It’s that time of year again! The 2022 5DayDeal Photography Bundle has just gone live, and this bundle is packed, once again, with goodies to enhance your photography. Today I’m going to share some of the products that I feel are particularly interesting and useful, and of course, links to the sale so that you can stock up on some of the best quality photography education available today.
Although I skip a year every so often, I’ve been working with the 5DayDeal team since their very first sale, and from the inside, I have to tell you that they are one of the most professional teams out there and always a pleasure to work with. It’s also very nice to see how sophisticated their production has become. For example, here is a video they put together to showcase this year’s bundle. I think they’ve done a very good job of this.
Anyway, first, let me explain the pricing structure of the bundles, along with savings made on each bundle, and then we’ll pick a few to look a little deeper into. The Main Bundle includes over $2,200 worth of photography education but it’s available for just $98, and, as the name implies, this is available for just five days, until October 18, noon, Pacific time. You can upgrade to the Pro Bundle for an additional $39 and get another $1,400 worth of education. The 5DayDeal team has always been big on helping you to help charities, and you can add their Charity Bundle for $29, adding another $1,300 worth of coolness! The full set costs just $166 with over $5,500 worth of photography education and tools, a total discount of over 97%.
The complete bundle contains 719 training videos, over 135 hours of training, and 2,693 LUTs and Tools. I rarely finish looking through everything available, but if you pick out stuff to ingest as time allows, it is a great way to up your game.
Perfecting the Headshot
So, let’s jump in and look at some of the products in the Main Bundle. The first thing that I wanted to mention is Perfecting the Headshot from Fstoppers. Headshots seem easy, but there is much more to creating great headshots than meets the eye. The number one challenge any photographer has when photographing people is learning how to break them out of the all too common “deer in the headlights” look and make them look comfortable and engaging. In this tutorial, Peter Hurley dives deep into the human psyche and explains why people almost always have apprehension and fear when looking into a camera. After learning what causes people to look that way, Peter teaches you multiple techniques to make your subjects look more confident and attractive in 10-and-a-half hours of content.
Mastering landscape photography
Next up, Mastering Landscape Photography, which contains 20 videos that will show you how to master the finer points of landscape photography with skills such as smoothing out water, creating reflections, showing motion on moving water, panoramas, and more. The course covers must-have landscape photography gear and the features you need in a photography backpack, and techniques for shooting great landscape photos and focusing techniques to create tack-sharp photos every time.
Dramatic Black & White Landscapes
Creating Black and White landscapes is an art all of its own, but help is at hand with the Dramatic Black & White Landscapes course. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to process and create dramatic and impactful black-and-white images utilizing photoshop, including…
– Utilizing smart objects in a black and white workflow – Utilizing Adobe Camera RAW in Black and white conversions – Maximizing contrast – Maximizing visual flow – Using Luminosity Masks to maximize contrast and depth – Cleaning up visual distractions – Controlling visual flow through color seperation
The course contains 4 tutorial walkthroughs with a combined runtime of 1.5 hours
There’s much, much more in the Main Bundle, but these three are some of my favorites. The Pro Bundle adds heaps more material for a relatively small additional fee, so it’s highly recommended. Here is a taste of what’s inside…
Milky Way Made Easy
Despite the non-professional sounding title, Michael Shainblum has done a great job with his Milky Way Made Easy course.
Learning how to shoot the milky way can be intimidating, but this course explains basic and advanced techniques in easy to understand video tutorials. Whether you are just getting starting taking your first night sky long exposure, or are advanced and just looking for some new tricks and tips to elevate your images, you’ll probably find value in this course, which contains 25 videos total over six hours of content, including a section called Single Exposure Shot at Crater Lake.
In this tutorial Michael covers how to shoot and compose a single exposure of the Milky Way. He then covers post processing techniques to clean up the photo and bring out the Milky Way. Even if you are an advanced shooter, this video shares some different techniques that you may not have seen before. You’ll learn techniques for properly planning out and scouting for night sky photography, gear for night sky photography and focusing techniques, including photo stacking.
