What is a photograph? There are many different ways to answer this simple question, but in basic abstract terms through the lens of lighting, every photograph is a combination of highlights and shadows. The only reason we see depth and dimension is in fact shadow. Understanding shadows is crucial in growing as a photographer.
Never take a blurry city twilight shot again! If you follow these tips, techniques, and gear recommendations, you'll never be disappointed with your cityscape photos again.
Light shaping tools are very expensive. What if you could take any object and turn it into a modifier? That would save you a lot of money as well as give some unique results. In this article, I will share some everyday objects that you can turn into light modifiers to get different looks.
I do mainly large format photography, and I often take my own self-portrait by using my pneumatic cable release that has a long cable and air bulb release. However, I have long been thinking about how to make a more modern kind of remote cable release. In this article, I will show how I created a DIY remote cable release.
If for any reason you need to downgrade your firmware update to an older one, there are two methods you can follow to revert to a previous version.
Google recently added Google Lens to its Chrome desktop Web browser. While it is a great tool, it replaced the "Search Google for image" option when right-clicking a photo. Here's a guide on how to continue doing reverse image searches with a right-click if you have lost it.
A big question every beginning commercial photographer asks themselves is how they should price their work. There is always a wide range of price points in all genres of photography, and they all depend on your level of work. But there is one truth that may apply to most photographers: you can’t apply a simple pricing strategy to your work.
When you're a photographer just starting to work with video, it can seem like color grading is a mystical art. However, it's simply the process of adjusting the colors in your video footage to achieve the final look you want.
Almost anything can be used as a light modifier. As long as it interacts with light in one way or another, it can be considered a light modifier. In this article, I will show you how to build a do-it-yourself (DIY) softbox with things you likely already have around at home.
The Tone Curve in Capture One 22 is by far my favorite tool to edit images, but it's usually one of the most difficult commands to get to grips with. It can definitely be one of your most valuable assets if you want to improve your editing skills.
Infrared photography is mostly used to create alternative and dreamy landscape pictures during bright days, giving nature specific hues from clear white to vivid yellow or red. But this technique has also a high potential in urban photography too, moreover at night.
Do you want to add a new dimension to your photos? Then lithophanes might be the thing for you. This is how you can bring an 18th-century art technique back to life with a 3D printer.
If you're wondering how you can shoot some stunning Christmas food photography, try shooting with holiday festive lights. In this video, I will go through in detail how to shoot with Christmas fairy lights. These lights will bring some festive spirit to your food photography and add sparkle to your Instagram feed this holiday season.
When it comes to photography, depth refers to the balance of what is in and out of focus. The right depth creates a sense of space and helps draw the viewer in, and adding depth to your product photography will help the product pop.
Darktable, RawTherapee, digiKam are undeniably powerful applications for processing RAW files. But while they offer a plethora of advanced editing and processing tools, using them to get the result you want requires and patience and some effort. But who has time for that?
The Geminid meteor shower is set to be a one of the most consistent meteor displays of the year, so we will be taking you through the preparation, shooting, and editing tips you'll need to capture the Geminid meteor shower from start to finish.
Can you think back to a time you were taking photos in a dinner scene and they just look "flash-y"? Why does flash never look natural? Well, in order to make flash look natural, you have to make flash part of the natural lighting scenario. Here’s how.
A lot of people have asked me in recent days how they can create and sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens), so I decided to write this tutorial on how you can mint (and hopefully sell) an NFT for free, with absolutely no gas fees or other costs to you.
Have you wanted to capture your own ink flow photographs at home? Below, I'll explain a few easy tips that make use of an inexpensive fish tank and a pot of ink or paint.
Online sales have long been the go-to for photographers looking to earn passive income. While you reach out to editors and communicate with clients about their latest headshots or food photos, have you considered which images you’ve already made might make you some quick cash?
Creating a do-it-yourself lighting setup for dappled natural light backgrounds isn’t as tricky or as involved to achieve as some setups and techniques, but it is a nice little idea to play with if the occasion arises.
Think you know the inverse-square law? How much of a "law" is it actually in the practice of photography? We are taught that the inverse-square law is the holy grail of understanding the laws of light. Some condense all the wonderful knowledge about light concepts to the inverse square law only. In this article, I want to invite you to take a step back and see how the inverse square law is wrong. Sometimes.
Capture One was recently updated with a dedicated before and after tool, and new powerful heal and clone tools. Before this update, the healing and cloning tools were unusable to me, but now with this update, I can save the time of moving back and forth between Capture One and Photoshop.
The most complex scenarios one can get in lighting are black on black and white on white. These scare most photographers, regardless of the genre. If black absorbs light and white bounces, how can you achieve natural-looking results with just one light?
The northern lights, otherwise known as aurora borealis, are the winter-time spectacle that sees northern skies filled with incredible dancing lights. Caused by the interaction of photons exciting the gas molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, they can appear as green, pink, or blue. Photographing them is near the top of almost all photographers’ wish lists, but getting a good shot is decidedly difficult.
