Why you need to calibrate your monitor If there one thing that’s certain about photos on the internet, it’s that nobody is seeing exactly the same thing as you. In general, most screens are too bright, and have whatever default color the monitor happens to ship with. Some are great, othe

What is a vignette? The word vignette comes from the root word vine, which originally was taken to mean a decorative border on a page. In photography, this translates to a border around the edge of the image. This border is caused by a reduction of light from the center of the image, or a light fal

So you’ve done the research, read the articles, browsed through your photos, and decided it’s time to make the leap from shooting in JPG to shooting in RAW, in order to get the most quality possible out of your photos. Congratulations, and welcome to the fold! Things are nice over here i

A huge part of your job as a photographer is to make people pause, and linger over a photograph. Sometimes it could be a stunningly lit portrait, or maybe an epic landscape. But, if you’re like me, more than likely you don’t live in an area that will provide you with daily majestic shots

I’m here to share my photography journey that started few years ago as a novice, to where I stand today. As an amateur or hobby photographer, you may relate. The journey from novice to advanced photographer About two years ago, I bought an entry level DSLR, to use it as an expensive point and

Here are 20 tips to help you take the best stock photos while traveling or around your hometown. Even if you don’t do stock photography, you can use these tips to help you get better images. NEAR SKOGAR, ICELAND – JUN 19: Skogafoss waterfall on June 19, 2015, was in the film The Secret L

The LED monitor on the back of a camera is most often used to review captured images. But here’s a tip: Live View can also be a useful tool, helping you to focus your camera before taking the shot. In fact, Live View may be the most accurate means of focusing a camera. Let’s take a look

Even though I strive to get the best compositional shot in-camera. I do see ‘cropping’ as essential to my post editing workflow. For such a simple post edit technique, it can really enhance and improve composition of the image. I have also found cropping an image, be it small or in

Young girl dressed up for Halloween. Low-key portrait using one speedlight, against a typical black background. I dare say that nothing is quite like the effect of low-key lighting to show drama in an image. So what does low-key lighting mean in terms of photography? A good definition is found

Brilliant black and white photos are created in two steps. The second of these is post-processing, and is very important. But before you get to that stage, you have to learn how to see and compose photos in black and white. This is just as important as processing – it doesn’t matter how

Photo converted to black and white in Topaz B&W Effects 2. While Lightroom and Photoshop are sophisticated, advanced Raw converters and image editing programs, there are still many things that they don’t do as well as third party applications. One of these is converting photos to black and

When it comes to off-brand (or third party) camera gear, do you feel a bit skeptical? I was in the same boat for my entire photography career, choosing to invest exclusively in Nikon gear when I was a Nikon shooter, then all Canon when I switched over for the Canon 5D Mark III. “You get w

If landscape photography is your passion, you probably love to visit new places, and photograph beautiful natural scenes. But have you ever been unable to capture the beauty you saw in front of you in your camera? Do your images come out flat and boring? With these six tips, you’ll take your p

So you are out shooting and you want to capture the full scene in front of you – all the way from what is directly in front of you to the background way off in the distance. You know you need a really large depth of field, and you know what you need to do to get it. You reach for the came

Working mostly in fine art portraits I’ve never felt the need to try a retouching program.  I like to keep a natural look, using Photoshop only for any minor retouching needed. I had looked into a retouching program briefly, but after clicking on a few sites I never got further than looki

You might have seen some articles here on Digital Photography School about using the histogram when editing pictures in Lightroom and Photoshop, but it can also be a very handy tool when you are out shooting images as well. Most cameras have the ability to show you the histogram when you review

Place your subject to the right or left of centre. For portraits, the eyes should be above the centre line for a pleasant good composition. Composition is all about the balance of the elements in your photograph. This also includes colors tones and textures. This is what separates a snapshot from a

When I first started out in photography I had a tough time wrapping my head around one of its most fundamental concepts: exposure. I learned everything I could about things like aperture, light, shutter speed, highlights, shadows and dynamic range, but all these were planets orbiting a central

A question I get asked a lot is, “What software for post processing would you recommend if you were starting out in photography today?” Don’t know which photo editor to choose, here are some free options worth considering. My go-to software for editing photos is Adobe Photoshop. Th

You want your photos to be as sharp as possible. Of course, there is no substitute for good technique in the capture phase, but you would like to add something in the post-processing to make the pictures clearer and sharper. You may already be adding sharpening, but how to add that e