Other sections include Twilight Blend On the Oregon Coast, Star Trails Tutorial at Sparks Lake, Moonscape Processing at Smith Rock, and Basic Light Painting at Mystic Beach.
Again, there is much more in the Pro Bundle. You can learn Frequency Separation Retouching, Compositing for Portraits in Photoshop, real estate photography, woodland photography, Newborn photography, Mastering the Adjustment Brush Tool, Advanced Portrait Editing Techniques, Launching Min-Sessions like a pro, and a realistic sky replacement workflow.
The Charity Bundle
With the Charity Bundle you’ll learn creative photography concepts, The Thriving Artist Method, exposure blending, creative blurs, the art of digital blending, wedding photography, and a Lightroom sunset workflow, among other things. Plus, of course, the charity aspect of this and the sale itself is one of the most amazing things about the 5DayDeal. Since 2014 the team has given over $2,000,000 to charity, so it’s not just the photographers that buy the bundles that benefit.
So, the 5DayDeal lasts just five days, but this blog post is eternal, so if you arrive after October 18, 2022, the sale will be gone, forever. The team will, I’m sure, be back next year with another set of cutting edge products from some of the worlds best photography educators, but this sale has to end on October 18. If you are in time, do check it out, and if you heard about the sale from me, please do use my link (https://mbp.ac/5daydeal). Please also share this post with your photography friends.
February has flown by so quickly, that I’m left with just a few hours to put down some thoughts to share before we welcome in the third month of the year. Unfortunately, February 2022 is going to remain in the memories of many as the month that Vladimir Putin finally completely lost his marbles, and sent an already insane world into yet another downward spiral. I’m hoping with all my heart that we see an end to the current madness in the early days of March.
I’ve spent 98% of the last month trying to finalize a new iOS app that I’ve been working on since the end of December. I’ll share a few details today as I don’t have time to say anything else that I wanted to say. I’ve backed myself into a corner and my time management skills go completely out of the window when I start coding. This is partly because I really enjoy it, but mostly because it’s not my core-competence, and having loaded a ginormous three-dimensional map of how my app is organized into my gray-matter, there’s either little room for anything else or my fear of the structure shattering to the floor like a house of cards prevents me from walking away for any length of time.
For the last few weeks I’ve woken up pretty much every day telling myself that I must create a Podcast, and even today, on the last day of the month, I’ve spent until almost 4:30 pm messing around trying to complete my app. I wanted to finish it, get version 1.0 out of the door, and then spend a few days creating some quality content and a marketing page, etc. but it’s just proving very difficult to finalize a few of those devilish details. The main problem is that I decided to write my latest app using SwiftUI which is Apple’s newer programming language that is incredibly powerful, but almost nothing like the Swift programming that I taught myself a few years ago, and have become pretty proficient with.
Because of this, a good portion of my time was taken up by learning new technology, but the result is that I’ve built a highly responsive very lightweight app that looks great without any graphics other than the app icons embedded in the package. Another major advantage that I’m looking forward to exploring more is that this puts me a lot closer to an Android version than my Photographer’s Friend app which I’m still trying to port. Once I have my second app in the App Store though, I do intend to spend some time working on porting them both to Android, although I’ll start with my latest offering, not Photographer’s Friend, mainly because of the porting benefits that the SwiftUI architecture brings.
I did, of course, spend some quality time with my Patreon community in our monthly Question Time event, and I have done some private mentoring sessions, and I lost a day to an almost 39-degree fever after getting my COVID vaccination booster last week, but I was happy it was only one day. I lost two days to both of my first two jabs. As the month progressed almost every day I’ve felt as though I could push the new app out and see how it flies, but it’s still not quite ready, and I’m now trying really hard to complete a way to save and restore theme settings, but once this is completed, I’m going to release it, and add the other few new features that I have in mind after that. The themes seemed like a good idea and I got really close to getting it working in just a few hours, but that was four days ago now, so I’m regretting not leaving that until the first update as well.
