Photography News

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Most beginners think editing is where a photo gets fixed. The truth is closer to the opposite: the edit accounts for roughly 20% of the final image, and the shot you took in camera carries the other 80%.

 

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The image, by BillRookery, is titled 'The Warmth Before Winter' and is a very natural capture of this morning landscape. The early 5am start provided just enough soft light to give an impression of a calm sunrise across the scene.

The golden and amber tones in the sky add a warm colour to the scene, while sunlight hitting the tall grass highlights the slope of the hill. A single sheep eating quietly in the grass also adds something special. The large tree standing at the top of the hill brings the whole morning view together.

Every Photo of the Week (POTW) winner will be rewarded with a Samsung 128GB PRO Plus microSDXC memory card with SD adapter, providing top-tier storage for all your creative needs across multiple devices. But that's not all! In January 2027, we'll crown our 2026 Photo of the Year winner, who will take home the ultimate prize of a Samsung Portable 1TB SSD T7 Shield, courtesy of Samsung. It’s time to shoot, submit, and showcase your best work for a chance to win these incredible rewards!

Want to be our next POTW winner? Just upload an image to our gallery where you'll also find all of our past POTW winners. See the terms and conditions for more information.

Viltrox released three APS-C lenses for Fujifilm in silver, the 9mm f/2.8, the 15mm f/1.7, and the 25mm f/1.7, and each one fills a focal length and aperture gap that Fujifilm's own lineup leaves open. The mix of speed, sharpness, and a light body makes these worth a serious look if you shoot street or travel.

 

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You shoot a conference in a dim ballroom, your shutter speed drops too low, and every frame comes back with a little motion blur. The fix costs real money, and the choice between a faster lens and a better camera body decides how you spend it.

 

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If you're looking for lighting advice, be it for capturing portraits on a sunny day or shooting landscapes in summer, we probably have a tutorial to help you.

 

1. Five Top Tips On How To Control & Work With Natural Light

Natural light is often the only light available to us when we are out shooting. But far from being an untameable beast, there are several ways that you can control it to achieve your desired photo.

 

2. Photographing Low Light Portraits

Working with just one light, or indeed natural light at dusk, is a great way to create moody portraits that can be full of character. It's a perfect technique for shooting subjects who are a little older as low light can really exaggerate lines and wrinkles but don't let this put you off photographing low light portraits of younger members of your family.

 

3. Six Top Natural Light Portrait Tips For Beginners

Get back to basics and make the most of natural light by capturing portraits without flash or studio lights.

 

4. Five Top Tips On How To Use Window Light For Indoor Portraits

Daylight is free and it is wonderful for portrait work as not only is it flattering and photogenic but it's really easy to work with so it's a good place for beginners to start. You don't need a fancy studio, either, as you can pick a location outdoors or simply set-up next to a window in your own home.  

 

5. Three Top Tips On Using Fill-In Flash For Portraits

Fill-in flash can give images that extra bit of 'pop' they need as we explain in this article.

 

 

6. A Basic Introduction To Outdoor Photography: 4 Top Outdoor Lighting Tips

Light's an important tool for photographers and knowing how to make it work to your advantage when capturing photographs outdoors is essential.

 

7. How To Use Built-In Camera Flash Successfully

Flash can give images that extra bit of 'pop' they need and many cameras feature several flash modes for you to pick from so we're going to talk through the various modes available and how they work. 

 

8. Top Portrait Photography Tips That Use Just One Light

With just 1 studio light, the COOPH team demonstrate how you can create different/unique portraits by manipulating how the light falls to enhance portraits and, as a result, greatly improve your overall results. 

 

9. Three Top Tips On Controlling And Using Flare In Your Photos

If you've ever taken photographs with the sun in front of you, you're likely to have experience flare, which probably spoilt your photograph. However, there are several things you can do to remove it or if you're feeling creative, you can use it in your shots to add a little romanticism, mystery and warmth to your work.

 

10. Nine Portrait Photography Light Hacks In 90 Seconds

We've got 9 lighting hacks to share with you which you can use the next time you're capturing portraits.

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition  

The 1872 law that created Yellowstone runs only a few hundred words and never mentions a photograph. By the time President Ulysses S. Grant signed it on March 1, prints of the region and a painter's field watercolors had reached Washington and were being used to sell the idea. The pictures entered the campaign before the vote, then left almost no trace in the formal legislative record.

 

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We’ve all been there. You’re out somewhere, with a camera in tow, but the purpose isn’t photography. Maybe you’re walking with family or friends. Maybe you’re running to an appointment. You don’t have the luxury of setting up a tripod or spending fifteen minutes working a composition. You take some extra frames from varying angles or perspectives, just to be safe. But when you get home, you may find you have an editorial problem you didn't plan for.

