In part 1 of “Using you Monitor as a Light Source”, I looked at replacing your existing light sources with your computer monitor by displaying various colors to act as “gels”.

This time we’re going to push it a step further. We’re actually going to be using our monitor as the background! This opens up a ton of possibilities but it also has it’s limits as well. The main limit is the size of your monitor. So this limits the size of the object in front of it. But if you have a 52 inch LCD TV, you could Continue Reading »

It’s time for your first ever YPS assignment! What would a school be without any homework, right?

So there I was, starting to write my next article on how to take perfect family photos when it hit me… “most of my readers have families, so most of them should be taking great family photos!”

This is how it’s going to work. Please follow the rules or else I’ll fail you! Hahaha! Continue Reading »

The holiday season is fast approaching and we’re soon going to be running around like headless chickens to get everything done in time. So why not get a head start with your Christmas photo postcard!

And what makes your photo pop? A cool looking border or frame around it!

In this Photoshop video tutorial, I’ll show you how to quickly make borders around your photos. No more Continue Reading »

Ho ho ho! It’s almost that time of year again when families meet, enjoy good food, good cheer and a little too much of the good drink. 

It’s also time for Santa’s yearly gift giving. And I thought I would help Santa out a bit by giving him some suggestions for my fellow YPS loyal readers! I’ll be focusing on the most obvious for a photography learning site… photography books! We all love reading them but we also want good ones! There are some lemons out there (I have a few) so let me weed out the bad stuff Continue Reading »

In this Photoshop video tutorial, I’ll show you 4 ways of converting your color photos into black and white. I got the inspiration for this tutorial because of the recent Black and White Spider Awards results. This is an international photography competition with some amazing photos from both professionals and amateurs. Continue Reading »

I’ve just written a guest post for one of the most popular photography learning sites out on the Net called Digital Photography School. For more info on DPS, check out my review.

I’m a big fan of macro photography. So much so that when I chose my first ever digital camera, the Nikon Coolpix 4500, it was mostly based on its macro capabilities. And when I purchased my Nikon D70 with kit lens, the next lens in my bag was the Continue Reading »

I did something this summer that I’ve only done once before as a professional photographer… enter a professional photography competition.

Last winter, a fellow photographer sent me a link to the Black & White Spider Awards informing me that some of the top pro photographers in the world participated and it could be a great learning opportunity. So I checked it out carefully to make sure it was serious and after seeing being blown away by the winners and nominees, I thought it would be a fun Continue Reading »

It’s time for another Adobe Photoshop video tutorial “quicky”.

I went thought my reader email bag and had quite a few of you wanting to know how to fix the color issues when saving images from Photoshop. The main complaint is that saved images, when viewed on the computer or the Web, look more saturated then what you see in Photoshop. Basically you’re asking: a) why is it that the saved image is more saturated? and, b) is there a way to adjust Photoshop to see the correct Continue Reading »

All right fellow YPS readers. It’s time for part 2 of my “Exploring Small Strobes” series that I’m currently writing for DIYPhotography.net.

In part 1 entitled “Why Should I use a Speedlight?”, I covered the reasons why you should use small flashes. If you missed part 1 you can check it out HERE.

In part 2, entitled “Why Use Speedlights Off Camera”, I explore practical ways of using flash photography off camera. The subjects covered are: Continue Reading »

Welcome to a Photoshop “video quicky” tutorial. It’s funny cuz I got a request from a reader on how to quickly straighten a horizon on a photo without having to fiddle around and guestimate using the Arbitrary option under Rotate Canvas (Image-Rotate Canvas-Arbitrary). I actually had to think about it for a moment since I’ve been using Lightroom 2 to rotate and crop my images for a while now.

It only did take a moment and Continue Reading »