Christmas is knocking at the door, and lots of photographers would love to send an original Christmas greeting—their own photos. Today we’ll look close up at one photo that would make a great greeting, to help you delight with a similar one of your own.

Is center composition always a mistake, or—when you know what you’re doing—can it benefit your photos? We’ll show you several examples of when you should compose to the center and when to avoid center compositions, and also how to improve a photo you’ve center-composed.

We’d all like to think of backgrounds as simply not an issue—when we think of them at all. But in reality, backgrounds can have a lot of clutter, especially in urban photography. Meanwhile, there are several ways to look at this issue.

When you’re photographing outdoors—and especially in the city—you can often end up with chaotic colors in your pictures. And someday you might end up for example photographing an athlete for a sponsor… and their uniform shows other sponsors’ logos. What’s the solution?

Surely you’ve been there—vacation time, and you’re the only photographer around. Everyone’s slowed down by your hobby, but on the other hand, when the time comes for a pretty picture, they’re glad to have you along.

Hair just doesn’t get the attention it deserves in photography. And meanwhile, great-looking hair takes a photo to the next level. So sit down, read on, and learn to give hair a healthy shine with (and without) a photo editor.

Intermediate photographers often complain about their equipment, and they can really pour a lot of money into it. They’re also always chasing after better photos and mumbling something about “good light”. Photographers are a community and they have their quirks, but are they all the same?

The eyes are the core of a portrait, and they’re an important means of expression in photography. So let’s take a look at how to make them stand out. We’ll retouch them using a brighten-and-darken technique. And we’ll do the same to let the lips and teeth stand out. The goal: to make our subject really, really shine.

Sometimes you need to highlight your subject to make sure they’re attention-getting and that it’s immediately clear what’s important in the photo. In today’s article, we’ll show you how you can make a photo’s subject shine using local brightening and darkening. After all, photographs are about light. And today’s edit will be about light too.

A documentary photo should document something—it should have a message or a story. Today we’ll be looking at how to shoot a story-packed documentary photo set.