Laura Alpizar is a professional photographer based in Minnesota. She's originally from the tropical lands of Costa Rica, a paradise that she often visits. Her specialization is in weddings, portraits and lifestyle photography. Find her on Google+ and Facebook.
When it comes to your passion, there is nothing like a good trick. Being resourceful can bring you so much satisfaction, and don’t mind all the extra learning involved!
You may think that photographers take their time to research equipment, patiently saving money from all their commissioned work (haha) and finally invest $80 on the new flash modifier in the market.
… Continue reading The Best Photography DIY Tips & Tutorials
Controlling your camera’s exposure is not only a fundamental topic to achieve good photographs, but it also becomes essential knowledge to be able to explore the creative possibilities of photography.
You might have heard of aperture, shutter speed and ISO. These are the camera controls that directly affect exposure and, finally, how the picture turns out. You can use many combinations of these settings to achieve correct exposure, depending on your “intention” of the picture.
… Continue reading Get Intimate With Depth of Field: Using Depth of Field Creatively
There’s almost nothing (besides maybe losing a memory card) that hurts more than having a great shot that ends up poorly focused! And even though sometimes we can blame our equipment, there are other factors that come into play when focusing.
Sharper and crisper photos are the goal of every photographer, so it’s time we cover the basics to achieve this. A great, focused image requires precision and understanding of depth-of-field, as well as knowledge of your equipment.
… Continue reading Actionable Tips to Get Sharper Photos Every Time
Establishing your own photography business is a full time job, if not more. It’s a great gig, don’t get me wrong, but running this or any other business will instantly make you the wearer of many hats.
The best way to make it work and avoid headaches along the way is to have a plan, even if it is a small draft or bookmarking this article. “Trying it out” is not a good business plan. Besides dreaming of being your own boss, you need to make sure you understand the costs, the struggles and the pros.
… Continue reading Tips to Establish a Smart Photography Business
Sometimes the best camera is the one you have with you, and most of the time, this will be your phone camera. This doesn’t mean your photos have to be terrible; it just means you must work on your picture-taking process a little more, as smartphones have limited capabilities.
Besides accessibility, one of the main advantage smartphones have is that the spontaneous pictures we take are immediately shareable, so you can take your images, edit them and share them right away. Another amazing thing is that phone cameras are getting better every single time, and the quality of the pictures is increasing tremendously.
… Continue reading 8 Tips to Get You to Take Better Smartphone Pictures
It’s about time! You finally made the decision to buy your first DSLR camera, you have saved a couple of bucks and started browsing around. Quickly, you realize the market is full of good (really good) cameras, and you start to feel overwhelmed.
You ask your photographer friend or, even worse, a camera store salesman and end up feeling even more confused. The truth is that it takes little to no time to realize how hard this decision can be, especially if you will also think of choosing lenses and accessories.
… Continue reading Why the First DSLR You Buy Doesn’t Really Matter
Understanding light is a concept that makes a good photographer, and an even greater skill to master is knowing how to recreate different light effects in the studio .
Using lighting accessories like off-camera flashes or strobes, and studying how to trigger them from a different position than on top of the camera, will give an overall different aesthetic to your photographs.
… Continue reading 6 Main Studio Lighting Methods to Master for Your Portraits
Once you get into photography, many of the things you want to buy are very expensive, and all of the sudden those 15 lenses on your wish list seem to compete with your children’s college fund.
For some reason, you start feeling like you “need” stuff to be a better photographer. Truth be told, you don’t need much, but it’s a real challenge to stop investing in your now favorite activity. Let’s entertain the idea you could get all those items in your wish list and even more fun things to put in your camera bag.
… Continue reading 10 Accessories To Make Your Camera Bag Super-Interesting
What does it mean to have an eye for photography? Is it something you are born with, or can you can learn? Besides taking pictures, our photographic eye lets us recognize situations, composition, subjects and then puts together all these elements in a frame that makes a great picture.
Taking good pictures is not always easy, as there is a lot of practice required, so we can achieve both the technical aspects and the composition. Another key to taking good pictures is our way of “seeing” or our “vision.”
… Continue reading How to Improve Your Photographic Eye Super-Effectively
There are some very common habits that we develop as photographers. Especially in the beginning when there is so much to learn!
Among the tips and secrets to good photography, a valuable one is to avoid bad habits that will be hard to shake off later. Bad habits are fairly common to create, as we create habits in everything we do. But this guide will help you overcome those habits, and later, you will thank yourself for being so immune to forming bad habits.
… Continue reading 10 Bad Photography Habits and How to Break Them Now
