Tips

Much has been written about the concept of the "decisive moment", a notion popularized (posthumously, for the most part) by legendary candid photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Your bride still hasn’t put her dress on and you’ve reminded her three times. You see all the breathing room you created into your wedding day schedule slowly disappearing. And, the worst part, you know that you’ll be the one that has to make up for lost time or else get blamed for screwing up the wedding day schedule.

Great portrait photography is so much more than just about knowing how to work a camera. You can memorize your camera’s entire manual and still not be confident in a portrait shoot because most portraits require posing. Luckily, this is the right place to learn how to pose and become a better portrait photographer.

We all know that headshot photography is all about capturing the essence of our subjects - their personality, character, and unique qualities that make them stand out. As headshot photographers, how do we really capture that magic?

It looks like a glamorous job, taking photos in beautiful places and a dance party every night. Or maybe it looks like the worst job ever, dealing with high expectations and family drama. Wherever you stand on the subject, listen up because I’m going to share the best and worst parts of the job to help you decide if you should be a wedding photographer.

Customers form an impression of how you did before you even deliver a single photo. While we all hope our photography is one of a kind, it is either enhanced by a positive client experience or harmed by a bad one. And that’s just one of the many reasons customer service might be your most important photography skill.

The Speulderforest (“Het Speulderbos” in Dutch) is a beautiful and serene forest, and one of the best ways to capture its natural beauty is through photography. It’s one of the more popular forests when it comes to woodland photography in The Netherlands.

I was born in early October, under the seventh astrological zodiac sign of Libra, which has a symbol of balancing scales.

Are you interested in photography and ready to learn skills to up your game? Do you want to evolve from iPhone snapshots to crafting something intentional? Today my plan is to drop some photography-for-beginners tips onto your shutter finger.

Photography is a competitive industry in which professional photographers are competing against anyone with an iPhone, which means pretty much everyone. How do you convince a client to pay you for your work when they can get something that’s ‘good enough’ from someone else for free?

Photography or any other creative pursuit requires us to be consistently creative, which means we need to tap into a reliable source of inspiration.

The Sony Alpha a7R IV released in July of 2019 as the successor to the popular a7R III. While the early Sony mirrorless cameras had a limited lens selection, by the time the a7R IV came out, the lens selection had blossomed. Nowadays, there’s a lens for every purpose from manufacturers like Sony, Tamron, Sigma, Samyang, and Tokina.

Titling a photograph or body of photographic work can be a daunting and often draining task. In many instances, a title will represent the work before someone has even seen the front cover, or leading image of a series, which means a punchy title can make all the difference in catching someone’s attention or losing it. There are many ways you can go about assigning a label to your work that not only identifies it but also can enhance and frame an entire experience for your audience.

Portrait photography is about capturing the personality or identity of your subject. Therefore, these photography tips for portraits will unsurprisingly relate to the person you are photographing. How do you make them look their best, feel more comfortable, or even tell a story about them through your portrait?

Are you an artist who struggles with releasing your work to the world because it's not yet perfect? It's a common problem many creatives grapple with, but learning to let go of your idea of perfection can actually allow you to move closer toward it.

We all know how to click the shutter button on our phones and get a basic shot. But how to take it to the next level?

I have been doing photography for a little over six years, and during and before this time I have hired many photographers for marketing, advertising and events. I have done this as a lead editor of a high-gloss fashion, real estate, and product magazine line, as part of marketing teams, and as a freelance writer throughout my career. I thought I would share some tips on what someone like me looks for when hiring photographers.

If you’re looking to make your photography stand out it’s time to get creative with light. The longer I’ve been a photographer, the more I’ve come to appreciate good light. Good light makes my job so much easier, but interesting light makes my job more creative.

Photographers are tasked with making their subjects feel relaxed for great-looking shots, and one wedding photographer has a novel approach for breaking the ice: asking her clients to "teeth kiss."

I have one overarching tip for you today and it’s a big one. The only wrong way to learn photography is to stop learning. Whether you’re classically trained or self-taught, the key is to always be learning and growing.

Nick Brandt is a conservation photographer whose themes highlight humankind's destructive impact on animals and the natural world. The Day May Break – Chapter Two was shot in Bolivia, a country in western-central South America, over six weeks in February-March 2022.

Wouldn’t you like to stay focused and calm even when multitasking and shooting in a very demanding situation? How about being able to notice everything without being distracted by anything? Meditation can help and that's why many photographers are getting into it. Intrigued? Read on…

It’s a beautiful, sunny day. You’re celebrating a special event with a photo session, getting your poses ready. You’ve posed countless times with family and friends, at parties, and for selfies. This should be a piece of cake, right? You say ‘cheese’ in your head and bring out the pearly whites. Then you check the camera to see the result.

You’ve been taking your camera everywhere, shooting photos of your experiences, and you love the way photography makes you see the world. Gradually, you’ve started to wonder what it would be like to turn your passion into a career. This guide will walk you through the process of how to become a photographer.

Language is an underlying reality in our everyday world, present in our thoughts, our words, and even our haptic gestures. When interacting with someone else we are incorporating language to translate abstract thoughts into communication, communication into meaning, and meaning into understanding.

