• Gabby Morgan Swaine, 27, from Illinois, is the founder of GM Photography 
• She went viral after showing how to secure jewelry with a bridal makeup staple 
• Gabby’s video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times 

By Erica Nardozzi For Dailymail.Com

Published: 17:12 EDT, 26 September 2023 | Updated: 17:17 EDT, 26 September 2023

A wedding photographer has revealed her brilliant hack for ensuring a bride’s necklace stays in place all day and looks perfect in every photo. 

Gabby Morgan Swaine, 27, from Springfield, Illinois, is the founder of GM Photography, the wedding business she runs with the help of her sister, Tori, and her husband, Matt. 

The content creator, who uses the handle @gabbymorganphotos, went viral on TikTok after demonstrating how a bridal makeup staple can also be used to keep your jewelry in the right spot.

Gabby shared a video of one of her brides using eyelash glue to secure her necklace pendant to her chest while getting ready. 

‘Wedding day hack: eyelash glue on the back of your necklace to keep it in place all day long,’ she wrote in the on-screen text. 

The trick is beneficial to both brides and photographers, according to Gabby, who worked her first wedding when she was just 15 years old.  

‘Dear brides, eyelash glue is your new best friend,’ she explained in the caption. 

‘This hack was MADE for wedding photographers [because] it ensures the bride’s jewelry stays in place all day, making it one less thing to worry about in photos.’

Gabby’s video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times since it was posted on September 7. 

‘Where was this when I needed it! That’s all I notice in our wedding pictures,’ one former bride commented. 

‘I did this & my husband was genuinely curious how my necklace never moved that day,’ someone else shared. 

‘This is freaking genius!’ someone else gushed. 

Some people recommended gluing the clasp to her neck instead, while others claimed they tried the hack for themselves and it didn’t work. 

‘If it’s outside wedding and hot… it won’t work lol,’ one user noted. ‘We tried it and it failed.’

Someone else claimed the bride was looking down when she secured the necklace, and ‘it’ll pull off’ when she looks back up. 

There were also a few viewers who found the concern to be ridiculous. 

‘Yes, [because] that’s what I’m worried about on my wedding day,’ one person sarcastically responded. 

‘Seems a bit extreme,’ another agreed.

Renowned photographer and environmentalist Ansel Adams’s secluded home in the tony Sea Cliff neighborhood of San Francisco, on the edge of the Presidio, has hit the market for $5.45 million.

Built in 1902 as an Arts and Crafts chalet on what were then remote dunes, the residence grew to its current form in 1929, when a “grand salon” annex was built under the direction of Adams and his wife. The merged home, said Sotheby’s International Realty in the listing, “became the residential seat of America’s most lauded landscape photographer.” That lasted until 1957, when he moved the family farther down the coast to Monterey.

Exterior view of Ansel Adams’s former home in San Francisco. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

The space boasts vaulted 20-foot ceilings, architectural beams, and a wood-burning fireplace. Upstairs are three bedrooms bathed in natural light, with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin Headlands.

Artist’s loft at the top of the home. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

Other perks include an attic-turned-artist’s loft, a front pathway made from repurposed San Francisco City sidewalk curbs, and a terraced garden design by renowned landscape architect Topher Delaney.

Front entrance with stepping stones made from city curbs. Photo: David Duncan Livingston for Sotheby’s International Realty.

Adams came to photography as a teenager in 1915, when his parents gave him a Kodak camera. His first photographs were architectural views of San Francisco and natural environments such as Yosemite Valley. He championed straight photography, allowing the vistas and objects in his images to speak for themselves.

Adams is remembered as a lifelong environmental conservationist and mountaineer whose photographs captured the grandeur of the American landscape. His black-and-white images of majestic outdoor scenes have had an enduring effect on American conservationism and the creation of national parks.

Ansel Adams stands on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean. Photo: Roger Ressmeyer CORBIS VCG via Getty Images.

In 2020, his best-known work, The Grand Tetons and the Snake River, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming (1942)—intended to hang in the U.S. Department of the Interior building until World War II canceled those plans—sold at Sotheby’s New York for $988,000 (including fees). The price soared above the high estimate of $600,000, establishing the lasting impact of a great 20th-century American photographer.

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Creating a successful image is almost always a two-step process: shooting and editing. As you grow comfortable with your camera, you should also work on developing your post-processing skills. This excellent video tutorial features an experienced photographer sharing some of the fundamentals of editing photos and offering some helpful advice sure to put you on the right track.

Coming to you from Roman Fox, this awesome video tutorial will teach you some of the fundamentals of editing photos. From a philosophical standpoint, I think one of the most important points Fox makes is understanding that good edits start with good shots. There is often the idea that you can “save it in post,” and while it is certainly true that modern post-processing software can perform small miracles, you can’t will a good photo into existence with a computer. This is often where beginners waste the most time, in trying to correct bad lighting, sharpen a blurry shot, or fix a sloppy composition. The closer you get it in camera, the easier it will be to edit. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Fox. 

