Today, I’d like to introduce you to what I consider are the best books to be read this year if you aim to become a professional photographer. Without much ado, let’s get started.

#1 – Digital Photography Complete Course by DK

The book itself starts from the very basics of explaining the different elements that make a camera – taking as an example a DSLR camera, though the elements mostly apply to any kind of camera. The care procedures for your gear, how to pick between tripods, useful gear and more. Lessons will move towards manual mode, with absolutely detailed and graphic explanations of the camera modes, shutter speed, aperture, etc.

Besides the visual format, one good element is that at the end of each chapter you get a tiny quiz to put your knowledge to test. It’s an all-in-one compendium of lessons that can be reviewed over and over for a convenient price.

Bonus: Books worth to be checked

1. The Photographer’s Eye Remastered
2. Mastering Portrait Photography by Paul Wilkinson and Sarah Plater
3. Food Photography: A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Appetizing Images
4. Understanding Color in Photography: Using Color, Composition, and Exposure to Create Vivid Photos
5. The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography

Well, I hope this selection of best books for photographers in 2022 inspires you to find new challenges as a photographer.  See you next time!

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In our age of high-definition everything, HDR photography is a great trend, and one that you should really look into working with. The great thing is that while there are ways to do this all yourself in Lightroom, you can use presets and brushes like Sleeklens HDR presets. These will take out a lot of the work that you have to deal with to streamline the entire process for you.

What is HDR?

Sleeklens HDR presets and brushes. It’s a simple way to create some really amazing HDR imagery.

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In fact, cityscapes are one of the most captured scenes in the world. Tourists are taking hundreds of photographs with their mobile devices every time they visit a city and share them on social media. But, how can you stand out of the mass? Here are a few tips to get started:

13 Urban Photography Tips

Long Exposure

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If you’ve been inspired by the work of street photographers, such as Henri Cartier Bresson or more modern day street photographers such as Bruce Gilden, and wished you could gather up the courage to do it yourself—today is the day to get started. In this street photography guide, we will consider some practical advice, along with some tried and true methods that will help a beginner get on the streets.

How to Do Street Photography

Being one of the most diverse forms of photography, street photography can be very exciting. Street photography encompasses things such as portrait photography, landscape photography, urban photography, low light photography, and more all bundled into one. This ultimately means there are no specific rules or guidelines when it comes to street photography, and you can pretty much try anything you please that fits into the genre of street photography itself. However, in this section, we will be discussing street photography tips to help you get the best photographs.

Gear

Famous Street Photographers

If you’re looking for inspiration to improve your street photography skills, one of the best ways is to study the experts. A few popular street photographers to study include:

• Martin Parr
• Henri Cartier Bresson
• Bruce Gilden
• Joel Meyerowitz
• Lee Friedlander
• Robert Doisneau
• Helen Levitt
• Robert Frank
• William Eggleston
• Saul Leiter
• Diane Arbus

Street Photography Requires Skill and Confidence

Street photography can be a fun and challenging way to improve your photographic skills. It’s also a great way to explore the world and capture everyday life as it happens. We hope these tips have given you some ideas on how to get started with street photography.

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In this article, I will be giving you some key reasons as to why a macro lens is essential to add to your lens collection, and making a few macro lens recommendations for those wanting to explore this photography style. Yes, there are lenses that may allow you to get close enough to a subject and enter the world of macro photography for just a bit, but they all have their limits. Macro lenses  are made specifically to excel in the field.

How a Macro Lens Works

Let’s explain how a macro lens works. First, we need to understand a few basic optics principles. A regular camera lens has its focal plane closer to the camera sensor plane than a macro lens.

How to Take Macros Without a Macro Lens

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What is a Prime Lens?

First, let’s start off by defining what a prime lens actually means. A prime lens is a lens with a fixed focal length lens, meaning it can’t zoom in or out. If you have a 50mm prime lens, then all your photos will have to be composed accordingly. Prime lenses typically have a focal length of 35mm, 50mm, or 85mm, but there are also wide-angle primes and telephoto primes with focal lengths below 35mm and above 85mm. So, whether you’re shooting landscape photography or portrait photography, there’s a prime lens out there that’s perfect for the job.

