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It’s our birthday, and we want to celebrate with you! Check out our 21st birthday contest and win a free photo toolbox just by entering. We’ll have prizes every month, plus a grand prize which includes a new camera! This month, we’re giving away a package from Spider Holster and a B&H gift card! Learn more and enter to win >
You’ll be excited to learn how HDR editing is now possible with a single image and extremely useful to bring out striking details in your portraits!
I do long exposure photography almost exclusively, so I look for specific qualities in tripods. If I photograph a series of photos for stacking for Milky Way photos or two-hour
I’m often asked what sort of cheap point-and-shoot camera will help take better photos than a smartphone. But before I make that recommendation, I have to mention that most modern
Ever wonder how people were making an Instagram grid photo piece on Instagram? Using Photoshop, you can create 1×3, 2×3, 3×3 and other multiple format layouts. Here’s how to get
Want to bring out the most of your action shots? Here are five tips to edit badass sports portraits to realize with any software.
Sometimes, being in charge of taking photos can be stressful. Here are my top five tips to help you be more confident at your next photoshoot! Know your subject Whether
This is what it looks like at my desk. And I know yours probably looks like it, too — although you’d never admit it publicly. Well, I am! And I’m
OK, you know what? I’ve kept this secret for too long. This pic does not entirely reflect the reality of the moment it was made. Here’s why I’ve decided to
The term “texture” is a catch-all term for adding either abstract images, detailed photos, or patterns of different surfaces, like metal, cracked paint, sand, etc. as an overlay on your image. This is a type of “compositing”, combining multiple images into one finished work. Adding textures to your images can change the mood, create special effects, strengthen the composition, or help better tell a story. These five concepts will help you add textures more easily, realistically, and quickly in Adobe Photoshop
This is 1 of 5 tips Anthony Neste shared on photographing a model in a Hotel Room, check out the other 4 on Photofocus.
A simple tip to ensure a better portrait is to center the subject’s pupil with the whites of their eyes. Have the subject turn their head and shoulders to balance their eyes.
For me, photography is all about light and having full control over that light. It is why I am obsessed with studio light. Being able to create a shadow here
I shot this photograph at WPPI in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. I was at the ClickProps Studio Backdrops booth. This company makes over 500 backdrops in various
What is a snoot? A snoot is just a funny name for a piece of equipment, generally a tube or similar objects such as a conical, cylindrical, or rectangular shape,
When packing for trips, I find myself seesawing between my Fuji X system and Nikon DSLRs. We do underwater, street, nature and landscape photography. Do I pack the Fuji X-Pro2,
Funny thing about animals is they move around, a lot. So a technique like HDR, which requires several images that are nearly identical in everything but exposure values, is usually not an option for wildlife photographers. Often thought of as mainly a tool for landscape and architecture photography, High Dynamic Range photography captures a series of shots at multiple exposures to provide detail in both highlights and shadows a camera cannot capture in one frame. But, in the case of a running horse or flying bird, even at high shutter speeds and frame rates there will be large differences in their position from frame to frame. This makes multiple exposure HDR pretty impractical, if not nearly impossible, for wildlife and other action photography.
While the multi-shot HDR technique may not work well for high-speed creatures, software like Aurora HDR is a useful tool to put the finishing touches on your wildlife photos. Instead of capturing a series of shots at multiple exposures as you would for landscapes, you use a single shot in a process called “tone mapping”. This is a fast and easy way I use Aurora HDR to Tone Map a single image and add some extra pop and punch to wild animal images.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) processing of your photos by its nature can result in a lot of noise or graininess in your final image. While Macphun’s new Aurora HDR 2018 for PC’s does a great job overall reducing noise, there are still times when noisy areas appear in your processed HDR. This can be caused by many reasons, but most commonly it’s due to your settings in camera (such as shooting at too high of an ISO) or any image processing you have done to your images before merging them in Aurora (such as exposure adjustments). Regardless of the cause, you can remove most of this noise by using a “Luminosity Layer”. This technique saves a lot of time, giving you consistently good-looking results, quickly. Â
A lightweight travel tripod is a handy piece of equipment for every photographer to have in their gear collection.  There are times where larger, heavier, “workhorse” tripods are not the right tool for the job, or places where they are too cumbersome to transport and use.  On the lookout for a new one, a few months ago I got my hands on the Oben CT-3551 Carbon Fiber Travel Tripod and BE-113T Ball Head. Â
After unpacking it my first thought was “Wow this thing is light, I’m going to break it.” Â But, half a year later with pretty constant use, it shows few signs of wear and tear. Â In that time, it has been used for landscape, travel, and macro photography, in various locations and conditions.
Most photographers will tell you that a good tripod is one of the most important equipment investments you can make for your photography. Â But, just owning one isn’t enough to give you better pictures. Â You have to have the right one to fit your photography, as well as know how to use it properly. Â
For as much time as we spend discussing and dissecting our settings, we often don’t think about the physical mechanics of how we take pictures. Â Over the years of running photo workshops and pursuing my own photos, I have seen many mistakes and mishaps with tripods, some resulting in pretty serious damage to pricey gear. Â These are some of the most common I’ve encountered (or accidentally committed), so you can avoid not only the pain of a missed shot, but worse, a toppled tripod and a crashed camera. Â
Tell me if this has ever happened to you. Â You’ve been on the road for a while, changing your lenses out over and over, and then came across the most
Happy Summer! It’s time to get away from the computer or out of the darkroom and enjoy the beautiful weather and shoot! Here are 3 tips on making great beach photographs.
