Photo How To

Got Questions About Photography? Professional Photographer and Photoshop Expert Scott Kelby Has Got Answers.

On Monday evening, February 8th, I got an e-mail okaying my request for press credentials to cover the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl victory parade. It was triple good news: I’m a Broncos fan, I’d get images for stock, and I wouldn’t have to travel far (I live about 10 miles from Denver).

As a Shutterbug reader, you know how to shoot fireworks. But what do you say to your friends and kinfolk when they ask you for advice? Simple—just send them the link to this article. It’s a nice, relatively short list of 10 tips for photographing aerial pyrotechnics. Because after all, there’s more to fireworks than what meets the sky. 

David X. Tejada’s assignment was a lighting demo for a how-to video and end-use images. The location was a private home where he was asked to create the effect of artificial sunlight. The weather cooperated by providing rain.

Shutterbug featured the unique work of expert light painter Jason Page back in 2014, and he has a fascinating new tutorial that will help you learn this popular technique. In this video, Page uses the Light Painting Brushes system to create some imaginative effects.

A good friend once told me, “When you’re doing something, you’re not doing something else.” This Yogi Berra-ism is actually great advice. When considering a photo project, think about its commercial potential. You can spend a year photographing the slime left by snails at night, but does anyone want to see that? More importantly in this increasingly web-focused world, will they share it in their social media feeds?

Many, many years ago, in a silver halide universe far, far away, amateur photographers were divided into two camps. Their differences were not based on political orientation. And they had nothing to do with the Cold War, nationality, ideology or anything else so trivial. What was the division that separated otherwise rational people? Read on…