something I've been doing every single day for the last eight years: a 365 project. And it still hasn't ended yet!
I think you can look around at a lot of the content based around photography on the Internet and extract a theme: people want to be better photographers.
Photographers are a narcissistic breed. Not me, of course, but my colleagues are. We’ve got profiles on dozens of websites and we must tell the world what we are doing at our jobs every day and in real-time -- we just have to. It’s compulsory.
It’s not every day you get to experiment with new forms of media. We have seen astonishing new ways to move the camera from drones to gimbals which can push the boundaries of photography and videography.
I ditched my DSLR in favor of an iPhone back in 2012, well aware of what I was giving up. But I love to travel light, and by using the iPhone as my only camera, I could get rid if the heavy and bulky backpack with all the lenses and stuff.
We've seen some interesting DIY flash diffusers, but I can't remember ever seeing someone use a blown up balloon. Which is a shame, really, because it's a cheap and effective way to soften your pop-up flash, or even a small speedlight.
I know that for a lot of people, the cold keeps them inside, but it can be really rewarding to go out in the bitter cold. Tonight I got the bug to go out and shoot, but the air temp was -15°F (-26°C), with a windchill of -30°F (-34°C).
In May of 2016, I had the opportunity to travel to Argentina through my university for the purpose of researching food politics with our anthropology department. I jumped on the opportunity when it was offered, and had the experience of a lifetime learning about conducting anthropological work.
I have a studio. For those of you that know me -- the author of the Studio Anywhere books, which focus on shooting anywhere but a studio -- this statement may sound oxymoronic or even blasphemous. Nonetheless, after years of shooting in my cramped basement, I finally outgrew my space and needed a slightly larger, dedicated space to have for working with clients.
Photoshop's tools frequently overlap, and a great example of this is Luminosity Masks vs Blend If. Both can be used to do the same thing, but they work in slightly different ways. This useful tutorial breaks down the differences so you know when and how to use each tool.
It's the holiday season and everyone's favorite photography background prop is Christmas lights. It used to be pretty easy to get these photos to come out perfect, but with the rise in popularity of LED lights, there's some weird stuff that happens if you don't have the right camera settings.
Streetlights are the driving force behind nighttime street scenes and how they make us feel. The way streetlights spread their light, the shadows they cast, and the colors they bring out affect everything else nearby, setting the tone of the scene.
Toronto-based photographer Peter McKinnon created this short video that shares 8 clever, quick, and easy camera hacks in the span of about 90 seconds.
In September I shot a campaign for Nikon using its new D500 camera, in which the brief was to demonstrate how fast, powerful and robust it was. We set about capturing split-second moments of impact, photographing scenes that would otherwise be impossible to see with the naked eye.
Anyone who has ever tried to take pictures of children knows how challenging it can be. They don’t have attention spans, they don’t listen, and they switch from happy to grumpy within seconds for seemingly no reason at all.
Nate Dodson over at TutVid just put together one of the most comprehensive overviews of Photoshop's key tools and features we've ever seen. 30 different tools or features you should definitely know about, each covered under two minutes. This one is worth a bookmark.
If you captured a range of exposures for a certain scene, you don't have to painstakingly adjust each one once you've got them in Lightroom. This really useful tip from the folks at Adobe shows you how to do it in a single click.
I’ve had my Snapchat Spectacles for a few weeks now, and I’m really impressed by the videos you can make with them.
Have a photography loving fella or gal on your list this year? Feeling crafty? Running out of time to get them something? If you answered yes to these questions, these last-minute DIY gift ideas for photographers might just be your saving grace.
Here’s a simple, fair, and free-to-use wedding photography contract that includes payment schedule, harassment, privacy, deliverables, and cancellations—in other words: everything you need in a professional service agreement—because Christmas!
There are more ways than ever to get your photography noticed online—from photo sharing platforms like Instagram to online resume site LinkedIn. If you intend to use them all, we definitely suggest you give this handy social media image size infographic a peek.
As a photographer, you obviously want to spend your time focusing on your passion: capturing great images, being creative, and making art. Unfortunately, in our connected world, photo security is a very real concern. This article is a comprehensive guide on protecting your photos from online image theft.
Photographer, weird lens expert, and friend of PetaPixel Mathieu Stern created this very simple and straightforward Photoshop tutorial for anybody out there who wishes they were a Jedi and wants to impress their friends.
One of my passions in life is travel. I love to travel, experience new cultures, try new foods, meet new people and, of course, take photos while I’m traveling.
My name is Jeff Cable, and I'm a photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. I previously spent many years of my life as Director of Marketing at Lexar dealing with the ins and outs of the memory card business. And in all that time, I have never written about the do's and don'ts of memory cards. Now that I am not on that side of the business any more, I feel that I can write this objective piece for you without any conflict of interest.
One of the ongoing pain points of being a photographer is the time we spend editing. Don’t get me wrong, I love turning a flat image into something breathtaking, but it does take a while to get through a batch of 1000+ photos from a wedding or concert.
Since elementary school, I've been told that things had to match. If I wore Sean John pants, then I had to wear a Sean John shirt. If I wore anything Nike, then I had to have the matching shoes to correspond. This was a mindset that I held throughout most of my life.
Simon Roberts, a London-based animator and designer, has created a great photography resource for beginners that is both simple and useful. It's called Photography Mapped, and it allows you to play around with and better understand the manual settings you'll find on a DSLR.
When was the last time you saw a round photo? It's probably been a while. The world is ruled by squares and rectangles. It's almost as if there's no place for circles, but I have come round to thinking that maybe those ancient mathematicians were onto something when they got all excited by circles, maybe you can have your pi and eat it too.
The folks at RocketJump Film School had a little bit of fun with food last month. Just before Thanksgiving, they gave us a peek at some of the weird tricks food stylists and food photographers use to make their meals look delicious (but taste gross).
The kit lens that comes with most consumer-grade and entry-level DSLRs—the infamous 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6—isn't exactly anybody's "go-to" lens. It's far from useless though—here are three simple "hacks" that'll help you squeeze a bit more performance out of your kit lens.
After our first visit to Yosemite National Park, my girlfriend and I have made it our goal to try to visit as many National Parks as possible. It's partly because of how beautiful and varied the parks are from one another, and partly because of the escape from the everyday noises that we find while out there.
Adobe is dedicated to updating Photoshop consistently, but those updates don't always go so well. A lot of people have rolled back their healing brush tool, and ever since Select and Mask replaced Refine Edge this summer, people have been complaining. Meanwhile, Nate Dodson over at Tutvid has been desperately trying to make this new tool work.