The Coolest Photography Links Of The Week

With so much going on in the world of photography this week we are happy to find that Toad Hollow Photography has been searching all over the internet for tutorials, special features and great photography to share here with everyone. This week's list is full of great content from many different genres and countries from all over the world. We really hope you enjoy taking your time and checking out these links as much at the Toad did in bringing this list to you.

TUTORIALS

How To Take Meaningful Candid Shots – many of us strive to capture great candid shots of people in various settings who are behaving naturally without any real knowledge of the fact they are being photographed. This article discusses some great ways of stretching your photography wings in this area with some insights on how best to get your subject at ease with the end goal of capturing a great image.

Make More Realistic Composites With Saturation Maps in Photoshop – if you do a lot of work creating composites, this 5 minute video tutorial will show you how to quickly and easily balance the color saturation between the various layers you are compositing. This is a very clever trick, allowing you to easily create this balance and help achieve a more natural feel in the end result.

How to Give Portraits a Dreamy Glow in Photoshop – this article features a video presentation just over 8 minutes in length that covers the techniques used to create images with a particular style. Sample shots are used throughout the video, along with detailed instructions, giving you a great jumpstart into making pictures that exhibit this contemporary look to them.

Pan with your camera to capture movement and make your photos more dynamic – action shots can be tricky to do properly, and an understanding of how to manage the settings of the camera and a good technique are critical to getting consistently excellent results. This video tutorial is just over 11 minutes long and is full of easy to understand tips and tricks on how best to get started.

12 Tricks for Photographing Cars with Your Smartphone – many of us enjoy photographing cars, and with today’s cell phone cameras you can take some great shots. This video runs around 6 minutes in length and gives some great compositional and technical ideas that can be applied to shooting cars, even with a DSLR.

How To Compose Your Street Photography Like A Painter – street photography is definitely an artform all its own, with true candids carefully composed forming some of the most profound images created in recent history. This video is just over 5 minutes long and shows us how to take control of the setting and the composition to catalyze these key elements into something special.

How to Add Color to Your Shadows With Gels – learn 4 different ways to add some color to the shadows in your photography by using gels. This video tutorial covers the different techniques and shows you the results in about a 6 minute presentation, giving you some great ideas on how to apply this concept yourself.

SPECIAL FEATURES

Photos of Europe’s Most Spellbinding Libraries – check out this alluring collection of photographs that feature the interiors of various libraries in Europe, many of them dating back hundreds of years. Each one exhibits a very unique architectural design, with all of them serving the primary goal of creating a space that supports and enhances reading.

Photographer Uses 1800s Process for Ethereal Portraits of Kids – the wet plate collodion process is a photographic process created in the mid 1800’s that produces unique images by using wet plate techniques that require long exposure times to create finished images. This series of shots of young people who are moving from childhood to adolescence is a mesmerizing and slightly haunting catalog of shots showcasing both this old technique as well as the inherent interest in the subjects captured.

This is What Wedding Photos Looked Like in the Late 1800s – travel back in time well over 100 years to check out this fascinating collection of monochromatic wedding portraits captured during the time period. It’s great to be able to see photographs like this and consider how they contrast against our contemporary practices in regards to wedding photography.

GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY

Prague Noir – the intrinsic power of black-and-white imagery as a media form that expresses depth and contrast is fully descried in this dramatic cityscape themed shot by Jason Row. The ancient city of Prague with it’s old stone buildings and the Charles Bridge is perfectly composed in this great photograph to take advantage of the monochromatic processing Jason used in post-production.

What’s you looking at? – this will melt your heart, guaranteed. Ron Niebrugge while up in Alaska photographing the bears in their natural habitat captured this wonderful shot of a mother bear and her two cubs, with one of the cubs nestled under her looking up with a terrific expression on its face. For those who love candid wildlife photography, this is certainly a must-see shot in this week’s list.

Divine spiral – enjoy the repeating geometries and patterns found in the spiral staircase in the Vatican in this fabulous shot by Manjik photography. This often-photographed architectural feature finds a new vantage with this composition that gently guides the viewer's eye upwards where an exquisite stained glass feature is exposed.

Afternoon at Moraine Lake – azure tones dominate this frame captured by Jim Nix in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, with rugged mountains and the still waters of Moraine Lake accented by the vibrant blue sky high above. This great landscape piece shows us why the Rocky Mountains are a great destination for the traveler, and especially the photographer, who is seeking a special connection with nature.

