Tutorials

Wide angle lenses aren’t as easy to use as a lot of photographers think. They shrink the background and give the foreground strange proportions. They include all sorts of distractions from the scene in front of you, plus a lot of negative space. And yet… used right, wide angle lenses are incredible tools. This 7.5-minute video and article explain the ins and outs of using your wide angle for maximum effect.

PrismLensFX unveiled a set of Variable Prism Filters back in March that lets photographers achieve prism effects using specially-designed lens filters. Upon seeing the prism filters, landscape photographer Christian Mögnum Möhrle decided to try his hand at making his own do-it-yourself version.

Photographer Eric Floberg made this 10-minute video showing how he creates in-camera double-exposure photos using a tilt-shift lens, a technique he calls his "creative bread and butter."

That title is a mouthful, but I didn’t know how to better describe the style. Over the years, I’ve been refining and perfecting my newborn photo technique to get the specific light and airy high-key look I want. While every home I visit is different, and some are more challenging than others, these strategies have given me the best and most consistent results.

Composition is so important in creating an image and it's a cornerstone of the four key elements that make up a photo: subject, light, timing, and composition. However, one of the hardest things to learn in landscape photography is seeing that image and putting the elements together in the most pleasing arrangement.

It is a well-known fact that Lightroom catalogs are nothing more than SQLite files. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to search multiple LR catalogs at once.

A little while ago I was teaching one of my lighting workshops and one of the attendees was looking to implement some of the set-ups I was sharing into his workflow. Seems simple enough right? Well, it turns out this photographer was a Formula 1 trackside shooter that needed to get portraits of drivers and crew.

In this video and article, we’ll show you how you can use a bridal veil to create interesting flares and light leaks in-camera. It can be hard to get the right amount of flare in an image, especially when the sun is overpowering the frame. Here is a simple trick we like to use to block just enough sun to get the perfect shot.

Shooting directly into the Sun, whether it is sunrise or sunset, often results in some areas around the Sun getting clipped, and we get these rather harsh edges in our sky. Even when shooting bracketed or underexposing for the highlights, we may not achieve a pleasing result around the strongest light in a scene.

Living in St. Louis almost my entire life, I was lead to believe the lights of the bustling city were too bright to make seeing stars anywhere nearby impossible. As I grew older and started getting serious about photography, I realized that was correct... kinda.

If you're a relatively new photographer who's using the strap that originally came with your camera, here's a 10-minute video that may be helpful to you. In it, photography educator Phil Steele runs through the basics of camera straps while offering some helpful tips and tricks you may not have learned before.

Can you shoot Milky Way photos using an entry-level crop-sensor DSLR and a basic kit lens? Yes, you can, but there are some tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to improve your results. Photographer Michael Ver Sprill (AKA Milky Way Mike) made this 16-minute video tutorial as a basic guide to doing this.

Freehand flower photography out in nature (or your own neighborhood) is one of my favorite photography genres. In this article and the 8-minute video above, I will give you my 8 best tips for flower photography in the wild.

I firmly believe that assisting a photographer whose work you admire is one of the greatest learning opportunities available to us and can provide invaluable experience.

When you purchase a new camera, how much time do you spend reading the manual? I find most camera manuals rather difficult to follow along with, and I for one very rarely use them. What’s interesting is that camera manuals only describe the technical “how to” side of things, like how to turn on your camera or how to attach a lens, but it doesn’t tell you how to truly become comfortable with your camera.

In this article, I'm going to show you how you can make a DIY darkroom safelight using very simple products from IKEA. Yes, IKEA the store that sells furniture that's almost made of cardboard.

If you need to make a complex selection in Photoshop that involves hair or fur on a background, the powerful Refine Edge Brush is ready to help. Here's a 1-minute Photoshop Magic Minute video by Adobe that will show you how to get started with the tool.

Lighting two people can be difficult to do, so I’m going to use 5 portrait lighting positions to breakdown how to best light a couple.

In the "Olden Days," professional science was still in its infancy. People who trained in science and practiced science were using every ounce of creativity and imagination at their disposal to discover the nature of the world. They were scrappy and inventive. In this article, I will outline a modern replication of the experiment that produced the first color photograph ever made.