 

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Talent gets discussed constantly, but the photographers who keep landing work tend to share a set of habits that have nothing to do with raw skill. The difference shows up in how they practice, prepare, and handle the people around them.

 

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Adobe quietly slipped a Light adjustment layer into the main Photoshop interface, and it looks almost identical to the tone and exposure controls you already know from Lightroom and Camera Raw. That resemblance is the whole problem, because now people can't tell where they should actually be making these edits.

 

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Better photos rarely come from a more interesting subject. They come from motion, perspective, camera height, and depth, the controls sitting in front of you that decide how an image feels before anyone thinks about what's in it.

 

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A respected photographer once told a teenager she wasn't good enough to make it, and that single sentence kept her from picking up a camera for decades. Those words carry a weight far heavier than the person who said them ever intended, and most creative people have heard some version of them, either out loud or in their own head.

 

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Stairs and steps may sound boring, however, when you start thinking about the materials they're made from and the shapes and styles that exist, you'll soon realise there's plenty of steps to keep you and your camera occupied. Be it a graphical shot of an industrial set of steps leading up the side of a metal structure or a spiral staircase in a grand house, if you keep your eyes open, you'll soon realise there are many interesting sets of steps and stairs around you that will make an interesting image. Here are a few tips to get you thinking about how you can capture shots of these subjects next time you're out exploring with your camera. 

 

1. Gear Suggestions

A wide-angle lens will exaggerate the twists and turns of a spiral staircase while a telephoto lens is good for bringing staircases on the outside of buildings to you. Pack a polariser for stairs against glass or reflective surfaces and a tripod would be handy to help you make sure that the stairs are perfectly straight.

 

2. Guide The Eye

As stairs take you somewhere they're naturally a great way to lead you into and through an image. They can be used to guide the eye to a particular feature or you could hide the last part of the staircase to leave the viewer wondering where the stairs may go to. Lines are a great way to lead the eye into the image and you don't get a better line than a long bannister so use them to your advantage.

 

3. Spirals

Stand at the top or bottom of a spiral staircase with your wide-angle lens and you can get a great but rather overdone shot of the spiral shape twisting up. Try getting someone to stand or lay at the bottom or carefully peek over the bannister at the top and use the spiralling stairs as a frame.

 

 

 

4. Movement And Size

For your more normal staircases use your wide-angle lens to exaggerate the grandeur of a particularly wide, long set of stairs or use a slow shutter speed if you're in a city and blur the movement of city-goers as they pass through your shot. Zoom in and fill the frame with repeating patterns of stairs to exaggerate their size which will also give your image a more graphical feel. 

 

5. Reflections

Some staircases go up the outside of buildings so use your telephoto lens to bring them to you. This lens is also great if your stairs are reflected to give you symmetry in your shot. Try to stand so you're in the centre of the stairs and reflection to enhance the pattern.

 

6. Be Different

For something different try to shoot through the spindles to the other side of the staircase or if you're outdoors, use them to frame a single building or a shot of showing part of the city. Try altering your angle, shooting lower down to emphasise the height and/or the number of steps in front of you. Many cameras now have vari-angle LCD screens which allow you to frame your subjects from multiple angles with ease. Which means you won't have to get down on your knees or crouch when capturing low-angled shots. Use light and shadows to add depth, shapes and another level of interest to your shots and experiment with colour, too as turning an image black & white can really make the viewer focus on the shapes and textures of an image when the colour's stripped away. 

 

   

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The tornado photograph you have probably seen, the dramatic one with a thick central funnel and two thinner vortices trailing off its side, was probably retouched, its more interesting cloud base likely painted in or combined from another negative. The image that actually came first is far less cinematic: a faint gray thread against a washed-out sky, made on April 26, 1884, by a Kansas fruit grower who happened to still own a camera. It is the oldest surviving photograph of a tornado, and its photographer got it by keeping a heavy camera dead still while a funnel crossed the plains.

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Reliable and well-engineered gear is something all landscape photographers rely on. This is especially true when we consider investing in the accessory that keeps our cameras secure and stable.

 

When I started with photography, I assumed one only needed a basic tripod and a standard three-way head. Over the years, I tried and tested different tripod heads, such as ball, fluid, and gimbal heads, as well as pistol grips. But nothing came close to the precision and ease of use of a geared head.

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Technical perfection can drain the life out of a photograph. Chasing sharpness, clean detail, and flawless contrast in every frame often strips away the exact quality that made an image feel real in the first place.

 

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An autofocus 50mm f/1.8 for the Nikon Z system runs $89, and the images coming off it look nothing like the price tag suggests. A fast prime at that number changes what a beginner can afford as a first step past the kit lens.