Anyway, I don’t want to give away too many details and to be honest, it’s such a simple idea that you’ll get most of it anyway, I’ve basically created something that I’ve wanted myself for a long time but have never been able to find a good answer to my personal wishlist of features for an iOS-based desk clock. I have a charging stand on my desk that can sit my iPhone on at about a 70° angle in either portrait or landscape mode, and I have a similar stand beside my bed. I did buy a desk clock a few years ago, but it always seems to get in the way and has been pushed way under my iMac screen, almost out of sight, but my iPhone sits on its stand in a prominent position, so it would be perfect to display a nice looking clock. Here is are a few photos of what I’ve created, to give you an idea.
My biggest wish was for the ability to load images that would cycle through in the background, so I’ve designed my app with the ability for the user to load images from Apple Photos. I realize though that although photographers have lots of great photos hanging around, some people are going to want good photos but need an easy way to load them, so I have added the ability to buy additional packs of my images, all theme-based, like Winter Landscapes, Flowers, African Wildlife, etc. and there will be eight packs available at the time of launch, but I’ve designed the app so that I can add new packs by modifying a web page and changing the settings on Apple’s developer’s website, without updating the app itself, so I will add a number of new packs in the weeks after launch.
The clock face is so customizable, that I decided to build an automated demonstration of all the settings. This was another feature that took just a few hours to get completed, but that was actually what led me to start work on the theme presets, which has added this extra four days at this point. You can change the color of the clock face and opacity from 0 to 100% and you can also change the color of the frame, as well as the frame’s thickness, from no frame at all, up to a very thick frame, and as you can see, you can select Arabic or Roman numerals, and show all 12 numbers, just the 12, 3 6 and 9 o’clock numbers, or no numbers at all. You can also remove the second marker for a very minimalistic clock. You can of course change the size and position of the clock as well.
There are a bunch of other features as well, but I’ll save that all for the launch when I’ll create a walk-through video as well. Hopefully, it won’t be many more days or weeks now, but I’ve been saying that since the end of January, so don’t hold your breath. Anyway, I’m out of time. It’s six o’clock on the last day of the month, so I had to get this recorded and posted. We’ll get back to some regular episodes very soon.
The 5DayDeal 2020 Photography Bundle has just gone live until Oct 20, and this is such a great sale that I decided to dedicate this week’s Podcast to telling you all about it. I’ll assume that you are here because you love photography, but all too often I hear from photographers that spend so much time on post-processing or business-related tasks that they start to lose interest in photography. That is a crying shame considering that many of the background tasks that surround photography can be optimized to the point that they are simply part of the fun, and it thanks to the 5DayDeal Team, a multitude of training tools that will help you to streamline your photography are available until October 20 for just $89 for the Main Bundle! There is also a Pro Bundle add-on which costs $39 and a Complete Bundle which adds the Charity Bundle to the Main and Pro Bundles for an additional $29.
The Photography Bundle 2020 contains 55 hours of training in 319 videos. If you were to buy everything individually the total would be thousands of dollars, but through the generosity of the contributors and sponsors and through the audience that this global sale attracts, it’s possible to bring this to you at a 96% discount. There’s so much inside the Photography Bundle that it would take hours to walk you through everything, so I’m going to talk a little about some of my favorite tools to give you a taste of what’s inside, but really, you need to go and grab your Bundle before October 20 or this will be gone forever! To ensure that the 5DayDeal Team knows who you heard about the sale from and to help support my efforts in providing the content that I do, please use my link which is mbp.ac/5daydeal, or use the button below.
It’s also important to mention that the 5DayDeal team gives 10% of every purchase directly to a number of charities, and will be raising funds to help offset food insecurity brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. During checkout, you get to choose which charity you would like to help. For example, Make-A-Wish helps create life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. The Colorado chapter alone has granted more than 5000 wishes to eligible children. Orbis transforms lives through the treatment and prevention of avoidable blindness by providing hands-on training, public health education, and more. Mercy Ships manages hospital ships that provide free, lifesaving surgeries for people where medical care is nearly non-existent. And the 5DayDeal Foundation lends a helping hand to scientific, environmental, humanitarian, and other charitable causes worldwide.
