Briefing a photographer can be challenging, especially if you haven’t hired one in the past. A good brief provides all the key information about your project that a photographer will need to make logistical, technical and creative decisions.
This morning I woke up early to photograph the descending supermoon on top of the famous St. Nicholas church in Amsterdam. But the supermoon was "just 96%" visible this morning as it is not completely full until tomorrow. Nevertheless, I love the slight shadow in the edge of the moon so I picked today as the day to shoot.
Seeing spots in your photos? Your camera's sensor might need a cleaning. If you'd like to go a do-it-yourself route and beyond a simple bulb blower, Michael The Maven made this 13-minute video walkthrough on how you can go about cleaning a mirrorless camera sensor.
Want to navigate through a large set of photos and assign star ratings using only your voice instead of your keyboard? It's extremely easy to set up for any image organization software if you use a Mac. Here's a 6.5-minute tutorial by photographer Tony Hoffer on how to set this up.
I'm a photographer in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, and I've been shooting the St John's International Busker Festival for the last 6 years. It's not a paid gig -- I do it for the fun and the challenge and to support the event.
Mystified by talk of "guide number" and "flash power"? Gerald Undone made this helpful 10-minute video that explains everything you need to know about the light from strobes and speedlights, from common misconceptions to practical formulas that will help you light your shots.
If you don't have access to a full cyclorama wall or large studio, you're in luck. In this 2-minute video, I'll teach you how to create a pure white background and light the subject using a single light source.
A few months ago I was inspired to try and see what shapes I could create while attaching a Lume Cube to my drone. I’d seen photographer like Phill Fisher do shapes in the sky manually and was extremely impressed, but I didn’t have the time to learn how to fly shapes manually. So instead I scoured the Web for drone apps that could make things like this possible.
I have been looking into shooting other sports outside of the motorsport world, and I have been particularly interested in soccer, basketball, and baseball. After doing some research, I found that some sports shooters covering these type of events use different remote trigger setups such as foot pedals and cable release buttons.
Have you ever had a moment in your life where a friend, co-worker or client comes to you and ask you for a specific image and you just can’t find the original? If you’re like me with a few Lightroom catalogs containing ten thousands of photographs, then this situation will likely happen.
Editing images with software like Lightroom typically involves changing parameters like exposure, contrast, highlights, shadows, and so on for more than 90% of your work. These parameters are controlled using sliders that you have to drag with your mouse -- sliders that emulate physical controls. But why not use such physical controls like sliders or control dials directly?
Even if you've worked with the Curves Tool in Photoshop for years, they may still be some useful tricks that you've never come across before. Here's a helpful 2-minute video by Adobe that contains 13 different tips.
Want to shoot a "bullet time" shot but don't have an ultra-expensive camera array or high-speed camera? Here's a 27-second video showing a brilliantly cheap and easy way you can create the same effect with any video camera.
I’ve written about this project in the past, as I originally made the rain machine and shot with it in 2012, but we’ve now done it in video form! Hopefully it shows a little more detail about the construction and how I shot with it.
Is your Sony camera not tethering to Capture One Pro or any other software on your Mac or Windows computer? I had this issue for quite some time and thought there must be some issue with my system, or camera, or wire -- nope. I decided to write a message to Capture One and get a fix but no one could help me.
I am constantly asked questions about how I started and how to start shooting film. So, here we go! This guide is intended to be a story of my introduction to film as a landscape photographer, provide some tips, introductions, and guidance, but in no means is it intended to be a foolproof method of how to shoot film.
It’s not often I get to shoot very simple, clean white light shots, but in a recent shoot the model asked if she could get some updated ‘Polaroids’. For those of you not familiar with the term when used in reference to a model shoot, it’s actually not the now-obsolete and ludicrously expensive single-shot film, but a request for very basic portraits of the model for their agency.
Camera lens cleaning pens use fine carbon particles to help cleanly remove smudges from your glass. Do you know what else has carbon particles? Soot. Here's a short 2.5-minute video in which photographer Mathieu Stern shows how you can use ordinary candle soot to get the same cleaning power as popular lens pens.
Sometimes, you’re forced to work with what you’ve got, even if that means just the flashlight on your phone. In this 10-minute video, you’ll learn 5 ways to light portraits using just a phone flashlight.
“Do you have 9 lights?” The account manager at Oakland University asked me. Somewhat inspired by a Queen album cover, he was looking to create an image where 9 award-winning students stood out in a dramatized version of a newly renovated space on campus. While I understood the goal of the session, I immediately knew rigging 9 lights up would be nearly impossible while showing such a vast space. I told him that it may take some time, but I could get it done with just 2 lights.
Want to learn how to get your portrait subjects to give you the poses and expressions you're going for? Photographer Miguel Quiles made this helpful 11-minute video in which he shares one of his best tricks: getting subjects to play a character.
I’ve always had a fascination with geometry and man-made structures, their perfection has a strong attraction on me. It took me time to realize that what I appreciated most wasn’t necessarily their symmetry or the simple repetition of shapes but the parallelism between the various elements of the construction of an image.
You might have seen countless videos about travel photography tips online. Most of them touch on more or less the same stuff, which is either fairly obvious or pretty banal. Here's a 17-minute video about travel photography tips that I’d consider fairly unusual. They aren’t something you commonly hear.
If you're looking to expand your skill set in shooting portraits with umbrellas, check out this 8-minute video by photographer Miguel Quiles. In it, he introduces different types of umbrellas and then shares 5 different ways he uses them to create stunning portraits.
