Tips

While working on a feature film called The Grind, filmmaker Vashi Nedomansky had to come up with a way to shoot a flashback scene, complete with Humvee, in the desert of Iraq. The only problem? He had neither Iraq, nor a Humvee to work with.

Fortunately, he did have the sand dunes outside of Los Angeles and a 1:18 scale model of a Humvee purchased at Walmart for $23. Combine those things with a bit of creativity and you get some low-budget, professional-looking visual effects.

Sick of carrying your tripod separately from your camera backpack? If you have certain types of backpacks, you can add your own strap loop system to the bottom to serve as a makeshift tripod carrying feature.

Even though most camera bodies these days use some sort of Lithium-ion battery, chances are there's still some gear in your bag that still runs off alkaline batteries. If you've ever found yourself in need of checking the charge on those batteries but you happen to leave your volt meter at home (I know ... what were you thinking!?) here's a cool little life hack that'll give you the info your need.

LA-based documentary and street photographer John Free has been practicing and teaching street photography for over 30 years. He's taught workshops in LA, New York, Paris and London, and his work has appeared in Newsweek, Smithsonian, US News and World Report and more.

In other words, he has many years worth of experience to offer (which is probably why he teaches workshops), and in the short YouTube video above he makes a little bit of his knowledge available for free.

Reuters photographer Yves Herman captured this peculiar photograph at a match between the Belgian and French national soccer teams yesterday. The photograph has attracted the Internet's attention due to the fact that it makes 28-year-old soccer player Mathieu Valbuena look like a child playing among men.

It’s incredible how Pinterest has taken the wedding industry by storm. My husband and I have always been, and still are, big supporters of Pinterest. It has been such an incredible tool for our business and has helped so many brides find our work. It can be a great place for brides to gather wedding ideas, color schemes, flowers they love, etc. It wasn’t until recently though, have we started seeing the negative affects of Pinterest on wedding photography.

Pinterest can discourage the creative process.

In my experience there seems to be a common misconception that shooting production photography and behind the scenes videos/documentaries are an easy task. While it's true that these sometimes don't require the normal spit and polish, photographers are used to, especially in terms of video work, I can assure you they're no walk in the park.

As is the case any time you're working around high level talent, or even low level talent for that matter, there's still plenty that could go wrong. A lesson I quickly found out as I started shooting behind the scenes videos a few years ago.

Have an afternoon to kill at a public library and want to go directly to the photography section? Just remember the magical number 770.

That's the division number for "Photography & computer art" in the Dewey Decimal System, used in hundreds of thousands of public libraries in 135+ countries around the world.

You probably wouldn't know it by looking at me, but I belong to a gym.

It's not the fanciest gym on the planet, but it's reasonably nice and the only gym in town that also has an indoor and outdoor pool. And a big glass water dispenser at the front desk with lemons in it. I'm a sucker for a nice water dispenser. My husband and I joined the gym years ago, stopped for awhile, and then rejoined with our children.

Although cracking open your smartphone and possibly voiding the warranty is never a pleasant task, sometimes it's necessary. For example, YouTube handyman JerryRigEverything's friend recently dropped his iPhone 5 and started getting some serious dust buildup on his front and rear cameras.

In the above video, Jerry shows you how he opens up his friend's iPhone and performs a quick cleaning job on both cameras to get them shooting good as new. (Note: If you choose to try this at home, you do so at your own risk)

Ever since the Magic Lantern folks unlocked the ability to shoot RAW video on the 5D Mark III (and, subsequently, a few more cameras after that) the DSLR world has been buzzing with excitement. The added dynamic range and detail seem make RAW video the easy choice over H.264 in any situation.

But is that really the case? In the video above, Learning DSLR Video's Dave Dugdale explains the pros and cons of Magic Lantern RAW over H.264, and when it might be better to just stick with the standard format.

So you think you have a good reason or excuse to use a photo you found on the Internet without asking the photographer who took it? Let’s see if it can stand the test.

Here's a helpful safety tip for shooting action shots in or around water: if you're using your camera in a rough-and-tumbly environment, do your best to keep it at a safe distance from your face. If you don't, your face could end up looking like the one above.

Norwegian photographer Arvid Strømnes learned a lesson earlier this week about why you shouldn't get too close to wild animals while trying to capture them on camera.

Quite a few years ago I took a solo trip down to Key West, FL. It was the first time I had gone on a vacation by myself, and since I was free of the distraction of friends and family, I decided it would make a great opportunity to expand upon my photography skills.

