You don’t need to look too hard or travel too far for a subject that would amaze, excite and produce a smile on your face. Spend an afternoon outside and just look up. Cloud watching isn’t just something for kids.

Here are 21 photographs that have captured the subject of clouds perfectly. Some are stunning and others whimsical. Take a look and hopefully get inspired on your next photo shoot!

Continue reading: 21 Amazing Cloud Photos

Travel photography is something we all get excited about. Sometimes we take a bunch of photos and come back to realize that our 500-something photos didn’t really capture the spirit of our travels. To ensure that this won’t happen to you (again), here are some quick tips.

The inspiration behind this post is that I do a lot of traveling myself. Although some travel photography tips online are extremely helpful, I find most of them to be like a Photography 101 tutorial. I’m going to steer away from technical composition and lighting rules and mainly concentrate on practical tips you can really use while traveling. The photos used are from my recent trip to Tokyo. Enjoy!

Continue reading: Travel Photography: 10 Simple Yet Practical Tips

For the final part of this series on shooting ghost towns, I will discuss how to take raw shots and manipulate them to create more pop and feeling for the content of the images. This can mean changing some from color to black and white, increasing the saturation level, color correcting or adjusting the brightness/contrast. All of my shots from North Hibbing were taken in a raw format with my Nikon Digital SLR. Often this means completely adjusting the image you took on the day to the one you think reflects the character of the location. The representation in the camera may not accurately reflect what you saw when you took the photographs. Bring your images into Photoshop and start playing with the settings to adjust the color and contrast.

Continue reading: Photographing a Ghost Town Part 3: Manipulating the Images

In the second part of this series on photographing ghost towns, I am going to continue discussing my trip to Northern Minnesota and North Hibbing (First part you can find here). One of the most interesting aspects of shooting this kind of environment is knowing that at one time, the spaces, streets and objects were once owned and inhabited by real people. When details emerge that add that dimension to the photographs, they are important to pick up and use as inspiration for certain shots.

Continue reading: Photographing a Ghost Town Part 2: Adding a Human Touch

When it comes to taking a great photo, it all comes down to the lighting and composition, rather than how expensive  the camera equipment is. Today, we’re going to highlight a composition technique called Rule of Thirds. It’s a very simple rule to grasp and can instantly turn some of those boring photos into something much more interesting and visually pleasant.

Visual aesthetics is something subjective. You might think a particular photo is nothing special, while your friend loves it to death. The Rule of Thirds is a simple guideline to help you produce a photo that is more likely to be visually stunning based on how you compose and frame your subject.

Continue reading: Composition 101: Rule of Thirds in Photography with Examples

Last time we ran a Photoshop tutorial on how to apply a selective color effect to a photo. This time, we want to showcase some great photos that have actually applied the selective color technique.

Hopefully this photos will will give you some fun, unique and refreshing ideas for your next photo project. If you have any other great examples to show us, simply post up a link in the comment box. We go through all the comments (good and bad) daily and try to respond to all of them.

Continue reading: 20 Stunning Photos Using Selective Color Technique

There are lots of tutorials that teach you how to touch up an old photograph to make it look new again. However, this tutorial will teach you the opposite of this effect and show you how to make a modern-looking photo appear old and tattered in Photoshop.

This tutorial will also give you the basics on how to apply a texture layer to a photo. Once you’ve mastered this simple technique, the creative possibilities are endless.

Continue reading: Photoshop Tutorial: Vintage Crumpled Photo Effect

In the first part of this exploration on ghost towns, I want to introduce where I decided to shoot and what aspects of ghost town locations are important to understand when taking on this type of photography.

I am from Minneapolis Minnesota but have always wanted to photograph a part of the northern iron range of my state called North Hibbing. You can see the location here.

I have a personal interest because my mother grew up in a town nearby and my grandfather was once a miner in the iron ore mines. It was also a location I could drive to in a day and was not overly dangerous to shoot and did not require additional lighting. I had also learned much of the history while growing up and so had a good understanding of the overall space and what details would be interesting to add. I happened to luck out on the day that I took the photographs that a rain storm was moving in. The darkness and clouds added to the overall spookiness of the location.

Continue reading: Photographing a Ghost Town Part 1: Researching and Understanding Your Location