Tutorials

Digital photography tips and tutorials on everything from sports photography to wildlife and fashion photography.

aerial photography tips

Aerial Photography Tips – Shooting From A Helicopter

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Needless to say I was beyond excited when one of photo heroes, Dan Carr, approached me to share a bit about my recent adventures in aerial photography here on Shutter Muse.  Back in March I spent a week to myself, exploring Kauai and shooting non-stop. Knowing that Na Pali Coast is arguably the most spectacular stretch of coastline on the planet I wanted to see it from both a boat and from above. I also knew that meant I’d need to get in a helicopter with the doors removed to capture the shots the way I really wanted.

No big deal, right?

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Managing Your Photography Business E-Mail

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This might seem like a bit of a dry subject but by now I hope you guys have figured out that I like to write from experience and I have an experience (and new-found knowledge) to share on this subject. I promise it will help you to run a more efficient photography business so please read on……

Those who have read my free eBook “10 Incredible Tools For Professional Photographers” will remember that I’m always looking for ways to streamline the business side of being a photographer, to get the camera back in my hand, where my value is greatest.

E-Mail is a necessary evil in the modern age and we’re probably all guilty of using it in unproductive ways.

Recently I was inspired by a post on Pat Flynn’s blog to re-think my e-mail strategy entirely. I’ve always had a number of issues with my system and never really stopped to take the time to solve them.

Let me run you though a few of my old problems and see if some of them sound familiar……

  1. I had too many different accounts to keep an eye on. One for prints sales, a personal one, an admin one, one for incoming questions from my blog and one for correspondence with my newsletter subscribers. That’s all for only one of my two businesses.
  2. My accounts were set up as POP accounts on my office computer. I forwarded all my mail to a GMail address which I used to check mail out of the office on my cell phone, tablet and laptop computer. The problem is that if I read or deleted an email outside of the office, the one in office doesn’t know about it. For short periods this is fine, but if I go away for a few days then I have hundreds of confusing unread e-mails.
  3. If I sent an email when I was out of the office it was routed through GMail. This meant this sent mail was never on my computer so when I’m back in the office I can’t search for that sent mail at all without opening up GMail.
  4. I was addicted to answering my emails as quickly as possible.
  5. I had a totally disjointed folder organization system that didn’t sync to my GMail account and was therefore not available to me outside of the office
  6. After running my business for some time I had nearly 9GB of e-mails on my server!

Does any of this sound familiar to you? Hopefully you are nodding your head, but even if you are not, I urge you to read on because there’s some amazing resources and time-saving tips to be shared here. Remember the one goal: get that camera back in your hand, ASAP! This is going to help you.

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10 Tips – How To Photograph A Meteor Shower

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Meteors Over Black Tusk

This weekend (May 22nd 2014) the earth will pass through the tail of Comet 209P/LINEAR which many people believe will give an excellent display of meteors on Friday night, with the peak coming between 2am and 4am.  The Camelopardalis shower or “the giraffe,” will be located between Ursa Major (which includes the Big Dipper) and Cassiopeia.

This is actually the first time this shower will take place since the comet was, in astronomical terms, only discovered quite recently.

Usually when we talk about photographing meteor showers we’re talking about the Perseids in August, the Leonids in November and sometimes the Geminids in December. The new Camelopardalis is a bit of an unknown quantity but if the sky is clear then there’s always a great opportunity for some interesting photos.

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film photography lessons

5 Lessons Learned From A Journey Into Film Photography

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Everything old is new again. The Nikon Df might be the latest and most hotly debated, but Fujifilm, Olympus and other manufacturers are clamoring to inject a little vintage nostalgia into their digital innovations. But instead of rushing out to buy the hot new old thing, let me propose that when it comes to getting back to the basics of photography, absolutely nothing is better than the real thing. In this post, I’ll share just a few of my impressions and top lessons learned from a year-long adventure with film photography.