The exploitation of photographers on Instagram

The exploitation of photographers on Instagram

When a company contacts you and offers to ‘gift’ you something in return for producing an advertising post and stories on Instagram, they’re not gifting anything, they’re trying to exploit you. By taking part, YOU are helping to devalue the photography industry – the industry you’re either working in already or wish to break into.

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Enhance detail and atmosphere with the Orton effect

Cwm Idwal waterfall, in Snowdonia North Wales, at sunset in winter edited with the Orton effect

Discover an advanced method of applying the Orton effect that keeps file sizes small and image quality at its best. I developed this refined technique myself in response to upgrading to a higher resolution camera, which meant the original technique created huge file sizes when saving layered images as TIFFs. And also, to deal with the problem of crushed shadows. This version solves both of these issues for the best results possible, and the tutorial works for Both Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

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Peak District dawn to dusk landscape photography workshop 24th Jan 2020

James Abbot Photography shooting at Stanage Edge in the Peak District. One-to-one workshops and small group landscape photography workshops.

Improve your landscape photography skills with a small group workshop in the Peak District with professional landscape photographer James Abbott on Friday 24th January 2020. The workshop will be limited to just five people so everyone can take advantage of lots of one-to-one and group tuition throughout the day. The workshop costs just £150 per person.

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Review of bark.com for photographers

Bark.com homepage

In this review of the lead generation website bark.com, I look at how effective the website is for photographers. In an ever-crowded marketplace, photographers have to do everything they can to stand out from the crowd and explore all possibilities for finding new clients. And with bark.com, potential clients effectively come to you. As well as the review, check out the comments where I discuss the website with other photographers.

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Creative ways to shoot water in landscapes

Long exposure at Old Hunstanton Beach during blue hour

Capturing movement in the landscape is a simple and highly effective way of adding a sense of dynamism to your landscape photography. And while the mechanical nature of photography can, if left unchecked, render scenes looking like little more than a snapshot, with the right compositional approach and shutter speed you can transform scenes in creative ways that transcend the capabilities of human vision.

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BenQ ScreenBar e-Reading Lamp review

BenQ ScreenBar e-Reading Lamp

The BenQ ScreenBar e-Reading Lamp is an innovative desk light that’s designed to free up space on your desk by clipping to the top of monitors while providing the right amount of light to avoid eye strain when working at your computer. It’s designed not to produce glare on the monitor screen, but the question is how effective is it? Read on to learn more and watch the video unboxing and review below.

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Shoot sharper landscape images

Crummock Water Long Exposure Stack

Capturing pin-sharpness throughout a scene – from the foreground to the distant background – is often the photographer’s aim when shooting landscapes. For wider scenes where the foreground interested is a few metres away from the camera you can usually get away with shooting a single image at f/11 – f/16 on a full-frame camera, or f/8 – f/11 on APS-C. With these settings and correct focusing front to back sharpness is possible in a single shot, but what about when the foreground interest is closer to the camera and you need both this and the background in sharp focus? The simple answer is to use focus stacking to achieve sharper landscape images.

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Reverse ND grads explained

A colourful sunrise and long exposyre at Southwold Pier in Suffolk, UK

You’ve probably heard this before and chances are, you’ll hear it many times in the future; one of the best times of day to shoot landscapes is the period of time just after sunrise and just before sunset. These times are known as ‘golden hour’ and despite the name, this period of time isn’t actually an hour in duration. At this time of the day the sun is close to the horizon, which means the area of sky close to the horizon is brighter than the sky at the top of the frame.

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Landscape photography – timing is everything

Behind the scenes Sony Alpa A7RIII and Vanguard Alta Pro 2+ 263 CT

Timing is everything when it comes to landscape photography, so to capture landscapes in the best light possible you ideally need to be on location and ready to shoot before, during and after golden hour. Bur while sunrise and sunset are considered the best times to shoot landscapes, they’re far from the only options. Throw the weather into the mix and you may even find that conditions are actually better well after sunrise has taken place. And on a moody and cloudy day, you may even be able to get great results throughout the day.

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Frequency separation retouching tutorial

Frequency separation retouching in Photoshop tutorial

There’s always more than one way to achieve an effect in Photoshop, but why use anything but the best? And for portrait and fashion retouching, that’s frequency separation retouching to maintain skin texture. Check out the video and written tutorials below…

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