Location Scouting

Scout Like a Pro: Peter McKinnon's Framework for Shooting High-Stakes Live Events
Video Tutorials

Scout Like a Pro: Peter McKinnon's Framework for Shooting High-Stakes Live Events

There’s a specific kind of pressure that shows up when you’re photographing something that cannot be repeated. A live stunt. A wedding ceremony. A sunrise that’s only happening once. I’ve felt it standing at a waterfall at 6 AM, soaking wet, telling myself I had one shot before the light moved. No reshoot, no “let me just try one more angle.” That pressure either makes your prep airtight or it exposes every shortcut you took.

How to Plan and Execute Multiple Photo Shoots in One Weekend (Without Losing Your Mind)
Video Tutorials

How to Plan and Execute Multiple Photo Shoots in One Weekend (Without Losing Your Mind)

Every few months I hit a wall. Not a technical wall — I know my camera settings, I can read light reasonably well, and I’ve been doing this long enough that the mechanics are mostly muscle memory. The wall I hit is creative. The photos start feeling safe. Predictable. Like I’m just going through the motions on my Sunday morning photo walks without really seeing anything new. That’s exactly why this Mango Street tutorial stopped me mid-scroll.

How to Scout and Shoot Waterfalls You've Never Seen Before (Lessons from Fiordland)
Video Tutorials

How to Scout and Shoot Waterfalls You've Never Seen Before (Lessons from Fiordland)

I once spent four consecutive evenings at a waterfall in Olympic National Park, missing dinner every single night, trying to get one shot I’d pre-visualized at home on Google Maps. My husband ate alone and said nothing. I came home on day five with an image I still use in my portfolio, and I learned more about reading terrain and making compositional decisions under pressure than any workshop had ever taught me.

One Resolution That Will Actually Improve Every Part of Your Photography This Year
Video Tutorials

One Resolution That Will Actually Improve Every Part of Your Photography This Year

Every January I go through the same ritual. I open a fresh notes app page, type “Photography Goals” at the top, and proceed to write a list that is way too ambitious for any human being with a day job. Shoot more film. Master off-camera flash. Finally figure out astrophotography. Learn Capture One. The list grows until it collapses under its own weight sometime around mid-February. So when I came across this Mark Denney tutorial focused on simplifying the whole New Year’s resolution process down to a single photography goal, I stopped scrolling pretty fast.

How to Scout and Shoot Iceland's Highlands Like a Landscape Pro (Lessons from the Field)
Video Tutorials

How to Scout and Shoot Iceland's Highlands Like a Landscape Pro (Lessons from the Field)

There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes from arriving at a stunning location with no plan. You’ve seen the photos online, you know it’s spectacular, but you’re standing there spinning in circles, camera in hand, with no idea where to point it. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, including one embarrassing week in Oregon where I spent three days circling a waterfall before I finally understood what I was actually looking for compositionally.

How to Photograph Sacred Japan: Behind-the-Scenes Planning, Gear, and Field Decisions
Video Tutorials

How to Photograph Sacred Japan: Behind-the-Scenes Planning, Gear, and Field Decisions

There’s a version of travel photography that looks effortless on Instagram. The golden light, the perfect composition, the serene temple with no tourists in frame. What you don’t see is the missed taxi, the wrong AI estimate, the hike into bear country with a bell clipped to your bag. That gap between the polished image and the messy reality is exactly what I kept thinking about while watching this Hugo Korhonen behind-the-scenes vlog from his two-week trip photographing sacred Japan.

How to Kill Decision Fatigue and Actually Go Shoot (A Lesson from Thomas Heaton)
Video Tutorials

How to Kill Decision Fatigue and Actually Go Shoot (A Lesson from Thomas Heaton)

Every Sunday morning I grab my camera and go for a walk with no destination in mind. It’s my favorite ritual. But even with that loose structure, I still sometimes stand in my kitchen at 6am, coffee in hand, completely frozen. The weather is good, the light is coming, and I cannot decide where to go. It sounds absurd when I type it out, but decision fatigue is real, and it quietly kills more potential photo sessions than bad weather ever does.

How to Read a Moody Landscape and Shoot It Anyway: Lessons from a Winter Scotland Road Trip
Video Tutorials

How to Read a Moody Landscape and Shoot It Anyway: Lessons from a Winter Scotland Road Trip

There’s a specific kind of frustration I know well: you’ve driven hours to a location, the light is flat, the foreground is uninspiring, and your wide-angle lens is basically useless. I’ve stood at the edge of a beautiful lake in the Pacific Northwest and felt completely stuck, watching gorgeous mountains sit behind a shoreline that gave me absolutely nothing to work with. That feeling used to send me back to the car empty-handed.

Why Just Wing It Is Killing Your Travel Photography (And What to Do Instead)
Video Tutorials

Why Just Wing It Is Killing Your Travel Photography (And What to Do Instead)

I spent an entire vacation in Iceland chasing one specific waterfall shot. Every evening, same trail, same tripod position, different disappointment. I missed dinners, missed conversations, missed the northern lights happening two fields over. I came home with technically fine images and a quiet sense that I’d done the whole trip wrong. What I was running from, though I couldn’t name it at the time, was the obvious problem with traveling for photography: you almost never have enough time to actually understand a new place before the light disappears.