Walkthroughs

Portrait and Headshot Retouching with Luminar Neo

Portrait retouching can get overwhelming sometimes with the steps you need to take to make your shots look absolutely perfect. Maybe these steps aren't that hard, but they can definitely be very time-consuming, so finding any way to speed this process up to make better and more efficient use of your time is a high priority for every photographer. Using Luminar Neo to tackle these steps can make retouching a breeze using just a few tools and leveraging some of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) built into the application.

How I Documented the Making of a Wedding Dress

Having been a wedding photographer for the past fifteen years, I’ve seen my fair share of white wedding dresses, but before focusing on weddings, I was fortunate enough to gain a little experience in the fashion industry, shooting for magazines, working backstage at fashion shows, and covering both London and Paris Fashion Weeks.

How We Shot a Halloween-Themed Liquid Death Spec Ad

Creating spec ads is an incredible way to grow as a filmmaker and photographer for two reasons: It allows you to build your portfolio It forces you to think outside the box and create projects that would appeal to the brands you would love to work with you one day.

What is a Contact Sheet and How Do You Make One?

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.

How to Make DIY Foldable V-Flats for Photography Lighting

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.

How to Use a Color Checker for Perfect Color in Photos

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.

PhotoPills: A Photographer’s Guide

PhotoPills is a planning tool to help you create images of the Sun, Moon, stars, meteors, and more. It can help you decide the best place to focus for maximum depth of field and calculate the correct exposure when using a neutral density filter to blur water, clouds, and other subjects. What's more, you can use it from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection to plan a photo shoot anywhere else in the world.

Cleanup.pictures: How to Easily to Remove Objects From Your Photos

Removing unwanted objects and text out of an image to clean up your photo used to require special software and skills, but these days AI has led to features like Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop that lets anyone do it in just a few clicks. If you do not have a Photoshop subscription, there is a free Web and mobile app called Cleanup.pictures you can use.

How I Took a Photo of the Andromeda Galaxy from My Backyard

I recently shot a photograph of the Andromeda Galaxy that went viral, appearing everywhere from the front page of Reddit to Newsweek. The photo was taken with a four-inch telescope over the course of multiple nights from my backyard near Charlottesville, Virginia, US.

How I Built a Digital Toy Camera

Are you sometimes annoyed by having too many easy and convenient ways to take perfect photos? Don’t despair…

This Telescope FPV Timelapse Shows What Astrophotography Feels Like

My love of astronomy started way back as a child when my dad bought a Celestron C8 telescope. I remember spending hours with him searching to find a single dark sky object. This love of the night sky stuck with me and it wasn't until 2012 I made a New Year's resolution to go out for one night each month near the new moon to do astronomy, astrophotography, and time-lapse of the night sky.

How I Create 200MP Aerial Panoramas with a Tiny DJI Mini 2 Drone

My name is Vlad Moldovean, and I'm a photographer from Brasov, Romania. In this article, I will share how I use my DJI Mini 2 -- a cheap drone that many people dismiss as being a toy for beginners -- to create photos and animations that stand out.

How I Captured a 40-Mile-Wide View of an Arizona Landscape

It all started when a couple Iowa guys’ video production company booked a commercial video project with the nation’s largest magazine publisher in collaboration with Arizona tourism. The fun story here is how we ended up on top of a mountain, in the Arizona wilderness, taking photos.

Photographing Birds with an iPhone: Leave the 600mm Lens at Home?

One of the most popular photo seminars in the world happens every December, when hundreds of photographers flock to the tiny town of Socorro, New Mexico, to document the migration of some 20,000 birds en route to Mexico.

A DIY Remote Mechanical Cable Release for a Large Format Camera

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.

The Intricate Work in Restoring Photos for a Vietnam Veteran

A while back, a young man contacted me about a photo digitization and restoration project for his grandfather, who served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. They had some photographs from this period in his life—of friends, scenery, and the culture of Vietnam—that they wanted to use for an album.

How I Photographed Comet Leonard Over Madrid

Last week saw the last few days to see and photograph Comet Leonard after sunset at the horizon where I am located in Spain, and when my fellow photographer Javier Martinez Moran asked me to join him in an attempt to catch the comet passing behind the iconic Four Towers of Madrid, I couldn’t say no!

Three landscape photos of Scotland

Landscape Photography in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland

Torridon, Glencoe, and the Isle of Skye have drawn landscape photographers and artists over the centuries. The highlands of Scotland are extensive and uninterruptedly breathtaking – a Big Country indeed. This is the internationally perceived face of Scotland – a meticulously sculpted land of peaks, glens, lakes, and shorelines. And rain or mist to make or break the scene dependent on your disposition.