As a creative, more specifically as a Photographer/Film Maker, we tend to get gigs all over the city. From big Production to small, low-budget clients, our commute can be taxing, especially with increased gas prices. Electric cars are surfacing, from trucks and sedans to SUVs; you’ll pretty much see electric vehicles at every corner. This is why I purchased a Tesla Model Y; it’s efficient and roomy for all the gears and equipment I own....

In late 2014 I was given a few pieces of piping. What you might call trash, but I call the ring of fire. It ended up being an incredibly useful tool in my photography. I quickly decided to add it to my (now literal) bag of tricks along with Prisming, Lens Chimping, my Broken Freelens, Anamorphics, etc). These days camera lenses are designed so well that they’ll nearly never create a flare....

If you haven’t been living under a photographic rock lately, you’ll probably have heard about Plotagraph. It’s a new system which allows you to give some motion to a still. It’s an evolution of the cinemagraph. A hybrid of still image and video. While Plotagraph has had a mixed reception, the concept is still a popular one. Unlike Plotagraph, cinemagraphs are made from a video clip, not just a single still image....

Adobe Spark is a new app from Adobe that allows users to create template based social media graphics (Spark Post), web stories (Spark Page) and animated videos (Spark Video) using a simple online interface. If you’re like me, you often find yourself creating social media graphics from scratch in Photoshop (or with an Photoshop action set). It’s a time consuming pain, and to be honest – I’m not a graphic designer so most of my graphics look pretty ugly anyway....

When doing product shots in the studio, reflective surfaces could be very tricky to handle. But of course, there are methods to deal with them and light them to show all their beauty. In this video, Dustin Dolby of Workphlo shares a comprehensive tutorial on lighting and photographing tricky, reflective products. And what’s more, you don’t need fancy gear. Prepare simple lighting modifiers, your DIY spirit, and Photoshop. Dustin uses a YONGNUO YN560 IV speedlight paired with a Yongnuo CA-63YN-560TXC YN560-TX transmitter and photographs a watch....

Nowadays you can buy all sorts of smartphone lenses: from $35 crappy super-zoom to high-end, $200 Zeiss lenses. But if you feel like doing a fun little DIY project, you can make your own smartphone macro lens and only spend $2 on it. In this video, Chris Notap will show you how. You will need For this project, you need only three things you most likely already have at home:...

Although most of us probably won’t ever get the chance to photograph mountain hares in the snow, it’s an interesting concept. It’s the opposite of shooting somebody in a black suit on a black background. Although, the principles are pretty much the same. The only real differences are that out in the wilderness with hares, you don’t get much control over the lighting and they don’t take direction very well....

When you photograph attractive locations, it’s inevitable to have other people walking into your frame. Sure, you can resolve this with some Photoshop tricks, or try waking up really early and shoot before other tourists arrive. But why bother when you can do it the easy way: just scream at them, really loudly! In the video above, Icelandic photographer Óli Haukur suggests what you should do when other people casually walk into your frame....

I make quite a few stitched panoramics. Occasionally I shoot them when I go on holiday and find a cool place. Mostly, though, I shoot them when I’m location scouting. When I come across a new area to potentially photograph somebody in the future, I fire off a few shots to stitch in post. They’re very handy for that. But they often suffer from the same problem. All kinds of warping and perspective issues....

One of the best ways to save money when buying photography equipment is buying used. Sure, there may be one or two risks involved, the benefits far outweigh them. Today, I want to deconstruct buying used cameras. Let’s look at how, where, and why look for one. Advertisements One of the first questions you should ask is something like what camera should I buy? Sure enough, buying a camera is a very important choice, there are a lot of things to pay attention to....

I will start with a warning: Digital Infrared Photography it’s not easy & this will get technical fast. Backstory It all started when I saw some awesome Instagram photos in infrared and I ordered an IR filter (an 88mm ice 760nm from B&H to be more precise) not knowing much about infrared. Filters usually range from 590 to 8-900 nm and usually, this kind of colored infrared shots are obtained with 590nm on a modded camera because it lets some visible light pass as well as infrared....

