It was the late-eighties. I had been working at Galoob Toys as a designer on the Micro Machines line, creating cars and playsets for several years. A dream job, drawing and painting cars and roadside architecture for a living, but I also craved something different that I could do for personal work.
Of all of the artistic photography styles, one of the most interesting is also the most basic-looking. However, don’t let that label fool you, there is nothing basic about the process of successful minimalist photography.
Since Milky Way Core season is in full swing, in this article I am going to level up and discuss one of my favorite topics: star trackers.
Not every photographer needs to hire agency models for their projects, and, fortunately, there are many freelance models to choose from, however, finding and hiring can be a daunting process for some.
What do you think are the two least used, and probably most important, pieces of your photography gear? I’ll give you a hint: you can’t buy them at a camera store.
While landscape photography is a lot about composition and on-location practices, one can never dismiss the importance of post-processing (or editing) the images. One question I am always asked is: "Why is editing necessary?"
After shooting cities all around the globe for the past 15 years, I managed to publish seven coffee table books featuring cities like Paris, Venice, Los Angeles, and New York. I learned the hard way when was the best time to shoot and want to save you the time and effort so you can make the best photos of cityscapes possible.
If you don’t control the background, you’re not controlling your image. In this video and article, I'll share 7 different ways to control your background and give you better images. These are simple techniques to master to improve your photography.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to create great fashion work that wows everyone? In this guide, I will break down all the steps you need to take in order to produce something that is of high quality. I'm aware of how hard it is to make fashion work, so in this guide, I am talking about the nitty-gritty, from idea to magazine submission.
Of all the effects that photographers tend to add to their landscape and travel photos, probably the most popular one is called the Orton Effect. When correctly applied, the Orton Effect can add a rich, dreamlike glow to your photos that will enhance them beyond what you can do in editors like Adobe Lightroom.
If you're among the list of creative professionals who recently moved to the new Apple M1 Macs, you might have discovered that the latest version of Photoshop is missing something you're used to seeing.
Are you wanting to get out and create photos, but don’t know where to start? Let me help with that. I'll give you an assignment that will help you by providing a framework and a structure for getting your camera off the shelf.
This article is aimed at people who would like to advance their basic photography skills. I assume that you already make decent photos and are familiar with f-stops, ISO, shutter speeds, etc. But I'm hoping that this read will prove worth your time and lead to even greater photographic skills and enjoyment.
The Lyrid meteor shower happens every year from April 16 through April 26, with the peak occurring typically around April 22. Taking great photos of the event does not require a high-end camera though, and you can get some great results with your smartphone by following these simple tips.
Want to get the best out of your photos this year? Using one photo as an example -- a photo I took in Paris with a Canon 5D Mark II to prove it can be done with a camera of nearly any age -- I will show five easy tips that will make dramatic differences in your images.
Aloha, and welcome back to my astrophotography tutorial write-ups. I wrote an article last month on the basics of photographing the Milky Way core season. Today I am going to continue this series and tell you about a game-changing technique that you have probably may have already heard about: image stacking.
A common post-production question involves Opacity and Fill, and what the differences are between them when it comes to photography. In this 14-minute video, Marc Newton from The School of Photography explains what sets them apart and how properly using them can dramatically improve your images.
Milky Way photos should first and foremost do one thing: fascinate. When the viewer's gaze loses itself in the vastness of the motif and he begins to dream, the photographer has achieved his goal.
Beautiful vistas and landscapes require very little in the way of adjectives when enjoyed in person, but trying to convey that majesty to someone through photos is a lot more challenging. Most of the time, a photo just doesn't really capture the awe-inspiring nature of reality.
Having a portable V-Flat in your photography kit can provide a unique tool when creating images for your clients. A V-Flat can be used as a background or a tool to bounce or absorb light on your subject.
