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This is the difference between taking a photo or making one

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The phrase “making a photograph” is one that you’ll often hear as your journey with photography continues. It’s odd the first time we hear it. “Making?”. All our lives up until that point, we’ve been told that we “take” photos, not make them. There is a big difference between taking a photo and making a photo, though.

In this video, photographer Espen Helland talks us through how he made this photo of a stag in Scotland’s Cairngorms. Espen takes us on a journey from the very beginning stages of his idea, right through to the day it was shot – to very dramatic effect. This isn’t so much a tutorial on how to make a photo so much as explaining the intent behind making a photo.

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This 19-minute photography crash course has everything you need to break out of automatic modes on your camera

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At some point, we were all beginners and there are new people coming to photography and buying their first DSLR or mirrorless camera every day. A lot of people starting out stick to the automatic modes and basically treat their camera like an expensive point-and-shoot, not really understanding how it all works. And that’s fine if that’s your thing. But if you want to learn more, it can be difficult to know where to start.

In this video, the Koldunov Brothers walk us through the basic principles of cameras and photography, and how they all tie into each other. It’s an easy-to-digest video, that’s a little over 19-minute long going over everything you need to really understand how your camera works.

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Photographing the corona discharge of conductive objects looks absolutely awesome

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This is a pretty cool technique that definitely needs to come with a health and safety warning. So, don’t try this at home unless you understand how electricity works and how to experiment with it safely. If that’s you, then you’ll love this video from Hyperspace Pirate. Even if it’s not you, watch it anyway because it results in some pretty cool photography!

It’s a process called Kirlian Photography and it’s used to be able to photograph the phenomenon of electrical coronal discharge. It was accidentally discovered by Semyon Kirlian, after whom it was named, in 1939. It’s a similar principle as those “Plasma Globes” that were so popular in the 80s.

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The better you get at photography, the more difficult it becomes – but that’s not a bad thing

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I’ll admit that this is something that I haven’t really thought of before, but after having watched this excellent video from aows, I think it explains why I often change the topics I like to shoot. His argument is that the more you do photography, the more images you shoot, and the better you become, the more difficult it becomes. It seems odd, but when you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

The reason it gets harder is that you’re following that advice often told to photographers. Stop competing with other photographers. The only photographer you need to compete with is the photographer you used to be. And this is basically the problem. As you learn more, get better and your work improves, you’re setting your own bar higher. It gets more and more difficult to best yourself.

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Annie Leibovitz under fire for “poorly lit” photos of Black skin… Again

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Vogue recently hired famous photographer Annie Leibovitz to take photos of the United States Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. As perhaps we could have expected after those Simone Biles photos, people were all over Leibovitz over “poorly lit” images.

Many have criticized the photographer over the “poor” lighting of Jackson’s brown skin. Some attempted to “fix” the photos and relight them. And some went as far as claiming that Leibovitz should not be allowed to photograph Black people.

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My perfect portable setup for the traveling retoucher or photographer

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Technology has really evolved in a way that has made it possible for people to work more efficiently on the go. I used to remember when laptops were barely able to keep up with Photoshop and working on the road was a huge pain. Now it’s changed drastically!

I am a working and traveling retoucher, photographer, and co-founder of Infinite Tools. This year alone I’ve had the pleasure of traveling and working in places like Cape Town, Iceland, and Namibia! Whether it’s going abroad or locally, I always need to be able to retouch client work and I wanted a setup that could adapt to home and travel life. After all, sometimes I am only home for a bit and even when I’m home, I like to work in different locations to change things up.

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Is Photoshop ruining photography or is it actually helping it?

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This is a topic that I see posted on social media every single day. It’s usually not a discussion of the actual topic, though. More often than not, it’s bundled up in a comment like “This isn’t photography!” or “Fake! You’ve Photoshopped this!”. Yeah, it’s a pretty one-sided conversation a lot of the time. But photographer and educator Blake Rudis explores the topic quite in-depth in this video.

The criticisms of the use of Photoshop in photography often come from the self-proclaimed “purists” who believe that every image has to look how it looks right out of the camera (which still has digital post-processing applied, btw) and there’s very little that seems to dissuade them from their beliefs. But ultimately, does it really matter what other people think about your use (or lack) of Photoshop?

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Is microcontrast your favourite photography blogger’s favourite myth?

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I write a series called the Glossary of Photographer’s Woo over on Medium, and am delighted to be here on DIY Photography to talk about microcontrast.

Lens design has improved pretty steadily over the last hundred years. That is to say, modern lenses resolve finer detail, render colours and contrast more deeply, and are generally more free from the defects of spherical distortion, chromatic aberration, and vignetting. These defects are all easily measurable, and in art reproduction and scientific photography, they are probably very important. But in creating art? To many photographers, our lenses have been more than good enough for a long time.

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These are the seven rules (guidelines) to cinematic framing and composition

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Composition is always such a hotly debated topic. There are so many “rules” (and sometimes a few that conflict with each other), but unless you want to start getting yourself obsessively wrapped up in those debates, you have to think of them more as guidelines. But they’re guidelines that we often see followed to great effect in many movies, TV shows, and photographs. Do you know why? Well, it’s because they often work.

In this video, Kellan Reck walks us through seven of what he considers to be the most important rules, tips and tricks to get a good cinematic looking shot. And while the video is geared towards filmmaking, much of what is said can be applied to photography, too.

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Going beyond the basic “rules” – How to create balance and find harmony in your photography

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Balance is an odd thing in photography. It’s one of those things that’s difficult for people to quantify – especially observers who aren’t familiar with critiquing photography. They look at the image, something feels a little bit off but they can’t quite put their finger on it. It’s what people often mean when they say “Oh, that landscape could do with a person in that bit over there”, because an image looks perhaps a little lopsided and uncomfortable.

In this video, photographer Pat Kay walks us through “Balance” in episode 9 of his series on visual patterns. It’s a well thought out series, and if you want to see them all, there’s a playlist here, but I felt that balance was a topic that often seems to stump photographers, isn’t spoken about as much as things like “The rule of thirds” and other popular topics, so needed to be featured here.

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