Pye and the guys from SLRLounge have done us a huge favor; they went out and bought a bunch of different AA batteries to test and see how well they perform for our camera flashes. I wish the tests were more thorough, in the sense that I wanted to see how consistent the flash was pumping out; however, their tests did conclude that some battery brands are just absolutely bad news, like the Energizer and the Kirkland. In terms of heat and...

The lens or focal length of the lens you choose has a profound impact on the image. It affects the perspective, background and features of the subject. In this video, Jay P. Morgan will go over what the different focal lengths do to the human face and how they change the background. Why do you choose a 135 mm lens to shoot a head shot of a beautiful woman but use a 24mm to shoot a clown. Jay will also go on to demonstrate a simple 2-light...

If you’re a wedding photographer, you should know how important it is it photograph wedding rings; or, we sometimes call it “ring shots”. Things get quite hectic on the wedding day, so you only have at most a few minutes to get the shots. Things get even trickier when you try to capture the ring shots while stylizing the photos to best represent your brand. Jasmine Star has made a video with some very nice tips for...

Ever since I upgraded my Adobe Lightroom 4, I ran into all sort of problems. You can go back and read my rants HERE and HERE. About a month after Adobe released their Lightroom 4.0, they finally came out with an iteration of 4.1 that did resolve some of the major bugs in 4.0. They fixed the adjustment curve issues, so your LR3 templates would somewhat work with that of LR4 (note: they still don’t look the same as the writing time of...

(Hint: Much More Than Just Persuasion) Whether you’re busy navigating the choppy, roiling tides of the vast corporate sea or simply wanting to have things go your way a little bit more often than they presently do, the ability to communicate effectively will be one of the most important arrows in your quiver. The important thing to remember, though, is that communication isn’t only about making sure you’re understood — it’s...

There are a ton of tutorials on how to make a dynamic “Back to Top” button on your website, and most of them involve jQuery. The problem is, those tutorials are for standalone websites, not WordPress. The biggest difference is if you’re running a WordPress website, chances are, jQuery has already been installed, and the most important thing is, a function noConflict(); has been called. When this function is called, the...

You want to edit beauty shots like a boss? Take an online course in Photoshop retouching with Julia from Omaha Image Productions. She’s one of the most talented photographer, and most skilled retoucher I’ve ever known. I stumbled across her work a few years ago on Flickr, and have been following her work ever since. Fast forward to a couple of months before this point, we have become virtually great friends. And by virtually I...

Nowadays, the access to photography is so easy for everyone; cameras haven’t gotten a lot more affordable, and a smartphone already packs more megapixels than any average person ever needs. To become a successful photography, it’s extremely important that you to stay relevant and ahead of the game, especially if you shoot wedding. One of the most effective ways to get the “Wow!” reaction from your clients is to...

Ring lights and ring flashes are some of the most awesome lighting tools for fashion photography. It’s great because because it creates a wonderful highlight on the model’s skin, and allows for the shadows to fall away from the camera. Ring lights and ring flashes give excellent dimensions to your images, even though they point directly at your subjects. This could be both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is if you...

In this week’s episode, Joel Grimes is going to walk us through some high-key shooting a 3-light setup to create a very soft look using 5-foot and 7-foot Octoboxes. Often times, this set up gives you a relatively “edgy” look on the model, but with Joel’s tips, you will be creating a gorgeously nice and creamy glow that wraps around the model. Most of Joel’s shots were done with an aperture of f/8.0, which is...