Video Production

Crane Shots on a Budget: Lighting Lessons from a TV Pitch Reel
Video Tutorials

Crane Shots on a Budget: Lighting Lessons from a TV Pitch Reel

Most of my work happens inside four walls with a ceiling grid I’ve mapped so many times I can place a light from memory. Cranes aren’t part of my daily studio vocabulary. But every few years a client asks for something cinematic — a brand film, a pitch piece, a behind-the-scenes reel — and suddenly I’m standing outside wondering how to make a moving camera look intentional rather than accidental. That gap between studio control and location storytelling is exactly why I keep coming back to tutorials that show real production decisions on real shoots.

Audio for Your Home Studio: 5 Options Ranked by a Working Photographer Who Got It Wrong First
Video Tutorials

Audio for Your Home Studio: 5 Options Ranked by a Working Photographer Who Got It Wrong First

I shoot video content in my studio almost every week now. Behind-the-scenes footage for fashion clients, talking-head segments for corporate campaigns, the occasional tutorial. For the first couple of years, I treated audio as something I would “figure out in post.” That is a lie photographers tell themselves. Post cannot fix bad audio. It can clean up noise, but it cannot reconstruct presence, proximity, or warmth that was never captured in the first place.

Zero-Friction Studio Design: What Peter McKinnon's Final Studio Tour Teaches Us About Shooting from Anywhere
Video Tutorials

Zero-Friction Studio Design: What Peter McKinnon's Final Studio Tour Teaches Us About Shooting from Anywhere

There’s a specific kind of frustration that only studio photographers understand. You’ve dialed in your key light, your fill ratio is exactly where you want it, your background is clean, and then a client asks if you can shoot “from the other side.” Suddenly everything falls apart. The light hits the backdrop stand. The extension cord crosses the frame. The whole setup was engineered for one angle, and that angle only.

Candy Glass, Rim Lights, and a Couch Against a White Wall: What This Stunt Technique Taught Me About Scene Lighting
Video Tutorials

Candy Glass, Rim Lights, and a Couch Against a White Wall: What This Stunt Technique Taught Me About Scene Lighting

There are tutorials that teach you a technique, and then there are tutorials that accidentally teach you three techniques while pretending to teach you one. In this The Slanted Lens tutorial by JP Morgan, the stated subject is how to make breakaway candy glass, the kind Hollywood prop departments have been fabricating since the early days of film. But if you pay attention past the candy thermometer and the corn syrup, there’s a complete multi-light scene setup buried in the second half, and that’s the part I keep coming back to.