Tips

The saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words. I certainly agree with this sentiment, but there's more to it. For every thousand words the photograph is worth, there's three thousand explaining how the image came to be.

We've all had that moment when we're browsing through some photographs online and the questions hit us. How did someone capture this photo? What gear did they use for this? What was their inspiration? How did they plan it?

Well, for moments like this, there's now a beautifully designed resource called The Image Story.

If you've ever dreamed of being published in National Geographic -- and let's be honest, a good number of us have fantasized about that career path -- then you're going to want to pay special attention to the short video above.

At the request of Nat Geo photographer and burn magazine editor David Alan Harvey, Nat Geo photo editor Susan Welchman gives you some concise advice on what she's looking for from her photographers.

Here's a video from back in 2012 that shows a basic GoPro video stabilization tip you might not have heard of yet. Put together by Mitch Bergsma of MicBergsma Productions, it shows you how holding your GoPro against your face will lead to more stable footage.

Have you ever accidentally deleted or lost a folder full of master images in Lightroom? If you have a backup you should be okay, but even backups fail, and what then? Are you really out of luck? Are those images gone forever? Maybe not.

It isn’t the over 14,000 followers on Instagram or 9,000 on Twitter that made adventure photographer Lucas Gilman a finalist in the 2010 and 2013 Red Bull Illume competition (that was all his own talent), but his social media presence has helped keep him top of mind with clients and landed him a few jobs along the way.

It's likely one of the reasons Adobe decided to shift to a subscription model was so that they could bring in more beginners and amateurs that had never had affordable access to the software.

For them, justifying a several hundred-dollar purchase wasn't always feasible, but $10 per month through Adobe's perpetually-extended Photoshop Photography Program is more than reasonable, and so we'd bet there are more beginners on Photoshop CC than ever before. Now the hard part... actually using the software.

Super helpful Photoshop CC beginner tutorial to the rescue!

You could go alone to New Zealand, Mexico, Cuba, or wherever your wanderlust takes you, and bring your camera along for the trip -- hope to stumble upon the ‘photographic’ spots, and take some pictures you think might be good.

Or, you could sign up for an amazing, fully immersive photography workshop in an exotic locale with a pro photographer who knows the land, guides you to all the best spots, gives you feedback during critiques, and helps you edit your new travel portfolio along the way. We prefer the latter -- and after finding out about all the amazing photography courses happening all over the world this year, we had to share. Wherever and whatever your heart desires to go and photograph, there’s probably a workshop to guide you through it.

On a recent trip to Hong Kong, David Hobby (aka. Strobist) caught up with his friends over at DigitalRev and offered some wise advice for the traveling photographer.

Despite all of the crazy gloom and doom talk that tends to circulate in the photography industry, it seems us photographers are still an optimistic bunch.

PhotoShelter has just released their "Photographer's Outlook on 2014 Survey," and besides being chock full on interesting and useful tidbits about who to follow and what to read (we're proud to say PetaPixel made the most-read blogs list!), it also showed that photographers have a very positive perspective on the upcoming year.

The lens is the most important factor in the image quality of a landscape astrophoto.

There are a number of lens traits that will determine the quality and usability of a camera lens for astrophotography. Let me explain what sort of thinking should go into choosing and using a lens for making astrophotography and Milky Way nightscapes.

Wedding photography gets a bum rap among many photographers, but the thing is, it gets that bum rap because it's hard! You're working in a high-stress environment, tasked with capturing someone's 'most important day of their lives'... and you'd better be doing it on par with the 3,426 amazing wedding photos they've compiled on Pinterest in preparation for this day.

Still autofocusing by pressing halfway down on your shutter release? Well, suppose I told you there’s another way that you might even like better? Sound interesting? Read on.

A few weeks ago, we shared a video by photographer Karl Taylor that gave you a behind the scenes look at what a day-long fashion shoot in his studio was like. And even though a few of our readers poked fun at the video's obvious product placement, a lot of people learned a thing or two and came back with followup questions regarding the light modifiers that Taylor was using throughout the day.

Fortunately for us, Taylor was listening, and has produced this very informative follow-up video in which he discusses the differences between his go-to modifiers, complete with side-by-side comparisons.

If there are two things I love in life it’s cars and photography, and the thought of putting those two together sounds better to me than getting chocolate in my peanut butter! Now I don’t claim to be an amazing photographer nor hold any hopes of one day having my own photography tutorial DVD. However, I do like to talk about photography and more so, I like to get other people talking about it.

William Albert Allard has shot over 40 stories for National Geographic, and in the short video above he shares some of what he's learned since starting his career for the magazine as an intern in 1964.

The introduction of the new Perspective Warp tool (among other things) for Photoshop CC was met with a good deal of excitement by photographers. But if you haven't had a chance to play with it yourself, or you're still unsure exactly how it works from the intro video, the demo above should give you a much better idea of how to put the tool to use.

