Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Architectural photography is possibly one of the most challenging types of photography there is. We see buildings every day of our lives, and most of them have been seen from just about every angle already. Seeing and photographing them in a new or interesting way isn’t easy.
This video from 30×40 Design Workshop was actually posted to YouTube a couple of years ago, but it’s not one I’d seen before and it offers some great advice for those wishing to pursue architecture photography.
As photographers start to explore alternatives to Adobe’s suite of applications, Capture One is a piece of software that’s often recommended as an alternative to Lightroom. While it may be arguably superior in certain aspects, and very similar in others, the workflow is a little different to Lightroom. So, it can take a while for new users to get used to it.
In this video, Michael Comeau at On Portraits walks us through his 20 top tips for beginners to Capture One to help newcomers get to grips with the software quickly and speed up their overall workflow.
When it comes to processing our images, there are all kinds of weird and crazy techniques out there. This is an interesting Lightroom one from Pye Jirsa over at SLR Lounge, which he calls “Dark Mode”. It allows you to quickly and easily draw a distinction between the lit areas you want to highlight, and the shadowy areas, without sending them to pure black.
It’s an approach I’d not seen before. It essentially involves bringing the exposure way down, the blacks way up to bring back the shadow detail and then controlling your contrast with the highlights. Some thought needs to be put into the shooting technique for this to work, but it looks to be quite effective if this is the final look you’re going for.
Travel and landscape photography has always been popular, but since everybody now has a camera in their pocket and many are also choosing to take things further with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, it’s really taken off. Finding information on travel or landscape photography isn’t exactly difficult, but Taylor Jackson has combined all his knowledge into this three-hour “Ultimate” travel and landscape tutorial video.
There’s been a lot of drama recently over the latest Photoshop updates, especially for Mac users. But regardless of compatibility issues, new bugs or whatever, many people put off upgrading to the latest version simply because they’re worried about losing their presets, despite the advantages the latest edition of Photoshop may offer.
In this video, Colin Smith at PhotoshopCAFE walks us through how to keep our presets when upgrading, as well as how to share them with others.
Maps are wonderful things. They don’t just let us figure out how to get from here to there, but they can also provide context, especially in travel videos. They let the viewer see how far we’ve gone, or get an idea of the surrounding area, or one of a million other reasons you might want to put a map in your video.
Fortunately, thanks to modern technology, doing this is now easier than ever. In this video, Jason Boone walks us through one way to create them using Google My Maps and Google Earth Studio to create an image sequence you can bring into your video editor.
Adobe’s Premiere Pro is one of the most popular video editing applications in the world. Like most non-linear editors, though, Premiere Pro can seem very overwhelming to new users, especially when it comes to effects. In this new video series, Justin Odisho is on a mission to go over every single effect available in Premiere Pro.
Each video goes over a different group of effects available natively in the effects panel of Premiere Pro. He takes a deep dive into each of the effects to explain exactly how they work and what each of the options available to them does.
Part of the joy of landscape photography for me is standing around and waiting for the light to change. You put your camera on its tripod, compose a shot and wait, taking photos every few minutes, whenever the sky or light or whatever looks interesting.
I caught the tail end of a storm in Santorini, Greece, with heavy clouds blowing over right at sunset. An hour or so later and it was blue hour, with streetlights and buildings lit up. Both photos are below, after being edited in Lightroom using the Lightroom Develop System.
It’s an argument that’s been around for as long as digital photography. Should I edit in 8-bit or 16-bit mode? What are the benefits of one over the other and does it really make any difference at all? In this pretty in-depth video, StyleMyPic walks us through what it means and busts two of the most common myths surrounding bit depth.
Gimbals can be wonderful filmmaking tools, and they’re ideal for adding interesting movement to your shot with the minimum of fuss. But they’re not always easy to get to grips with instantly. To get the best out of them, you need to practice and experiment. If you’re very new, though, just searching on YouTube for gimbal tutorials can get overwhelming. Many of them cover advanced techniques without really showing you the basics.
In this video, Jason Vong goes through some gimbal basics to get you shooting cinematic footage as quickly as possible. And he not only talks about the techniques he uses but also his lens choice to get the most impact.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
His videos have over a hundred million views, have been extensively published by news outlets, and has even received recognition from a few film festivals, such as International Ocean Festival
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