Check out the time-lapse video below called “Heart of Vancity” shot by Canada-based photographer Joel Schat. The video is one of the cleanest I’ve seen. The composition is top notch, the music is epic, the movements are so smooth, and there is virtually none of light flickering. What you’ll notice is that is Joel Schat focuses on shots that involve a lot of change in terms of lighting. How did Joel achieve such...

I work in the Financial District area of Manhattan, New York; namely, at the corner of Water St and John St. There are at least 20-30 food trucks, on top of multiple restaurants, within the 700-yard radius. At lunchtime everyday, my coworkers and I walk around the blocks trying different places to eat. A few months ago, we discovered GRK Fresh Greek, and it’d proven to be a good spot to visit at least once a month or. The food is...

Here’s another Jasmine Star’s installment on how to pose a bride for a photoshoot. When you are photographing a bride, it is as important to make her feel comfortable as it is to have the pictures look good. One of the tricks is to give the bride something to hold, because it will create natural lines and curves where they are supposed to be. This can be easily done since there’s always the bouquet. You can also give...

The post title is a bit confusing, so I’ll try to explain the purpose here: Let’s say you have a webpage with a top navigation menu. Now, suppose you want to be fancy and have the top navigation stay static with respect to the page as the user scroll down. The effect is seen implemented on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Techcrunch, Woot.com, etc… I’m going to explain how this trick is done using  jQuery. Now,...

I’ve been on a quest to find the best weather app for quite some time now, and I think I’ve finally found it. I have an iPhone, and the native weather app has been put in my “junk” folder for almost a year now, because it looks so ancient and is so impractical. What I wanted was an app that is clean, elegant, and informative. “How informative” you ask? Well, I want to know how windy it’s going to...

I’ll be honest, I’m generally not a huge fan of Joe McNally when it comes to tutorials because he tends to go off tangent and I can’t follow, but this is an exception that I personally think is one of the greatest. In this video, Joe McNally will tell a story about how he got the gig to shoot this badass aircraft for National Geographic. The plane was delivered to him and 3 o’clock in the morning, so it was pitch...

April’s Fool is approaching us, so I thought this post would be appropriate. Below is a jQuery code snippet that you can paste into your website that’s loaded with jQuery to run on the first day of April, 2013. The prerequisite is that jQuery.noConflict() has been called, and you have FTP access to your website or WordPress blog. Here are the things this code will do: - Check to see if today is April’s Fool. If yes,...

One of the mistakes one photographer could make in the early days was showing up to a photo shoot and hoping things would work out for themselves. They never do. When your shoots are not going the way you wanted, you should realize that it was no one’s fault but your own. As a wedding photographer, Jasmine Star needs to prepare her clients for success. This usually begins at the beginning of the working relationship – the...

Take about half an hour out of your day and watch the speech below given by Amy Dresser, who’s one of the most talented photo retoucher in the industry. Amy has a great point about her field, her work, and how it’s perceived by photographers and outsiders. Retouchers are like “parasites in the photo industry”, she said. She goes on about the ridiculous requests that she’d get from clients, and how she’d...

My friend Julia Kuzmenko McKim has done it again and released yet another eBook called “Digital Photo Retouching: Beauty, Fashion & Portrait Photography“. I had the honor to be involved with the proofing and launching processes of the product, so I was able to check it out before it went live. I must say this: this is one of the most comprehensive and useful book I have read, as far as photo retouching is concerned. I have...