Timelapse and landscape photographer Michael Shainblum has shared a tip-filled guide showing how he uses long exposures to capture some of his more creative waterfall images in the Pacific Northwest.

Most professional portrait photographers exclusively use strobes for a variety of reasons, but commercial photographer and director Isaac Alvarez explains that in some circumstances, there are still reasons to use constant lights.

As a photographer, there are many things that we feel may be holding us back. For some, it’s gear. For many, it might be limited free time. For others, there might be a lack of interesting locations to shoot.

Steam vents, suited businesspeople, the neon glow of the night, umbrellas on windy days, stray glances through bus windows, beachgoers in a boardwalk scene, or silhouetted figures dancing in the sunlight: as photographers, we want to capture things that give life and vivacity to the subjects of the streets. We capture their spirit and do it in a visually interesting way.

My wife and kids have standardized joking about how long it takes dad to get through airport and other security checks when traveling and visiting museums. No, I'm not a supervillain with an evil laugh, I'm just a film photographer!

We live in a world where everyone has access to a camera in some form or another, and the content we create is often viewed through a phone screen. So it's no surprise that so many people have learned how to take and edit cool photos that will get them likes on Instagram.

Ten years ago, if you heard the word elopement, your thoughts might first go to images of a shotgun wedding in Las Vegas (or Gretna Green if you’re from the UK). These elopements would be typically short and sweet, no fuss, and over within an hour.

Green screens, while incredibly commonplace in big-budget productions and Hollywood blockbusters, often get a very bad reputation in the hands of independent filmmakers.

So you’ve decided you want to learn wedding photography but you want to learn it fast and for free. Luckily there’s no better way to learn than by diving in and making mistakes along the way. Additionally, with countless resources and inspiration sources, you’re bound to find someone to teach and inspire you even if they don’t know they’re doing it.

Color Grading in Lightroom is a lot of fun, but for beginners, it can be a bit overwhelming. This often leads to people thinking you need to adjust all the sliders there are, but often this just leads to a strange-looking photo.

There are a lot of tools available that can help a filmmaker produce a better finished product, but these nine are particularly helpful.

I think photography educators teach and talk about photography to beginners in an overly complicated way. It’s all concepts, jargon, theories, and numbers. It should be focused on composition and how to take ‘better’ photographs as this is what most beginners join courses to learn.

How much should photographers charge? I feel like that statement is as triggering as my toddler asking me about death or where babies come from. But unlike the age-appropriate answers we give our kids on hard topics, it’s important to do some adulting on the topic of money.

In the process of chasing that magical number one on social media, artists are unfortunately losing the ability to do their craft and no longer focusing on the only thing that will actually shape the next generation of artists.

This is my jam: I love photographing people in nature. Give me a stunning landscape combined with a person enjoying the place and I’m camera happy. That’s why today I’m sharing some photography tips for landscapes with people in them.

Take the uniqueness of the numerous brides planning a wedding in a given year and the quantity of creative wedding photographer types and you’ll find a wide range of styles when it comes to both weddings and wedding photography. However, one thing remains reliable, predictable, and timeless inspiring me to share these 5 keys to documentary-style wedding photography. Couples want to remember the joy of their wedding day.

If you’re reading this article, you might be interested in testing out wedding photography or you might be trying to figure out how to build a sustainable career. When people find out we photograph weddings there are a wide variety of responses but one of them is, “I tried that once and I’ll never do it again.”

Live music photography (also known as concert photography) is one of the most exciting and gratifying genres of photography. Granted, it’s not for everyone and it requires a lot of work in not-so-ideal conditions. However, if you're up for a challenge, you could find it rewarding and capture some rather unique and interesting shots. But behind every shot from the pit, there are some basic standards and sometimes unwritten codes of conduct that every photographer should adhere to.

Landscape and adventure photographer Michael Shainblum has taken another trip to Iceland and shares some tips on how to get great photographs no matter what the weather condition.

Lightroom presets are all around us. You might love them as a 1-click solution to your batch editing needs or you might think that they are useless and that all the photos for which one was used look the same. Still, the truth is they are here to stay and maybe we should start thinking of how to integrate them into our professional workflows as more than crutches for your next Instagram post.

We’ve all been there. Walking into a room of complete strangers, business cards at the ready, with a feeling vaguely reminiscent of stepping onto a used car lot. Welcome to the monthly Chamber of Commerce networking luncheon: a hellscape of desperate Realtors, indifferent bank managers, and the guy who just quit his job at the car wash to become a personal trainer.

When I work on a blueprint for a potential documentary project most of my attention goes to unpacking whatever it was that drew my initial interest – usually a collection of themes, locations, and characters that I will visit in order to discover what direction the story will end up going in.

As far as my group of photographer friends is concerned, I am an oddity. Our studio operates 9-5, Monday through Friday, with no holidays and very little emotion involved. Specializing in headshots and commercial photography has its perks. No babies in buckets, no couches in fields, no wedding weekends.

To be a wedding photographer you need to be able to consistently take good wedding photos. You need to be able to nail everything from the first kiss to the newlywed couple's sendoff in a way that delights your clients.

As a photographer, you know that your job is more than just crafting beautiful images. As with any job, you spend a lot of time on things outside of your main job description. One of the hardest but most important parts of photography is finishing the photos, which means culling and determining which and how many photos to give your clients.