You see, the trip was shortly after I had decided to take this whole photography hobby of mine seriously. I had worked with video for years but now I wanted to work on becoming a good photographer as well, not just one that took as many photos as possible and then looked for the three good ones out of the hundreds shot (seriously, it's a horrible method and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody).

Thank God, I am now a gear minimalist focused on photography and a big fan of "limitation creativity" (i.e. you are more creative with less)... But here’s the truth, I used to be a huge gear junkie, basically having Gear Acquisition Syndrome (G.A.S.) as soon as I got a new camera. I had this problem since the very beginning, but now I am cured. In one sense I am trying to help those who know they have G.A.S. to stop having it and trying to prevent others from having it.

Film photography is similar in many ways to digital photography, and most of your standard digital photography techniques apply to film too. You just have to understand the peculiarities of film and its limitations and you’re good to go.

That will be explained in detail in this article, which presumes readers are already reasonably proficient at digital photography and are embarking upon film photography for the first time.

Finding a website using your photographs without your authorization can be a distressing situation. Luckily, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 helps to protect individuals who have had their intellectual properties stolen on the web. This article is a guide to detecting and enforcing copyright by filing DMCA takedown notices with hosting providers that harbor copyright infringement.

It seems the perfect storm of affordable cameras, constant updates in technology, and adventurous artists has hit us and brought with it a large wave of time lapses. I'm not sure when time lapses really became as popular as they are right now but they show no sign of slowing down anytime soon.

My mentor was a cranky dude. He liked to put me through my paces every chance he got. Sometimes, when he needed something: “Hey, Greg—fetch that cable for me!” Yes, he said “fetch.” Sometimes, when he just knew better than I did: “Hey, Greg -- get off your a** and come assist me.” Or when I was feeling superior: “Hey, Greg—stop being an idiot.”

Ah, fond memories!

We've all been there, when you make that one mistake. The mistake your obnoxious friend warned you about a hundred times. The mistake they'll never let you live down. Or worse the mistake you bragged to everybody about, saying, "Oh, I'll never do that. I know better." But now here you are, in a big puddle of embarrassment.

Like any trade, photography has a few of these classic mistakes that are almost guaranteed to happen to you at some point.

A new client walked into my studio with her three little children, the eldest of which had a session. The little girl was all dressed-up, but very traditionally, so after conferring with mom, we began the session. And it was one of those sessions where everything went right. Happy child, great expressions, and yet, mom was hovering, straightening an already straight bow, smoothing invisible wrinkles in her daughter's tights, "fixing" tiny details, some of which weren't even in the frame.

Have you ever noticed that the watches and clocks found in product photographs and advertisements usually show the time 10:10? If you haven't, pay attention the next time you're flipping through a publication and come across a watch ad---the rule is almost always true.

If you have noticed this, do you know why 10:10 is the default time for watch photographers?

Back in March 2011, British adventure photographer Dan Milner went on a 9-day photo shoot in the Scottish Highlands for Transworld Snowboarding magazine. While there, he endured blizzards, 100MPH winds, -20° temperatures, and being headbutted in the lens by a wild stag.

It's true: the video above proves it.

"Spec" is short for "speculative," and "spec work" is defined by the AIGA (which counts many photographers as members) as, "work done prior to engagement with a client in anticipation of being paid."

This is the classical definition, and it began in the creative industries, where a photographer would shoot images for a desired client and then show them the work in the hopes of being hired. Notice the very important distinction: the work was done BEFORE contact with the potential client. This "free" spec work was not solicited or negotiated.

In case you don't know it, cameras and lenses are prime theft targets. You may never think it's going to happen to you, but almost every day I hear from someone who is missing thousands of dollars worth of gear with no hope of getting it back.

My gear rental company has lots of experience with preventing theft and recovering stolen items. I'm not going to give specifics about all the exact measures we take; that would be like leaving a blueprint for those who want to steal our gear. But we've learned a lot and have at least tried everything I'm going to talk about today.

If you ever take your camera on a safari to photograph animals in the wild, here's one animal you should be careful around: the giraffe.

Sure, it doesn't have a dangerous reputation like lions or other fierce animals at the top of the food chain, but if you're not careful around the world's tallest terrestrial animal---especially the hormonal ones---you may quickly find yourself in a situation that's strangely similar to a famous scene in the movie Jurassic Park.

