10 Pro Tips For Better Composition

Published Monday, September 9th, 2013

I frequently quiz my friends in the photography business for tips and tricks to share with readers either in person or by email; they’re used to it and, for the most part, are pretty forthcoming. From those efforts I have collected a number of ideas for better composition from people who live the business of photography every day. This exercise was fraught with surprises and the answers were not always what I expected. It’s hard to get photographers to follow the rules, even the ones they set for themselves. I’ve sifted through the responses and pick the top 10 based on their feedback.

Stunning Landscape Photographs

Published Thursday, September 5th, 2013

Landscapes are a popular subject with many photographers, and everyone loves to see a beautiful landscape photo. Amazing subjects for landscape photos are all over the place, you don’t have to be at one of the best locations in order to produce a great landscape photo.

In this article we’ll showcase 45 examples from various photographers. This gallery should provide plenty of inspiration for your own landscape photography and give you something great to browse.

6 Tips for Candid Kids Photos

Published Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

There’s nothing worse than cheesy smiles and awkward poses when it comes to kid’s photos – so if you want to get cheese-free photos then you may want to consider the following tips:

Free Elegant Fade Lightroom Preset

Published Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013

Today we have a free Lightroom preset that will give your photos an elegant faded look. This preset is a sample from our larger set of Fabulous Fades Lightroom Presets. The preset works in Lightroom 4 and 5. See preview images below.

5 Tips for Real Estate Photography

Published Monday, September 2nd, 2013

With more and more people jumping on the real estate train every day, the market is beginning to get very saturated with realtors. This causes those who want to be successful in the business to offer a higher quality service to those who hire them. One way realtors can do this is by offering professional images of their listings for the Multi List. Not only does it make their service look more professional, but it also helps sell houses more quickly because better pictures online usually means more foot traffic at the listing.

Here are five great ways to help you offer an outstanding product for your clients who are real estate agents.

Create Christmas Cards with Your Own Photos, Plus Free Templates

Published Wednesday, August 28th, 2013

Christmas is still a few months away, but before you know it you may have some clients who are interested in getting Christmas cards printed and it’s always good to be prepared. Seasonal promotions can be a great way to bring in some extra money from your photography, and Christmas cards are something that most families will be looking for within the next few months.

We have a few different products that can help with making it easy to offer Christmas cards to your clients this year. You can use these resources along with your photos to make memorable cards that your clients will love. These resources are photo overlays, and they’re very easy to use. It can be as simple as using one of your photos for the full size of the card front and then applying one of the overlays on top of it. Here are the different types of Christmas-themed overlays that are available.

Christmas Word Overlays – $19
This set includes 15 different Christmas and holiday themed quotes in .png and .psd formats. You can simply lay them on top of your photo and customize the overlay details like size and color. You can even edit the text if needed.

Top 10 Destinations Around the Globe for Landscape Photography

Published Wednesday, August 28th, 2013

The world is full of beautiful and inspiring locations at every twist and turn, and knowing where to take your camera next is often the hardest decision you’ll ever have to make when it comes to photography.

From the picturesque peaks of the Peruvian mountains to the breathtaking British Isles, check out these top ten destinations from around the globe that every passionate landscape photographer needs to add to their bucket list.

Texture Pack 2 – Free Samples

Published Tuesday, August 27th, 2013

These free textures are provided as a free sample from our Texture Pack 2. The free sample includes 3 high resolution textures, and the full set includes 50 textures. Each texture is 12 inches by 12 inches at 300 dpi (3600 pixels by 3600 pixels), so they are versatile for web and print usage. You can preview the free sample textures here, and download the high res textures after the preview images.

33 Stunning Urban Decay Photographs

Published Monday, August 26th, 2013

Browsing through the work of other photographers has always been something that I really enjoy. Seeing the work of others can provide inspiration and ideas, plus it helps me to find things that I want to try on my own. One subject that I find to be a favorite is urban decay.

