Arlington, Texas, was long in the lead to become my family's vacation destination this summer. But sometime in May, we decided that we wanted to revisit Italy. Last time we didn’t make it to Tuscany, so there was no doubt that it would be the area to stay and explore.
I’m an experienced concert photographer. From the largest stadiums to the smallest, dirtiest night clubs, I’ve photographed thousands of bands and seen it all. I’m damned confident in my ability to anticipate the shot and be in the right place at the right time. Or, at least I was until last Saturday night.
On the way out of the Terai Plain in Nepal, I stopped in the town of Janakpur. The town has a beautiful temple and I was all geared up to shoot some nice stuff. But as I wandered around, I could not “see” any images despite a religious ceremony that was taking place at the time of my visit.
A surgeon at a meat market. It's an absolutely simple yet ridiculous idea, so it had to be done for real! China has been harvesting organs from detainees, so maybe this absurd project of mine isn't so far from the truth!
I've been involved with The Wild West Days in Viroqua, Wisconsin since 2008. I've been doing photography for most of that time as well, but as-of 2017, officially as Hickok Country Photography.
Last week I made the long trip from the UK to Chile in the hopes of capturing my first total solar eclipse. I had experienced a cloudy total solar eclipse from the UK in 1999 but back then I was just 9 years old and certainly no photographer. Now that I’m apparently a professional landscape astrophotographer, a total solar eclipse was a gaping hole in my portfolio.
My name is Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens, and in this 6.5-minute video and article, I'll illustrate the balance of strobes with ambient light. Whether it’s inside or outside, you’re going to have to learn the formula to balance strobes with ambient light. It’s not that hard, so let’s go back to 1930 and learn the formula!
They said it couldn’t be done, that I was wasting my time, that it was impossible to take a time exposure photo of a daytime missile launch... in color... directly into a Florida sunrise... from ten miles away.
I wanted to see if it was possible to turn a dead SX-70 camera into a functioning digital camera without significantly modifying it’s outward appearance. I had no idea if this was reasonably doable but I set out to give it a try.
For his latest piece, titled "Stellantis," surreal photography artist Erik Johansson set out to create a photo of someone stealing stars from the night sky.
Photographer Steve Kazemir made this 4-minute video showing how he shoots beautiful photos of paint splashes frozen in time using an old speaker in his garage.
Last year I joined my local photography club. The club holds regular competitions and I was amazed by the quality of the bird and wildlife photographs. I've never been much of a natural history photographer. So it's not surprising that my own photographs did very poorly in competitions.
The first 2.5 months of the 2019 year were filled with excitement, learning, stress, editing, headache, more learning, and more editing as I dove in head-first to creating a 360° VR promo video for a client. This is a look into its creation and how it’s done.
Jamey Price is a freelance motorsport photographer based in Charlotte, North Carolina, but he shoots way more than cars racing. Here's a 6-minute video in which Price takes us behind-the-scenes of shooting a steeplechase horse race at Queen's Cup in Charlotte.
Photographing a Porsche is a special experience for me, as I am a racing fan, and Porsche is racing. They are the essence of speed on the curving tracks they have graced around the world, and on a photo shoot, they are just as incredible sitting still. It is for this and many other reasons that I count myself lucky to stand behind the camera while photographing the art pieces that are Porsche racecars.
The moment I had been waiting for finally arrived exactly 49 days after I got my Huawei P30 Pro. This is one of my final tests for the phone after shooting the Milky Way handheld and a meter. So what’s the big deal about this test? Because photographing the Milky Way in Singapore with a DSLR was deemed impossible by many astrophotography veterans here just 5 years ago.
As a true fan of the wildlife documentary genre, I have been itching to create my own short wildlife video project ever since I started doing wildlife photography. That being said, and despite having some previous experience with videography and video editing, producing a high-quality wildlife video always seemed like a too difficult task for a single person with a non-existent budget and some pretty basic gear, and so I never pushed myself into trying it.
If you feel like the place you live is boring and lacking in good photo spots, try doing a "Boring Hometown Photography Challenge." That's what photographer Wahid Fayumzadah discusses in this 11-minute video.
Shooting professional-quality portraits with artificial lighting doesn't have to weigh heavily on your bank account. Here's a 22-minute video in which photographer Sean Tucker shares how to shoot great portraits using a single speedlight and a cheap modifier.
With so many ways to be creative in photography, I get really excited with many ideas for a photograph. One area I find very interesting is sports action photography, but with a twist. It's great to capture that split-second moment and have that frame frozen, but I wanted to explore capturing the motion and freezing the action all in one go.
When I first started in photography, there was no method to my data management madness. When shooting on location, I downloaded my cards onto my laptop and upon my return home I copied everything onto my computer. Every now and then I would make a backup on an external hard drive that I kept in my office.
Father and son wedding photographers David and Luke Edmonson were recently commissioned by Godox to test its new V1 round-head flash. The duo decided to shoot this 9-minute video and a creative photo as a tribute to English photographer Henry Peach Robinson.
I'm Niklas Roy, and I recently built a kilopixel camera called The Flying Pixel Portrait Camera. It's a do-it-yourself project that uses a single photoresistor and a video projector in order to capture portraits.
As an astrophotographer, I had this dream of seeing the moonbow (AKA the lunar rainbow) one day in Yosemite, my favorite National Park in California. Every year, either water flow or cloud conditions prevented me from catching it. But this year, my dream came true.
In December 2014, I decided that I wanted to practice shooting the night sky in order to expand my photography skills. Of course, I made every possible mistake. My compositions were completely off, I severely underexposed or blew out the sky and the images were not sharp.
