If I look back at how I learned to take pictures, the path isn’t straight at all. But this isn’t necessarily just because I took wrong turns (yes including selective colour, and cheap tripod). It’s also down to my goals changing. Constantly. One of the things that has changed significantly over the years are my goals for light. I remember when I first saw someone take pictures of a model, he was using a big soft-box and was really impressed by the technical quality of the result – pin sharp due to a very small aperture, which in turn was made possible by tonnes of light....

Advertisements Pretty amazing, right!?! Before we go any further I want to take a second to thank the model Kim Henry for being the most elegant etherial human ever. She is a professional dancer and self-proclaimed “Delicate Warrior” (which I liked so much I decided use it for the title of the picture). I think it is such a poetic couple words, how she is gentle and graceful yet her poses are so strong and powerful....

Bringing something to life is always exciting for me. One of my friends was playing Assassin’s Creed and I caught a few seconds of the game. (Then minutes…, then hours…). I immediately fell in love with the characters, and we got into an Assassin’s Creed conversation. After a few minutes of talking, my friend told me that the map for the first game was made from the ancient cities Acco and Jerusalem....

When you’re shooting close-ups or macro you often find yourself at f/16 and still not getting enough depth of field. So that’s when focus stacking can be a really useful tool. It sounds complicated and there are lots of in-depth tutorials telling you that you need x,y and z special equipment to make it work. But it actually doesn’t have to be that complicated, particularly if you just want to get the whole of a glass in focus for example....

Like many of you, I have a large collection of 35mm slides and negative film that I have taken over the years that are currently pretty much invisible. I ditched my slide projectors with the last house move (they were 240V and hadn’t been used in 20 years!) and so all the slides were stored in their boxes for some sort of future viewing! In my early years, I took a lot of black and white films and so have all those negatives in those paper holders filed away....

Macro is a challenging subject to photograph. Light, especially, can be a real struggle, so you often need to add extra light to overcome the bellows extension factor inherent in all true macro lenses. But dedicated macro flashes and ring flashes can be very expensive (at least if you want a good one). Are there other options? Well, you can butcher a Pringles tube. We posted a tutorial on this way back in 2011 to be able to make use fo the popup flash for macro, but this video from photographer Micael Widell shows a similar method using an on-camera flash, allowing you to get much more power for those extreme close-ups....

We’ve featured some of Workphlo‘s brilliant product photography tutorials before, and Dustin Dolby doesn’t disappoint in this latest one. In this video, Dustin shows us how to capture a dramatic beer pour advertising style shot using just basic equipment. He explains that it’s fun to evoke some motion in an image, and pour shots are surprisingly simple to create. The entire set-up is compact and uses only an entry-level DSLR and 3 speedlights....

Whether you love them or hate them, watermarks are a thing and some people want it to be a bit more personal than just a logo. Sometimes, they really want to “sign” it. But how? It’s a pretty easy process to do when you know how and in this video, Jesús Ramirez at the Photoshop Training Channel shows us how. But not only does Jesús show us how we can digitise our signature properly for placing on top of an image, but he also shows us how we can create an action within Photoshop to automatically apply it to our images with just a single click....

Sometimes the hardest lighting setups to achieve are actually the ones that look the easiest. For years I’ve wanted to emulate that dappled lighting you see through leaves on a sunny day, or that rippled light you see at the bottom of a swimming pool when the wind catches the water. Like I said, this should be relatively easy to recreate in a studio in theory, as every natural light setup is only ever one light....

Have you ever wondered how big and bright an LED panel can get? Matt from DIY Perks has, and he decided to do something more than just imagine it. He created something that can easily be the world’s largest DIY LED panel. In this video, he shows us the process of making. And when he does it, it seems quite easy. He had a huge pile of leftover LED strips from his previous project....

Photographing dolls and action figures is something a lot of people ask me about. Sometimes it’s just product shots for classifieds or auctions, sometimes it’s something a little more creative. I always give the same advice, regardless. Light them exactly the same way you would a real person, but on a smaller scale. In this video taking you on a behind the scenes look at a Barbie Dreamtopia photo shoot, you can see this principle being applied....

The healing brush tool in photoshop is one of more powerful tools the editing software has to offer. It is often used to clean skin, repair walls, or do any kind of work that requires repairing a texture without changing the color and luminosity of an area. Stefan of RAW.Exchange was kind enogh to send us three tips on how to properly use the healing brush tool. Actually, if the healing brush tool is not working for you, there is a good chance that it is because one of those three basic tips is not used....

Shooting interiors can be a lot of fun but also an extremely difficult challenge. Most rooms aren’t designed to be photographed. They’re often laid out all wrong for it, there’s stuff in the way of the shot, the colours and patterns don’t really match and it can be tricky to find the right angle to shoot from. Even if all those things do fall into line, interior lighting isn’t usually geared toward photography....

This is an effect that seems to be becoming popular lately, particularly with music videos. I’ve seen it in movies before, often to suggest some kind of mental haze the protagonist in the story might be feeling at any given time. It’s an interesting effect, and the principle is quite simple, although it can take some practice to pull it off effectively. Essentially, it’s a timelapse, but with the camera moving in a way you’d expect it to move for video....

Regardless of whether you shoot photography or video, or what kind of gear you shoot with, the one thing we all have complete control over is our composition. There’s a lot written about composition, about the “rule of thirds”, golden ratios, and leading lines, but composition can be a difficult one to grasp. Kevin, the Basic Filmmaker talks about composition and developing your eye in this video. But not in the way you might think....

A few days back, I compared Photoshop and Luminar AI Beta’s sky replacement feature. When I turned to Luminar AI, I struggled with a mountain that was too warm for my taste. It turns out, I managed to overlook an important sky replacement tool; the masking brush. In this article, I will show you how to use masking to improve the sky replacement algorithm. Further, I also have a closer look at what Skylum calls Augmented Sky....

After the fantastic experience I had hosting my first Dog Photo Booth at Glens Falls Pet Fest in City Park, Glens Falls last year, I knew I had to return for the 2nd annual event. As simple as the concept may sound, hosting a photo booth (let alone one for dogs) involves a number of technicalities. Having never hosted a photo booth before, last year was a tremendous learning experience for me as a photographer....

Back in 2006 when I first started getting serious about photography, I found Strobist.com and was instantly hooked. I followed every tip and technique that David Hobby had to offer from the beginning and it didn’t take long before I had a set of six Nikon SB-800’s and was lighting everything Strobist style. Eventually, I saved up enough cash to invest in a set of Pocket Wizards (if they were what David Hobby used – they were what I needed) – and when the Pocket Wizard Mini TT1 and Flex TT5 were released I upgraded to a brand new set (here is the original review from Strobist)....

I’m a professional full-time photographer and I choose to let people download and use 95% of my images (even commercially), here’s why. Who am I ? I’m Samuel Zeller, a freelance Photographer from Geneva, Switzerland. I’m also an ambassador for Fujifilm and the editor of Fujifeed. I recently launched my “Archive” a repository which contains nearly all my photography, organized by location and subjects. All of the images can be downloaded for free in high resolution (up to 6000px on the longest side)....

An ultrawide angle lens is often the best friend of a landscape photographer. But sometimes it can be advantageous to take a slightly different approach. In this video, photographer Nigel Danson shows the benefits of shooting landscapes with a 70-200mm f/2.8 in the beautiful landscape of Scotland’s Glencoe. While I do often shoot landscapes myself with a wide angle lens, I do feel like it’s a bit of a copout sometimes....