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How To Become A Wedding Photographer In 10 Easy Steps – Photographers Hate This

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Starting a career as a wedding photographer is EASY – all you have to do is follow these 10 EASY STEPS TO BECOME A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER!

If you have ever wanted to start a fun, glamorous and profitable ($$$$!!!) career as a wedding photographer, I will share the secret to success that professional wedding photographers don’t want you to know.

The best part is that you don’t even need to know how to use a camera – or even have a camera to get started!

And you can learn it all FOR FREE – just read the rest of this article (and then be sure to buy our eBook*)!!![Read More…]

Upleap Review – Instagram Tool Promises to Grow Organic Followers and Engagement

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Instagram is becoming more and more relevant to photography and video clients, to the point where a respectable Instagram following is part of how clients choose potential creators for paid jobs.

Brand sponsorship, affiliate marketing, complimentary products for review and influencer access are also a few of the side benefits to growing a large Instagram following with high engagement.

As a visual medium, Instagram is uniquely tailored to the advantage of photographers and videographers who produce visual content for a living…so how do you grow organic followers and engagement on Instagram?

I have tried many Instagram growth strategies over the years: from like and follow schemes to bots to outright purchasing followers and likes – but in this Upleap review, we are going to look at a new Instagram tool that promises to grow organic followers and engagement.

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Finding your photographic eye

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When my wife and I first met, we spent a week together in Vancouver. One of the things that made me realise that we were so well suited to each other was that we both loved taking photos. While walking around the downtown area, it took us about an hour to cover 30 meters because we both kept stopping to take pictures of various things that we found interesting along the way.

I also soon learned that she had a much better natural eye. Over the period of an hour I could take one hundred pictures and she would take ten, and all ten of hers were better than mine. She just sees shapes and angles that I miss.

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Glow or sparkle? Two artistic aperture choices for sun flare & specular highlights

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When you think of lens aperture on your camera – do you think about exposure, or do you think about artistic interpretation?

Yes, aperture is one third of the exposure equation (with shutter speed and ISO making up the other two variables), but your choice of aperture should primarily be an artistic choice.

If you’re moving up to a DSLR from a mobile camera, you probably haven’t really thought about aperture too much (since phones have a fixed aperture) – or if you have, it’s in terms of bokeh (wider aperture = more bokeh…yay bokeh), but your choice of aperture has a big impact on the look of your captured image (beyond just bokeh).

In this article, I will show you the difference between using a small, closed aperture and a big wide open aperture when it comes to sun flare and specular highlights.

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How To Create Completely Fake Yet Totally Authentic Ski Chalet Fire Light Photos

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We recently spent some time skiing at Mont Tremblant in Quebec Canada.

One of the highlights of skiing is, of course, the apres ski. For me that means sitting by the fire with a good book / coffee / scotch.

In this post, I will share all of the details (technical and aesthetic) that went into creating this series of completely fake yet totally authentic ski chalet fire light photos…

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How to cut anything out in Photoshop

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Making selections in Photoshop gets easier with each passing year thanks to better tools. But, there are times when more precise selections are needed, most notably when there’s hair or fur involved in the photograph you’re trying to cut out. For times like these, more robust means of selection are required.

To help show off a handful of methods to achieve these more precise selections, Chris Spooner of Spoon Graphics has made a helpful tutorial.[Read More…]

Learning Light Painting With Eric Paré

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If an amazing light painting portrait has caught your eye sometime over the last few years, you’ve probably seen the work of Montréal, based visual artist Eric Paré.

I first noticed Eric’s work when he released his LightSpin project back in 2013 – featuring groundbreaking and truly spectacular 360 degree bullet time light painting.

Since then Eric and his long time collaborator Kim Henry have been busy traveling the world combining dance, environmental portraiture, and light painting with gorgeous results (check out Eric’s 500px portfolio here and his work with Adobe Max here).

I recently had the opportunity to catch up with Eric and Kim in Toronto where they were presenting a Creative Photography and Light Painting Workshop…

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Surprisingly, This Method Is Still the Best Way to Market To Your Photography Audience

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There are many books and countless online articles about marketing your photography business, each with their own thoughts and opinions.  Over recent years, the main the push has been towards social media and the wide audience it brings to the photographic entrepreneur.  However, with sites like Facebook basically giving page managers the finger unless they pay to have their page promoted, I fear that it won’t be long before others follow suit and the viability of social networking as a means of marketing for small business will be a thing of the past.  So, what do we do?

In a recent article over at Fstoppers, Craig Beckta shares how to effectively grow your marketing reach while others are losing theirs.  “Don’t make the mistake of countless other photographers by building your business on someone else’s platform,” he cautions, which is exactly what marketing through social media is.  But, Craig offers a different approach.

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Get Hauntingly-Beautiful Images with This Homemade Camera Lens

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It’s been my experience that I enjoy working with things more when I create them myself.  And, for the sake of argument, we’ll say you feel the same way, too.  Which is why I can only imaging that you would enjoy photography that much more if you crafted your own gear.

Instructables user bertwert has been looking for an excuse to break out the duct tape and incorporate it into photography in a manner that didn’t result in the Mounties being called.  Using a toilet paper roll, some old glass, and a little measuring, he was able to construct a usable homemade camera lens that yielded some hauntingly beautiful results.

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