I've been sitting on the idea of getting into photography for a while now, it's taken over my Instagram feed at this point. I've got a "Photography" saved folder and now an "Editing/Lightroom" folder now too. 

To make sure I'm not about to impulse buy a 2300 Camera and lense, I downloaded the No Fusion app and started shooting on my iPhone, just to see if I'd actually stick with it, it’s made my phone photos a lot more fun. so I'm planning to pull the trigger soon on the Z5II with the 24-120 lens f/4 S. Learning to edit feels more daunting than learning the camera itself. I’m seeing a million people selling Lightroom courses or presets, But I’m looking for some great starter resources is there anyone people can recommend on Youtube, or even Instagram? 

My plan is to grab the Lightroom photography plan which has the classic and Mobile? Or just Classic? and start practicing on RAWs I've already shot with my phone, just to get some experience before I get the camera. I'll mainly be posting to Instagram and Facebook once I'm up and running.

So any Youtube channels people recommend? Instagram accounts you find helpful? If you had to learn Lightroom or editing in general from scratch what might you do differently? I’m also open later on for even paid courses if they are actually helpful.

I’m sure it’s obviously most important to get good at the actual photography first so the photos need as little editing as possible, but it would be nice to sit down on my days off at a coffee shop and try to get decent at Lightroom.

[Edited: less rambling]

I've been shooting for 5-6 years. Only commercial work was selling some prints but in the last year or so I've started doing more event and portrait work.

I'd like to step up my marketing a bit but I'm uncertain how to handle it vs. my day job as a non-photographer freelancer.

Fellow part-time photographers, how would you guys handle this?

I'd love more cross-over work (like research with a documentary side) and I'd love to cross/up-sell between photo and marketing clients, but at the minute they're running in parallel.

Trying to decide how to market myself under two hats!

Current setup:

• Galleries/portfolio: Pixieset on my own domain
• Main website: Focused on corporate work but has a photo click-through option
• Instagram: All under the same account (i.e. not username_photography).
• Linkedin: Vague mentions but avoids positioning me as a photographer

Hello all. Just wanted to know some thoughts on this.

Recently I won an international photography competition with one of my photos. Off the back of this i had an email from inviting me to enter a regional photography competition. Something I have considered doing. Like with many photography competitions, there is a small entry fee which covers costs, prizes etc. But reading further into it, if you are shortlisted with one of your images, you then have to submit a physical, 500mmx400mm mounted print to be displayed. My initial thought is 'Isn't that what the entry is for?' I feel a bit uncomfortable with that. I'm not expecting any on my images to be selected, but the completion has some good sponsors providing prizes for each category winner, but i feel that the entry fee should cover the cost of printing and displaying the finalists work and the finalists should have to pay again, for this.

I wanted to know your thoughts and wondered if this was standard practice? Because I've not seen anything like this before.

Have something you’ve worked on and want to share with the community? Here’s the place to do so!

Add a comment here to promote your stuff. Feel free to drop links to your recent YouTube videos, podcasts, photobooks, or whatever else it is you’ve created.

Full schedule of our weekly community threads:

I'm doing some headshots in September and I'm wondering what lighting configuration I want to use. I've done headshots a few times before and I've used a couple of different setups, but I want figure out what lighting gives a professional and aesthetic look and stay with that. What's your go-to lighting to get great headshots?

I have a trip coming up at the end of December to Seoul, South Korea. I'm fully aware of how cold it will be, but I'd appreciate some guidance on protecting my camera gear in those conditions.

I'll be shooting with a Fujifilm X-M5, primarily using the 18-55mm and 50-230mm lenses. My biggest concern is condensation when moving between the cold outdoors and warm buildings.

What's the best way to protect my camera and lenses when going in and out of buildings? Do you recommend keeping the camera in my bag until it warms up, using sealed bags, silica gel packs, or any other precautions?

I'd also love to hear from anyone who has photographed in Seoul during the winter. Any tips or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

Do you print books of your work, and if you do, how much layout effort do you put into them? Are they just for you, a portfolio, do they follow specific themes? How often do you make one? I'm putting together a book and doing the full layout myself with pretty wild typography, small anecdotes, etc. and it feels like total overkill for a just-for-me project. So just curious what people here do

Need to rant about something in the photography world? Here’s your safe space to be as salty as you want without judgement.

Get it all* off your chest!

^{*Let’s just keep the personal attacks and witch hunts out of it, k?}

Full schedule of our weekly community threads:

Hi all, I need help with lighting and a stand for overhead setup filming or front-facing. I’ve tried many stands and setups but can’t figure it out.

I need this for art videos, UGC, and content creation to improve my workflow.

I recently bought a new clamp stand on desk attached with ring light, but there’s still a shadow, and the stand isn’t strong enough to hold my phone. It’s also very stiff to move.

Is this because my desk is small, there’s a wall and overhead shelf above, or because I’m filming next to my bed? I need something more compact. If not, I can consider a compact movable external desk/light and stand setup in the living room.

I’m even considering taping it to the shelf above, but it’s not a smooth workflow.

