Pro Techniques

It's impossible to be a serious digital photographer without learning at least a little bit about computers. Some people take to computer technology like kids take to dirt, but many never get beyond e-mail and Photoshop. Don't get me wrong--that's not bad--but when the need to upgrade arises, the folks who are short on computer skills sometimes think...

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...

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...

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...

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...

As I look over my favorite photographs taken through the years, a common theme intertwines many of them together: serendipity has played a major role in creating those images. Given this, I decided I wanted to be lucky more often (as luck has it, this is actually possible). Recently I read an article about the science behind luck and how luck is not random, but rather something we...

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...