Camera manufacturers like Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Sony, and Fuji have launched their webcam software this year. However, they may not support your camera model, so you’ll need to find another solution. Duncan Dimanche has one that is simple, cheap, works for most camera models, and on both Windows and Mac. Duncan’s approach is similar to this one, but he uses a gadget that’s around ten times cheaper than Cam Link....

Circular polarizing (CPL) filters are one of the most useful tools a landscape photographer can have in their toolkit, and in this video from landscape and nature photographer Joshua Cripps, you’re going to find out why. Of course, they’re not limited to just landscapes, they can also help to cut through reflections and glare on glass and other reflective surfaces, so they can also be great for street, automotive and even portrait photography....

Long exposure photography is tricky, especially in the studio when you’re trying to combine multiple light sources within a single frame that have very different brightnesses and colour temperatures etc. So although I believe this article will be very useful to many of you, there will most certainly be others that perhaps have little to no experience with long exposure photography and as such this article might seem to brush over certain long exposure lighting ideas....

PART 1 – The Camera Starting back in May of 2014, I finally put my first foot forward in the making of a 16×20 inch bellows camera. The idea to build a camera was nothing new to me, but I was always hesitant to begin construction since I am the type of person that prefers to work off a set of blue prints and directions. Unfortunately, since my drawing skills aren’t amazing, it was pretty difficult to visualize and plan a solid blueprint of the project – which ultimately forced me to bite the bullet and simply begin construction of the camera and problem solve along the way....

I shoot about 50% film and 50% digital these days. For digital, I shoot with the Fujifilm X series cameras and lenses. Fujifilm cameras appealed to me several years ago because of the retro styling and film camera like controls for shutter speed, ISO and aperture. I also loved the ability to use Fujifilm film emulsion filters on the in-camera jpgs such as Velvia, Acros, Provia, Astia, Classic Chrome and PRO Neg to name a few....

It’s been a little while since I built my UV Box but sometimes, life gets in the middle of our fun projects! Now, I’ve finally tested the UV Box and I can say that it works great. I made a test with two different negatives: a very soft flower subject lighted with painted light and a very sharp subject lighted with a very contrasty light. I wanted to see how this printing process deals with different subjects....

I was very excited when I first read about the new Nikon D850 and I knew that this camera would be exactly what I had been waiting for. The larger file size is welcomed from a fine art perspective and in combination with a highly improved focus system, fast processors and better ISO capabilities I could easily see myself using this camera also for wildlife. Unfortunately Nikon have not been able to ship as many cameras as expected in the first batch and I was not able to get my hands on one before departing on a WildPhoto Travel photo tour to Alaska....

Every year, on the cusp of true, Rocky Mountain summer, I travel to the high country to photograph butterflies. For a brief couple of weeks, during the height of the alpine meadow bloom, when lupine and mallows turn acres of open space to blue and pink, Montana’s butterflies make the most of their short season. This year, I test drove Nikon’s flagship dx camera, the D500. I ran it with Nikon’s 300mm f4 PF VR and the TC-14E III, giving me a whopping 630mm of reach, hoping to bring these colorful insects up close and personal and preserve more depth of field than when shooting with my 200mm Micro Nikkor, my usually choice for butterflies....

Out of all the kit I own, my drone is probably the most flexible tool my the arsenal. Need to know what your roof looks like? Drone. Want a badass picture of the top of your head? Drone does that. Want to make it look like your significant other is being sucked into a spacecraft that’s en route to the Andromeda system? Drone definitely does that. I’ve been planning to try something like this for ages, but my anemic first-generation Mavic Pro shook and bucked around like a sad robot with vertigo any time I attached anything weighing over a few grams to the exterior....