Each year, my photographic instrumentation students build very simple focus stacking systems. After several years, I decided to construct a more advanced version that could move a stepper-motor-driven stage to precise positions, automatically collect a series of images, and then manually use a stacking program for combination into a single high-depth-of-field image.
Choosing the correct shutter speed is imperative. Here’s how it works and why you should take it into consideration when shooting any photograph.
In my previous article, we embarked on an adventure that started with a basic understanding of metering and exposure. Hopefully, you appreciate how the camera measures light and how its aperture, ISO, and shutter speed can be balanced to expose the image correctly. Each of those changes the way the image looks, and here’s what the aperture does.
Photography requires greater technical understanding than any other art form. I’ve been teaching people at all levels of photography for well over a decade. At the start of each workshop, I always begin by explaining metering and basic exposure settings. A major foundation of good photography, these settings are often the least understood, but they are among the easiest things to get right.
If you’re someone who makes a living by creating things with your computer, or even an enthusiastic hobbyist, chances are that eventually, you’re going to need more room to store all of your stuff than can be provided by the drive(s) built into your computer. Arguably more importantly, if you’re especially attached to some of the work you’ve done and would like to protect it from loss, you’re going to want some method of backing up your data.
Astrophotography has exploded in popularity over the past decade, thanks to ever-improving sensors, automated tracking mounts, and processing software that practically polishes your stars for you. But in a digital world obsessed with data, sharpness, and pixels, I found myself increasingly disengaged.
While photographing wide-angle nightscapes is a common occurrence for astrophotographers, not many capture the faint nebulae and distant galaxies hidden beyond the Milky Way. Trevor Jones, creator of AstroBackyard, turned his obsession with space into a dedicated passion, teaching himself astrophotography to share the deep-sky he first witnessed through a telescope. Now a successful YouTuber and respected voice in the community, Jones helps demystify the process.
As a photographer, if there is one thing I despise when editing my photos, it is jumping between multiple editing apps with one single photo and ending up with duplicate files where my settings are burned in and can’t be tweaked down the line.
Google launched new AI-powered Arts & Culture experiments this week, including Learning Light, an experiment by Google Arts & Culture Lab artist in residence Jack Wild. This interactive tool walks users through lessons and experiments to help them learn about lighting.
Words play a significant role in photography in many ways as we talk and write about them. I created the above image many years ago using an online app, Wordle, which used text content and analyzed the significant words. The larger the word, the greater the frequency of use.
The difference between a good landscape photo and an extraordinary one often comes down to one thing: Light. And there's a magical window of time, called the Blue Hour, that offers some of the most atmospheric, cinematic light in landscape photography. However, many photographers overlook or struggle to fully capture its unique potential.
Film photographer and educator Tim Klein's recent YouTube video explains the tricky concept of exactly why aperture affects your depth of field in a very digestible way.
Taking on a personal project is the next level. It makes you treat photography as an art form. Like in any art, you first start with one-offs, singles, or short stories, and only then approach writing a novel. And this is how I invite you to treat your personal project, as writing a novel, as opposed to snapping unconnected stories here and there.
The images of Japan that spring to mind are of the bustling, neon-splashed streets of Tokyo—towering walls of steel and glass, teeming pedestrians dodging traffic. But the Land of the Rising Sun also harbors visions of natural beauty that stretch the eye to the horizon and tug at the soul.
As a photographer, you are taught to see different compositional elements in other people’s work, and you apply the elements that resonate with you to your own work.
For some people, a car or a motorcycle is nothing more than a method of getting from point A to point B. It is a tool, an instrument, something that serves a purpose and nothing more.
The high-speed class at Rochester Institute of Technology learns Arduino programming and some simple circuits as an introduction on triggering high-speed flashes in complicated situations. One of the easiest high-speed events to study is a balloon popping. This simple event is also one of the safest high-speed events too.
When thinking about how to get started with wedding photography, you’ll want to make a checklist of things you need to do, have, or create. Today I’ll give you a starting point as well as prompts to help you customize your list. The first thing you might notice is that it’s not all about photography.
This article is about how to make a time-lapse system that controls the lighting conditions and triggers the camera shutter for time-lapse plants.
One of the crucial elements of a wedding day is the timeline. As photographers, the timeline dictates what types of photos you’ll be shooting and when you’ll be shooting them. Today we’re going to talk about how to create a wedding photography timeline to make your shooting experience better for you and your clients.
In the world of photography, achieving precise focus is a requirement when capturing great images. Whether you're shooting a landscape, a candid portrait, or a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in a fast-paced event, sharp focus can make or break your image.
Darkroom printing has long been an increasingly forgotten part of film photography. Even with many new photographers picking up film in recent years, a lot of them seem to ignore the practice of darkroom printing.
Photoshop can feel infinite. It’s a lot like a high-tech espresso machine or a sports car: you don’t have to use all of its features for it to be functional, but when you can, it’s a powerful tool.
This article is a little guide on how I have had luck shooting photos at concerts. This is by no means the only way to do it, nor can I say that it will be the best way to do it for everyone. All I can say is that I recommend bringing a 35mm camera into some concerts. It really is a fun way to document your night!
Dune: Part II was recently released in theaters, garnering positive reviews from movie-goers and reviewers alike. Over at Kolari, we were hyped to see infrared photography used in one of its most visually stunning movie sequences in recent memory.
As photographers moved from film to digital photography, they gained a new flexibility that changed the entire process. However, what was lost in that transition was a need for a more tangible connection to images that only a printed photo can provide.
For years photographers have been able to make images of the same person in different settings. And now AI can do the same.
Texture layers are photos that are normally blended with other images as part of a composite rather than being used on their own. They can be color, monochrome, detailed, or blurred. The idea is simply to add an extra level of interest to a picture. In this guide, we will look at various ways of collecting and using texture layers for your photography projects.
Many serious photographers say you must calibrate and profile your monitor, and maybe they’re right. But most camera users in this world enjoy their pictures without getting bogged down by such technicalities.
Adobe Photoshop contains a very broad and deep set of tools for making edits and adjustments to images. While there is little limitation to what can be achieved using the native tools available in Photoshop for more than two decades, they may not be as intuitive and user-friendly to photographers who have spent most of their time editing raw images in Lightroom.
