Tutorials

Light painting has become a popular technique in the age of digital photography. If you have always wondered how to do light painting photography yourself, you've come to the right place.

Your iPhone can nicely blur the background to enhance a photograph or video. A similar effect works well with video chat software, eliminating distractions and putting the focus on the subject. Whether you want to blur the background during a FaceTime call, snap a beautiful portrait photograph with your iPhone, or edit the background blur in pictures you've already captured, we'll explain how it works to help you get the blur you want from your iPhone.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day. You’re celebrating a special event with a photo session, getting your poses ready. You’ve posed countless times with family and friends, at parties, and for selfies. This should be a piece of cake, right? You say ‘cheese’ in your head and bring out the pearly whites. Then you check the camera to see the result.

You’ve been taking your camera everywhere, shooting photos of your experiences, and you love the way photography makes you see the world. Gradually, you’ve started to wonder what it would be like to turn your passion into a career. This guide will walk you through the process of how to become a photographer.

Most professional portrait photographers exclusively use strobes for a variety of reasons, but commercial photographer and director Isaac Alvarez explains that in some circumstances, there are still reasons to use constant lights.

Green screens, while incredibly commonplace in big-budget productions and Hollywood blockbusters, often get a very bad reputation in the hands of independent filmmakers.

Color Grading in Lightroom is a lot of fun, but for beginners, it can be a bit overwhelming. This often leads to people thinking you need to adjust all the sliders there are, but often this just leads to a strange-looking photo.

Mood boards are more than a random collection of photos found online. If you want successful photoshoots that deliver what you, your client, or your team envisioned, mood boards can help you. All it takes is some brainstorming and curation.

Photographers who shoot portraits are likely familiar with Rembrandt-style lighting as well as other styles such as loop, butterfly, and so on. This is especially true if you have taken a lighting class or have been reading up on the subject. You may be using this specific type of portrait lighting in previous images and might not even realize it until reviewing later. (Ask me how I know).

With Apple's iCloud, it's easy to download photos from your online photo library to any device. If you own an iPhone, iPad, or Mac this can be set up to happen automatically. From a Windows computer, there are a few more steps required and the same is true for an Android phone or tablet.

Being an accomplished photographer means developing a range of complementary skills all of which combine in an agreeable process that, hopefully, results in good photographs.

Live music photography (also known as concert photography) is one of the most exciting and gratifying genres of photography. Granted, it’s not for everyone and it requires a lot of work in not-so-ideal conditions. However, if you're up for a challenge, you could find it rewarding and capture some rather unique and interesting shots. But behind every shot from the pit, there are some basic standards and sometimes unwritten codes of conduct that every photographer should adhere to.

In the past, double exposing film was one of the most popular special effects used in photography, and often could be hit or miss. The idea was to combine two (or more) photos into the same image.

Apple makes it very easy to delete a photo from an iPhone but removing all of them at once can be quite a bit more challenging. There are also some complications to be aware of, like accidentally deleting photos from iCloud. Knowledge is power and with a few tips, you'll be able to delete only what you'd like from your iPhone and make it take effect immediately.

Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter have all been chasing TikTok's domination in short-form video for some time now. But while its competitors focus on short-form video, TikTok has made the unexpected pivot to photography.

The iPhone has a built-in timer feature that can snap a picture a few seconds after the shutter button is pressed. This can be very helpful when you want to be in the photo and need the full quality and all of the options available when using the rear cameras. The front-facing camera isn't bad but doesn't capture as much light and that often results in a photo that's a bit flatter and softer.

For decades, there’s a piece of gear that I’ve always had in my camera bag. This would be a handheld light meter. I feel I’m in the minority these days by still using a handheld light meter and that’s too bad this is so.

Shooting dancers can be one of the most daunting photographic subjects but also one of the most rewarding in terms of the final images captured. Dance can be an unforgiving subject, and unless one delves deeper and tries to understand the movement, the choreography, the piece, and how to capture the light hitting the dancers, it will prove tough to achieve award-winning imagery.

Today I’m going to answer the question that’s been burning on your heart. What oh what should I wear when photographing a wedding? It’s a more important question than you might realize but not for the reasons you think.

At some point in their career, an artist will be approached by a gallery or will approach galleries looking for representation or to have an exhibition. You’ve had some success at local art shows and fairs and have made some inroads selling your photography online, but now you want to get your work out there and start looking for galleries to show your work or represent you.

In my complete guide to wedding photography, I addressed 10 critical moments that a wedding photographer can’t miss. In this guide, I want to dial in and take a closer look at what photos should be taken at a wedding.

We can learn about photography composition techniques and we can learn about wedding photography, but how do we combine the two lessons into real world application?

Film set the photographic standard in more ways than one. The contact sheet, for example, once an essential aspect of the film process, has survived the transition to digital. Although it serves a slightly different purpose these days, the contact sheet can help you see the results of a shoot and make your best photos easier to share.

BeReal is a new social media network that puts a focus on authenticity. Others have made similar claims but this goal has proven difficult to achieve. This guide will look at what BeReal is and how to use it.

You have a photograph in mind and now you want to try and make it a reality. Or, a client has contacted you to help them realize a photograph they have in mind. What now?

What is the most common compositional rule in photography? Most likely your answer is the rule of thirds. Undoubtedly, this is a very powerful technique to compose an appealing photograph, but is it the only way? Of course not.