Here you’ll find 33 different examples of urban decay photography for your own inspiration. These photos take a subject that is deteriorating and in disrepair and use it to create a stunning and powerful image.

How to Create a Split Tone Effect in Photoshop

Published Wednesday, August 21st, 2013

Split toning is a technique that harks back to film photography, but it’s very easy to create a similar split tone effect using Photoshop. This technique applies different color tones to the shadow and highlight areas to produce a twist on a simple black and white image.

You can find a variety of ways to achieve this effect in Photoshop. If you’re working on a RAW file, you have a split toning option in ACR while converting for use in Photoshop and it’s also possible to use ACR to work on JPEG files. However you do have a little more control using the Gradient Map method that I’m going to describe here.

Vintage Lightroom Preset

Published Tuesday, August 20th, 2013

Today we have a free preset that will allow you to create vintage-style effects for your photos in Lightroom. This preset is a sample from our full set of Vintage Lightroom Presets, which includes a total of 31 presets. It works with Lightroom 4 and 5 and will give you an excellent preset for quickly creating beautiful vintage effects.

How to Submit Stock Photography – Preparing to Get Accepted!

Published Monday, August 19th, 2013

Becoming a professional photographer opens you up to a whole array of different avenues towards earning a living and making some serious dough. Not only can you sell your services as a photographer, but you can also sell your images on the internet to a whole bunch of different stock image companies; knowing how to submit stock photography can be somewhat confusing, even for the seasoned pro-photographer, see below for three of the most popular stock image companies:

• Getty images
• Shutterstock
• istockphoto

Each of these offer a very detailed and somewhat confusing image submission guideline, some offer advice on how to submit stock photography, others don’t. Nevertheless, there are many to be found on the internet, each offering their own unique services and set of guidelines for submissions.

Getting it right

The director of Getty images said in an interview recently;

“We get thousands upon thousands of photographers going through our online submission process every week, most don’t know how to submit stock photography sites. Less than 5% of these photographers get picked. Not reading the guidelines correctly is the main factor for this”

Getty and all of the other image houses ask for relatively the same elements and just as what explained above, many excellent photographers get turned away because they didn’t follow the guidelines to the letter.

The Five Top Mistakes Photographers Make With Models

Published Wednesday, August 14th, 2013

When you’re behind the camera sometimes it’s easy to lose perspective about what it’s like for the people in front of the camera. It’s not that hard to understand when you think about it; doing photography right takes a lot of focus. It’s not that you don’t have empathy for your models and subjects, it’s just that sometimes you’re a little too busy to give it much thought.

The mistakes new photographers make working with models are surprisingly consistent. I was lucky enough to marry a model and she is uniquely qualified to provide the perspective from in front of the camera.  She was fortunate enough to work with photographer Brian Heston in Chicago on her early portfolio shots.  After starting out with the best she can tell the amateur photographers from the pros in just a few minutes and these insights are the five biggest mistakes she sees new photographers make when working with talent.

Create HDR-Like Effects in Lightroom with the Fundamentals Presets

Published Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

In this tutorial we’ll quickly walk through the process of creating an effect similar to an HDR photo. You can achieve this look in Lightroom with or without Fundamentals, but the purpose of Fundamentals is to speed up your workflow. You can get the HDR look with just a few clicks and without messing with a lot of sliders in Lightrooms develop module.

For the tutorial we’ll be working with this photo, which has been provided by Meghan Newsom.

Create a Black and White Effect in Lightroom with the Fundamentals Presets

Published Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

In this tutorial we’ll quickly walk through the process of creating a beautiful black and white photo. You can achieve this look in Lightroom with or without Fundamentals, but the purpose of Fundamentals is to speed up your workflow. You can get this look with just a few clicks and without messing with a lot of sliders in Lightrooms develop module.

For the tutorial we’ll be working with this photo, which has been provided by Meghan Newsom.