Creating Your Own Bokeh Bokeh refers to the aesthetic quality of any lights in the out of focus area of your images. This is to NOT be confused with a blurred shallow depth of field. Bokeh is all about the shape of a...

What Do the Numbers, Letter, & Symbols on a Camera Lens Mean? If you are new to photography, you might find yourself wondering what all of the different numbers, letters and symbols on your camera lens mean. They...

How to Use Leading Lines & Curves for Better Composition Sometimes it is hard to photograph outside where there are unpredictable backgrounds. Have you ever taken a photo that you loved (like, really loved) only ...

How to Hold a Camera While it's important to hold your camera in a way that feels natural to you, it's also just as important to hold the camera in a way that will prevent blur and unsharp images due to camera shake....

Why I Changed to In-Person Sales (IPS) About 3 years into my business, I was facing burnout. I was shooting sessions all weekend long from sun up to sun down, staying up until 2 am to finish my edits and upload to ga...

What is a 365 Photo Project? I just finished my second 365 photo challenge a few weeks ago. Now having completed two 365 projects, I've learned A LOT about what it takes to complete one of these photography projects....

Photographing Children with Live Animals What’s cuter than a bunny or chicks? An adorable child gently snuggling with them, of course. As an animal lover, some of my favorite child portraits are those that include f...

How to Restore Old Photos in Photoshop A question that has been asked quite a few times recently our community is how to digitally restore old family photos that originated on film. We all have them: cherished vintag...

Monitor Calibration In this post, we will look at why monitor color calibration is so important, and how you can calibrate your screen in order to ensure the images you photographed look their very best, both when yo...

DIY Newborn Photography You're expecting a baby? Congratulations! Have you been asked by everyone you know if you’re planning on doing a photo shoot with your new bundle of joy? Are you planning on trying? You shoul...

Guide to Back Button Focus Back Button Focus is a powerful feature on your DSLR camera that can help you achieve sharper images in certain situations. In this post, I will explain what Back Button Focus is, how to fi...

Studio Lighting for Winter Photography I love outdoor environmental portraits - warm, yummy sunlight and lots of beautiful trees and flowers and elegant compositions. I can't get enough of it in the Spring, early Su...

Softbox Vs Umbrella Vs Beauty Dish Is studio lighting using a softbox better than an umbrella or a beauty dish? Today I would like to talk about these 3 different studio light modifiers and share some example photos...

Cake Smash Photography Some trends in photography come and go. Before you even blink, it’s a new hip thing, and then just as quickly, the sizzle goes away. Then there is the cake smash - a trend that is steadily gai...

Storybook Photography Setting up and shooting a storybook photography session can be quite exhilerating and fun, but can also fairly stressful if you are unprepared. I've put together this tutorial based on my exper...

Film Photography: What's in it for YOU? We live in a digital age of photography, that fact is quite obvious! It seems as though everyone from hobbyists to professional photographers are sporting the latest DSLR’s. ...

How to Develop Film Several months ago, I wrote a post about the benefits of shooting film. As much as I love shooting real film, one of the major drawbacks in addition to the cost is the increasing rarity of profess...

Importance of White Balance In Photography Getting your white balance right in-camera will not only save you a lot of time in post-processing, it will also give your images a much more polished look. If your white ba...

Senior Picture Poses I love photographing seniors. They are a fun, happy group - excited to be graduating and generally enjoy having their photos done. Personally, I like to take a guided, natural approach to all of...

Finding Great Photography Locations Finding great photography locations near to you will take some investigative work on your part, but along with that you can also use some new tools that I will share with you later...

How to Photograph Fireworks The Fourth of July is right around the corner.  I am always mesmerized by the amazing firework photos I see many photographers share on social media.  But photographing fireworks is not as...