Our 10 Most Popular Blogs For Photographers in 2023
February 22, 2024
2023 was the biggest year EVER for the Hunter and Sarah Photography Blog! And for the first time ever, it was our photography students who really brought the traffic! 🏃♀️🏃♂️🏃♀️ In past years, our “Top 10” blog lists have been a mix of wedding blogs, engagement session or surprise proposal blogs, blogs about our personal lives, and photography education content. But with just shy of 50,000 views for our education content alone, this year’s top 10 list is all blogs for photographers, as far as the eye can see.
So what did you guys love reading about? Keep scrolling to find out!
#10 – Shooting in Manual: the EASY Way to Set Your ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed (NO More Exposure Triangle!)
Anyone who has ever tried to learn to use their DSLR or mirrorless camera in manual mode has probably encountered the dreaded “exposure triangle”. Frankly, we think that it’s WAY more confusing than it needs to be. And honestly, it only makes sense if you already understand shooting in manual!
That’s why we weren’t surprised that the final post/video in our “Shooting in Manual” series — where we pulled together aperture, shutter speed and ISO for portrait and wedding photographers — hit our #10 spot. Funny enough, this was one of just three blogs in our top 10 that we actually wrote in 2023! Apparently, our blog visitors really discovered the archives in 2023!
Check out the blog, “Shooting in Manual: the EASY Way to Set Your ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed (NO More Exposure Triangle!)” here.
#9 – Best Aperture for Portrait and Wedding Photography (Shooting in Manual Part 2)
While Part 1 in our “Shooting in Manual” series introduced aperture and explained what it was, this blog/video — Part 2 — got VERY practical. In it, we explained the best aperture for portrait photographers, and answered one of the most common questions we got from our newer photography students: “What aperture should I use for portrait photography?”
While Part 1 had graphs to help explain aperture, this video was full of real images that we’ve taken at various apertures, to really show the nitty gritty of how to use your aperture to produce great portraits!
Check out the blog, “Best Aperture for Portrait and Wedding Photography (Shooting in Manual Part 2)” here.
#8 – Camera Bag Essentials 10: Ten Wedding Photography Accessories You Didn’t Know You Needed
Our “Camera Bag Essentials” series continues to be one of most popular blog/video series. This is true, even though these were some of the first blogs for photographers we ever produced! In Part 10, we break down all the smaller items that weren’t important enough to have their own video (you won’t find any camera bodies or lenses in Part 10). But it’s still filled with some items we wouldn’t shoot without, from our decibel-reducing earplugs to save our ears on the dancefloor, to the emergency sewing kit that has saved the day on more than one occasion.
Check out the blog, “Camera Bag Essentials 10: Ten Wedding Photography Accessories You Didn’t Know You Needed” here.
#7 – Camera Bag Essentials 2: Wide Angle Lenses, 35mm vs 24-70mm vs 14-24mm
As our wedding photography students expand their camera bags beyond their first camera body and prime lens, a wide angle is often the next thing they consider. But which wide angle lens is best for wedding photographers? Is the 35mm f/1.8 prime lens okay? Or do I need to shell out for the more expensive 24-70mm f/2.8? And what about the $2,500+ ultra-wide 14-24mm f/2.8? Will I actually use it enough to justify the cost?? We answer all of that and more in Part 2 of our Camera Bag Essentials series!
Check out the blog, “Camera Bag Essentials 2: Wide Angle Lenses, 35mm vs 24-70mm vs 14-24mm” here.
#6 – 6 Pro Tips for How to Photograph a Wedding Day in the Rain
Coming in at number 6 on our top 10 blogs for photographers in 2023 is another staple from 2022: how to photograph a rainy wedding day! Any photographer who’s been capturing weddings for any length of time has encountered a rainy wedding day. And if you’re unprepared, it can be a disaster! So in this blog/video, we walked through a few simple steps (as well as a few pieces of inexpensive gear) that can make or break a rainy wedding day.
