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Use this Hollywood colour designer trick to elevate the emotion in your photographs

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The use of colour in most movies is not random. It’s actually all thought through and planned far in advance of shooting, in order to amplify and help convey the emotion and story. This excellent video walks you through the complicated theory of colour and how it’s used in the film industry.

One popular way to simplify how colour is designed is to use the 60/30/10 rule, as this video from Wolfcrow describes. It’s different from colour grading which is colour adjustment applied in post-production.

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Light pollution is ruining your photos, follow these three tips to minimize it

If you live in a city, photographing night skies is a challenge, to say the least. Light pollution affects our photos and makes the sky suck, coming from the ground and even from the sky. Even though we can’t lower light pollution on a global level, at least we can do something to minimize its impact in our photos. In this video from B&H, astrophotographer Jess Santos will tell you how.

Jess helps you get past light pollution and raise your night sky photos to a higher level. But she also shares some important facts about light pollution that affect more than just our photos.

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Here are three ways to add a second light to your flash setup for shooting portraits

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There has been a lot written (and put onto video) over the years advocating the use of a single flash and there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re often packed with wonderful advice that’s geared towards either educating those who’ve never used flash before or helping those with far too much gear to really limit themselves in order to master that most basic of techniques.

But once you’ve mastered lighting up your subject with a single flash, how do you go about adding another? Why would you even need to do so? Well, in this video, Gavin Hoey walks us through the potential problems of only using a single light that can only be overcome by adding another and offers up three different ways we can add a second flash to our setup in the studio.

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This crash course teaches you everything you need to know about using flash for portraits

Flash is almost an inevitability when it comes to portraits. At some point or another, you’re going to find yourself frustrated with the “natural light” and you’re going to want to either try to overpower it or complement it to improve its looks or you’re going to give in completely, head indoors and go for a more studio-style setup away from the wind and rain and crappy weather. Whatever the reason, it’s as inevitable as Thanos.

But where do you begin? What gear do you need to get started? What do all the terms mean? How do you use them? What are modifiers? Key light? What? Well, all these questions and more are answered in this hour and a half long video from photographer Ed Verosky. It’s a complete crash course on using flash to shoot portraits, although much of what’s said applies to flash in any context.

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Camera hack: Snap Focus on Fuji cameras

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Ricoh’s GR cameras and Fujifilm’s X-E and X100 series are probably the most popular affordable street photography cameras. Although both are ultra-compact APS-C cameras, there is at least one unique street photography feature that sets Ricoh apart from Fuji: snap focus. This allows the camera to be set to a fixed focusing distance (such as 3 meters/10ft) for ultra-fast snapping. When Snap Focus is enabled, the camera shoots with minimal delay because the autofocus does not hunt.

In addition, Snap Focus minimizes the risk of misfocusing when a photographer has internalized the right distance between camera and subject and set a small aperture for a wider depth of field. Snap Focus is therefore a direct functional equivalent of traditional zone focusing techniques in rangefinder photography but on a digital autofocus camera.

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Take your images up a notch when working with non-pro models

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If you’re like me then most of your portrait shoots are probably not spent photographing professional models. In fact, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I have shot with an experienced professional model. I actually prefer to work with non-models, it’s a different challenge and with a slightly different approach you can create fantastic images.

In this video Irene Rudnyk walks us through some of her tips for getting the most ut of photographing a non-model.

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Put your glass on wheels for awesome splash beverage photos

There are plenty of ways to photograph drinks, glasses, and bottles. Dustin Dolby from Workphlo has guided us through many of them in his great video tutorials. But this time, he shares something that looks like a lot of fun and adds motion and dynamics to your beverage photos.

Using cheap and simple dolly, you can create splash photos in the studio with minimum gear. So, let’s dive in and see how Dustin got his shot: from shooting all the way to the final edit.

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4 tips to find the best unique locations for epic landscape photography

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How do you avoid the dreaded ‘identikit’ landscape image problem? You know, when you think you’ve found an epic location and then check Instagram and discover hundreds of almost the same but possibly better images?

What you need is a new method of location scouting, and in this video photographer, Dave Morrow walks us through a few ideas on how he finds amazing locations that aren’t already all over everyone else’s feeds.

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Watch this beginner’s gimbal guide and learn how to get smoothest footage possible out of your camera

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Gimbals are more popular now than they ever have been and their popularity will no doubt continue to rise in the future as they become more advanced, more accessible and higher-end features come to lower end and lower-cost models. But if you’ve never used one before, they can be a bit of a learning curve to get used to so that you’re shooting nice smooth steady footage.

That’s where Josh Morgan at Momentum Productions is here to help with this beginner’s guide to getting smooth and stable footage from your gimbal as quickly and easily as possible. In the video, Josh uses the Zhiyun Weebill 2 (review here) along with the Sony A7S III and Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 Art lens to demonstrate some exercises to try in order to learn how to use your gimbal effectively.

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