This post will, of course, remain in my feed indefinitely, so if you missed it, and would like a remember when future sales are underway, please subscribe to the General Information interest group of my newsletters which you can find at mbp.news. Anyway, here are some of my favorite tools from the 2020 Photography Bundle.
Main Bundle
Magic with Any Light – Jerry Ghionis
One of my favorite courses is Magic with Any Light from Jerry Ghionis. In this Masterclass, Jerry shows you how to shoot in a variety of challenging situations, from full sun to a candlelit room. Jerry provides help with obtaining consistency in different lighting conditions, help with posing your subjects, and provides advice on post-processing. Finally, he takes you through the entire post-photography process giving tips on how to achieve a minimum stress workflow.
One Light Masterclass – Joel Grimes
Another favorite is the One Light Masterclass from Joel Grimes, in which Joel takes you through his One Light Masterclass showing how to master creating dramatic portraits using only one light. You’ll learn about the inverse square law and using the Zone System, as well as what High-Speed Sync is, and how to create shallow depth of field images in full sunlight. This is a 26-course class with almost five and a half hours of tuition.
Lighting 101 | Introduction to Flash Photography from SLR Lounge
If you are just getting started with flash photography or need a refresher, we’ve got you covered as well, with the Lighting 101 Introduction to Flash Photography from the SLR Lounge, which will help you to create flattering light anywhere! You’ll get a better understanding of creative white balance and light modifiers and how to create multi-point light with one flash, among other things. Every image in the workshop is created with just one on-camera flash and basic light modifiers, proving that you don’t necessarily need expensive lighting to get great results. This workshop includes 60 video lessons with 9 hours of content.
Shooting Digital Like Film – Sebastian Michaels
A subject that is close to my heart is Shooting Digital Like Film and Sebastian Michaels covers this masterfully as he helps you to learn how to reframe how you think about photography. I’m not going to quote everything that Sebastian says about the course as frankly, I find it a little presumptuous, but it’s a good course all the same and highly recommended.
Creative Control 1 & 2 – Nicole S. Young
Nicole S. Young has contributed her Creative Control Lightroom presets 1 & 2 to the sale. Nicole is a lovely person and great photographer, and although I personally never use third party presets, or Lightroom for that matter, I do know that it can be a huge help if you are still trying to figure out how to get certain results by applying and studying presets.
Each pack includes 100 presets you can use to completely process your photographs from start-to-finish. You can selectively edit the colors, tones, contrast, and much more just by working your way through each sub-set. It’s an excellent way to quickly create a polished image and control the look of your photographs, or to make a few changes to any of your existing presets.
Pro Bundle
Pricing Your Photography Workshop – Jessica Whitaker
If you are thinking of selling your photography but having a hard time developing a pricing strategy, Jessica Whitaker comes to the rescue with her Pricing Your Photography Workshop as part of the Pro Bundle. Jessica says “You have to stop treating your photography business like a hobby!” and that is so true. Of course, if photography is a hobby for you, there is no shame in keeping it that way, but if you start to do photography as a business, this is solid advice from someone who knows what she’s talking about.
Office Organization For Photographers – The LawTog
Another great tool is Office Organization for Photographers from The LawTog, which helps you to manage business finances and general office organization.
Complete Bundle
From the Complete Bundle, and again, this is just a few of my favorites, Courtney Slazinik has contributed the Beginners Guide to Manual Mode Course to help you to master your digital camera and take great photos in all kinds of situations and environments over a 4-week course. Ana Brandt also contributes with the adorable Creative Baby Wrapping course to help with newborn and maternity photography. This is ten videos on creative wrapping and posing. There is also a Street Photography Masterclass from Thorsten Overgaard, to give you a whole new perspective on street photography.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, as there is so much content in this bundle, I have only scratched the surface here, but I hope it gives you an idea of what you’ll get. Even if you are still on the fence, do go and take a look at the bundle and check out the rest of what is available, and remember, you are helping not only your own photography but some very worthy charities at the same time by getting involved.