And when all else fails… get comfortable with flash and photograph the entire wedding day inside, like we did in September of this past year, as a hurricane hit Charlottesville during one of our weddings!
Check out the blog, “6 Pro Tips for How to Photograph a Wedding Day in the Rain” here.
#5 – Camera Bag Essentials 1: Prime Lenses, 85mm vs 50mm vs 35mm
At the halfway point in our list of most popular blogs for photographers is one of the oldest debates in modern photography: which prime lens is best for wedding photography? This is obviously a very subjective topic, and one that has no shortage of controversy. We’ve even gotten some nasty comments in our YouTube because people get SO heated about which lens is best! (Which is obviously a silly thing to get rude about 🙄)
But if you want to see what our take is for the best prime lens for wedding days: 85mm or 50mm or 35mm, pop over into our Camera Bag Essentials series!
Check out the blog, “Camera Bag Essentials 1: Prime Lenses, 85mm vs 50mm vs 35mm” here.
#4 – Best Shutter Speed for Portrait and Wedding Photography (Shooting in Manual Part 4)
Even though we expected the “Shooting in Manual” series to be popular, we were surprised that the nitty gritty of shutter speed for portrait and wedding imagery made it so high on the list! Like in Part 2 of the series, we get super practical in Part 4, breaking down a variety of images that we captured, and what shutter speed we used to get them!
Check out the blog, “Best Shutter Speed for Portrait and Wedding Photography (Shooting in Manual Part 4)” here.
#3 – Camera Bag Essentials 0: Mirrorless or DSLR? Nikon D750 vs Z6 vs Z6ii
We told you that the “Camera Bag Essentials” series was still popular! 😂 This “Part 0” of the series (think of it as a prequel) is still one of our most popular blogs for photographers of all time as we get into some of the details of (what was at the time we wrote it) the 3 most popular cameras that Nikon sold: The DSLR D750 and the mirrorless Z6 and Z6ii!
One small caveat: if you check out the blog and end up watching the video, have some grace with us 😅 This was the first YouTube video we ever produced, and clearly were still figuring out things like audio and lighting!
Check out the blog, “Camera Bag Essentials 0: Mirrorless or DSLR? Nikon D750 vs Z6 vs Z6ii” here.
#2 – Should I Charge a Travel Fee for Portrait/Wedding Photography?
This was the blog that most surprised us on this list! Even though this blog is more than a year old, photographers really wanted to know about travel fees in 2023! Almost 25% of the things people searched on Google that landed them on our website were along the lines of, “how much to charge for travel fee for photography”, or “travel fee for photographers 2023”, or “photographer travel fee”. As a result, more than 9,000 people landed on our travel fee blog in 2023!
In this blog, we share when we do and don’t charge travel fees, and how we figure out how much they should be. Spoiler alert: there’s no perfect $/mile formula!
Check out the blog, “Should I Charge a Travel Fee for Portrait/Wedding Photography?” here.
#1 – 4 Reasons to Switch From DSLR to Mirrorless in 2023
With almost 15,000 views on this blog alone, the verdict is clear! DSLR vs. mirrorless cameras is one of the hottest topics in camera gear right now, and apparently people were very interested in our take! When we wrote our first blogs for photographers on this subject back in 2018, it was a very clear “this vs. that” with pros and cons to each. But as mirrorless technology has gotten better and cheaper, this was a big update in our tone. “Ditch the DSLR” was our motto in this 2023 update to the mirrorless vs. DSLR debate!
Check out the blog, “4 Reasons to Switch From DSLR to Mirrorless in 2023” here.
Thank you SO much for reading! And not just for reading this blog, but for reading all of our posts/videos, week in and week out. When we first did a “Top 10 Blogs” looking back at 2019, it only took 350 views to make our Top 10. This year, our Top 10 had a combined 39,000 hits! We know there’s an infinite amount of content that you could use to fill your time nowadays. Thank you so much for investing in yourself and learning on the HSP Blog!
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Interested in more Best-Of Content? Check out the best blogs from other years!
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