Step-by-Step: Light Painting a Desert Tow Truck With Star Trails
I wanted to photograph and light paint a super-long exposure of a vintage tow truck with long star trails, but I also needed to do this quickly so I could continue teaching workshop participants. How did I do this? I’ll take you behind the scenes of my desert ghost town long-exposure photo.
"I Need To Create a 90-Minute Photograph in Ten Minutes"I was teaching a night photography workshop in Nelson Ghost Town, NV with Tim Little, and had just finished a hands-on lesson with a group on how to photograph the large barn...
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Potensic Atom 2: A Tiny Drone Going Up Against the Big Guys
It seems drones are all over the news recently—either new iterations of existing models promising to change your life, new entries to the market aiming to shake up the game, or even recent headlines suggesting that drones are “evil” and need to be banned. But what happens when a new kid on the block enters the race and suddenly makes a bit of sense? That is where the Atom 2 from Potensic, who recently attended CES as one of the exhibitors, enters...
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4 Top New Year's Resolutions For Photographers
A New Year has begun and with it comes new opportunities to better your photography. So, with a whole year ahead of you, what will you be doing differently this year? Do you want to try a new genre of photography, do you want to shoot with your smartphone? Or, quite simply, do you just want to enjoy the hobby of photography more? Whatever your plans, we've got a few New Year's Resolutions for photographers to get you thinking about your year of photography that's to come.
1. I Will Know My Gear WellIf you've got a new camera for Christmas or have fallen into the trap of switching to Auto as it's just easy to use, make this year the year you get to grips with your camera. Take the time to learn why shutter speeds are important, how apertures can change the look of your photo and why setting your white balance manually can improve your shots. Of course there are more modes, techniques and settings than listed here and you can find plenty of advice on various aspects of photography over in ePHOTOzine's techniques section. Don't overlook sitting down and reading your camera's manual too as they are usually full of good advice.
Learn how to use a new piece of editing software or how about trying a different photography technique? There's plenty of subjects out there and you won't know if you enjoy photographing them if you don't try. If you're looking for tips, head over to ePHOTOzine's techniques section, ask your question in our forums or take a look at some of the photography books that are on offer.
Many of us are guilty of leaving the camera at home a little too often when really if we had it in the car or even in our bag, we'd take more photos. In fact, with a large amount of smartphones on the market, why not make more use of the camera that's on your phone and most likely with you all of the time? Yes, there is a chance many won't be great but you can use the shots to learn from and improve the shots you take at a later date.
Just because you don't own an expensive DSLR and a long lens doesn't mean you can't take good photos. You just have to think more about what the gear you have is capable of capturing and focus your energy into taking good shots of that with it. Plus, if you do want to photograph a particular subject but don't think you have the right gear, there are often ways to get around it. For example, for wildlife photography, you'll need longer lenses, a tripod etc. when taking your shots out in the wild which means it's not an ideal subject for compact users. However, you can capture wildlife shots at a zoo or wildlife park where you can get closer to the wildlife, making it easier for you to capture frame-filling shots.
What photographic themed resolutions have you made? Share them in the comments below.
Stop Paying for These 5 Camera Features You Will Never Use
You are paying a $2,000 premium for buttons you will never press. Modern flagships are genuine marvels of engineering. These cameras represent the absolute pinnacle of what decades of imaging technology can achieve, packed into weather-sealed magnesium alloy bodies that can survive conditions most of us will never encounter. They are fast, precise, and loaded with capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction just ten years ago. They are also, for the vast majority of photographers, spectacular overkill.
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Why Your Photos Feel Empty (And It’s Not Your Settings)
You keep hearing about getting “better composition” or “dialing in settings,” but this video is focused on something that comes earlier than both: the decisions that decide what the photo is actually saying. If you shoot people and your results sometimes feel technically fine but emotionally thin, this is the kind of checklist that can expose why.
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The New Meike 85mm f/1.8 SE Mark II for Canon: What $230 Really Gets You
A budget 85mm can look perfect on paper, then punish you in the exact situations that make 85mm worth owning: wide-open portraits, backlit scenes, and close-up framing. The Meike 85mm f/1.8 SE Mark II lens is interesting because it isn’t just “another cheap prime,” it’s a native Canon EF option that also invites adapting to newer Canon RF bodies.
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Landscape Photography When the Light Is Working Against You
Midday beach light can look brutal through an ultra-wide. If most of your landscape time is squeezed into sunrise and sunset, this approach pushes you to build usable skills when the sun is doing you no favors.
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The “Looks Like AI” Problem: When Your Best Photo Gets Doubted
Two nearly identical landscape images can hit your Facebook feed and get wildly different reactions, even when the platform is doing the distributing. This video puts Midjourney and ChatGPT in the middle of a bigger problem: how “real” work gets judged when the algorithm and AI aesthetics keep blurring the line.
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Evoto Officially Responds To The Controversy
When the photo editing software Evoto created software so good that it made photographers obsolete, their user base began to revolt and rumors started to fly. I went directly to Evoto to get the truth.
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Did Evoto Betray Photographers With Their New Software?
Thirty years ago, photo editing meant painting and airbrushing prints by hand. Then Photoshop arrived and wiped out most of those jobs. Over the last few years, AI software like Evoto did the same thing to advanced Photoshop skills. Slide a few controls and get results that once took years to learn. Photographers loved it...Until now.
Evoto recently released an online AI headshot generator (which was quickily pulled down). Anyone could upload a bad photo and instantly get a polished professional headshot. No lighting. No posing. No photographer. Predictably, photographers are...
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