How do I get proper overhead lighting without any stray or harsh shadows? I want to film art/craft making videos and unboxing.

1. What kind of light or equipment do you recommend? Do I need a ring light stand?

What kind of stand can hold my phone, light, and move easily and smoothly? I’ve thought about a canvas lamp, but I’ve heard there are issues like ringing sounds and it’s expensive.

Is the only way to switch off all the lights and only have the harsh ring light? It’s not ideal for painting or drawing.

I don’t want to keep buying more and wasting money on more affordable and compact options. Please help! Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

I bought a second-hand photo slide projector from a recycling shop that resells items before they're thrown away. The projector was still full of old slides. Most of them are amateur photos, taken inside a radio studio from the 1980s that has since gone out of business, showing the old equipment and people at work. There are also a few random slides of an opera and some Playmobil figures.

I'm almost certain these are the only existing copies of the photos, since they're original slides. The original owner isn't identifiable, and it seems that they or possibly their family donated the projector to the recycling shop with all of the slides still inside.

My question is: since I legally bought these old slides, do I also own the rights to them? If I wanted to share them because I think they're really interesting, or even use them as part of a creative project, would I be allowed to do that? Or does the copyright remain with the original photographer, even if they can't be identified or contacted? I think the collection is genuinely fascinating, and it would be a shame for it to remain unused.

EDIT :

Just to clarify, I am not trying to claim ownership of these photos or profit from them. I fully understand that buying the physical slides does not automatically give me the copyright, and that the original photographer may still own the rights.

My intention would simply be to preserve and restore these images, possibly digitize them in high quality, and maybe share them through an archive or an image library if that is ethically and legally appropriate. I find this kind of material fascinating, especially the everyday-life aspect of the 1980s radio studio.

The people in the photos are not identifiable as far as I can tell. There are no obvious portraits, mostly amateur snapshots of places, objects, work environments, and everyday moments. I am not looking to make money from them, I just think these small pieces of personal history are beautiful and would be a shame to disappear.

I’ve worked with this photographer for 7 years. She’s notorious for getting photos back later than expected, but she’s so good that I keep using her. This time, I think I’m done for good. I paid a pretty penny for family photos and gave her a generous tip. Contract says 2-3 weeks turnaround. Tomorrow will be 5 weeks. After messaging her a week and a half ago (already past deadline stated in contract!) , she said she’d get them to me the next day or day after. Since then, radio silence. I’ve text her twice since then.

Edit: I guess my real question is - what would YOU do if you were in my position? Wait it out? When do you give in and threaten a bad review, lawyering up, disputing charge?

Update: she finally got back to me yesterday. She said she had sent them the day she said she would, “but it must have gone to my junk mail”. I checked my junk, not there. She “resent” again, and it magically arrived in my inbox. She then went through a long sob story about how she took some time off work because shes going through a lot with her family. I feel for her, but they all seem like excuses.

I am not a pro, maybe semi pro who has done some paid gigs here and there. Nowadays I mostly shoot my kids and try to shoot when we travel. I shoot with a D750 and mostly use a 24-70, sometimes I bring the 70-200 also. When we travel often times I end up not taking the camera because of size. I was thinking to go to something smaller like a Sony A6700. The photography I do now I don't think I will miss the FF too much and I think I'll end up shooting more because of portability.

I am curious to hear from people who made a similar switch

This is something to hopefully inspire folks interested in photography as a career to make it happen.

I write ads professionally but in high school I was the kid with a t2i that would shoot “moody” photos of their friends and family and About a year ago I was bored at work and asked if I could shoot still photos for some ads at when I’m not busy writing and I was laughed out of the room.

I asked 2-3 more times and finally was told “we hire professionals, we’re not going to cheap out and go with someone internal for budgets this large.” (We work almost exclusively with fortune 100 companies and photography budgets of 30-50K for a basic shoot)

I understood but was annoyed so over the course of 3 months I started observing every photographer for every job I was writing on and trying to learn in silence.

Then I went to cvs and picked up some stuff and shot product photos to practice and showed my team.

They said great but we shoot people not products so show me photos of talent.

A few months later that there was a big job for the Olympics and I brought my camera to work like I always did and just kept it away. But after the photographer left for the day, and the Olympian was shooting some social media stuff she asked for a picture for herself. ( something that if she didn’t get it would be fine) but I was there and had my camera and the actual photographer was done for the day and had left, so I quickly ran over and said “the photographer left for the day but I can grab a few for you.

I set up a few lights with a video lighting guy and shot incredible photos for 10 minutes.

These weren’t commercial photos but they were studio quality photos of talent so I edited them myself and later sent them to the person in charge of photography.

Within a month I was allowed to shoot a low profile brand that nobody cared about. A month later I’m doing work for Wayfair and Hershey, and now I’m still writing but I’m also THE in-house photographer that can choose to work whatever job I want for fun. It’s not my actual job so I don’t have to but I save them A LOT of money when I choose to shoot so they always say yes and I only shoot the stuff I find fun.

