Photography tips & techniques for every skill level

Video Tutorials

What Documentary Photography Taught Me About Shooting With Intention (Thanks to Tish Murtha)

There’s a difference between taking pictures of people and actually photographing them. I spent years on the lifestyle and travel side of things before I really felt that distinction in my chest. I could frame a shot, nail the exposure, find the light. But something was missing from a lot of my work, and I couldn’t name it until I started paying closer attention to photographers who built their careers on truth rather than aesthetics.

September 17, 2026

Video Tutorials

How to Frame Your Shots Like a Pro: Composition Techniques That Work Immediately

Every Sunday morning I do a photo walk through my Seattle neighborhood, camera in hand, coffee in the other. And for the first year of doing this, I kept coming home with technically fine photos that felt completely flat. Correct exposure, decent light, sharp focus – but something was missing. The images weren’t pulling anyone in. They were just… pictures. Composition was the piece I was underestimating. Not because I didn’t know the rules, but because I wasn’t actively hunting for compositional opportunities before I raised the camera.

September 17, 2026

Video Tutorials

Stop Reaching for the Contrast Slider: Editing Mistakes That Are Flattening Your Landscape Photos

Every Sunday morning I take a photo walk around Seattle. No agenda, no client brief, just me and whatever light shows up. And for the first year of doing that, I’d come home with these gorgeous raw files that somehow looked flat and overworked by the time I was done editing them. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I knew my way around Lightroom well enough, but something in my process was quietly killing the images.

September 17, 2026

Video Tutorials

How Sean Tucker's Street Photography Philosophy Changed the Way I See My Own City

Street photography stopped me cold for years. Not because I lacked gear or technical skill, but because I’d built this rigid picture in my head of what it was supposed to look like. Someone brave and a little confrontational, pointing a lens at strangers on a busy corner, negotiating consent or chaos. That wasn’t me. I do a solo photo walk every Sunday morning in Seattle, and for the longest time I’d walk right past perfectly interesting scenes because they didn’t match the “street photography” label I thought I needed to earn first.

September 16, 2026

Video Tutorials

What Peter McKinnon's Photo Assignment Reviews Taught Me About Seeing in Color

Every Sunday morning I walk the same neighborhoods in Seattle with my camera, and I still catch myself defaulting to the same kinds of shots. Interesting light, sure. Decent framing, usually. But intentional? That’s the harder question. One thing that’s helped me shake loose from comfortable habits is watching how experienced photographers critique work, not just make it. Seeing someone break down why a photo lands, or why it almost does, teaches you to look at your own images differently.

September 16, 2026

Video Tutorials

How to Photograph Wildlife in a Landscape (Without Sacrificing Either)

Every landscape photographer eventually faces this problem: you spend an hour composing the perfect shot, and then something living walks into the frame and ruins your plan. Or, if you’re lucky, it makes your plan ten times better. The difference between those two outcomes usually comes down to whether you’ve thought about wildlife as a compositional element before the animal shows up, not after. That’s the core lesson I took from this William Patino tutorial filmed during his encounters with kea, the world’s only alpine parrot, in the New Zealand mountains.

September 16, 2026

News

Canon's Latest Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera Brings Professional Features to Budget-Conscious Photographers

Canon’s Latest Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera Brings Professional Features to Budget-Conscious Photographers I’ve been watching the mirrorless camera market evolve, and I’m genuinely excited about what Canon has just announced. The new EOS R8 Mark II is shaping up to be a game-changer for photographers who want professional capabilities without breaking the bank. What’s New in This Update? Canon has equipped the EOS R8 Mark II with two significant upgrades that address common pain points I hear from photographers:

September 16, 2026

Video Tutorials

Shooting in Terrible Weather: What Iceland's Worst Storm Taught Me About Dramatic Photography

Every photographer I know has a version of the same story: you’ve planned a shoot for weeks, you show up, and the weather is genuinely miserable. Not moody-miserable. Actually miserable. Wind, rain, low visibility, the works. Most people pack up and leave. I used to be one of those people. What changed my thinking wasn’t a book or a course. It was watching how working professionals handle exactly those conditions in real time.

September 15, 2026

Video Tutorials

The Photography Skill You Can't Buy: How Visual Exercise Will Transform Your Eye

I used to think I needed to be out shooting to get better at photography. If I wasn’t behind a camera, I wasn’t practicing. That belief kept me stuck for longer than I’d like to admit, because real life rarely cooperates with scheduled creative sessions. Between client calls, errands, and the general chaos of adult existence, my camera spent a lot of time sitting on the shelf. Then I came across this Sean Tucker tutorial on developing your photographic eye through what he calls “visual exercise,” and it reframed something I thought I understood but clearly didn’t.

September 15, 2026

Video Tutorials

How a Variable ND Filter Finally Fixed My Outdoor Video Problem (And What to Look For in One)

Every Sunday morning I take a photo walk around Seattle, and for a long time, outdoor video was my nemesis. I’d set up a beautiful wide-open shot near the water, soft background blur, gorgeous light coming through the trees, and then watch the footage back and cringe. Jittery, overexposed, nothing like what I saw through the viewfinder. I’d bump my shutter speed to compensate for the brightness and ruin the cinematic motion quality entirely.

September 15, 2026

Video Tutorials

What a Perfect Namibia Shot Teaches Us About Editing With Restraint

There’s a trap I fell into for years early in my photography practice: the better the shot, the more I felt compelled to edit it. Like somehow a stunning location deserved a dramatic edit to match. I’d crank the saturation, push the contrast, add a heavy preset, and walk away thinking I’d made it better. Spoiler: I hadn’t. I’d just made it louder. That’s exactly why I keep coming back to this tutorial from Thomas Heaton, where he walks through his processing workflow for a landscape image shot in Deadvlei, Namibia.

September 14, 2026

Video Tutorials

Why Personal Photography Is the Most Powerful Work You'll Ever Make (And How to Start)

There’s a version of photography where you chase the technically perfect shot. Perfect exposure, perfect light, perfect composition. I spent a long time living in that version, and honestly, some of my most forgettable images came from it. The ones that stopped people mid-scroll, the ones that strangers at coffee shops asked me about, those almost never came from a calculated setup. They came from something real. That’s the problem this tutorial addresses head-on, and it’s one I needed someone to put into words for me.

September 14, 2026