Posts

We set out to see what collaborating on an automotive campaign would look like when done virtually. In the words of the always colorful Jeremy Clarkson, “How hard could it be?” TL;DR: Not that hard! The traditional automotive advertising shoot involves the meticulous planning of every detail. It is typically a carefully scripted production with many moving parts that can involve road closures, permits, police presence, a large crew, a host of lighting and rigging equipment, and more....

About two years ago, I used to go about my usual everyday life like most people do, not noticing all of the beauty around me. After I picked up a camera and started taking photos of my kids, I started to see the world in a whole new way. Once you start to see it, you can’t unsee it. I started to notice how light affected things, and how looking at something from a different perspective could change the whole scene....

I’ve written about this project in the past, as I originally made the rain machine and shot with it in 2012, however we’ve now done it in video form! Hopefully it shows a little more detail about the construction and how I shot with it. I made this just for fun really, it rains enough here in the UK that you really don’t need a rain maker, but this allowed me the control of putting studio lights outside without getting electrocuted!...

There’s a lot of myth and misinformation out there about grey cards. They’re often a bit of a pain to use sometimes, too. But they can be one of the most valuable tools photographers have at their disposal when it comes to getting good and consistent exposure. In this video, David Bergman walks us through how to use one. To understand why a grey card works one needs to understand how a basic camera meter sees....

If you are a landscape photographer trying to get his work out there, you have surely heard about that one big imaging platform called Instagram. So you made yourself a profile and started dropping all your gorgeous work that you worked hard for and suddenly you wonder: Why is nobody liking my images and why do I have 50 followers while others have thousands and just keep growing? Their reason for it isn´t one- it´s actually many and I´ll try to cover some of them here in this article, giving some tips along the way that have worked for me in the past....

If you darken the skies in Lightroom by adjusting the luminance of the blues, you may end up with a white line creating a border between the sky and the objects on the ground. There are ways to get rid of it in Photoshop, but there is also a way to avoid it completely. Tony Northrup shares a tutorial for editing your landscape photos in Lightroom and making those skies dramatic, yet natural....

Shiny male watch on a black background will certainly catch your eye in a catalog or in an Instagram feed. You can also create this kind of look, and you don’t even need an expensive studio gear to do it. Photographer Dustin Dolby shares his workflow that will give you the stylish, catalog-worthy photo of a watch, and all you need is a camera with a kit lens, one speedlight, and a few modifiers....

If you go out on a shoot in the rain or in the snow, you;d better make sure your gear is protected. I mean Cameras, strobes and water don’t mix well together. I know Ilko does a nylon bag thingy when he goes out in the rain, and now, I see Manny Ortiz doing a similar thing in the snow. They both use a plastic bag to protect strobes. (Well, Manny also uses a collapsible wescott brolli to hide from the rain)....

If you regularly work and shoot in the same location, like a studio or a set place in your home, keeping things both organised and readily available at a moment’s notice can be quite difficult. After all, when stuff’s organised, it’s typically packed away somewhere in a cupboard or drawer. This makes it easy to find things, but for things you’re using regularly, it adds a lot of time to the workflow to keep taking it out and putting it back....

There are times in a photographer’s life when reflections in glasses is just a fact of life. Most of the time we can eliminate them in-camera, especially with a posed session. Occasionally, that’s not possible. Perhaps when in very confined space with a huge softbox. There are techniques to help get rid of it in post, though. Although it does require some pre-thought during shooting and taking an extra shot....

For most stills photographers, the only measure of exposure that many of us see (besides the camera’s built-in reflective meter) is the histogram; essentially a graph which covers the amount of each of the different brightness levels in your image. Although many photographers making the move to video might feel more comfortable shooting with a live histogram, they’re not the only ways to judge exposure. Nor necessarily even the best....

Photoshop’s layer blending options are some of its most powerful tools but also one of its most frustrating, particularly the “Blend if” sliders. Designed to help you blend a layer with those below it based on the luminance of colour channels, actually seeing what’s effect it’s having on a layer often can be difficult. In this video from the f64 Academy, Blake Rudis shows us a technique for dealing with “Blend if” to be able to easily see what part of the image our layer is covering, and applies it to some noise reduction....

Are your lenses not quite wide enough to get that landscape shot you want? Or perhaps your camera’s resolution isn’t quite high enough to print it as big as you want to? Well, that’s where stitched panoramas come into play. The process is fairly straightforward and offers a lot of advantages over just using a wide lens, but there are a few gotchas. In this video, landscape photographer Nigel Danson walks us through his process of making stitched panoramas covering everything from the different shooting techniques to how to actually stitch them together in the computer....

Photographer Mathieu Stern is passionate about finding and even making unusual lenses. This time, he hit a flea market and found a $6 treasure: Rollei 90mm f/2.4 MC. It’s a slide projector lens, but Mathieu adapted it to his Sony mirrorless camera and found out that it’s also great for portraits. The Rollei 90mm f/2.4 MC has no diaphragm. However, Mathieu found out that it fits perfectly in an M52 helicoid tube, which gave him a possibility to adjust focus....

Zone focusing is a term that often seems to confuse people. But if you don’t know what it is, then it’s quite easy to understand why. It’s a common technique for a lot of subjects, and particularly for street photography. I often use it myself because it means I can just raise my camera, take the shot and know it’s in focus where it needs to be. This video from photographer David Coleman explains exactly what zone focusing is, with several ways to implement it in your shoot workflow....

Hoya has today launched their new ProND Graduated neutral density filters. Like all graduated ND filters, they’re designed to help you darken down the brighter area of sky in your image in order to help get a more even exposure with retained highlights and shadows. The new Hoya ProND Graduated filters, though, aren’t your usual graduated NDs. These aren’t square format ones that you slot into a holder. They’re round screw-on filters, that can rotate to let you get the angle you wish (much like a circular polariser or variable ND)....

The Flying Pixel Portrait Camera uses a video beamer, a single photoresistor, an Arduino and a PC for taking photos of people’s faces. The beamer ‘scans’ the image by projecting a small white square onto a person’s face inside an otherwise completely dark chamber. While the projected square slowly moves over the entire face, the photoresistor captures the reflected luminosities. This generates a proportional analog electric signal which is digitized by an Arduino and transmitted to the PC....

I’m sure over the last few years all of us photographers have heard the word CINEMATIC so much that in the end, it lost all meaning. Is every photo with crushed backs and a cyan-orange color grade cinematic? I’d say NO! So today I’ll try to explore what are the factors that add up for an image to be cinematic and what can make or break the cinematic vibe of a shot....

If you’ve always wanted to own one of the iconic Magnum Photos prints, here’s an opportunity you don’t want to miss. Starting next week and for six days only, over 100 archival-quality prints will be available for just $100. All of them are signed by the photographers or estate-stamped by the estates and made by photographers such as Robert Capa, Elliot Erwitt, René Burri, and Werner Bischof, to name just a few....

An arresting photograph of a flock of thousands of geese in mid-flight from the point of view of another bird has been announced as the overall winner of the Drone Awards 2021, the main international contest of aerial photography. The award is part of the International Festival of Visual Arts Siena Awards, and the winning images from eight categories will form the exhibition “Above Us Only Sky” in Siena from October 23rd till December 5th 2021....