When you photograph birds, their beauty really gets in focus against a clean and simple background. But when you’re out there with your camera, it can be pretty difficult to get a nice and clean background in bird photos. In this video, Jan Wegener shares a couple of simple tricks that will help you raise your photos to a whole new level. When you’re shooting birds out in the wild, there can be lots of distractions ruining the background....

“As landscape photographers, we often dread seeing a week-long clear sky prediction for our photography trips…” goes the voice-over at the beginning of this video. Honestly, after more than a month of rain every day lately I’d take a clear sky any day. We’ve had the wettest March since 1950. In fact, the weather has been so un-Spanish that authorities are considering changing the official language to English to stay in line with the precipitation levels*....

Street photography doesn’t only require photographic skills and capturing the right moment. It also involves interaction with the strangers, which can be difficult for many of us to deal with. Photographer Eduardo Pavez Goye has created a helpful video, in which he’ll give you some tips for taking the right attitude. If you feel awkward taking photos of strangers, but really want to pursue street photography, these tips could really boost your self-confidence and help you overcome inhibitions....

A reflector and a flag are useful pieces of kit you should have in your kit. In this video, photographer Alastair Bird shows you how to make your own 2-in-1 reflector and flag. The white side works as a reflector to give you a nice, soft fill light, and you can use the black side as a flag. It’s cheap, easy to build, and it fits in your car along with all the gear you carry to a shoot....

Pinhole cameras are about as old as photography gets. They’re such a simple and basic concept that’s withstood the test of time and are still very popular today. While many modern photographers opt to get a pinhole body cap for their DSLR or mirrorless, it’s easy enough to make your own. In fact, there are many different ways to make one. I’ve been following YouTuber Joe Van Cleave for a while now....

It’s still winter here in the Northern Hemisphere. So, if you shoot portraits outdoors, your models may look a bit like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. This tutorial by Mathieu Stern will show you how to fix red skin in Photoshop in a very quick and easy way. When you open your image in Photoshop, first make a duplicate of the layer and add a Hue/Saturation Layer. Select the Reds in Hue/Saturation layer....

Many of us would find it convenient to upload the photos to Instagram from our computers. Windows 10 users have this option, at least if they use a PC with a touchscreen. But the Mac users and those with older versions of Windows can still only rely on their phones. If you use Google Chrome, there actually is a way of uploading photos to Instagram, and it’s pretty simple. It doesn’t require Lightroom plugins or desktop apps, only a couple of clicks around the Developer Tools....

I find long exposures to be great fun, especially once you start really stopping down the light and extending that shutter to ridiculous lengths. The costs of getting started, however, can add up very quickly. In Mathieu Stern’s latest video, which features long exposure photographer Thibault Roland, we are shown how we can get started very inexpensively using welding glass as a filter over our lens to cut down the amount of light hitting our sensor, and lengthening those shutter speeds....

Anybody who’s ever ordered anything substantial from B&H will likely, at some point, receive a printed catalogue. This is essentially an inch thick (or bigger) 300+ page book featuring every product in B&H’s inventory. I’ve received them myself in the past. It started after ordering my first “Pro” lens. I didn’t ask for them, and after receiving the second I wanted no more. Having to throw them out is a terrible waste, and not throwing them out when a new one arrives is simply taking up space on the shelf that could be otherwise better used....

When it comes to using just a single light source in the studio, there is a lot of great content out there, and we’ve covered some of it here on DIYP before. Often, when you want one light to look like several, though, you usually need to think about multiple shots and compositing in post – whether it be for stills or video. But you don’t have to. Photographer Jiggie Alejandrino recently showed us one way to shoot dramatic portraits with just one light but now he’s back again with a new tutorial....

If you don’t own several strobes or simply don’t feel like making complicated lighting setups, you can use just one light and still get professional shots. In fact, you can turn this single light into two, three or even more lights. Well – kind of. It’s pretty simple, but you’ll need some Photoshop magic. In this video from Adorama, Gavin Hoey will show you how. Sine you will be stacking multiple images in Photoshop, you will need a sturdy tripod and a subject that doesn’t move....

Unless you have a dedicated boom arm, or a voice activated lightstand (an assistant) to do the job for you, booming microphones and lights overhead can prove to be a little tricky. Good boom arm stands can be expensive, especially if you want stability. This solution from the Frugal Filmmaker couldn’t have come at a better time for me, as I’ve been in the market for something to hold my microphone boom pole for a little while now....

How much do landscape photographers earn from selling NFTs? Specifically, I used public data to compile: My list of 50 Top landscape Photographers selling NFTs on Foundation, ranked in order of ETH sales between the snapshot dates (5th – 9th July 2021) to get a feeling for the range of earningsPublic details about the photographers, including Foundation account, country, short bio, and social media links to provide further context and follow-up for interested partiesStats like the max, min, and average ETH sales of the 50 photographers combinedA list of the collectors who bought NFTs from them...

When I began posting my photos online, I started getting comments like ‘wow, you must have a great camera’ or ‘anybody can take photos like these with expensive gear’ or ‘I can’t take photos like these because I can’t afford an expensive camera like yours’. It breaks my heart when I hear people say things like this. Or when they feel like they can’t get any better or they don’t have a chance because they have a cheap camera....

Today, March 10, 2021, Adobe dropped its latest software updates via the Creative Cloud and among those updates is a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) called “Super Resolution.” You can mark this day down as a major shift in the photo industry. I have seen a bit of reporting out there on this topic from the likes of PetaPixel and F-stoppers, but other than that the ramifications of this new feature in ACR have not been widely promoted from what I can see....

Due to its otherworldly beauty, Iceland is becoming increasingly popular among tourists. Sadly, more tourists mean more Instagram addicts who’d do anything for a “perfect” photo. Iceland is having more and more problems with inconsiderate visitors, and the locals have had enough of irresponsible influencers destroying the country’s beautiful nature. Earlier this month, we’ve seen an Instagram star who bragged about driving offroad in a protected geothermal area. The police towed his car and slapped him a fine, but he apparently saw all that as an adventure....

Earlier this year, NetSE Group – the company behind Oprema Jena and Meyer Optik Göerlitz – filed for bankruptcy. The insolvency proceeding has now been opened, and all the lenses pre-financed by crowdfunding will not be delivered. In other words, if you have preorder any of these lenses on Kickstarter – it looks like you can kiss your money goodbye. NetSE Group was in trouble in August, when its CEO Stefan Immes was in a serious traffic accident....

What is a stop of light? Essentially, it’s a relative quantity of light. Either half or double of a pre-existing amount. But what does that really mean? And why does it take Rob Hall 8 whole minutes to explain it? Well, that simple concept comes with a lot of implications in photography, and it applies to everything from our ISO, aperture and shutter speed to flash power, flash distance, neutral density filters and more....

Last month there was the invitation to the secret dealer meeting about some new Canon mirrorless camera. Then we discovered that this might be the EOS M50, capable of shooting 4K UHD video. Now, thanks to Nokishita we’re seeing what are reported to be leaked images of the new camera, and 470 EX AI flash unit, along with some specs. According to Nokishita, the specs look pretty respectable for a small APS-C mirrorless camera, along with some cool new space-saving features for your memory cards....

Social media is a wonderful thing. It allows us to instantly connect with an audience of hundreds of millions of people. But it also means that when a bug shows up, it potentially affects hundreds of millions of people, too. And that appears to be what’s happened with a recent issue on Instagram. Last week, The Verge reported that hackers exploited a bug on Instagram to get the private phone numbers and email addresses of a number of celebrities....