Videos

Manny Ortiz is a Chicago-based photographer who also offers helpful tutorials on portraiture and wedding photography techniques. In the quick and straightforward video below, you’ll learn three easy ways to use backlighting for more pleasing portraits.

We’ve run dozens of stories of photographers shooting amazing photos and videos of the Northern Lights, aka the Aurora Borealis. But many, if not most, of those images and clips have required some serious traveling and trekking by the photographers to capture their stunning Northern Lights moments. Sometimes though, you just stumble upon them by sheer luck.

I shared this on my personal Facebook page yesterday and it’s made the rounds of social media, but it’s definitely worth a watch if you haven’t seen it already. (And probably worth a re-watch even if you have seen it already.)

Optical technology has advanced dramatically since the early days of zoom lenses when the consensus among serious photographers was that prime lenses offered far greater sharpness, resolution, color rendition and contrast than zoom lenses. In the video below, Matt Granger discusses that “misconception” as it pertains today, as well as the notion that prime lenses encourage more compositional creativity by forcing you to “zoom with your feet.”

David Bergman is an acclaimed celebrity/sports shooter known for his striking images of famous personalities as well as the 15 Sports Illustrated covers he has to his credit. In the quick video below, Bergman shows you how to take perfect portraits by first photographing your hand to check camera settings.

While the humorous video below is from 2011, it’s getting a lot of love on Reddit right now so we thought we’d give it a share. You’ll not only learn the four-minute method for shooting a photograph, but you might even feel a little less guilty for not owning a camera with the latest high-speed processing and focusing capabilities.

Arizona photographer Mike Oblinski has a unique dual specialty: He not only shoots weddings but also is well known for his epic time-lapse films. In the 4K black-and-white video below, Oblinski captures some truly astounding weather and tornadoes during an incoming storm.