It is often said that photography is a visual language. Through our photographs we tell stories, share experiences, and communicate emotions. Aside from journalism, where faithful captures are important for ethics reasons, photography is often about creatively interpreting a scene, rather than simpl

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on creative color effects in Lightroom. In this article I will explain how to use the Tone Curve tool for creative color effects. Tokyo Street Scene Color Settings In Part 1 of this series I covered white balance. I discussed split toning in Part 2, as well as how t

A Guest Post by Tom Di Maggio from Tom Di Maggio Photography. My use of composite pictures has been drastically increasing in the last few months. It started with locations that got cancelled due to unavailability, then bad weather made it impossible to shoot at certain location and as of lately pe

Everything is *right now* you want your images on line, you want your original files backed up, we want everything to happen quickly and easily with a minimum of fuss. Eye-Fi Pro X2 8 GB  When the company Eye-Fi started up back in 2005, I will admit that I was a little curious and wondered &ldq

By David Julian “Photographing a landscape from a low angle perspective helps me illustrate subjects in nature.” When photographing the land, I shoot traditionally and also look for a unique perspective or point of view. Low vantage points are often overlooked, and are often truly rewar

This week I’ve learned so much about photography – in a way that really surprised me. On the recommendation of a friend I purchased for myself a copy of Magnum Contact Sheets – a book (a real hard cover one) that may put you off a little due to its price and size – but which

Click on the above image for a 1200 pixel wide version. I had a number of requests to explain how I shot and edited this image and I thought it might be helpful to the DPS audience at large to explain it here. When I first started in photography 20+ years ago, I was often baffled by the results som

A Guest Post by Adi Chiru Although I never focused exclusively on making money out of photography I am still affected by this idea that many people have that photography has become easy and photographers, in general, are not really needed anymore. It sounds stupid, I know, and, I probably shouldn&rs

This post won’t teach you much, it’s meant as a reminder. A reminder to take good photos. Right now you are likely reading this post on your home computer or work computer or maybe even a phone or tablet. I would put odds that 99% of you are going about a fairly routine day and are no mo

A Guest Post by Tom Di Maggio from Tom Di Maggio Photography. When I posted the my article about creating Eye Catching Composites I got some comments and a lot of emails asking for more details on my post processing technique. This article will be more focused on how to achieve the wanted effect. I

When teaching modern digital photography I often forget those new to the general art of photography might not be familiar with classic terms and techniques and I need to take a step back. This post is for those who might have always wanted to ask, “What do people mean when they say ‘burn

A Guest Post by Rebecca Lily With the comeback of film over the last few years, many digital photographers are questioning whether or not to make the switch.  This is a decision I had to ponder myself as well.  Is it worth adding a Contax 645 to the arsenal and shooting weddings on film? I

A Guest Post by Benjamin Jenks from AdventureSauce.com. You love digital photography… Or at least you love when you capture a beautiful moment and you can share that moment with others. What if you could share more of these moments with more people? The technique I’m suggesting is cal

A Post by Mitchell Kanashkevich – author of our eBook, Natural Light: Mastering a Photographer’s Most Powerful Tool. Natural light is the most important and powerful tool available to photographers, and it is free to everybody in the world. Understanding how natural light works and how t

This is the second in a series of four articles about exposure by Andrew S Gibson – author of Understanding Exposure: Perfect Exposure on your EOS camera. You can read the first lesson, which explored the reasons for using program, aperture priority and shutter priority modes. It doesn&rsquo

De lumière et de vent means Of light and wind. I discovered the work of fellow photographer Bruno Mercier quite recently and I was quite taken by his high contrast black and white images of a region that I know quite well. Bruno lives in Normandy, France, which is where I grew up and visit o

I’ve been talking to a few people lately about deleting catalog backup files. If you backup and optimize your catalog every time you close Lightroom then, over time, you will end up with a lot of excess catalog backups. Each of these backups will consume disk space so the question becomes &nd

One task I perform regularly in Photoshop and Lightroom is to assemble multiple images on a single page for printing. I love displaying my photos, for example, as triptychs –which are three side by side images. I’ve posted before on the process in Lightroom here and here and today I&rs

A few months ago, DPS published an article I wrote entitled “How to See in Black and White.” That article had a small bonus section at the end, in which I talked about how useful HDR can be to the monochrome photographer – a fact that is initially somewhat counterintuitive, since

A Guest Post by by Gavin Phillips What is High Dynamic Range Imaging? (HDR) HDR is when you take 3-5 or 7 photos at different exposure settings, and then merge them into a single image using speciality software. What you get are beautiful photos with incredible detail, controlled lighting and accur