If you would like to continue your photography learning journey, be sure to check out our range of tutorials in the Fstoppers store.

For those looking to level up their photography skills, leading photography education book publisher Rocky Nook is hosting its first ever online conference, called The Art and Craft of Photography.

Full disclosure: This sponsored article is brought to you by Rocky Nook.

The conference features two days of sessions presented by the authors of Rocky Nook’s best-selling photography books including Lindsay Adler, Roberto Valenzuela, Joe McNally, Scott Kelby, and more. These photographers, all top-notch teachers, will each present two different educational sessions that explore ways to develop your artistic voice and hone your photographic craft. Become a better photographer with lessons from world-class photographers—and maintain access to the session recordings for 12 months.

The conference is scheduled for November 8–9 from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. (Pacific Time) and offers an early bird ticket discount of $199 (along with a $50 gift card to Rocky Nook’s bookstore) if you register early.

The Art and Craft of Photography features ten speakers from diverse backgrounds for a total of 20 sessions. If you’re ready to move past the fundamentals and shoot creative and editorial content with your camera, the conference offers two tracks: an “art” series focusing on how to tell your authentic story through your photographic style; and a “craft” series teaching high-level concepts and techniques so you can achieve your vision. This unique approach allows the speakers to pair the “deeper” topics in photography—such as curiosity, imagination, and vision—with the skills, dedication, and inspiration it takes to create great photographs.

The Teachers: Learn from the Professionals

The speakers will help you to awaken your creative spirit, develop your own photographic style, and deepen your understanding of the art and craft of photography.

Learn more about the speaker sessions here.

Why Should You Attend?

Learn the secrets of the great professional photographers and instructors while exploring a wide range of photography topics, including landscape, portrait, lighting, and commercial.

Discover your voice and develop your personal style—and improve your understanding of photography. Awaken your creative mojo and get inspired to go out and shoot!

Full disclosure: This sponsored article was brought to you by Rocky Nook.

As I prepared the photos for my recent feature on Amtrak’s new ALC-42 locomotives, I realized I didn’t have a good photo of the units at Stanton Creek, Mont. That’s not to say I didn’t have a photo of the flashy new locomotives there — I had a few — but there were some problems with them.

The first time I got the Chargers at Stanton Creek, I had the wrong leader — specifically, I had locomotive 302. The 302 was the first ALC-42 to lead a train in early 2022 on the Empire Builder, but just outside of Seattle it struck a truck at a crossing, damaging the locomotive’s nose cone. When it got back to Chicago, a new nose cone was popped on the locomotive and it was sent back to work. But there’s a big problem with that specific nose cone — it doesn’t have the white stripe all the other ALC-42s have. (Why Amtrak didn’t put the stripe on the replacement cone is beyond me.) I never actually noticed the lack of nose stripe until Matt Donnelly, Amtrak’s brand communications manager, pointed it out to me, and now it’s all I can see when I look at 302. So that photo was out. The second time I shot a Charger at Stanton Creek, I actually had the perfect locomotive for it — “Day 1” heritage unit 301 — but a hazy sky defused the light, so that shot didn’t work either.

I’m generally not that picky. Just the other night, for example, my wife ordered a sausage, pepperoni, pepper, and onion pizza — by no means my favorite, but I ate it nonetheless. But one area when I do get picky is when I’m attacking a photo project, and for the last 18 or so months the ALC-42 locomotives have been a pet project of mine. And when I adopt something as a “project,” I want to shoot it from every possible angle and I want to make those images as perfect as can be.

I was first introduced to the idea of project photography by my dad. When I was younger, I always wanted to see new railroads and different locations. But because I wasn’t paying for gas or doing any of the driving, we usually shot what Dad wanted to shoot, which meant repeat visits to the Rockland Branch (the state-owned former Maine Central branch that was operated by Maine Coast Railroad in the 1990s) or the former Canadian Pacific across western Maine. Both of those were his “projects” and that meant we would make dozens of visits to each during different seasons with different weather trying to get as many unique shots as possible. Dad wasn’t content with getting a few token shots. He wanted to cover those lines like few others had, so if anyone ever said, “Hey, can you put a slide show or article together about [insert railroad/locomotive/region here]?” he could confidently say, “Yes.”

When the author began shooting BNSF’s locals in northwest Montana, he knew he needed a shot of the Kalispell Job working the grain elevator in Evergreen, such as in November 2020. 

Of course, Tim Franz didn’t invent the idea of project photography; he was just copying what some of the well-known shooters in our hobby were doing. As Elrond Lawrence pointed out here in Camera Bag back in January (see “Lessons from Stein”), Richard Steinheimer “was a champion of returning to the same place again and again to get the pictures needed to tell a complete story in his projects.” For example, in the 1960s, Southern Pacific’s PA locomotives were a focus of Steinheimer’s, and while the lineside images of smoke-belching Alcos were the heart of that effort, it would have been lacking something had Stein not returned to get images of SP employees keeping those beasts in service at the locomotive facility in Oakland, Calif. Stein often referred to the idea of going back to a subject time and time again as “layering.”

