The Academy with John Gress

the latest

Everyone makes mistakes, weather your a beginner or a seasoned professional. The goal is to practice and to make fewer of them as you advance in your career. In today's video, I go over 7 common portrait composition mistakes.

7 Composition Mistakes Every Photographer Makes

06/22/2022

In this week's video I am going to breakdown how I lit this cinematic portrait of Dyren. I'll cover everything from light placement, to ratios, to fill, to flagging, and freezing action in this lighting tutorial.

Lighting Tutorial: Cinematic Hard Light Portraiture using hard reflectors, a beauty dish & a softbox

06/19/2022

Part of making a refined image in the studio is separating your subject from the background. In today’s video, I will teach you the three secrets to using a edge light, including why you would use one, where you should place it and how bright it needs to be.

Kicker 101 – The 3 Secrets You Need to Know!

06/10/2022

This this critique video we go over refining portrait lighting and I also use the tail of a model air plane to represent a persons nose!

Live: Q&A and Critique June 4, 2022

06/06/2022

Why I switched from Drobo to Synology. Protecting our data is one of the most important things that we do as photographers, videographers and content creator. In addition, being able to access that video quickly while editing is paramount. The 10GB Ethernet equipped Synology 1821+ paired with my new Mac Studio gets it done!

Review: The Synology 1821+ is the perfect partner for the Mac Studio

06/05/2022

Member Exclusive Product & portrait photography in one shot

Member Exclusive: Product & portrait photography in one shot

05/29/2022

This simple cover for your soft boxes will help you create dramatic images that look like they were taken with a Maxi Brute, Audience Blinder or Mole Richardson Fay circular continuous lights.

Review: Why you should buy Pro Light Mods

05/26/2022

In addition to the critique we talked did a deep drive on hair lights, clam shell lighting and more.

Live: Q&A and Critique May 24, 2022

05/26/2022

In today's video I am going to share the 10 worst photo and video purchases I have made over the course of my 20 plus year career.

The 10 worst purchases I have ever made!

05/21/2022