My Huawei P30 Pro arrived at 4:30 pm on April 6th, and I knew the night sky in Mersing would be amazing for me to try out this low-light beast. I had read a lot of good reviews on P30 Pro, but I was still skeptical, so I booked a room at my regular resort on the same day and drove 3 hours to get there.
I’m on the bow of the boat, bag over my camera, when the rain falls. We’re drifting over Alleppey’s backwaters, fed by the Arabian Sea and 38 rivers from across Kerala, southern India. 900km of waterways connect to each other, irrigating rice paddy fields and forming a natural human ecosystem built by the hands of India’s people in kinship to the surrounding landscape. It is a testament to the power of human nature -- to live in accordance with the land and its diverse inhabitants.
Today we are going to be shooting a photo that I have been wanting to do for a while now, but just haven’t made the time. There are these beautiful wildflowers that grow up on a hill near my house that I envisioned for this kite shot.
The modern orotone can be created in a number of ways, the most popular using a coating of liquid emulsion on a glass plate with a gelatine base. This method produces some excellent results with a minimum of effort.
A couple of weeks ago I was blessed with a sight that truly left me in a state of awe. Shortly after leveling off onboard United 534 from Honolulu to Los Angeles, I tried my luck with some astrophotography over the crisp Pacific Ocean skies.
Bruce Gilden is one of the top street photographers of our generation. He’s controversial, talented and he has his own style… so there’s no question as to why some might want to emulate him.
Say what you will about wedding photography, but few other gigs will allow you to drink on the job and party with beautiful people without having to even know a single dance move.
I'm 50 years old and I have lived through at least two major photographic revolutions of our time: film to digital and cameras to mobile phones. As a designated "family photographer," I am suddenly a sought-after person whenever there is a birthday, a wedding, a festival, or a gathering. I am also supposed to be "armed" and ready all the time, even on a vacation!
The cheapest watch I could find, that was my mission! I decided I wanted to create a magazine advertising image using a really cheap watch. My goal was to replace the luxurious and expensive aspect of the image with an unknown brand but still maintaining that feel of expense and luxury in the final shot. It was also to focus on the photography and the importance and impact it has on advertising.
A lot of people seem to think I have a giant photo studio space. I do not. I actually have never had more space than the 2 converted bedrooms I work in now, and not so long ago I was renting a small, bedroom-sized commercial space. And even before that, I used to work in a studio between my bed and my desk. And going even further back, I had to sit on my bed to even be able to shoot a half body.
There are a great number of differences between professional photographers and those that shoot only as a hobby. Surprisingly enough one, of those differences isn’t always talent. There are many amazing and talented photographers that shoot for a hobby and they take my breath away.
Photographer Markus Hofstaetter just completed an ambitious project in which he spent 6 months working to shoot stereo 3D photos on large format wet plates.
Doing a photo shoot in China is different than anything I have experienced on any set anywhere else in the world. Heck, just getting from the hotel to the set is like playing a video game when it comes to driving on the roads... or sidewalks, for that matter. However, to go to a country expecting it not to have a different culture is ethnocentric and prepares one for nothing.
In the "Olden Days," professional science was still in its infancy. People who trained in science and practiced science were using every ounce of creativity and imagination at their disposal to discover the nature of the world. They were scrappy and inventive. In this article, I will outline a modern replication of the experiment that produced the first color photograph ever made.
My name is Dana Neibert, and I'm a commercial photographer based in Coronado, California. Here’s a behind the scenes look at one of our commercial photo shoots.
Having returned to photography after a lay-off of some years, I had discovered a whole new world, where, among other things, computers had largely replaced darkrooms. It soon became apparent that my Windows 10 laptop was sadly underrated for the tasks required. I began to research alternatives.
While I was visiting San Francisco, Kristy Headley, a dear friend and fellow engineer, showed me her studio. There I was lucky enough to sit for her while she did some vintage tintyping. Tintyping was one of the earliest forms of photography, popular in the 1850s.
We came up for the idea to do this shoot when we saw someone on Instagram who was dropping flowers into milk and just manually trying to get the timing right. Although they were able to get nice photos of the splash some of the time, they would miss the splash just as often as they were able to capture it. We knew we could build a rig that let us capture the perfect flower splash moment every single time. In all, we took about 70 photos and successfully captured the splash every time.
Let’s face it – cars are meant to be driven. And there is no better way to show off a car than with a rolling shot, or “roller”. Here, I’ll go into detail about how to set up your camera and everything else needed to create the perfect roller using an image from a shoot with Performance BMW Magazine.
This was a fun experiment and, to be honest, I’m not sure if it’s been done before. I read about photographers capturing the Milky Way with their phones so I wanted to put a drone to the test and see what it could do while hovering. As it turns out you can not only catch the Milky Way’s galactic core but also meteors and satellites as well.
This article is for all of the new photographers new to lighting and to all who think they are limited by their lack of gear! I will show you how you can create this whiskey image with just one light, in-camera, and with no editing.
Well-known London street photographer Nick Turpin has started a new point-of-view video series to allow people to "come along for the ride" as he creates his work. The 17.5-minute video above is a look into how he works and things on the streets of the UK's capital.
By carefully applying blur to a portrait, you can make it look like it was shot with a shallow depth-of-field using a fast (and expensive) lens. Here's a 12-minute tutorial by PiXimperfect that teaches the key to creating this faux blur in a realistic way.
Have you ever found yourself looking at your children's toys and thought to yourself, "Man that would look great in an image?" Well I have, I do, and I love creating images this way, trying to create a realistic/surreal image which tells a story from using nothing more than a piece of plastic.
What is it like to shoot a travel assignment for a major publication? What’s the process from start to finish? Every publication is a little different but I’ll speak from my experience shooting dozens of assignments for The New York Times travel section throughout Southeast Asia for over a decade.