Scattered Lights Of Dubai – the city of Dubai glistens below as the bustling city enjoys the abundant nightlife and features of this opulent city in this photograph by H A N A A • T. The cinematic feel created in post-production adds to the sense of excitement experienced when seeing this image, creating a perfect finishing touch to this dramatic composition.

Three Brothers – Yosemite National Park, California – Yosemite National Park in the United States is home to a countless number of features that make this place a destination, as we see here in this shot by Len Saltiel that shows offs the majestic mountains in a region in the park that features three peaks. This finishing touch for this amazing shot is in the form of the mirror-like reflection found in the still waters in the foreground of the frame.

Tempestuous – an incredible sense of dynamic dichotomy is captured in this amazing shot by Bruce Omori taken on the shores of Hawaii. As new molten lava flows into the ocean, it creates a stunning cloud of vapor from where the hot and cold intersect, sharing a not often seen facet of nature.

Mt. Washington Auto Road – Michael Criswell shares a great trio of shots in this post that reveals the vibrant colors in the autumn leaves within the frame of a winding road that leads up a mountain. One of the shots also features a cog train running along with the ribbon of roadway, with both the train and a car visible in the same picture to give some great context to the shot.

Farm… – rich and warm tones grace this landscape scene captured by Krzysztof Browko of a rural setting found in what is presumably Tuscany. As the rolling hills undulate into the vast expanses in the distance, shadows and light play off the hills to create a strong sense of depth and scale.

“Golden Ginkgo” – Rachel Cohen uses the colors of autumn as a means to create a photographic study of nature within the paradigm of golden colors. Rachel shares a great set of images in this post that are close-ups of the Ginkgo tree blossoms right in the heart of autumn with water droplets on the leaves for a dash of artistic tension.

格陵兰岛大岩壁 – this image takes on the distinct feeling of a painted masterpiece with dramatic and jagged mountains that appear to reach towards the heavens as clouds swirl around the majestic rock formations. This photograph by 星尘V perfectly captures and expresses the natural drama found in places such as this.

Collages – LensScaper (Andy Hooker) uses a collage format as a means to share his vision of incremental decay in autumn leaves in this post that has four different variations on the theme. These are great renditions of the overall concept he was working on as they not only meet his artistic goals, they also are great pictures to see and enjoy.

Cafe in the dome – this busy shot overwhelms the visual senses at first until some of the smaller details come into focus, much like walking into a dark room and allowing your sight to adjust to the light. As you explore this frame by Herbert A. Franke, you begin to see the people sitting around the circular space, adding context and artistic tension to the image.

California Pilot . . . – this shot comes to us from Vancouver Island based photographer ƊƦคƓ๏ƝŦlץƊгєคɱʂ88 who finds a boat anchored in still waters with terrific natural light coming in from the right part of the frame. The red colors of the boat itself help it to pop, and a closer look reveals the boat is laden with scrap that leads us to believe it is no longer active.

Wonderful Morning – a gentle mist lingers over this gorgeous landscape as night gives way to a new morning in a serene and peaceful setting in this shot by Jaewoon U. The autumn colors in the trees add splashes of color to the picture as the gentle and still waters creates a terrific mirror-like reflection.

Goodwood in the fall – Barry Turner shares a great shot in this post that takes distinct advantage of the portrait orientation he used to capture it to reveal gorgeous autumn colors in a row of trees that frame a ribbon of roadway. The road itself creates a strong leading line that guides you into the picture where it leads out into a terrific vanishing point.

Moody mornings at Pyramid Lake – an ethereal and mystical sense envelops the viewer in this amazing portrait oriented landscape shot from Mindz.eye captured in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. A wood walkway leads out over the still waters of the lake as a fog covers the trees in the distance, leaving you with as many questions as answers, along with a feel of personal serenity.

Emerald Forest Waterfall – the lush greens found in Vancouver Island’s forests come to vibrant life in this great shot captured amongst the trees by Jason McKenzie. Jason uses a long exposure to capture this shot, which in turn makes the waterfall in the composition take on an ethereal silky look to it.

Winding Road – a lovely winding ribbon of roadway cuts through this landscape themed shot by Martin Rak. A lone building sits alongside the road, and in the distance rugged mountains add a sense of the dramatic to an otherwise simple composition.

Danger Ahead – Mike Olbinski is well known for his work in the field of storm chasing, being featured on various news TV channels and other major media outlets time and time again for some of the iconic images he captures. This shot is a great example of this, taken from an overpass this picture features light trails from moving cars for a great feel of artistic tension and the incredible lightning bolts in the distance as the storm rages on.