Video Tutorials

Think Smaller: How Switching to Macro Saved My Creative Off-Season (And Why I Ditched My Wide Angle Too)
Video Tutorials

Think Smaller: How Switching to Macro Saved My Creative Off-Season (And Why I Ditched My Wide Angle Too)

Every year around late November I hit a wall. Fall color is gone but snow hasn’t committed yet, and I’m standing outside with a wide angle lens pointed at a bunch of gray-brown trees wondering why I even drove out here. I’ve wasted more Saturday mornings than I want to count chasing scenes that peaked two weeks earlier. So when I came across Watch the full tutorial on YouTube from landscape photographer Mark Denney, where he talks about why he basically stopped reaching for his wide angle lens and what he does instead during that awkward fall-to-winter gap, I felt like someone finally put words to a problem I’d been ignoring.

Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8: The One Zoom That Might Replace Half Your Bag
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Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8: The One Zoom That Might Replace Half Your Bag

I have a spreadsheet. It has every budget and mid-range lens I’ve tested going back three years, with columns for sharpness, bokeh quality, autofocus speed, filter size, and whether I’d actually buy it again. Most lenses end up somewhere in the “solid but forgettable” category. Every once in a while one shows up that makes me rethink a whole column. The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 is one of those lenses, and not in an obvious way.

The Best Travel Lens Isn't What You Think — A Breakdown of Tony & Chelsea Northrup's Framework
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The Best Travel Lens Isn't What You Think — A Breakdown of Tony & Chelsea Northrup's Framework

Every time I’m packing for a trip, I fall into the same trap: I start with “just the essentials” and end up with a backpack that weighs more than my carry-on limit. The lens question is always the worst part. Do I bring the fast prime? The wide zoom? The telezoom just in case there’s wildlife? I’ve wasted more mental energy on that decision than on actually planning the trip itself.

How to Fake Expensive Bokeh in Photoshop (No Fast Lens Required)
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How to Fake Expensive Bokeh in Photoshop (No Fast Lens Required)

I’ve been saying for years that the gap between a kit lens and a $1,200 prime isn’t as wide as the gear crowd wants you to believe. I started with a $300 camera kit and shot a wedding that ended up published in a local magazine. Nobody asked what lens I used. What they cared about was whether the subject popped off the background, whether the photo felt professional. That separation, that sense of depth, is something most people assume you can only get by spending serious money on fast glass.

How to Actually Get Your Camera Gear Through Airport Security Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Lens)
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How to Actually Get Your Camera Gear Through Airport Security Without Losing Your Mind (or Your Lens)

Every time I zip up my bag before a flight, I do a quick mental calculation: how much is in here, and how bad would it hurt if the airline lost it? After enough trips shooting on location, I’ve gotten religious about this. So when I came across Watch the full tutorial on YouTube from Pierre T. Lambert, a photographer who clearly travels more than most people sleep, I recognized the anxiety immediately.

Tamron's 3 New Full-Frame Lenses for 2019: What Budget Shooters Actually Need to Know
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Tamron's 3 New Full-Frame Lenses for 2019: What Budget Shooters Actually Need to Know

Every January I tell myself I’m done chasing gear announcements. Then something like this happens. Tamron quietly dropped details on three new lenses for 2019, and honestly, they’re the kind of announcements that actually move the needle for shooters like me who track value obsessively. I’ve got a spreadsheet with every third-party lens I’ve tested in the last three years, and Tamron keeps showing up near the top for image quality per dollar.

What a Landscape Photographer Shooting Antarctica Taught Me About Patience, Placement, and Wildscape Thinking
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What a Landscape Photographer Shooting Antarctica Taught Me About Patience, Placement, and Wildscape Thinking

I’ve spent years arguing that technique beats gear, and most of the time I believe it. But every once in a while I watch someone work through a genuinely difficult photographic problem and realize the technique conversation goes a lot deeper than camera settings. That’s what happened when I sat down with Watch the full tutorial on YouTube - Nigel Danson’s breakdown of shooting wildlife in Antarctica as a landscape photographer.

Camera Gear Maintenance: What Tony Northrup's Tutorial Taught Me I'd Been Ignoring
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Camera Gear Maintenance: What Tony Northrup's Tutorial Taught Me I'd Been Ignoring

I’ll be straight with you: I used to think camera maintenance was something you only worried about when something broke. I’d wipe down a lens with my shirt, blow on the sensor like it was an old Nintendo cartridge, and call it good. Then I spent a weekend shooting in Rocky Mountain National Park and spent three hours in Lightroom cloning out dust spots that I could have prevented in twenty minutes at home.

Sigma vs Sony vs Tamron 35mm: Here's Which One I'd Actually Buy
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Sigma vs Sony vs Tamron 35mm: Here's Which One I'd Actually Buy

There’s a question I get more than almost any other from photographers building out a Sony mirrorless kit: “Which 35mm lens is actually worth buying?” It sounds simple. It isn’t. The 35mm focal length is one of the most crowded spots in the Sony E-mount ecosystem, and the price gap between the options is wide enough that picking the wrong one stings. I’ve been chewing on this myself, so when The Slanted Lens dropped a direct comparison video putting the Sigma, Sony, and Tamron 35mm lenses head to head in real shooting conditions, I watched it twice and took notes.

Black Friday Camera Deals Worth Your Money (And a Few That Made Me Jealous)
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Black Friday Camera Deals Worth Your Money (And a Few That Made Me Jealous)

Every year I build a spreadsheet before Black Friday hits. Prices, historical lows, which “deals” are just regular prices with a red sticker slapped on them. I’ve been burned enough times to know that most photography sales are theater. So when a creator I trust puts out a deals roundup, I actually stop and pay attention, because the signal-to-noise ratio is usually much better than what the retailers are pushing on their own pages.

How to Shoot Street Portraits With a Massive IMAX Lens (And What It Taught Me About Thinking Outside the Bag)
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How to Shoot Street Portraits With a Massive IMAX Lens (And What It Taught Me About Thinking Outside the Bag)

There’s a certain kind of photographer who looks at a massive, decades-old cinema lens collecting dust in a storage case and thinks “yeah, that’ll work for portraits.” That’s JP Morgan of The Slanted Lens, and honestly, that mindset is exactly why I keep coming back to his channel. In this The Slanted Lens tutorial, JP hauls an IMAX lens built by iWerks down to a skate park in Santa Monica and shoots street portraits with it on his Canon EOS R.

How Metal Prints Are Actually Made: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at UV Inkjet Printing on Aluminum
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How Metal Prints Are Actually Made: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at UV Inkjet Printing on Aluminum

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about output. Not in an obsessive way, just practically. You can nail the shot, dial in the edit, and then hand a JPEG to a lab that treats it like any other file. The print comes back fine. Not great. Fine. So when I started seeing photographers display work on metal panels at galleries and pop-up exhibitions, I got curious about what was actually happening in that process and whether it was something worth understanding even if you’re not planning a gallery show anytime soon.