Expose for the Sky
A reader recently asked, “I’ve read a lot of photography articles where they say to “expose for the background” or “meter for the subject”, then “recompose and shoot”. When I do that, it still doesn’t work! My camera just adjusts the exposure for whatever I’m focusing on. For instance, if I want to take a...
A Simple Explanation of F-Stop Numbers
Even if you have a good command of using f-stop numbers and properly exposing photographs, you might not understand the math behind why f-stop numbers are what they are. Here’s a simple (albeit math-filled) explanation by Dylan Bennett of what f...
How to Compose Shots When Shooting Skateboarders
Here’s a tutorial by skateboarding photographer Michael Burnett in which he discusses various composition tips and techniques. His area of expertise is in shooting skateboarders, but the tips are very applicable for other types of photography as...
Photography 101: Using Available Light
Vimeo has partnered up with Nikon for a new educational video series titled Do More With Your DSLR. The first video is about “working with available light”, and is geared towards beginners who are just starting to figure out how to use their DSLR camera. You can find a more in-depth discussion of the concepts...
How to Make a Fluorescent Lighting Setup for Less Than $200
Here’s a tutorial by photographer Joe Edelman that teaches how you can build a studio lighting setup with fluorescent lights for under $200. You can find a detailed parts list over in the description of the video on YouTube. Once you’ve built the rig, you can move onto this next tutorial in which Edelman shows...
How to create an HDR Timelapse – a Dustin Farrell Tutorial
It’s the year 1991. I’m a kid on a beach in St. Petersburg, Florida trying to capture another amazing sunset with my new awesome camera. This was the day I first learned about the inadequacies of digital photography. That picture I took . . . sucked. The sunset didn’t look nearly as magical as it...
Personalize a Birthday Party with Picture Perfect Party Hats
If you want an extra personal touch at birthday parties, you can turn portraits of the birthday boy or girl into picture perfect party hats! Simply print out a portrait using a special template, turn it into a cone, add some fringe, and you’re done. Eden over at Sugar and Charm has the low down....
How to Visualize Photography Lighting Setups in Blender
Not too long ago I finally got around to picking up a decent manual flash for exploring lighting and speedlight techniques. I picked up a Yongnuo YN-560 Speedlight Flash for Canon and Nikon, and my friend Sean was kind enough to send me his old radio triggers to play with. I was mostly all set...
How to Quickly Find and Select Black and White Points in Photoshop
Here’s a nifty Photoshop tip by photographer Alex Wise on how you can use a Threshold layer to approximate black and white points in a photograph, and then use those points in the Curves tool to remove color casts from photos.
How to Shoot Sound Painting Photos with Paint and a Speaker
Last week we featured some “sound painting” photographs by Martin Klimas, captured by using a speaker to vibrate paint. Here’s a video tutorial by some Arizona State University Polytechnic students demonstrating how you can do your own “sound painting” photos. They use a thrift store speaker covered with a garbage bag and some Crayola poster...
Make an Easy-to-Swap Bokeh Modifier Kit
Photo enthusiast Mike Gerdau wanted to play around with bokeh shapes but didn’t want to create a separate “lens cap” for each shape. His solution was to separate the shapes from the cap itself, cutting the shapes into 45x45mm squares that swap in and out of the cap easily. The “slides” can be neatly stored...
Bit Depth vs. Dynamic Range in Layman’s Terms
Hi friends! A reader recently sent me an e-mail asking me to explain the difference between bit depth and dynamic range, so I thought I would post the explanation here for everyone’s benefit. Bit Depth A bit is defined as the smallest unit of data. It’s binary – it can be either 1 or 0,...