So, for a while now I’ve shared photography techniques I’d worked on throughout my career. Every wedding season I try to share something new with everyone and I love seeing what other photographers have done with prisming, freelensing, and brenizer methods (aka. bokeh panoramas).

Now it’s time for my latest technique: I call it lens chimping.

There are a lot of tips and helpful articles out there about buying your first 'nice' camera, or even how to make sure everything is working well when you get one as a gift, but there's significantly less help for those who are considering buying their first flash. Enter DigitalRev and their "10 Things to Consider Before Buying a Flash."

The photograph above seems fairly straight forward: pretty model photographed in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. But that's not actually the case at all. The photograph was actually taken in a basement in Ohio.

If 2014 is finally the year you plan to turn your love of photography into a business and see if you can quit your day job to do something you enjoy, then PhotoShelter is here to help. In the infographic below, they provide you with nine very useful tips that will help you begin to look at photography from the business side of things.

The holidays are a great time for gift giving, which also normally means they're a time for cleaning out closets and camera bags. Every year, I find myself needing to get rid of old stuff that has been replaced; or dealing with the thoughtful but odd and/or useless gifts given to me by well-meaning family and friends.

But what to do with that redundant lens or knitted camera cozy? The simplest answer is to return or re-sell it, but sometimes there's no gift receipt to be found or the gizmo in question is too beaten up to be sold for any real value. Fortunately, there's plenty of ways to find a use for your used gear.

In a world dominated by too many photos and too little photography, one of the pieces of advice we stumble across fairly often from masters of this craft is to simply "slow down." Andy Romanoff is one such master, and his project "Seeing the PDC" -- for which he spent 6 months photographing the Pacific Design Center in LA -- is a testament to slowing down and really seeing what it is you're trying to capture.

Because you asked, these are real letters I have sent to people found using my photographs inappropriately, ranging from "The standard DMCA takedown" to "The repeat commercial offender payment demand letter."

Michael Shainblum is a name that has come up a few times on PetaPixel, and it's always associated with a spectacular time-lapse that earns many a "beautifully done" and even the occasional "hot damn." And now, thanks to The Creators Project, we get to go behind the scenes with Shainblum as he creates one of his masterpieces.

On Sunday I covered what was easily the hardest football game I’ve ever been asked to shoot. In turn it was the most fun I’ve ever had on an assignment.

The ability to pull photos out of your camera and onto your computer wirelessly is an incredibly useful tool that many photographers use, but what if you could pull those photos instantly into Lightroom right there on-location? Well, it turns out you can, and it's not all that complicated either.

This is certainly not the first time we've shared a video uploaded to YouTube by a frustrated videographer whose shots were consistently ruined by the photographers at the wedding, but this might be the most extreme example we've seen.

Usually we try to stay away from traumatizing you at the very beginning of the week, but this week, we'll make an exception. The video above started out as a tutorial on how to quickly attach and detach a lens "just like a pro"; it turned into a cringeworthy photographer fail.

There's something inspirational about watching a seasoned photographer work at his craft -- whether it's a studio photog who molds light to his will or a street photographer whose demeanor and results both scream professionalism.

Jack Simon falls under the latter of those categories, and in the video above, fellow street photographer Eric Kim takes us behind the scenes with Simon as he walks the streets of San Francisco.

First, I'd like to start this article off with a little bit of a warning. This post is primarily aimed at people just starting to get into photography or people just beginning to make the jump from hobbyist to professional. That said, hopefully there's something below that can be appreciated by photographers of all levels.

Now, lets talk about style a little bit.

Back in February of 2012, portraitist Peter Hurley shared an awesome tutorial that showed how to accentuate your subject's jawline in portraits and instantly make them look much more photogenic. That video went insanely viral amongst photographers, and now, Hurley has finally released a followup in which he shares what he calls "his most incredible tip for looking photogenic."

No matter how much energy you have going into a project, it's likely that at some point you'll run out of steam. When you're hours in to editing your photos and are beginning to have an existential crisis about the real meaning of the words "tone curve," you'll suddenly stop and wonder why you're doing this in the first place.

Then the next day, when it's time to return to editing, you'll stare blankly at your computer screen or come up with any number of excuses or tasks that will prevent you from getting started.

Well, we started the photography tips train rolling earlier today with four incredibly informative short interviews with portrait master Gregory Heisler, and what better way to follow that up than with some great tips from the sillier side of the photo industry: the folks over at DigitalRev.

A few days ago, we stumbled on a new set of short interviews with portrait photography master Gregory Heisler that cover everything from lighting, to relating with your subjects, to getting creative, to (and we know you're all interested in this one) getting hired.

Without a makeup artist at your disposal, even a great portrait can be ruined by shiny skin. So if you're looking through the results of your most recent portrait shoot and there's a lot of shine there, here's a fantastic tutorial that shows you how to get rid of it without making the photo look like it's been doctored.

