Posts

$10,000 Photography Giveaway is Online

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Our great friends and partners over at 5DayDeal are warming up slowly for the 2017 Complete Photography Bundle that starts in less than a week. What better way to do this than to open a huge giveaway event. :)

How to Create Lightroom Presets the Right Way

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Lightroom's Develop presets are a great way to speed up and simplify your editing workflow. Presets let you store the develop settings you apply to one image and apply those settings to any other image with a single click. You may be used to applying presets that you acquired from someone else, but how do you create your own presets? In this tutorial, you'll learn the basics of how to start creating Lightroom presets yourself.

The Crazy $50,000 Photography Giveaway

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This is easily the biggest photography giveaway you ever came across. If you enter now, you can win over $50,000 in prices. These prices include computers, gadgets, cameras, and software as well as a ton of photography education by some of the biggest names in photography. So, if you want to win and upgrade your photography, head over to the 5DayDeal website and enter the giveaway.

Photographers, Help Us Raise $300,000+ for Charity

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How would you like to help raise $300,000+ for charity and get a great photography education deal on top of that? This is your chance to give something back while also doing something awesome for your own photography education. How is that possible? Through the 5DayDeal bundle sale September 10 - 15. What I love about this event is that it is not just a sale, it is really an event that is much larger than a simple sale. And one aspect that is really having an impact way beyond photography is that while you are buying the bundle, you can pick between 4 important charity projects and send them 10% of the bundle price.

12 Essential Tips for Your Wide-Angle Photography

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Wide-angle lenses - you use them to cram more stuff into your photos. Now wait... If that's what you know about this type of lens, you're missing the whole point. A wide-angle lens can be a very powerful tool for different types of photography ranging from landscape and architecture to creative effects and even to portraiture. But you really need to know what you are doing. Otherwise, you're going to fail miserably and be disappointed with your results. In this article, I am giving you an overview of the most important aspects of wide-angle photography and a bunch of essential tips that will make your wide-angle adventures so much more rewarding. I have collected some video resources for you that will really teach you how to take the right approach. There's lots to learn, so let's dive right in!

11 Pro Tips for Composing your Photos - with Ian Plant

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Photographic composition - we all know the rules, right? And we all know that the first thing you learn is the Rule of Thirds. Well, here's a talk by one of the world's best landscape photographers, Ian Plant. Quite refreshingly, Ian does not talk about "rules", he talks about "tools of Composition", deliberately not mentioning the Rule of Thirds. Ian uses his stunning imagery to show you examples of very compelling compositions and dissects them to show you the tools he used to create them. The images alone are worth your time when you watch this video. Enjoy!

The 'What' and the 'How' of great photography!

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This video by Joel Grimes ties in nicely with one of my prior posts about How to Become an Outstanding Photographer. Joel talks about what makes a great photograph, and his main point is that photographers get sucked into the technical side too much. Creating a great photograph is a creative process, above anything else. Of course, the technical side is important, but all the photography gear, all the shooting techniques and all the post-processing tricks are just tools. It's your creative vision that counts. Therefore, you should ask the 'What' questions before you ask the 'How' questions.

How to become an outstanding photographer

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Wow, that is a bold title for a blog post, isn't it? And I bet you're expecting a fool-proof list of actions that will make you outstanding - maybe a list of gear or a set of techniques that will take you there. But what I will tell you in this post is of a different nature. It is not about gear or techniques - it is about you and your attitude towards photography or any other creative passion you may pursue.

16 Top Photography eBooks to Step Up Your Game

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What's the best way to invest in your photography? You may buy a new camera, some lenses or a crazy new tripod, that's for sure. But will this make you any better as a photographer? You have to be strong now, because the answer is... wait for it... NO! New gear is great, and we all have a gear acquisition syndrom to a some degree, but the only thing that will really make you take better pictures is Education! In this post, I am sharing mini reviews of 16 asweome photography eBooks with you. These are all premium products, and you will not get them for free, but you can get them for an incredible price in the next few hours.

Zack Arias - One Light 2.0 (Full Review)

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Lighting a scene in-studio or on location can be an intimidating task, even for an experienced photographer, and even more so for a beginner. Most professional shoots that you see and read about are incredibly complex using multiple lights, a whole set of modifiers and some expensive props. How in the world are you ever going to pull off something like this? If that's what you feel like, than this video course by Zack Arias is perfect for you. Zack shows you how to light a scene with one light and one modifier. That's all it takes to - as Zack himself puts it - take pictures that don't suck.