The biggest photography event of the year is happening right now!
Every year my friends Griffin, Valerie and Adam over at 5DayDeal release what I personally consider to the best and most exciting photography related sale of the year. They’ve spent months putting together a collection of all the best photography products available online from all of the top name photographers around the world, and for 5 days only, they’re selling it for just $127.
This year they’ve got products from people like David duChemin, Nicole S. Young, Lindsay Adler, Trey Ratcliff, Serge Ramelli, and Topaz Labs.
Here are just a few of the products included in the deal:
5 Simple and Creative Lighting Setups + High Impact Images by Lindsay Adler – $198 Value
24/7 Photo Pro by Dave Seeram – $497 Value
The Art of Sculpting Splashes by Alex Koloskov – $250 Value
Lightroom for Landscapes by Christopher O’Donnell – $199 Value
Newborn Photography for the On Location Photographer by Cole’s Classroom – $300 Value
Photographing Children – Naturally by Brent Mail – $300 Value
Wedding Photography Business Start Up Bundle by Jasmine Star – $50 Value
In fact, they’ve included over 50 products from more than 25 contributors, many of which normally alone sell for over $150. When you buy The Complete Photography Bundle on 5DayDeal.com, you get dozens of super high-quality photography products. Over $3,300 worth of products to be exact. Now you see why I consider it to be the most exciting photography event of the year.
You might be wondering, what if you already own one of these products?
That’s alright, The Complete Photography Bundle is still a total bargain even if you already have one or two of the products. It’s also good no matter what your level is – there’s something in there for everyone.
The best part of the whole thing though, is that a full 10% of the revenue from the sales goes directly to 4 awesome, specially chosen charities; Help Portrait, The BOMA Project, Camp Smile-A-Mile, and Flashes of Hope.
They’re looking to raise over $300,000 for these charities this year, and to do that, they’ll need your help. Head over to 5DayDeals now, and check out the sale, and, even if you choose not to buy this year, please share this link (https://mbp.ac/5dd3) with your network to help raise awareness. Not only is this a great deal, it’s a great cause which I’m extremely proud to support, and I hope you will too.
Ends Sept 15, noon PST
Of course, as this is a 5DayDeal, it only lasts 5 days. From Sept 10, noon PST to noon on Sept 15, 2015. Once those five days are up, that’s it! This bundle is gone forever, so don’t drag your feet on this one. Pick up your bundle now, before it’s too late.
Photography Bundles are becoming popular, and for good reason. They are generally rich with hand-picked products from professional, world-renowned photographers who are experts in teaching others, and the Ultimate Digital Photography Bundle is no exception. From today, for just seven days, you can buy The Ultimate Digital Photography Bundle, in three editions; the Beginner Edition, the Intermediate Edition and the Business Edition, to give your photography a boost, whichever level you are at.
Here’s a little more detail about each edition…
The Beginner Edition
If you are just getting started, and wondering how to improve your photography, Ultimate Bundles have put together an incredible product to help you. It’s called The Ultimate Digital Photography Bundle (Beginner’s Edition), and it contains a curated collection of ebooks and video training guides to help you become a better photographer.
All the resources have been provided by professional, world-renowned photographers who are experts in teaching others – even complete beginners. You won’t need to switch up to a more expensive camera to make full use of the bundle (even if you just use your iPhone for photographs), and you don’t need to neglect your family for weeks upon weeks of training! You can learn everything in little chunks – whenever you have a spare moment.
There’s even better news! Everything in the bundle has a combined total value of $555, but for this week only, The Ultimate Bundles Team is selling the entire bundle for just $37 – a discount of more than 90%! What’s more, they’re also throwing in a FREE copy of FX Photo Studio Pro software from MacPhun (which provides stunning filters and photography effects) worth $29.99!