 

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You can shoot at f/1.4 and get almost no background blur, or shoot at f/4 and get plenty of it. That single fact upends how most people spend money on lenses, and it explains why some expensive glass never delivers the creamy backgrounds you paid for.

 

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Your mind goes blank the second the couple stands in front of you, every Pinterest board you studied the night before suddenly gone. That blank moment is the difference between a wedding day that flows and one that stalls while two nervous people wait for direction.

 

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Photo by Joshua Waller

 

City life's not for everyone but as the sun begins to set find yourself a vantage point where you can see most of the city skyline and you'll soon have a photograph that may make you rethink your dislike for cities. One of the best times for photographing city skylines is when the sun's begun to set so there's still a touch of blue in the sky but the light's not too harsh so make sure you're on your chosen vantage point well before sunset. 

 

1. Gear Choices

Pack a wide lens for capturing the big picture and a telephoto for singling out individual buildings and pulling distant objects towards you on your evening jaunt. Taking a tripod with you is advised but do leave your flashgun at home and turn your on-camera flash off as if it fires, it can ruin your skyline shot.

Most cameras, even compacts and smartphones are capable of producing night shots of decent quality but if you're planning on using much lengthier exposure times, you'll want to pack a more advanced camera. 

 

2. Where To Stand With Your Kit

While on holiday (if you have a room with a view) make use of the balcony to give you a high vantage point of the city. You'll also find buildings with observation decks, bridges to stand on and if you're in a city such as Sheffield which has the peak district on its doorstep, try heading for the hills to give you a sweeping shot of the whole city. From high locations you'll be able to capture patterns you can't see at street level such as the lines street lights form as they turn on or the shapes created as city dwellers switch on their lights at home. Street lights look particularly good twinkling against the deep blue sky still lit by the setting sun. Just be careful where you meter from as you don't want the sky or building lights to 'blow out'. Keep an eye on your histogram and take a reading from a darker part of the frame. Another option is to take multiple exposures of the same view so you can combine them to create a shot with a balanced exposure where there's not under- or over-exposed areas in the image. 

 

3. Taking Photos Through Glass

If you've got to capture your image through glass do check for marks and smudges that will spoil your shot. If you can't remove them, experiment with your aperture to see if one particular f-number will remove them from the shot. You'll also need to put the lens as close to the glass as possible and cup it with your hand, a cloth or whatever else you have that will reduce the amount of interior light reaching your lens. If you don't, you'll end up with reflections and flare could spoil your shots. 

 

Photo by Joshua Waller

 

4. Depth Of Field 

You'll want to use an aperture that gives your shot plenty of depth of field, around f/8 is a good place to start, and try to stick to lower ISOs where possible. You may find you need to adjust this to increase shutter speeds but if you're using a tripod, longer exposures won't be an issue. If you have it available, the depth of field preview button can help ensure your shot is sharp from front to back. 

Foreground interest can add another level interest and 'fill' empty space that can occur when focusing on subjects in the distance. However, do make sure it's not stealing the spotlight and pulling the viewer's attention away from the skyline. 

 

5. Shoot Silhouettes 

Silhouetted cityscapes are popular subjects and they work well against a plain but bright background. Even though they're a little clichéd sunsets do work well particularly if it's one that's rich with colour. To create your silhouette you need to expose for the background and not the buildings you want to silhouette. You may need to fool your camera when it comes to metering as using the camera's automatic metering won't always give you the silhouette you're after. Try half-pressing the shutter button while focused on the brightest part of your scene before moving back to frame the shot but this means your camera will focus on this and not your subject. Manual focus or using a smaller aperture can combat this problem. Talking of manual focus, you should consider using this even when not shooting silhouettes as it'll always produce better results, plus auto-focus tends to struggle as light levels fall. 

 

6. Shots At Street Level

As well as getting up high working at street level can work well in the evening too. Try using long exposures (20-30 seconds) to set the dark sky and buildings against the streak of lights that come from the traffic as it moves through the city streets. You could even combine multiple traffic streak shots to increase the sense of speed and movement in your city shot. Another way to add a creative twist to your city skyline shots is by incorporating reflections from rivers, lakes or even wet pavements after it's rained. 

 

7. Tall Buildings & Straight Horizons

Pay attention to your horizon and the angle of the buildings as you don't want them to be slanting to one side of the image. A tripod with a spirit level can be handy although many cameras now have these or gridlines built-in. When home, check your city shots for distortion but this is something that can be easily fixed in image editing software. Playing around with the colour balance can enhance and evoke mood, too so don't be afraid to experiment with this. 

 

You've read the technique now share your related photos for the chance to win prizes: Daily Forum Competition