Another photographer who practiced “layering” was John E. Gruber, founder of the Center for Railroad Photography & Art. Gruber photographed countless railroads and places, but it’s his work on a select few subjects — Chicago Union Station; Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee; Green Bay & Western; and the Rio Grande narrow gauge — for which he’ll be most remembered. In each of those instances, Gruber made multiple visits to the same place getting to know the locations, the angles, the lighting, and — perhaps most importantly — the people who made those railroads work. Those people would not only become invaluable in providing information that could lead to unique images but became subjects of photos themselves, helping tell a complete story.

Over the years, I’ve had a few “projects” of my own. Canadian Pacific across Maine and the Rockland Branch have certainly been interests of mine over the decades, but, of course, that’s mostly piggybacking off what Dad has done. If you want a slide show of the last 30 years on the former MEC between Brunswick and Rockland, don’t ask me, ask him.

The former Great Northern in northwest Montana has been perhaps my biggest personal project, especially the line through Kalispell, part of which was ripped up a few years ago to make way for a trail. Not long after it was announced that about two miles of track through downtown would be ripped up (the surviving rail customers were moved to a taxpayer-funded industrial park east of town), I decided that the rails through Kalispell would be a project and I began shooting Mission Mountain Railroad’s local there as much as I could. At the time, I was working at a newspaper downtown, so running out to nab a few photos every other day was pretty easy. After I had checked off most of the lineside angles, I rode along with the train crew to get images on board and of the employees. I then began to seek access to the industries themselves — a grain elevator and a drywall distributor — to record what those operations were like.

Eventually, I created an in-depth record of the railroad there and began to ease off my efforts. That was, until the final few runs in late 2019, when I again started going out as often as I could to capture the end. Even after the trains stopped running and the rails were ripped up, I’ve gone back to Kalispell to get photos of the trail construction and developments that are springing up alongside it. Even if the trains are gone, there’s still a story to be told and photos to be captured. (For those who are curious, I published a story about that project online. You can check it out at kalispellrailroad.com.)

Another project that had occupied me over the last few years was photographing BNSF’s locals in and out of Whitefish. In some ways, this was a continuation of that Kalispell project because, in 2020, BNSF reclaimed from Watco the branch from Columbia Falls to Kalispell. Besides trying to get the local at some of the more notable locations it passes, I emphasized images of it switching the various industries it serves, from the industrial park in Kalispell to the lumber mill in Columbia Falls. At the end, I wanted to have enough images to put together a complete story, which I did in the April 2022 edition of this magazine. 

Which brings us back to that ALC-42 project I was talking about earlier. Ever since the first run back in early 2022, I knew I wanted to focus some photography efforts on the locomotive’s debut on the Empire Builder. For starters, that meant shooting the locomotives in as many different locations as possible on Marias Pass, arguably one of the most famous locations the train traverses on its daily run from Chicago to Portland, Ore., and Seattle, Wash.

I also tried to shoot the locomotives in different conditions, from bright sunny days to dark winter storms. I wanted down-low angles that emphasized the locomotives themselves and dramatic aerial views that put them in the context of the territory they were operating in. I also wanted images of them with people, so getting a few photos of them at Whitefish (one of the busiest stops on the entire route and a crew change point) was critical. Detail shots were another important consideration.

Some railroad photographers want to try and see as many different railroads and locations as they can. I get that. Part of the fun of this hobby is experiencing new places. But oftentimes, I find the biggest reward photographically is revisiting locations and subjects I’m familiar with over and over again in search of that perfect photo — a photo that can help tell a story. Ultimately, when I look at my photo collection, I really hope I’m able to find deep coverage of a few things, rather than shallow coverage of a lot of things.

Anyway, if you would excuse me, I’ve gotta check the weather for Stanton Creek tomorrow morning… 

Wildflowers can make fantastic subjects or complements to the subject of a landscape image, but when they start thrashing about in a stiff breeze, it can be tricky to still get optimal image quality. If you keep finding your plans foiled by the wind, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features a seasoned landscape photographer sharing some helpful tips for photographing wildflowers in such conditions. 

Coming to you from Michael Shainblum, this great video tutorial offers a wealth of helpful advice for photographing wildflowers, especially in windy conditions. We often talk about the importance of a foreground element in landscape photography, as the use of a wide angle lens without one can lead to an overly empty and flat image. A patch of wildflowers can be a particularly good element, as they are often vibrant and richly textured, and that can balance the similar elements often seen in the midground sky of such an image. And if you bring along a macro lens, you can sometimes get some extra images from the same spot! Check out the video above for the full rundown from Shainblum. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out our latest tutorial, “Photographing the World: Japan With Elia Locardi!”