It’s no secret that most photographers want the pro stuff. Indeed, perhaps your favorite YouTuber has a Canon R5 or the latest expensive L lens. Pro gear beats amateur gear in most areas, even if it's 10 years older. I know people who shot global campaigns in 2018 on a pro camera from 2009. Pro gear is great but expensive. Sometimes extremely expensive.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I've lost a shot because I didn't think through the basics well enough. I would of course have my composition and exposure settings dialed in and with that determined, you would think that I have what I needed to get the shot. But, in some cases, that just isn’t enough.
In this article, I'm going to tell you the story of my latest camera creation: a digital Polaroid camera that combines a receipt printer with a Raspberry Pi. To build it I took an old Polaroid Minute Maker camera, stripped out its guts, and replaced the innards with a digital camera, an E Ink display, a receipt printer, and an SNES controller to operate the camera.
One of the most misunderstood tools in Adobe Lightroom is the Calibration tool. This is kind of a shame, because it's also one of the most powerful tools available to us as photographers, both from a correction perspective and a creative perspective.
If you're a video game enthusiast who's also trying to get into photography, Texas-based photographer Mir-or-Image has a creative new video series for you: he's teaching photography skills through the photo modes in popular games.
Tomorrow is April Fools' Day, and with such a bummer of a year leading up to this point (and things are only now just starting to look better in a few places), everyone could use some laughs. To that end, photographer Richard Wakefield shows how you can create eight visual jokes in Photoshop.
If you've ever wanted to learn how to shoot product photos like those seen in Apple advertisements, here's a short 4-minute tutorial by photographer Karl Taylor that you can do at home with just a couple of speedlights and homemade modifiers.
I'm photographer Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens. In this video and article, we’re going to take a look at batteries. What you can fly with, what you feel comfortable checking in your check bags, what you should carry on with you, and what you shouldn’t take with you.
Keeping batteries charged for your camera and accessories is the bane of the professional photographer. With the increasing popularity of battery-hungry mirrorless cameras like the Canon EOS R5 and R6, this has become all the more challenging and important, and that’s what drove me to create this simple hack to track which batteries are charged, and which ones need to go into the AC charger when I get home from a shoot.
I'm photographer Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens. In this video and article we’re going to take a look at why a 50mm lens is the only lens you need for landscape photography.
Recently a squirrel noticed our nut box that was waiting to be raided for almost a year now. But as our squirrels here are a bit skittish, I needed to come up with a way to get in close to take nice pictures of them.
These days people love photo booths and once you have set it up it works -- and pays -- for itself. I found various plans and tutorials, but in my opinion, none of them had a good purchase list or a really good manual. So I decided to make my own.
Germany has a long history of producing some of the best cameras and lenses ever to appear in the history of photography, but German brand names can be a bit tricky to pronounce. In this 8.5-minute video, photographer Maximilian Heinrich of Analog Insights shares the native German speaker's pronunciation of some well-known brands.
It's one thing to hear tips on how to be a better photographer, it's another to actually watch photos come together in real-time. Photographer Michael Shainblum created this 13-minute video where he takes you on a first-person narrated photo outing to show you how he makes his images.
There are many places where drones are banned and many laws restricting how, when, and where you can fly, but what if you absolutely must capture some drone shots in one of these off-limits locations? Well, you can just fake it!
Photographer Kevin Raposo normally produces quick, easily digestible videos that only last a few minutes, but in a bit of a shift, his latest 14-minute video shows how he shoots both photos and videos for his real estate photography clients and explains why you too should offer both.
Here's a quick, easy idea for something you can try in your kitchen with a macro lens. Yesterday as I was doing the dishes, the water stream hit an egg cup and bounced up in a concentrated jet, splashing water up all over me.
How bright should your images be? How should the luminosity levels in your image be balanced? And how do you make sure you get the right exposure to allow you to have the best chance of creating an edit that you love?
Milky Way core season is right around the corner. I wrote this quickie guide on how to photograph our galaxy for anyone interested in going out to do some astrophotography this season!
As a photographer, I work from my home base in Istanbul, completing assignments for places like The New York Times. But, just like everywhere else, COVID-19 has put a damper on normal human interactions in Turkey. So, when a photo editor at The New York Times gave me the option of shooting an assignment remotely, I was intrigued.