Making selections is one of the most basic things that you do in Photoshop, but there are many handy features and tricks that can help you work with selections. Here's a 2-minute video by Adobe with 7 helpful tricks, some of which you may not have known before.

Having returned to photography after a lay-off of some years, I had discovered a whole new world, where, among other things, computers had largely replaced darkrooms. It soon became apparent that my Windows 10 laptop was sadly underrated for the tasks required. I began to research alternatives.

Over the past couple of years, smoke bombs have become a popular photography accessory that adds a colorful new twist to portraits. They are being used for street portraiture, gender reveals, engagement shoots, and so much more. We found the best smoke bomb for photography usage and in this 6.5-minute video and article, we are going to give you 5 tips on how to use them safely and creatively.

We came up for the idea to do this shoot when we saw someone on Instagram who was dropping flowers into milk and just manually trying to get the timing right. Although they were able to get nice photos of the splash some of the time, they would miss the splash just as often as they were able to capture it. We knew we could build a rig that let us capture the perfect flower splash moment every single time. In all, we took about 70 photos and successfully captured the splash every time.

Let’s face it – cars are meant to be driven. And there is no better way to show off a car than with a rolling shot, or “roller”. Here, I’ll go into detail about how to set up your camera and everything else needed to create the perfect roller using an image from a shoot with Performance BMW Magazine.

Your actor headshots, combined with your actor showreel, are the foundations of your actor profile. They are without a doubt a key marketing tool for your acting career. It’s important to prepare yourself in order to get the most out of your session.

One of the most asked questions I get is how I add contrast to pictures taken in very low contrast conditions like dense fog. This made me think it would perhaps be of use to many of you if I wrote an article about contrast and how you can fix contrast issues in post processing.

This article is for all of the new photographers new to lighting and to all who think they are limited by their lack of gear! I will show you how you can create this whiskey image with just one light, in-camera, and with no editing.

By carefully applying blur to a portrait, you can make it look like it was shot with a shallow depth-of-field using a fast (and expensive) lens. Here's a 12-minute tutorial by PiXimperfect that teaches the key to creating this faux blur in a realistic way.

Photographer Miguel Quiles made this 7-minute video tutorial on a trick you can use to shoot eye-catching portraits. It's all about paying attention to and manipulating the catchlights in your subject's eyes.

What is the best way to light glass? Glass doesn’t look good when you shine light directly at it. It soaks up the light it doesn’t define it. It just gives you specular highlights little pinpoints that don’t photograph well.

If you're always looking for ways to optimize and streamline your photography post-processing workflow, here's an 11-minute video for you. Jesús Ramirez of Photoshop Training Channel shares 15 helpful Photoshop keyboard shortcuts (AKA hotkeys) that aren't as commonly known.

For Easter, I made a pinhole camera out of a chocolate Easter egg. In this 5-minute video and article, I'll show you how it's done.

Today we are going to talk about placing a softbox -- not the positions that you would use, like a Rembrandt, a butterfly, or a loop, but how to place it once it’s in position. Let’s talk about how to finesse the look that you want to achieve while using a softbox.

Want a camera stabilizer that's sure to attract (perhaps unwanted) attention? Just add a rifle-style stock to it. Alex over at I did a thing made this humorous 5-minute video showing how he built such a stabilizer for his own DSLR.

I was often disappointed by my Canon 5D Mark II not having a flipping or better yet a detachable monitor. Instances of this happened when I placed the camera on a fully extended tripod and had the camera pointed downwards to make a photograph of something on the floor. Getting one’s eye above the view screen was sometimes impossible.

900 dpi prints?! That’s kinda crazy, right? You just need to print at 300 or 240 or 200 because somebody on the Internet told me no one can tell the difference.

To shoot directly into the sun is both challenging and fun. Challenging because it can be difficult to control the light and, not least, our images are very often marred by sun flare. One simple way of avoiding flare is to shoot an extra exposure with one finger or more obscuring the sun.