Portraits are more than just capturing faces or expressions, they are moments in time that can evoke feelings and anchor lasting memories. Smartphones have made it easier to capture portraits with pleasing bokeh for dramatic effect, but there’s so much more to it than that.
When we think about websites, search engine optimization (SEO) is often top of mind. How is Google ranking you against other similar photographers? Are you showing up on the first page of search results? There’s no doubt SEO is important for every photographer to consider. However, there are some big misconceptions when it comes to SEO.
Right off the bat, I’m going to add the disclaimer that this tutorial will probably not be for every type of photographer out there. If you have no interest in exploring the creative opportunities that mobile photography offers, then this video may not be for you.
It’s not often that a new Lightroom update or feature is as positively received by users as last week’s Masking improvements. And there is a good reason for the fanfare because these new tools really are amazing... as well as a bit confusing and inconsistent.
Special effects are a fantastic and fun way to tell compelling stories through images. While they may seem complicated, the truth is, many special effects are easily done in-camera using tools you likely already have. In this video, I’ll be walking through how to create one of our signature portraits, the “Day vs. Night” effect.
If you follow food photographers on Instagram, I am sure you have seen some of the light or what I would describe as "airy" food photos that are popular at the moment.
In this tutorial, we share our lighting setup for a piece of glass stemware using minimal gear. To mimic this shot, you will need a black background, stripboxes, and speedlights.
Unless you’ve just emerged from a nuclear fallout bunker, you’ve likely already heard about Lightroom’s impressive new masking tools that Adobe announced at their annual Adobe Max conference. In fact, PetaPixel’s Ryan Mense wrote a wonderful hands-on article covering the expanse of these new masking tools.
For years, Apple's iPhone Live Photos has offered the coolest camera trick. With one click and no tripod, I could easily transform a body of water into a long exposure like dreamy shot, with long flowing water.
With careful composition and editing techniques, you can take your portrait game to the next level. In this video, I'll show how you can level up your portraits with this one simple tip.
Looking to improve your food photos ahead of this holiday season? If you stick to a few simple tips, there’s no reason why your photos shouldn’t go from no-go to "wow."
One of my favorite engagement photography techniques is getting up close to the subjects with a wide-angle lens. The resulting images feel alive and immersive. In this article and video, I'll be demonstrating the difference a wide-angle and a telephoto lens can make when capturing action.
If I can afford to, I always try to spend time in shops where I know there is a good selection of photo books. The books offer me inspiration for my photographs as well as the way I present my own work in printed publications.
Want to create a "small world" or "tiny planet" image in which a landscape photo (often a panorama) is turned into what looks like a miniature planet? Here's an easy-to-follow 2-minute tutorial that will teach you how to make one in Photoshop.
You don’t often see photographers using gels outdoors in natural light, but why? I think one of the core reasons you don't see too many natural light gel shots, is that you need a lot of power and control from your lights to make color gels visible in daylight.
In this 15 minute video, we break down a step-by-step approach to capturing the images needed to composite an attractive cosmetic drip.
You’ve likely already heard of the “Ring of Fire” photography technique. This is a visual trick popularized by famous wedding and portrait photographer, Sam Hurd. The Ring of Fire is created by using a piece of copper tubing to reflect light coming into the camera.
Social media is a vital part of how a business promotes itself, and having a wide variety of social media tools at your disposal is important. While you can link all your social media accounts together to create one post appearing on all of them, this strategy ignores unique opportunities each platform offers to its audience.
Don’t toss a photo just because the lighting isn’t the best. You may be able to bring it back alive in post-production. As photographers, we face countless different scenarios and it's nearly impossible to get the perfect shot 100% of the time.
Hi, this is photographer Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens. In this article and video, we’re going to take a look at how to set up a simple corporate portrait in a tight space.
I previously shared how I converted my Afghan Box Camera into a slide projector. The principle of the slide projector involves putting a light source at the back whose light passes through some condenser lens. The light then goes through the slide, passes through the projector lens, and is projected at a larger size on the projector screen.
Street photography might be one of the easiest genres of photography to slide into — it’s just you, a camera, and more or less walking around documenting humankind with an artistic flare — yet it can be quite difficult to progress beyond snapshot-looking images. This article will explore tips for improving your street photography using nothing more than a smartphone.
Landscape photography is often associated, or even equated, with the use of wide-angle lenses, however, this can lead to formulaic compositions. Telephoto lenses may seem like the province of wildlife photography, but alternating with them brings new creative opportunities for landscape photography.
Even though the Brush tool is not a new tool in Adobe Lightroom, you may be surprised by all the ways it can be used and all the advantages you can gain by using a brush. This is part of my daily workflow and I hope it will become part of yours!
In this nine-minute video from Workphlo, photographer Dustin Dolby explains how to light catalog quality reflective product photos using just a single Speedlight.