7 Reasons to Use a Prime Lens in Photography

Clarity

As a general rule of thumb, a fixed lens is always going to give you sharper, cleaner looking image. Why is this? When we look into the construction of the how the lenses are made, the optics of the glass are more precise. Think about it: if all the optics in a lens are specifically crafted to focus on one set focal length, the engineers can make sure that it is near perfect optically.

weddings or sporting competitions. Sometimes in these conditions, even the quick process of changing a lens (5-10 seconds) means missing the opportunity to take an important shot.

Prime Lenses Pack a Lot of Punch

If you’re looking to improve your photography, a prime lens is the way to go. The best part? They’re not as expensive as you might think. We hope this guide has helped you see the value in adding a prime lens to your camera bag—and that you’ll be inspired to take some amazing photos with it!

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A lot of people may ask, “why would you want to go thousands of feet in the air just to take aerial photos when there is technology that can do that for you?” Well for one, with all this new technology coming out, they all have their limitations as to how far and how long they can work. For example, your regular DJI drone probably lasts around 35 minutes on a single charge. This is assuming that mother nature permits it to fly unbothered with minimal winds or any other elements.

4 Aerial Photography Tips for Beginners

Book A Flight

This is one of the most important tips for packing your aerial camera gear and getting excited to disappear in the clouds. Run a quick search for a location near you, and see what packages or services are offered for those who would like to do a tour. I have seen many aerial photographers do this at the last minute, and then end up having to wait a few days or even weeks before they can get on an aircraft. It also does not necessarily have to be a plane—a helicopter tour can also help you reach your desired elevation—and may even be better.

drone that you can control from the ground, but rather you thousands of feet in the sky flying over unfamiliar terrain. Knowledge is power, and it’s always better to be safe and prepared than sorry and uncertain as to what you need to do.

Aerial Photography is a Thrilling Adventure

Aerial photography is a photography niche where you get to explore the world from a different perspective to capture breathtaking air photos. Whether you’re a professional photographer or a hobbyist, we encourage you to try this technique to take your photography to new levels. We hope you find these quick and easy tips useful for planning your next trip in the clouds. Until next time, be safe and have fun shooting.

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Food Photography Tips for Beginners

Depth Of Field

The first food photography tip I’d suggest is to try and achieve a shallow depth of field when shooting your subject. With food photography, you should always aim to capture the most important thing on the plate; once that is made the focus of the picture then you shouldn’t really worry about the background as it will transition into a very soft blur.

Mind you, I’m not saying that your background should be completely out of whack. Still try to keep some elements associated with food in the background such as forks, a napkin etc. To achieve this I would actually recommend the use of a 50mm lens. You’ll end up easily achieving that smooth transition into the background not to mention how close you can get to the subject with a low aperture.

Add Oil

The last tip is to put oil over your vegetables. Not a lot but enough that the vegetables have a bit of a shine to them, and they will really glow when you have the lights on them. That will help to add definition to the image, but it will also make the food look very appetizing. The vegetables will look fresher with that glisten, and your photo will really pop with that extra bit of shining light coming from the vegetables and the fruits.

Plated Perfection Lightroom Presets Collection today and take your food photography to the next level!

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]]> https://sleeklens.com/blog/food-photography/food-photography-for-beginners/feed/ 0 https://sleeklens.com/blog/lightroom-tutorials/split-toning-lightroom/ https://sleeklens.com/blog/lightroom-tutorials/split-toning-lightroom/#respond Thu, 17 Nov 2022 07:00:33 +0000 https://sleeklens.com/?p=35089 Let’s take a look at split toning in Lightroom to help you on your freelancing journey or just to groom your Photoshop skills and see how other photographers get the best out of their images. Our range of Lightroom presets have split toning incorporated into them, so definitely check those out if you want to see […]

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]]> Let’s take a look at split toning in Lightroom to help you on your freelancing journey or just to groom your Photoshop skills and see how other photographers get the best out of their images.

Our range of Lightroom Photoshop Actions to achieve the same effects with just a few clicks. These create a very balanced split toning effect, and can be a good starting point for your photo editing work.

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]]> https://sleeklens.com/blog/lightroom-tutorials/split-toning-lightroom/feed/ 0