There has been a lot of talk recently about how best to succeed as a professional photographer, now that "everybody is a photographer." A recent post here by Alex Ignacio emphasized how important it is to “specialize and focus” -- Ignacio believes that if we don’t, we’ll “perish”.

As someone who trains aspiring commercial photographers, I agree that some doors may shut if you don’t specialize, but many more will open if you’re versatile.

Battle hardened photographers will tell you that theirs used to be an elite profession, difficult to do, hard to enter, and accorded the proper respect. Now that everyone and their grandmother has a super computer/camera in their pocket or purse or on their face (read: Google Glass), it seems like everybody is sharing their filtered masterpieces with the entire world.

And like our very own Cheri Frost wrote, next is for the camera-ed masses to hang out their shingles and call themselves professional photographers.

The know-how to properly shoot day-to-night or night-to-day when you're capturing a time-lapse can add a special something to your final product, but the task may seem daunting at first. That's why photographer Preston Kanak has put together this comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorial that discusses three approaches to shooting the perfect day-to-night time-lapse.

With the ability to shoot video now nearly ubiquitous among DSLRs, many photographers take advantage and switch into video mode on occasion. But because video isn't a photographer's first priority, camera sliders and cranes that many videographers find necessary for beautiful, smooth tracking shots don't always make the budget.

Thankfully, if you're not in the market for a slider or crane, but you still want to shoot the occasional tracking shot, the folks at DSLR filmmaking tutorial site Fenchel & Janisch shared this simple trick for getting similar results using the tripod already at your disposal.

Photographer Jared Polin recently had the opportunity to photograph the musician Macklemore in concert. Fortunately, instead of just shooting the three song set and moving on with his life, he brought his GoPro along to give interested photographers a taste of what it's like taking photos from the pit at a packed out concert.

He put the above video together afterwards, adding his own commentary to give us some perspective of what exactly was going through his head as he tried to line up the perfect shot.

Having hundreds of thousands of images categorized, tagged and sorted on a computer is a wonderful thing. It makes all the non-photo-related chores that used to go along with the art of photography many times simpler and sometimes even automated. Instead of labeling and filing away into plastic sleeves, fighting off dust and taking up space in your closet, we now batch name, drag into a “folder” and easily back up onto an external drive for redundancy (or maybe even that ambiguous cloud we all have heard so much about).

Storing your images digitally is certainly convenient, but it may prove detrimental in the long run.

Back in the mid 2000s, when Tiger Woods was the number two player in the world (and about to embark on a 281-week number one run such as has never been seen again), he was part of a Nike commercial shot by director Frank Todaro. In a fit of inspiration, Todaro asked Woods to "go ahead and aim for the camera" -- and much to the camera's disappointment, Woods did.

I have always been interested in photos. When I was younger, I used to pore through drawers of photos and photo albums that my parents made, looking at them, rearranging them and remembering the moment that they were taken.

I loved those photos. When I went to college and returned home for holidays and summers, I would always return to those drawers, collect the photos to view the new ones and to catch up on everything that had happened while I was away. When I looked at the pictures, I tried to imagine myself there and what I would have been doing at that time.

This little story started after I’d bought a Ricoh GRD IV and GV-2 viewfinder. Due to some unforeseen financial issues, I realized I had to sell it. I didn’t think this would be a problem since I’d only used it around three or four times. So optimistically, I went about advertising on eBay, Gumtree and Craigslist. The next day I received an email via the Craigslist ad from ‘Pamela Richard’ asking for me to reply “asap”. This is where it all began.

You may never take local birds and weeds for granted again after spending some time with Meet Your Neighbors, a photo project aimed at documenting the huge variety of the biosphere one species at a time.

Street photographer Eric Kim recently found himself in New York, and on his last day there he visited Kane's Diner, a spot that all his NYC friends insisted he must go before he left. After a meal of steak, eggs and conversation with his friendly waiter, he decided he would get his courage up and ask the waiter if it would be ok to take his picture.

Fortunately for us, he was able to attach his GoPro to the hot shoe on his Ricoh GR and capture the entire experience -- from momentary hesitation through impromptu photo shoot -- in the above POV video.

Photographer Jeff Cable has come a long way from his first few gigs shooting Bar and Bat Mitzvahs in San Francisco. Mostly sports-related, his résumé now includes images from the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, a stint as the official Team USA Hockey photographer during the 2010 games in Vancouver and the Team USA Water Polo photographer during the 2012 games in London.

