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We’ve all been there: You’re shooting a beautiful landscape with bright billowing clouds and some interesting shadow detail, so what do you do? You can expose for the highlights and risk introducing noise into the shadows. But if you expose for nice clean shadows, there go the highlights.

Photographer Jaanus Ree visualized this image in his head before he shot it but the idea to use a cat was a last-minute decision borne out of necessity. “After seeing a portrait in a bookstore where I was able to see the photographer’s silhouette against the reflection of an eye, I got the idea to make something similar,” Ree notes.

The Hôtel Déclic is a photographer’s theme park wrapped in the luxury of an elegant 4-star hotel in Paris, France. I discovered it as I was planning a trip to the City of Lights for the publication of a new book of my photographs.

Time-lapse photography and time-lapse videos are still immensely popular and interest in them shows no signs of slowing down (so to speak). In fact, a spectacular time-lapse video of Chicago was the fifth most popular story on Shutterbug.com in 2016 and it’s easy to see why.

There’s a reason why this hyper-lapse video is so breathtaking: It took almost 48,000 hand-held still images, 35 days of shooting, and 220 days of post processing to create.

Shutterbug reader Roberto Ojeda loves to shoot “interesting people, especially artists.” For this otherworldly shot he enlisted the help of “Monica, an amazing ballet dancer who is dancing and exploding in front of the lens.” Using one light behind Monica, Ojeda had her hold two fists full of flour and then open them in midair to “exaggerate the expressiveness of the action.”

Want to elevate the quality of your photography with the gear you already own? It may sound too good to be true, but all you have to do is watch the following video tutorial from Canadian pro Peter McKinnon and that’s exactly what will happen.