One of the questions I often hear from people who are new to photography, particularly when using flash is “How high should my light be?”. It’s a difficult one to answer, especially if you’re shooting on location because there are so many variables. The Koldunov Brothers break their usual silence in this 9-minute video to explore the topic. They offer a lot of tips with practical examples to show how different lighting heights and positions affect how the camera sees the subject....

How does it make you feel when someone mentions I Spy books? They were introduced in 1992, and there’s a good chance that either you or your kids read them. But did you know how all those images in the books were created? In this video, Insider introduces Walter Wick, the photographer and photo illustrator behind I Spy books. He will take you behind the scenes and tell you just what it took to create photos for the books you (or your little ones) loved so much....

I’ve always been drawn to interesting looking light. The simple, soft and flat light of softboxes and other standard modifiers rarely hold my attention and I’ve often felt like that softbox lighting doesn’t exist outside of the studio. It’s always looked a little too clinical for me. We’re shown interesting light all of the time when we’re observing daylight. Dappled light as it falls through leaves, dancing sparkles of light on water, rays of light through buildings and other structures, but we rarely try and bring that interesting looking light into the studio....

I sometimes worry that I’m moving from being a photographer into simply being a collector of photography equipment. You just accumulate so much stuff over the years. A good deal on a camera here, a lens there, or you bid on a complete outfit on eBay because the final price is worth the one item you actually wanted. Swedish commercial and travel photographer Jens Lennartsson is taking a much more cut down approach these days, minimising the amount of equipment he takes on his travels, allowing him to shoot more, and worry about gear less....

One would say that shooting portraits with a 400mm or 500mm lens is overkill. Absurd, even. But what shooting portraits at 900mm? Manny Ortiz teamed up with Irene Rudnyk and Gerald Undone to find out. They used a Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens for shooting portraits, and to make things even more absurd, they paired with an APS-C Sony a6400. In other words, they shot portraits at around 900mm equivalent and it looks like they had a lot of fun doing this crazy experiment....

If you get caught up in a heavy rain, snow or wind, I’m sure you want to protect both yourself and your precious gear. You can have a good jacket to keep you warm and dry, and there are several options for protecting the gear, like waterproof backpacks or lens caps. But Langly Field Jacket brings the two together: it’s designed to protect both you and all your gear from the elements....

There have been a few reports across Facebook groups, YouTube videos, and various forums across the web on sharpness issues with DJI’s new Mavic 2 Pro. Despite housing a camera branding the Hasselblad name, people aren’t happy. But are things really as bad as they might appear? Tom David from Tom’s Tech Time puts the new Mavic 2 Pro head to head against the Phantom 4 Pro to see how the two compare....

Uploading from your desktop straight to Instagram isn’t really anything new. There are a number of methods out there to let you access your Instagam account and post new images straight from Windows or OSX. Usually, they’re a bit of a long winded process. The new LR/Instagram plugin for Lightroom, however, makes the process simple and smooth. Best of all, it’s completely free to try it out, and only $10 to register if you like it....

It’s no secret that we use Set a Light to test our photo lighting before we start a shoot. (We talked about it here, here, and extensively here). We even used it to play around with models under lockdown. While I used the software quite a bit for photo projects done with strobes, it lacked in the cinema section. But now, they released a new version, and I am blown away by the possibilities it opened....

Colorizing a black and white image in Photoshop requires a huge amount of time, and not to mention that you need exceptional skill to do it. A year ago, Richard Zhang and a team at University of California revealed Algoritmia, an app that does it automatically. It was fun to play with it, but there was still plenty of room for improvement. Now, a year later, they have found a new approach....

I often say that the only way to finish all the chores I have in a day is to clone myself. Well, now I can do it, sort of. Hour One is a company that lets you create a “digital clone” of yourself. This way you can create videos, tutorials, even do online job interviews or any kind of presentation without actually being there. Hour One presented the technology to the world in collaboration with YouTuber Taryn Southern....

If you’re new to Lightroom, you may feel like you don’t know where to begin. It would be useful to have someone guide you through it, right? Rachel and Daniel of Mango Street have a fantastic video for you to get you started in using Lightroom. In less than 30 minutes, they will guide you through the program and help you learn everything you need to know to start editing your photos as soon as today....

Ethics and law in street photography is something that can create a lot of confusion and debate in the community. No matter how well you know the law, you’ll often come upon situations that will be new to you. Also, not everything is black and white in street photography: sometimes even lawful things can still be unethical. To help you answer the most common questions on the law and ethics in street photography, Sean Tucker has filmed yet another fantastic video....

On Saturday, 16 February, Kelyn Alyssa and her husband went to Broadacres in Houston to have some photos taken of their baby daughter to celebrate her first birthday. During the shoot, a woman started shouting at them from a car for taking photos. But then it got worse – she got out of the car and threw a tantrum. She was screaming at the couple and the photographer, she hit the husband and started moving the props, all while the terrified child was screaming....

Many photographers prefer shooting portraits with soft light than hard light. There’s certainly a good reason for it: it’s more flattering on the subject, more forgiving, and requires less retouching. But does it mean you should discard the hard light? Absolutely not! Even though it can be more demanding to work with, there are reasons to love hard light and embrace it in portrait photography. In this video, Lindsay Adler shares three main reasons why you should do so....

Ever tried posing your family or other non-pro friends for a photo. For some, it comes naturally, but for others, it may feel like an excruciating experience. Mango Street (previously) is here to the rescue. They share three basic (yet powerful) tips to help you pose and direct your friends. As usual, good photography starts with the basic things, so once those are in place you can continue to build to more advanced levels....

Technical Image Press Association (TIPA) has announced its list of the best photo gear items for 2021. This year marks the Association’s 30th anniversary, and according to the 2021 best gear list – everyone got a present this year. Among the top 40 products from the photo industry, there are nearly all major gear manufacturers. Like every year, there are 40 products on TIPA’s list of the awarded gear. They are divided into five categories: Cameras, Lenses, Accessories, Services, and Tech and Design....

Over this past year, an increasing trend in photography seems to be finding a viable alternative to Adobe Lightroom. Some have done it to get out from underneath the subscription service while others aren’t pleased with what remains to be inconsistent speed and performance. It seems to be more of the latter than the former, with the Lightroom Catalog largely responsible for the latter. I’m not a software developer by any stretch of the imagination, but my non-educated guess would be that there is only so much that Adobe developers can do to increase performance with the existing framework that supports the Lightroom Catalog without completely starting over from scratch....

I’m not sure if you guys are up to date on who Clay Cook is, but you should be. Because as I speak he’s on his way to Africa to climb Kilimanjaro in aid of Charity, it’s a truly kick ass event! More details here. So I’ve had this plan for a while now spanning from Lara Jade to Peter Hurley and more where I want to bring you these killer intimate articles where not only do we get to see a serious glimpse into what it’s taken these guys and gals to succeed but also how it’s impacted them into the journey they have today....

The king of weird lenses, Mathieu Stern set himself a challenge with a documentary short film he shot recently. The challenge was to use only anamorphic and swirly bokeh lenses. But he wasn’t just getting off-the-shelf ready-to-go lenses you can pick up online (although he did use a couple). He ended up using seven different lenses to film his documentary, along with various adapters and doohickies to tell his anamorphic story....