One of the most (seemingly) basic tools in Photoshop is the venerable Crop Tool. Used to cut way portions of an image to only leave the desired area, the Crop Tool might appear to be simply a one-trick pony. However, there is a lot more to here than you might think. In this guide, I’m going to break down the various options for making the best use of the Crop Tool.

At some point in time during your photography career, you will probably decide to start offering limited edition prints of some of your best work. It’s a good idea to sell your prints as editions because it’s the way you can court collectors and galleries to purchase or represent your work.

When using manual focus, it’s difficult to tell exactly where your plane of focus is. It’s possible to make a guess using your eye, but you can still be slightly off and end up with an image that is out of focus. Similar to how histograms take the guesswork out of exposure, focus peaking uses an algorithm and a simple visual aid to help take the guesswork out of manually focusing your lens.

A Live Photo can be made from a video, but this isn't a built-in capability of the iPhone. Instead, a third-party app is required. Alternatively, an iPhone can capture a Live Photo if the camera app is set up to do so. The iPhone’s default setting of Live Auto, however, leaves the decision to an Apple algorithm that might choose to snap a still photo instead. Thankfully, this setting can be adjusted to force Live Photo to be recorded every time if preferred.

Time is money. That’s nothing we don’t already know but it’s probably the reason you’re interested and wondering how to cull and edit a wedding quickly. Maybe you’re overwhelmed with work during the wedding season or your clients are bugging you for a faster turnaround.

A passport is almost always a necessity when traveling outside your country, and a photograph is required along with identity documents, filling out a form, and paying a fee when applying. The photograph is potentially the most challenging part of the process. The good news is that the photo can be taken and printed at home as long as careful attention is given to the rules.

Let’s talk about wedding photography flash and what you need to know. Shooting with flash can be intimidating if you’re just starting out but it can be freeing the more you know how to use it. There might be times when you need to use flash and there might be times when you choose to use flash.

I’ve used poly-boards, bounce-boards, and even white sheets and white walls as lighting modifiers to soften the light in the past, but arguably the quickest and most efficient way to instantly achieve beautifully soft light, is the V-Flat.

My wife and I recently spent some time updating our estate plans, or what will happen to our “stuff” after we die. Since we don’t have children and our other family and friends all know us in different ways and for different reasons, it seemed prudent to go ahead and get a first draft of our obituaries going.

Let's consider a situation. You went out for a photo shoot with your trusty camera or phone. On location, all the photos looked sharp on the small screen and when you returned to base and opened the photos on your computer you found some photos had missed focus. Worse in some photos the entire image seemed shaken and out of focus.

Apple makes it relatively easy to hide photos that are stored on an iPhone and this feature can be quite important when the phone might be used by anyone other than the owner of the device.

In this era of ubiquitous high-resolution color screens, it seems hard to recall that photography established itself without color. The medium earned its position in the worlds of journalism, popular culture, and fine arts long before Kodak introduced color film. But this does not relegate black-and-white photography to the basement. The genre remains powerful, present, and widely practiced today, with both film and digital cameras.

It will come as shock to no one that digital cameras are as complex as the manufacturing processes that make them. Thanks to the wizardry of Steven Sasson, our photographic pursuits are inextricably linked to the cold mass of integrated circuits, photovoltaic diodes, and the other discrete components that make up our modern tools.

One of the questions I get most often is, how do I price my art photography. In this article, I will share some advice and tips on things you should keep in mind when determining what you will charge for your fine art photography prints.

Resizing images in Adobe Photoshop sounds like it should be a trivial and simple operation, and for many uses and users, it is. It’s when one starts looking closely at the details in a resized image that it becomes apparent you should be looking into the options of the resize image dialogue box.

It can be heartbreaking to discover a favorite picture on an iPhone or a photograph from a recent shoot has been unexpectedly deleted. The good news is that there are several ways to recover deleted photos, some quite simple and most can be done directly from the iPhone itself.

The period of time when the sun is just below the horizon is commonly referred to as “blue hour,” and comes directly before or after golden hour depending on the time of day. While most people know about golden hour’s benefits for photography, blue hour is often left out when thinking about optimal lighting conditions.

While the Victoria Falls are neither the widest nor the highest waterfalls in the world, they are undoubtedly the largest. At 1,708 meters wide and 108 meters high, they combine to form the largest single sheet of falling water anywhere on earth.

Working with your spouse in a photography business can have huge advantages as long as you’re ready and able to overcome the challenges. While there are many benefits of self-employment, one of the main drawbacks is that a photographer has to wear many hats. However, if you are part of a team then you can divide those responsibilities between you and your partner.

I recently heard a photographer say he’d spent 17 hours going through 10,000 images, deciding which ones were worth saving. My first thought was, “I hope he’s retired.” My second thought, though, was that he badly needed a lesson on speeding up his workflow. Which led me to write this guide on how to turbocharge your photography workflow.

Travel photographer and content creator Pat Kay has released an extensive and detailed video on how to edit a digital image in Adobe Lightroom to make it look as though it was captured on film.

18-year-old Vijay Suddala created a stunning composite image of the moon from his home in southern India with just a $150 telescope and his smartphone.

If you’ve been outside during a nice sunrise or sunset, chances are good you’ve heard the term “golden hour.” It’s one of the best times to do many types of photography and a beautiful time to be outside. This guide will help you understand golden hour, when it happens, and how to make the most of it through various types of photography.