Instagram has nearly 500 million active users per day and pulls in engagement rates 23% higher than Facebook and 84 times higher than Twitter. With statistics like these, it’s the ultimate social media tool for photographers to share their work with clients worldwide. However, staying on top of Instagram’s frequent feature updates and taking advantage of its potential to grow your business can be challenging. You’ve probably heard lots of contradictory advice about Instagram best practices, particularly when it comes to engaging with your audience....

Hey, folks! Its a brand new year and one I am pumped for! 2020 is gonna be another great year! To kick this new decade off, I wanted to share with you some lighting setups and behind the scenes from a portrait session where we tried out a few different setups, if you prefer to watch the video you can check it out above. I wanted to start with this image as its very achievable for most and its a great look!...

They often say that photography is all just smoke and mirrors. And, in this case, they’re half right. Mirror-like reflections certainly are involved. This is lighting setup that never would’ve occurred to me had I not stumbled across it on a friend’s Facebook post. UK based photographer Dougie Smith typically brings people into his studio, but he also shoots photographs for Chards, a dealer of rare and collectable coins. Dougie’s been a friend of mine for years, so when I saw him post a couple of setup shots to his Facebook profile, I had to send him a message asking if I could share them here with you guys....

New gear is always exciting, and can certainly put a little pep into your photography step. But after the shiny newness has worn off and you’ve got used to it, that new lens probably isn’t going to be making your photos better. Unfortunately it’s always the more boring things that really make a difference to your images, like better planning and preparation, learning new skills, and being intentional in your image-making....

Smartphone makers are racing who will make a phone with a better camera, and more camera modules. The Huawei P30 and P30 Pro have just joined the race, offering “phoneographers” a lot to play with. The Pro model features a four-camera setup, with the 40MP main sensor. It allows 5x optical zoom and optical image stabilization. Along with a few more specs, it really seems promising for all those who often shoot with their smartphone....

Yes, I said it!!! I sold my DSLRs and bought a brand new, out of the box, mirrorless camera body. Here is the last of my “DSLR to mirrorless” journey articles with (of course!) the big announcement of who between the Olympus OM-D E-M1X or the Sony a9 stole my heart! If you haven’t been following my journey, you can read the earlier parts in this series here. Are you considering switching your DSLR to a mirrorless?...

My name is Brendan Burkett, and I believe I have created an original device and street photography method. What I have done is attach a softbox to my back for ultimate portability. This allows me to get street portraits with a very unique light. I live in Cincinnati and it all started when I went to Fountain Square downtown and was told that I needed a permit to use any kind of light stands or tripods....

I shot a full portrait session using a Lensbaby Composer Pro II with Sweet 80 Optic. Here’s how it went… Helpful hearsay For years I had only delivered work for clients, something which is imperative for paying the bills. But what I found was that years of shooting for someone else had really stunted my creativity. Someone pointed out to me that I needed to shoot for me as well as my clients....

It’s the one feature that Canon EOS M mirrorless shooters have been begging for years to get. It’s what the early adopters of Canon’s EOS R and EOS RP cameras have been asking for, too. In-body image stabilisation. It’s a feature that many of Canon’s competitors have had for years, and now Canon has finally introduced it themselves with the EOS R5 and EOS R6. But it seems that the EOS M shooters are likely to be satisfied, too, as Canon Rumors reports that IBIS is something that we’re “likely” to see in upcoming EOS M cameras....

Parody songs can be a bit hit and miss. Some are amazing (just look at the career of Weird Al) while others can be pretty awful. This one, though, from Dave Maze at Kinotika definitely describes a few people I’ve met. It’s a take on Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy” music video, called “Gear Guy”. It follows the tune pretty well, and even includes vocal processing to simulate similar effects to the original....

We all assume that Photoshop and the art of retouching is a fairly new phenomenon. When you think of image retouching you automatically think of celebrities made to look taller and slimmer, of blemish removal to the point of obliterating skin texture, and head swapping those pesky people that always blink in group portraits. But did you know that image retouching has been around nearly as long as photography, it was just done in a different way....

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is an impressive smartphone, with an impressive $1,399 price tag to match. It has an interesting camera assembly on the rear, with three cameras at 12, 48 and 108-megapixels, as well as a Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor for depth-sensing. iFixit have managed to get their hands on one and as they often do, they decided to tear it open to see how it all comes together inside....

Whose image is it anyway? When does inspiration or imitation of a landscape photo cross the line or go too far? Recently a few things came up that makes me ask if or when does the idea of copying someone else’s photo go too far, or is it just a form of flattery derived from a source of inspiration via the route of imitation? In the commercial photography world, this can have an impact in real dollars and sense (yes, that’s the word I meant to use), especially if you get caught deliberately copying someone else’s work....

It’s been a minute since Insta360 launched a new camera. Or at least, since they’ve launched one that appears to be of the action variety alluded to in the teaser video below that was posted to Insta360’s YouTube channel today. Insta360 has said nothing about what’s coming, beyond the “built to adapt” tagline and the March 22nd, 2022 date. So far, the only camera in the Insta360 lineup that could be really considered “adaptable” is the Insta360 ONE R....

Instagram has become a breeding ground for a lot of negativity as it’s grown and evolved. It’s something that Instagram have been working hard to try and eradicate from the platform. They’ve been demoting “inappropriate content”, removing fake engagement, and doing what they can to reduce online bullying. But online bullies are using the inappropriate content crackdown to report peoples images that aren’t inappropriate at all. So much so that it’s become something of a problem....

Instagram has been both a blessing and a curse – depending on who you ask. But this video from landscape photographer Mark Denney looks at that topic in detail, and specifically with how it relates to landscape photography. It’s an interesting take, looking at both sides of the argument. That Instagram has both helped and destroyed landscape photography. Mark says that he’s been studying this topic on Instagram for the last few years, and finds that there are two main schools of thought....

The whole “light field” thing caused a bit of a buzz a few years back when Lytro started announcing light field cameras. They looked like the kind of futuristic photography tech we’d see in Blade Runner or Minority Report, allowing us to shift focus after the fact and look at a true 3D scene. After shifting their focus from photography to video, killing off their sharing platforms, and ultimately selling out to Google, not much has been said about the tech since....

Third-party lenses are wonderful things. They prevent us from being locked those manufactured solely by the company that makes our cameras. It provides us with options that the camera manufacturers don’t even offer. For some systems, though, they don’t always offer the same feature set as OEM lenses. For Micro Four Thirds, that sometimes means no automatic aperture. Laowa’s original 7.5mm f/2 lens for MFT was one such lens. So, they’ve now announced a new 7....

We recently released some footage of Laowas 9mm f5.6 Dreamer. This Full-frame rectilinear lens blew us away, but we needed to get more footage to really understand the lens. It seems like a silly concept to describe how wide 9mm is. However, the first time you open the camera you realize, WOW!… that’s wide. Most of the time, when using the lens you end up looking around to see JUST how wide it is!...

After Norway, the UK could be next to tackle the issue of unrealistic and harmful beauty standards. The Health and Social Care Committee found that more and more people suffer from body dysmorphia while social media and its ads are largely unregulated. As a result, the UK law could soon require ads to clearly label if there are any photoshopped bodies in them. MPs have pointed out that some steps need to be taken to prevent body image dissatisfaction....