How to hold your camera correctly

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The way you hold your camera while you're shooting has profound effects on the quality of your photos. Remember: If you are shooting hand-held, you are the tripod! It's surprising to see how many people are actually having trouble with that. Now, as with most things in life, it's hard to give you a definite right and wrong here. After all the exact way you hold your own camera is still depending on you and your body. But there are some best practices, and in this article, I will share how some professionals go about holding their camera when they are shooting hand-held.

Starbursts - How to create and control them in your photos

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Starbursts can be a nice feature in your photos - especially in landscapes and night shots. But somehow, they seem to show up only infrequently and randomly, right? So how to you create an image that purposefully has a starburst in it to improve your composition and give your photo some additional interestingness? In this featured video, John Greengo explains what you could almost call the science of starbursts. Now, personally, I had a few rules of thumb on how to actually make them appear in my photos, but John has a whole lot more to tell you. Check this out if you want to make better use of these little dots of light in your photos.

Review: Landscape Photography (eBook & Video Tutorial) by Nicole Young

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If you are into landscape photography, the subjects and the creative possibilities are endless. How do you shoot the different scenes in order to end up with the image you have in your head? What are the shooting techniques and the tools? And last but not means least, how do you process your images to give them their final look? Wouldn't it be awesome if you could just go out with a world-class landscape photographer and watch every step? Wouldn't it be great to watch over her shoulder when she post-processes those images on the computer to pick up all those little tricks? This eBook and video series by Nicole S. Young gives you exactly that: A deep insight into how it's done and what the right tools and techniques are to make your landscape photos really stand out.

Review: Take The Mystery Out Of Lighting by Joel Grimes

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Lighting a scene correctly and creatively so that you get the look you want from your shoot is the most important but at the same time the most difficult thing to do when you do studio work. The light that you throw onto a scene and the way you modify that light really makes or breaks your photos. In this video tutorial, Joel Grimes takes the mystery out of this process. He takes you through all the different options that you have today for lighting a scene and for modifying the light source you have. He explains these options and when to use which. Then he demonstrates how to use the different types of lighting and light modifiers in an actual shoot

Review: Tack Sharp by James Brandon

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One of the most basic things you need to get straight when taking a photograph is to make sure it's sharp - tack sharp! If you like a softer look in your images, you can always add that later in your post-production. But making a blurry image sharp is far more difficult and in many cases even imporssible. In the 3rd edition of his book Tack Sharp: A Step By Step Guide To Nailing Focus James Brandon teaches you all the different ingredients to creating the sharpest possible images. And there are many ingredients to this. It's not just about using a tripod.

Review: Midnight in Paris by Trey Ratcliff

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In this 4-hour video course, world-famous travel photographer Trey Ratcliff and fashion and fine-art photographer Miss Aniela take you on a journey through the majestic French countryside and inside the Château de Champlâtreux for a one-of-a kind photography workshop. They show you how to shoot different types of photos in that renaissance building and context, and in the extensive post-processing parts of the tutorial, they show you how to make those image come to life.

$2,000+ Photography Resources for $89. No Kidding!

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This is easily the greatest photography event of the year. And it has launched just few seconds ago. The Complete Photography Bundle is a package of high-quality photography resources (video classes, ebooks, presets and more) worth $2,000+ (actually quite a bit more than that), and those crazy guys at 5DayDeal.com sell it for just $89. Can you believe it? That's well over 95% discount over the regular price of the products included. Get your bundle before the deal expires on October 20th!

Why to shoot in Raw mode - Two compelling reasons

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When I started out in photography, I set my camera to JPEG mode and that's where it stayed for quite some time. Just like every beginner, I did not know what Raw images really were and that caused a lot of confusion in me. When I did my firsts tests, the Raw images I opened looked terrible. So, I did not really see any reason why I should use this strange image format. Looking back, I wish I had known better as that would have saved a lot of photos that I eventually deleted. In this article, I will give my killer reason(s) for shooting in Raw format, and I will back this up with a real-world example.

The best photography magazines on Flipboard

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Flipboard is a mobile app that lets you aggregate your favorite content from all over the web and from social media into a nice-looking magazine that other users can subscribe to. Using Flipboard is a great way to stay informed about photography. But which of the 10 million magazines on Flipboard are right for you? In this article, I will give you my personal list of the top photography magazines on Flipboard so that you can get started quickly.

Announcing PCS Video - Photography Education the Way It Should Be

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On July 1st, we will be launching our brand new PCS Video platform. PCS Video is a combination of software and video that is tightly integrated with resources like sample images, actions and presets that you need to learn a specifc photographic topic. Make sure your ready on July 1st to grab your free sample course.