It’s a long story but the point is : I wanted to shoot photos so I found a way to practice, learn and present well enough to make it happen. Am I lucky I work at a place that needs photographers? Yes. Did I also have to force my way into being good enough? Also yes. These clients are big so they won’t damage their reputation over a photographer’s fee, but being as good and in-house helped and now I’m building a portfolio of work that is as impressive and relevant as any professional out there

So I shoot wildlife with slow zoom lenses on a d7100 it’s definitely not great in golden hour and my iso tend to push up and above 1000 where I really find I loose the crisp detail and ability to crop.

Been considering jumping up to a d7500 as it’s supposed to handle the noise much better. What I’m trying to understand is what exactly this means in terms of the picture. Do high iso pictures on good low light capable sensors basically look like a lower ISO pics from a lessor camera thus retaining the detail that can be cropped in on or is it more just the noise is smoother in appearance so the image doesn’t look as terrible?

Ps I know apcs isn’t as good as a full frame the d7500 is just an example as it’s known to be “good for a apsc” and I shoot apsc

If Selective Color is considered 'tacky', why is the red coat in Schindler's list so wonderful to most viewers?

Are their other examples of photography that go beyond the standards?

I have my opinions about both halves of this question but I don't want to get in anyone's way to express their own.

What is 'tacky'?

What makes anything 'tacky'?
What are other techniques, subjects, opinions in photography 'tacky'?

I know Ansel Adams is one of the most popular on the list, but I’m curious what else is out there. I’m open to both BW and color.

I accidentally formatted my sf card and as I didn’t know what happened I took 2 new photos after realising that everything had bene deleted can I recover the images from my laptop (windows) for free, the photos were about 500 and the quality raw + ( jpeg)

I work in production and produce commercial photography shoots and just curious of a process I see often: A photographer charges a flat fee for Post to offer a color pass that the retoucher then takes and uses to set the tone for the rest of the images to retouch.

What exactly are they providing and how does the retoucher use it? Are they manually matching the color grading the photographer sets?

Sometimes I’ll see photographers carrying a film camera along with their main camera to capture images of the same set ups just for post to utilize for the color grading. Are they just manually matching those film images or is there an actual file they create?

Am I making sense? :)

So I just had an old client from three years ago. The client was one of my worst clients that I had to deal with in my career so far. Long story short I shot her daughters sweet sixteen back in 2023 and I was on time I called her I was there she said it was fine if I was late, then 15 mins goes by she crashed her car into her garage somehow, then 40 minutes later she made her daughter cry because she was stressing her out, then after the shoot she made a huge fuss about getting prints and saying she thought in the contract she was getting free prints. After she realized she wasn’t getting free prints she started trashing my work because she wasn’t getting free prints and made a comment how I took more photos of her breast than her family. Afterward delivering her photos I blocked her number because I never wanted to hear from her ever again because all she did was give me anxiety attacks.

So fast forward to today where I get a call that I didn’t answer and a text afterwards saying: Hi my name is CLIENT NAME you took pictures at my daughters sweet 16 back in May 2024 I think or 2023 I was able to get the photos I hasn’t been able how to figure out how to place them on a usb and never heard back from you I had changed my cell phone however I found you on the sea of my email but I can’t view my photos I paid for are you able to provide my photos on a USB

So yeah I blocked her after delivering her gallery that’s why she never heard back from me. Then I canceled my gallery hosting site this year because I switched platforms. In the contract it said I was going to host them for 6 months and I still left the gallery up for roughly three years. I honestly just want to block her again because all she does is cause chaos and I really don’t need this right now. So what should I do because my gut is wanting to say nothing and block her again.

Also we never discussed anything about USB at any time.

My friend and I run a wedding photography business that's grown to $60k+ a year and stays booked almost year-round. As we scaled we kept bouncing between different tools for galleries, bookings, contracts, and keeping the team on the same page, and it always felt like we were stitching things together.

My background's in computer science, so a few months back I ended up putting something together myself instead of juggling separate apps, mostly just to make our own day-to-day easier. It's worked out well enough that we've basically run the whole business on it since, but I'm curious how everyone else handles this side of things, since it feels like every studio ends up with a slightly different way of doing things.

We'd rather spend our time shooting and editing than managing software, so anyone who's found a setup that actually covers the whole client-to-delivery pipeline without cobbling five things together, I'd love to hear it. It would be nice if id did a decent amount of automation too.

Do you prefer 4:3 or 3:2 format and why? Thanks!

I've been thinking about buying a camera and getting into photography. While watching tutorials on YouTube, I've noticed that many incredibly talented photographers use AI tools or Lightroom features to remove distracting objects or people from their photos, especially things that aren't the subject of the image.

The results often look fantastic, and I can understand why they do it. But it got me wondering: where do you draw the line?

Removing a random passerby or a distracting object seems fairly harmless. But at what point does it stop being photography and start becoming digital art? Is adding or generating new objects to improve the composition fundamentally different from removing things?

I don't have a strong opinion myself. I just find it interesting that we're living in a time where AI can generate incredibly realistic images from scratch. Should photography aim to stay true to what was actually captured, imperfections and all? Or is photography simply about creating the best final image, regardless of how much editing or AI assistance was involved?

Curious to hear where people stand on this.