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The Field Backup Workflow That Saved My Footage (And Will Save Yours)
Video Tutorials

The Field Backup Workflow That Saved My Footage (And Will Save Yours)

I have backup drives for my backup drives. My kids think this is insane. My clients think it’s why they keep hiring me. After fifteen years in commercial photography, I’ve learned that the photographers who stay in business aren’t always the most talented ones. They’re the ones who never show up to a client meeting and say “I lost the files.” That conversation ends careers. So when I came across Watch the full tutorial on YouTube from Pierre T.

Stop Drowning in Raw Files: A Pro's Breakdown of Mango Street's Photography Editing Workflow
Video Tutorials

Stop Drowning in Raw Files: A Pro's Breakdown of Mango Street's Photography Editing Workflow

There is a specific kind of dread that hits when you get back from a shoot with 800 raw files, a client deadline in two days, and a folder structure that looks like a crime scene. I spent the first few years of my career editing that way, and it cost me hours I’ll never get back. The photographers who scale their work, whether they’re shooting for ad agencies or editorial clients, are not necessarily faster at editing.

Lightroom's AI Edit Order Warning: What That Color-Coded Icon Actually Means for Your Workflow
Video Tutorials

Lightroom's AI Edit Order Warning: What That Color-Coded Icon Actually Means for Your Workflow

Order matters. I learned that the hard way running a commercial studio where consistency across hundreds of images isn’t a preference, it’s a contract requirement. When Adobe quietly added a new AI edit status icon to the Lightroom Classic toolbar, my first reaction was the same one I have whenever Adobe ships something new: is this going to break my existing workflow, or make it better? In this Matt Kloskowski tutorial, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube, Matt does something I appreciate in a good instructor: he doesn’t just explain the feature, he tells you when to ignore the rules it suggests.

The Workflow Tools I Actually Use After 15 Years of Commercial Post-Production
Workflow & Automation

The Workflow Tools I Actually Use After 15 Years of Commercial Post-Production

The first time I manually cropped and resized the same image 200 times in a single day, I didn’t get angry. I got methodical. I spent that evening learning Photoshop scripting, built an action the next morning, and ran the whole batch in under four minutes. That was fifteen years ago. I haven’t repeated a manual task since — at least not without asking myself whether a tool should be doing it instead.

Lightroom Profiles Are the Non-Destructive Edit Layer I Didn't Know I Needed
Video Tutorials

Lightroom Profiles Are the Non-Destructive Edit Layer I Didn't Know I Needed

I’ve spent fifteen years building systems that save time in post-production. My entire consultancy runs on the idea that repetitive manual steps are the enemy of good work. So when a feature ships inside a tool I use every single day and I completely miss it, that stings a little. That’s what happened with Lightroom Profiles. I’d been clicking past them for weeks before I actually stopped and paid attention.

How to Get Your Lightroom Classic Presets onto Your Phone in Three Steps
Video Tutorials

How to Get Your Lightroom Classic Presets onto Your Phone in Three Steps

I spend a lot of time building systems so I don’t have to think twice on a deadline. Presets are a big part of that. Over the years I’ve developed a library of custom Lightroom adjustments tuned specifically for the kind of work I do – product photography, e-commerce, the occasional ad campaign. They live in Lightroom Classic, which is where I do all my serious editing. But more and more, clients want quick turnaround on selects reviewed from a phone, or they want me to make a light pass on tethered shots while I’m still on location.

Remove People From Photos Automatically: Lightroom's June 2025 AI Update Is the Real Deal
Video Tutorials

Remove People From Photos Automatically: Lightroom's June 2025 AI Update Is the Real Deal

Every commercial shoot I run ends with the same conversation with a client: “Can you get rid of that person in the background?” Sometimes it’s a tourist, sometimes it’s a crew member who wandered into frame, sometimes it’s just a stranger whose presence undermines the whole composition. My answer used to involve a lot of time in Photoshop, careful masking, and Content-Aware Fill working harder than it wanted to. That workflow is not dead, but it just got a serious competitor.

What a Model Competition Show Teaches Us About Staying Composed Under Pressure (And What Jessica Kobeissi Had to Say About It)
Video Tutorials

What a Model Competition Show Teaches Us About Staying Composed Under Pressure (And What Jessica Kobeissi Had to Say About It)

There is a specific kind of chaos that shows up on set when the brief is unclear, the styling is questionable, and someone in a position of authority is asking loaded questions. I have been in that room. Early in my commercial studio days, I watched an art director try to bait a junior photographer into criticizing a client’s concept out loud, right in front of the client. The photographer who survived that moment did so by staying completely focused on the work and refusing to take the bait.

What Anne Geddes' 2016 Calendar Shoot Teaches Us About Directing and Capturing Unpredictable Subjects
Video Tutorials

What Anne Geddes' 2016 Calendar Shoot Teaches Us About Directing and Capturing Unpredictable Subjects

There’s a particular kind of pressure that comes with shooting a calendar. The deadline is fixed, the concept is locked, and every image has to carry weight on its own because each one gets thirty days of eyeball time on someone’s wall. I’ve assisted on enough commercial campaigns to know that the shoots that look the most effortless in the final product were usually the most exhausting to pull off. That’s exactly why I keep coming back to behind-the-scenes footage from photographers who’ve mastered that gap between chaos and control.

From Rope Photo to Pattern Brush: A Cross-App Workflow That Actually Holds Up
Video Tutorials

From Rope Photo to Pattern Brush: A Cross-App Workflow That Actually Holds Up

Most of my work lives inside repeatable systems. Actions, batch exports, preset pipelines built to survive a Monday morning with 300 product shots due by noon. But every so often a client brief lands that needs something handcrafted-looking, something with texture and physicality that a gradient overlay just cannot fake. That’s when brush work and pattern techniques become genuinely useful, not decorative exercises. This particular workflow came across my radar through Watch the full tutorial on YouTube from Kelvin Designs, where Kelvin walks through creating a seamless rope pattern in Photoshop and then applying it along a vector path in Illustrator.

LUTs in Lightroom Are More Powerful Than You Think (Especially With a Profile Intensity Slider)
Video Tutorials

LUTs in Lightroom Are More Powerful Than You Think (Especially With a Profile Intensity Slider)

If you do any volume of editing, you have probably felt the friction of applying a LUT-based look to still photos. LUTs live comfortably in Premiere and DaVinci, but getting them to behave inside Lightroom has historically required workarounds that feel more like duct tape than a real system. That problem gets worse when you work with clients who want their product photography and video content to feel like they came from the same shoot.

Sony A7V vs A7CII vs A7CR: A Working Photographer's Guide to Picking the Right Body
Video Tutorials

Sony A7V vs A7CII vs A7CR: A Working Photographer's Guide to Picking the Right Body

I’ve spent fifteen years in commercial studios where the wrong tool choice costs real money. Not hypothetical money. Actual rebooking fees, overtime, and the kind of conversation with an art director you never want to have twice. So when I’m evaluating gear, I’m not reading spec sheets for fun. I’m asking one question: does this fit the way I actually work? That’s why I kept coming back to this comparison from travel and adventure photographer Pierre T.