There’s more! The folks at Ultimate Bundles have thrown in some extra-special gifts worth over $350 in total:
$20 gift certificate toward any SpinLight 360 Package
$15 gift certificate to Lightscoop (for pro-like photos with your built-in flash)
$15 gift certificate to Porteen Gear (where you can buy custom-made, stylish and functional camera bags and gear)
FREE choice of a premium video photography course from Craftsy.com (up to $50 value)
FREE three-month subscription to the Light Inspired Women’s Photography Forum
FREE marketing set of your choice from the Seaside Creative collection ($75 value)
x4 FREE Volumes of Clarity Magazine – including video tutorials from top photography educators
FREE FX Photo Studio Pro PLUS Snapheal Pro software from MacPhun – which will help to give you a vast number of ultra-powerful adjustments for your photos (combined value $69.98)
Every month, millions of digital photos are purchased online for use in websites, blogs, articles, marketing, materials and more. People like you are taking those photos… AND they’re getting paid for them!
If you truly love the idea of being a professional photographer but always believed it was out of your reach, it’s time to change those beliefs!
Not sure where to start? That’s where The Ultimate Digital Photography Bundle (Business Edition) comes in. It contains many tools and resources that you need to start your own photography business NOW and create income from your photographs.
Inside the bundle you’ll find a whole range of ebooks, video training and useful document templates from today’s biggest names in digital photography – containing their secrets to not only producing stunning digital shots, but also their blueprints to building a profitable, sustainable business that puts money in your pocket on a consistent basis.
Ready for even more good news? The Ultimate Bundles team have also thrown in some extra-special gifts worth over $400 in total:
$20 gift certificate toward any SpinLight 360 Package
$15 gift certificate to Lightscoop (for pro-like photos with your built-in flash)
$15 gift certificate to Porteen Gear (where you can buy custom-made, stylish and functional camera bags and gear)
FREE choice of a premium video photography course from Craftsy.com (up to $50 value)
FREE three-month subscription to the Light Inspired Women’s Photography Forum
FREE marketing set of your choice from the Seaside Creative collection ($75 value)
x4 FREE Volumes of Clarity Magazine – including video tutorials from top photography educators
FREE FX Photo Studio Pro PLUS Snapheal Pro AND Intensify Pro software from MacPhun which will help to give you a vast number of ultra-powerful adjustments for your photos (combined value $129.97)
You can buy with complete confidence because you’re covered by the Ultimate Bundles 30-day money-back guarantee. That means you have a full month to try out all the ebooks and video courses in the bundle, and if you don’t think they justify the price or they weren’t what you were hoping for, you can get a full refund.
The Craft & Vision Magazine PHOTOGRAPH No.10 has just been released!
Pairing darkness and beauty to create light, Issue 10 of PHOTOGRAPH magazine is filled with images and articles that represent the link between obscurity and transparency; just the right light can create new ways of seeing.
Portfolios and interviews feature the work of cover girl Brooke Shaden, whose self-portraits exude a brooding melancholy in a light and whimsical way; the incredible Susan Burnstine, who modifies all of her cameras to best tell the stories of her dreams and nightmares; the portraits of Clive Charlton, who discusses how his art is influenced by his admiration of the Dutch masters for their use of Chiaroscuro; and Jim Kasson’s Staccato series, borne of the idea to make a short set of exposures at night and reassemble them in Photoshop, resulting in a painterly effect of complex lighting patterns, a sense of place, and compelling gestures.
Regular contributors John Paul Caponigro, Michael Frye, Guy Tal, Chris Orwig, Piet Van den Eynde, Adam Blasberg, David duChemin and yours truly, Martin Bailey, open up about patience, flow, creativity, finding rhythm, the beauty of natural light in both landscapes and portraits, the meaning of success, and the magic of the lens.
Craft & Vision’s philosophy is that this craft isn’t just a technical pursuit, but an artistic one as well; our hope is that PHOTOGRAPH magazine embodies this theory. Our goal is to showcase beautiful portfolios and provide the best value in photographic education in this 245-page, ad-free publication.
If you pick up your copy in the first week, it will be on sale for just $6.40, and after that, still only $8, which is a steal for this amount of photography and creative goodness.
If you aren’t already rushing over to get your copy, below are a number of sample pages to look at…
