Pro Techniques

Color can thrill, color can dazzle, but often a black and white or monochrome image is more powerful. Black and white may better convey the feeling you want to evoke for a particular image--more dramatic, more abstract. Paradoxically, even when you know that you want a final photo in black and white, you should shoot digitally in color, as you should scan a film or print...

As a young photographer, Eric Meola's first job after college was assisting Pete Turner. He got the job through the same passionate perseverance that has driven him in countless successful assignments. It helped him create a unique visual style that has carried throughout his entire career.

Shutterbug: After about 18 months of assisting Pete...

Photography can do two things that no other artistic medium can do: It can freeze motion so we are able to examine every detail in a fast-moving subject, thus revealing things that our eyes could never catch; and it can blur the same subject to express the fluidity and aesthetics of motion. When you blur a subject with a long enough shutter speed, it blends the background with a...

It's a well-known tenet that Perspective Control (PC) or tilt/shift lenses are intended for shooting architectural subjects. But who says you have to use them that way?

A PC lens lets you do a certain amount of tilt/shift, rise/fall control, a limited equivalent to a technique that view camera photographers can fully exploit via the...

He figured he'd be one of the last of the holdouts. "When the whole digital revolution started, I thought I'd be the last guy to be shooting digital," David Alan Harvey says. Then along came an offer he didn't want to refuse. "Nikon was working on an ad campaign for their D100, and they asked me if I'd go down to Mexico and shoot with the...

In my workshops I often get asked, "How do you find digital clients?" I think there is a myth surrounding the word "digital." Photography clients are not really "digital" as a category to target in your marketing. Clients are hiring you to create images and, if it is commercial work, buying the use of those images. If it is consumer, wedding...

There's something about a good black and white image that makes it jump off the page. It should be simple, direct, and hit you right between the eyes. It stands on its own. It doesn't even need color to make it stand out. It has a full range of tones from a true, deep black all the way to a clear white...with detail throughout.

What kind of...