This interview with Camille Seaman is packed with so much goodness. She talks about using natural lighting in shooting subjects as varied as giant icebergs to TIbetans who don’t use lights indoors at all during the day. More importantly what really struck a chord is how WHO a photographer is plays a central role in their work.

This is a quick, concise guide to mounting your GoPro Hero 3 to your surfboard, with some fun surfing footage at the end! Grab yourself a GoPro Hero3

And now that you have your GoPro, let’s get out and surf!

 
This is my son Ian on the board and you’ll see me taking off to his left. Having too much fun in California!

Jay P. Morgan is an excellent commercial photographer in Los Angeles who has a series of behind the scenes videos/lighting tutorials and in this one he explains how using colored gels on strobes and shifting your white balance on your camera can turn sunshine into moon light in your photos. It’s a pretty simple and straight forward tutorial but it can completely change the look of your shot.

Chase Jarvis is a very talented commercial photographer who had a few tips to share. One of which was browsing your photo spot without your camera.

What would you suggest if we just want to get better sports shots of the friends and family?

You know, two of the things that I would suggest are that. One: clean. That is my biggest thing that I am looking for in an Image is make your background clean. Clean up those backgrounds, make the image, the personal subject pop out of the frame. So think of yourself as a director and you are placing people on the screen. So you are the person who gets to place them there you get to pick the screen. So when you are shooting your photos clean up those backgrounds, nothing to distract what is going on so you can focus right on that subject.

Any final tips for our viewers who just want to get better photographs?

You know the one of the biggest things that I think the imagers struggle with is taking their off full automatic. You know I would say learn that camera. Put it on semi-automatic, your time value, your actual priority, learn how those functions work. And the biggest most important thing that I think now is that you can shoot ‘raw’. Sure it is an intimidating thing you get these huge files you have to manage them. But it’s like having a negative. It’s like having a fujichrome velvia and you get to print that image whatever way you want. When I see students work who had gone from jpeg to raw during one class session. It’s amazing, and they come back and say “I will never shoot jpeg againî. So that would be the biggest tip I have for everybody-’Shoot raw’.

To see more of John’s work click here

Guy Kawasaki’s new book What the Plus! is a must-read for anyone who’s interested in how to get more out of Google+. And it’s a must-read for any photographer who’s sharing photos on the Internet.

Last night, with my dog sitting on my lap, I read What the Plus! on my iPad, from start to finish. Although it’s some 130+ pages in length I was able to enjoyably breeze through it as if it were a magazine. And guess what? At $2.99 the ebook version of What the Plus! costs less than a Grande Caffè Latte.

Photographer Dave Powell guest wrote Chapter 7 on how to share photos and it’s excellent. This is why I’m calling it a must-read for photographers.  You’ll get an easy-to-understand illustrated tutorial on how to share photos using Google+. Dave walks you through exactly why and how to upload photos onto Google+. Within minutes you’ll be branching out into a whole new world of online photo sharing.

One of the things I like most about Guy’s new book is that it makes Google+ easy to understand and put to immediate use. As a photographer, I’m visually oriented and need to “see” how to do things. The chapter on photography shows me how simple it is to share photos on Google+ and how to get started with just a few clicks of the mouse.

If you’re not already familiar with Guy Kawasaki there’s no better way than to sit down with him for 15 minutes in this May 2011 interview where Guy discusses his then-new book Enchantment with Marc Silber. After watching this interview I think you’ll understand why I think Guy is an inspiring, innovative, and creative person who we can all learn from.

Photography is about a lot of things, but sharing is a huge part of it. Google+ takes photo sharing to a new, exciting, and global level. Take a look at What the Plus!, learn what’s happening with Google+, why it’s a game-changer, and in no time you’ll find yourself jumping right in.

Chairs at Peninsula School

I was going through some old negatives, rescanning them and came across this one. What a difference an angle can make. Have a look at how this shot started out, when I took it way back,  of my 7th grade classroom at the Peninsula School in Menlo Park.

Angles can make quite a point in telling your story. Remember to try shooting from different angles and heights. Then when you go back and edit the images you may be surprised at what pops.

Which do you prefer and why?

This video is a step by step tutorial of how to create your own DIY beauty dish for just five dollars. You only need a few things which you most likely have lying around the house. The beauty dish may not be the most professional looking thing, but it definitely works. If you have a few minutes, go ahead and try it out.

If you’ve ever had a shoot with someone wearing eyeglasses then you must have had that frustrating moment when you looked at the image and saw an obnoxious reflection in the glasses. It’s very simple to fix that as long as you have an off camera flash. Take a look at the video above to learn about “angle of incidence” and “angle of reflection” it’s a small tip but a very useful one.

Brian Smith is a Pulitzer prize winner who has photographed one luminary after another: Bill Gates, Anne Hathaway, Samuel L. Jackson, and the list just goes on. In our interview Brian discussed his process for getting intimate environmental portraits that truly capture the essence of his subjects. He gives down to earth tips for portraiture that can be applied to photographing anyone, not just movie stars but every day stars who deserve to have a great photograph taken of them, for their personal 15 minutes of fame.

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