If you're a scientist looking to snap photographs of jaguars in the wild, how do you go about luring them to your camera? You might be thinking that you'll need to bring along some kind of meat, but there's a tool that'll fit much more neatly in your camera bag: cologne.

That's right: field biologists have discovered that scents designed to please human noses are actually quite effective at bringing the big cats into an area for a photo shoot.

The world of camera lenses can be a bit daunting when you first start out, and so a videographer and photographer have joined forces to put together a fun (and funny) introduction to all the basic lens options, what they do, and what situations you might use them in.

I've met a lot of bitter photographers over the years, especially as high-end cameras have become cheaper and more accessible. They complain that Photographer A gets more work than Photographer B even though Photographer B's work is clearly better; or that Photographer C doesn't get any work even though their work is the best of the three (Side Note: often times the photographer complaining IS Photographer C).

What these people don't realize is that, sadly, success often has little to do with talent and a lot more to do with personality. I don't mean that you have to be likable either, there are a ton of successful people that could easily be described as horrible human beings. What I mean is that you have to be motivated, unafraid and adventurous.

These days, most photographers spend way more time staring at a computer screen than peering through a viewfinder.  Despite this, we sure do spend a lot more talking about lenses and cameras than widescreen monitors. Perhaps that's because editing tends to be the far more tedious part of the job. With a little investment though, you can make those late nights pouring over the day's images just a little bit more comfortable.

Nothing makes a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, or in this case, a baked potato, look more warm and appetizing than a beautiful cloud of steam. Immediately, your taste buds think of a hot, comforting meal, and your nose can almost sniff the fresh-from-the-oven smell.

Anyone interested in shooting photos or videos using continuous light without breaking the bank has likely looked at purchasing or building a lighting setup based around CFL bulbs. Earlier in the year, I decided to go this route myself because I film interviews and generally prefer the way that soft continuous light reacts with a subject's pupils and comfort levels for photography.

Whenever somebody asks me if they should take a free job I answer with a resounding, no. Don't do it. Just don't. It should be a hard and fast rule in your book: do not work for free! That said, everybody breaks the rules, especially their own. Case in point, I just came off of a job this past weekend where, you guessed it, I worked for free.

So since me sitting here and lecturing you about why you shouldn't work for free would be a big waste of everybody's time, especially having just taken a free job myself, lets instead go ahead and look at when, perhaps, just maybe, you should at least consider working for free.

We've shared a few pretty cool life hacks over the years -- for example, check out this super-simple drop test that'll let you know if your AA batteries are juiced and ready to go -- but the video above brings together some of the most useful.

Put together by DigitalRev, these ten photo-related life hacks have the potential to make your photographic life that much easier, while saving you some money as well.

We recently spoke to PhotoAttorney.com’s Carolyn Wright and former ASMP President Richard Kelly about the importance of registering your copyright regularly. In that vein, A Photo Editor recently updated us on the Richard Reinsdorf v. Skechers case, which illustrates the complexity of copyright violation cases and re-emphasizes the necessity of copyright registration.

A New Zealand railroad buff killed by a train Saturday may have been misled by his camera's LCD screen into thinking the train was a safe distance away.

Photographer John Free's many years of experience as a professional in the industry have given him a deep reservoir of tips, tricks and advice from which to pull. In the past, we shared his inspirational no-BS video on shooting without tension and the importance of practice.

That video offered some all-around "how to get better" advice. But yesterday, he uploaded a new video in which he addresses a specific problem many photographers (himself included) face: getting too emotionally attached to your images.

Update: Unfortunately, the video has been taken down since we put this post up. We'll keep an eye out and get it back up if and when it is re-uploaded.

Wedding photographers have complained before (and for good reason) of people getting in their way while they try to do their job. In the video above, however, the tables have turned. It's not a guest getting up and standing in the middle of the aisle, blocking every shot. The one in the way is actually the photographer.

About twelve months ago, PetaPixel very kindly published my article "The Vital Link Between Emotions and Creativity in Photography." Well, it's one year later and I’m back to tell you how I over came my "Photographers block" and share a few key lessons that I have learned along the way.

Light Painting goes as far back as Pablo Picasso, and since the true formation of the medium with pioneers such as Dean Chamberlain, Eric Staller and Vicki DaSilva, there has been a mass of people trying their hand at the world of light painting photography. The advent of the digital camera and the popularity of DSLRs has only made this number grow exponentially.

In this sudden growth and glut of people experimenting -- and I include myself as part of that "glut" so please don't be offended or discouraged -- it can sometimes be difficult to find those truly special artists who are expanding the medium and taking it to the next level. Luckily, I'm here to help. Here are 10 amazing light painting artists you need to check out:

Need to send someone some RAW photographs but hate the fact that they weigh tens of megabytes each? You can actually resize the files to smaller sizes quite easily in Lightroom, making sending small copies back and forth a snap.