If you’ve spent much time working in black and white, you already know how important it is to understand contrast. Contrast is what keeps your black and white images from looking flat. Contrast adds dimension, and dimension can go a long way towards making a photo more engaging. It invites the viewer into the image. [...]

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Color is one of the six classic design elements, which also includes shape, form, line, texture and space. Like the other design elements, good use of color can evoke emotion and give the viewer something to think about. Color is one of those things that was see all the time but often don’t notice, at [...]

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Black and white photography is considered to be classic and expressively emotional. After all this time and technology, it remains quite a popular format among all genres. However, unless you’ve spent time reading your camera’s manual or poking around the settings, you might not be aware that there’s a “Monochrome” option. This setting lets you [...]

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The grandfather of street photography was Henri Cartier-Bresson. His image here of the young boy carrying bottles of wine under his arms, and looking quite proud in doing so, is one of his most popular. It’s street photography at its finest because it’s spontaneous, fun, and it tells a story. Cartier-Bresson’s photographs of children were [...]

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Digital photography has done a lot of great things for us. It’s made film unnecessary, which means that individual shots no longer cost anything and you are now free to take as many pictures as you want without fear of wasted film. A related benefit is that you no longer need to choose a specific [...]

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This time of year you’re probably looking out the window and wondering when the sun is finally going to come out. It’s the dead of winter, the holidays are gone, and guess what? You’ve gotta return to your job. The first week in January is consistently voted the most depressing in the northern hemisphere, but [...]

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Here’s a fun effect to play with. If you’re old enough to know who Andy Warhol is, this image should strike a chord. We’re going to use a few simple tools in Photoshop Elements to transform an ordinary digital photo of a banana into something with a little more panache. Let’s get started!

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Shooting in low light situations is difficult. It presents a combination of problems for which there is no single quick fix. You can decrease the shutter speed, but if you don’t have a tripod, your image will be blurry. You can bring a flash with you, but if you’re too close to your subject, you’ll [...]

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When you’re beginning black and white photography, it’s often difficult to figure out what to photograph in the first place. You’ve seen some amazing black and white photos, but you don’t know why they’re so amazing. How can black and white enhance a subject? Are certain subjects more tailored to black and white photography than [...]

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I had a great response from last week’s article on Selective Coloring. As well as lots of great email comments, there were a number of readers who uploaded their selective color photos to our gallery. A lot of the questions I received were from readers asking what kinds of photos are best to use selective [...]

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Or: How to make one object color while the rest is black-and-white I really love this effect. When your main subject is in color, and the rest of your image is in black-and-white, you can draw a lot emphasis to your subject. You can also use small amounts of color to highlight otherwise unseen parts [...]

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There is probably no more exciting time in life than the birth of a newborn baby. For many moms and dads, it’s the reason they got into photography in the first place. These pictures are the ones you’ll keep looking at for years to come. That’s why it’s so important to get them right, and [...]

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