Here's a 6-minute video by photographer Kelly Hofer of Theory of Curiosity on Background Oriented Schlieren (BOS), a technique that lets you shoot photos and videos of heat using an ordinary camera and Photoshop.
How do you go about shooting one of the rarest sports cars in the world? Here's a 17-minute tutorial in which automotive photographer Mike D'Ambrosio shares the 5 steps of his "night flare" style while shooting a $2.75 million Maserati MC12.
I’ve been photographing weddings for 10 years now, so I’ve seen and dealt with nearly every lighting scenario possible, from a dark church with no windows, to a wedding ceremony at high noon with not a cloud in sight. But one thing most photographers don’t know is how to photograph in dappled light!
One of my favorite environments for photojournalism is the world of fashion, which I fell into almost accidentally when I first started out as a photographer. It has been one of the most interesting, rewarding experiences both artistically and personally, and I would like to share some thoughts on working in that scene.
After Canon handed out camera lens mugs at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, novelty lens look-alike mugs and cups have flooded the market. If you've received one or more of them as gifts, one thing you can do is turn them into camera lens desk lamps.
If you shoot a portrait and your subject is blushing or has red patches on their skin for whatever reason, removing the coloration is quick and easy in Photoshop. This 1-minute Photoshop tutorial by PiXimperfect shows how it's done.
The concept of equivalent exposure can be a tricky one to wrap your mind around when you're just getting started in photography. Photography enthusiast and animator Vincent Ledvina of Apalapse made this helpful 5.5-minute video that explains it in a simple and visual way.
Finding new ways to create isn't always easy, so you have to keep your eyes open for inspiration. One day while making my way down the rabbit hole of YouTube, I stumbled across a video. These guys had created 3 colored shadows off this pencil while keeping a perfectly white background. What in the world was this sorcery? Turns out it wasn't sorcery, it was science.
If you’re like me and you’ve tried to attach gels to your lights in the past, you’ve likely resorted to using one of the many types of sticky tapes available. When I used to manage a studio, I would see all manner of tapes being used to attach gels to hot modifiers.
I love bokeh and wanted to incorporate it into some upcoming holiday-themed beauty shoots. Well, I didn't want to shoot in the cold and I really didn't want to buy strings of lights (or generally spend any money at all) so I put together this great backdrop with basically just tinfoil.
Looking to get started in film photography and hunting for your first camera in the used marketplace? Photographer Casey Cavanaugh made this helpful 9-minute guide containing 5 tips to ensure you find a good one.
For a long time, I have been building sets or props for my images, which in time developed into making and selling furniture as a hobby business. I thought it about time I made videos detailing the process of those builds and the “high budget” results that can be achieved with little financial outlay and a little DIY.
How hard is it to remove a stuck filter on a camera lens? If it happens with a slim profile filter, you are left with less of a surface to grip.
Have you ever exported a photo, uploaded it to the Web, and then noticed that the colors looked off on your monitor? The reason is likely the color space of your photo. Here's a helpful 15-minute video by PHLEARN that provides a crash course on color spaces and how to use them.
In my opinion, the most under-appreciated tool within all of Lightroom has got to be Split Toning. Not only is this a great option to solve many photo-related problems, but it’s also an excellent way to work towards developing your own creative editing style.
If you have a TLR camera, here's a simple trick you can try to help you to focus more easily. All you'll need is some rubber bands, scissors, aluminum foil, and a ruler (optional).
It always takes time to really master any craft that you choose, and the same rings true for surf photography. I have spent countless hours in and out of the water over the years with the aim to improve my surfing pictures each time I enter the water. I find that no matter how much you think you know, there is always more to learn.
Before we get started, it's essential to understand that astrophotography takes time and practice in order to achieve good results, so don't get frustrated if you don't nail it on the first go.
Sports photography is both challenging and rewarding. It requires practice, the right equipment, and a dash of luck. There wasn’t a lot of literature available on the discipline when I was starting out, so I resorted to learning from the professionals at work around me (I was an athlete), adopted techniques from other photography disciplines such as bird photography, and improvised on them as I went along.
My name is Ettore Chiereguini, and I'm a freelance photographer from Brazil. Here are some things I've learned about photographing riots and protests.
When it comes to online educational content, there aren’t many photographers out there willing to share their mistakes when trying to create a photo. I think it’s fair to say that there are easily far more who only share their best work online and for good reason; as educators, you want to create an image of a photographer who makes little to no mistakes at all.
You're full of excitement, and new adventures and life experiences are just around the corner. You have finally completed those last minute errands and your bag is now bursting at the seams as you try to squeeze in the last few items before zipping that bad boy up and darting out the door for the airport. But you pause for a moment and find yourself staring at your bag. You think to yourself, "Have I forgotten anything?"
Food photographers have an arsenal of tricks up their sleeves to make food look delicious on camera. And more often than not, these hacks make use of non-edible products that aren't appetizing. Blossom has created an eye-opening video that reveals the dirty (sometimes literally) little tricks of food photographers.
Art has arguably been around almost as long as humans have. The moment we learned to mark something for others to see and interpret, the moment art was born. Thankfully for us photographers, we needn’t go quite that far back to begin learning from the history of art. In fact, we only need to go as far as the "Old Masters."
It seems the moody edit trend has been going strong for quite a few years now and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down. There’s probably not a better time of the year to capture moody landscape photos than the winter months.
Light diffusion panels can cost $80 to $100 or more when purchased retailed, but very little when you make them yourself, and to do so is very simple. I can’t tell you how many times I have been asked about my diffusion panels and where I get them from. The ones I use in my studio have all been custom-made to fit my needs, and I’ll show you just how to make your own.