In this B&H Event Space seminar, however, he's not going to just scroll through a bunch of pictures and talk about how he composed or shot them. Instead, he's sharing some thoughts on post-processing: specifically, the 15 features in Photoshop that he believes every photographer should know.

Tutorials are available for photographers of all levels, but many of the tutorials you'll find online have to do with grasping a basic technique or tackling an intermediate lighting scenario. The above tutorial falls much closer to the pro level.

Photographer Phillip McCordall -- an award-winning still life photographer -- put this tutorial together to show those interested in jewelry photography how to professionally photograph a highly reflective gold watch.

If you've never attempted to photograph the night sky, be it a constellation or a planet, the idea may seem daunting. You may think that you need a specific type of camera or that you need to invest in a high-quality telescope.

While those things can be true in certain situations, astronomer Mark Thompson takes a minute in the video above to show you how to capture great photos of the night sky using very little in way of equipment.

Given the recent leaps Magic Lantern has been making regarding mind-blowing RAW video capabilities for both old and new Canon cameras, there are probably a lot of Canon owners out there who are thinking of giving the custom firmware a try for the first time.

However, before you go installing one of the nightly builds (the unstable ones that can actually do RAW video), we would suggest installing the current stable build and getting to know the ins and outs of Magic Lantern first. With that in mind, here's a quick tutorial put together by Dave Dugdale from Learning DSLR Video that walks you through the steps of installing Magic Lantern for the first time.

Photographer Glyn Dewis shared this cool little technique that lets you work with a black background even if you don't have an actual backdrop with you. It's a fairly common trick that he refers to as "the invisible black background," and it's a nifty little tip that many photographers may want to keep up their sleeve.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of years shooting personal projects as a way to get hired by the companies with whom I really want to work. When I began this process, my images were fairly tame. I assumed that mainstream and technically-correct images were better than free-form zaniness.

But then I started attending portfolio reviews, where I had the opportunity to sit down with industry buyers to find out what it is they really wanted to see. It was surprising to discover that my loopier ideas resonated more, even if they weren’t necessarily in the style of the company to whom I was pitching.

With the availability of a whopping 1TB of storage space now available to users on Flickr, it wasn't long before someone out there found other ways to put 1TB of storage space to good use. That is to say, the uploading of files other than images.

That's just what Redditor rlaw68 has done, allowing the user to upload packaged files by essentially tricking the Flickr servers into thinking you're merely uploading an image. The process involves putting two files in one folder, a GIF image (though some users have been able to do this with other image file extensions) and an archive file (such as a .zip or .rar), followed by combining them to create what only appears to be an image file.

We all know by now how Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer unleashed the collective fury of photographers and the creative community during her presentation of the new Flickr with a few poorly chosen words. She has since clarified her statement, but the real issue is that the distinction between photographer and professional photographer is fuzzy at best in the minds of most people, particularly those that know little about the world of photography.

This guide is what I do during wedding days, and I typically photograph the cake right when I enter the reception location. Overall, I take 4 shots of the cake: 1 vertical, 1 horizontal, 1 detail of topper, and 1 detail of the base or whatever is the most interesting on the cake.

This process takes me literally 30 seconds. That’s it; done. Move on to centerpieces. This guide is for photographing real cakes on real wedding days for wedding photography professionals.

Dear (new’ish) Model,

My name is Other Model. I have spent the last couple of years finding out a few things that I wish I’d known from the start. Please don’t think I’m patronising as I mean this only in goodwill, as there is absolutely no gain for me by sharing these cheats. Not all of my points will be valid for you as posing varies in each genre. Just take what you can and ignore the rest. If only one suggestion helps your future career then my time has been well spent…

I am a former kid. I have lived through the trauma of bad photos taken of me by my father. I was not photogenic, and admittedly he had a cheap camera. He had a knack for catching the incredibly awkward moments of childhood in a way that now makes me cringe. If I could go back in time and give my 1970′s dad a few tips on how to take better pictures of me I would.

As a former kid recovering from the trauma of bad photographs, I feel like it is my duty to future kids of the world to give parents and photographers some tips I have learned on how to take some great photos of kids. Or, at the very least, photos that won’t make your kid cringe when they get older.

Before running out for Botox or for a fancy photographer, here are 10 quick and easy things you can do to improve how you look in photos:

Have a lot of shots taken of you, and only keep the best. Focus on flattering posture and angles. Know facial expressions that work for you. Make sure your eyes are facing the light. Pay attention to what you are wearing, your grooming, the lighting and background.