Besides being respected members of the photo community, what do Joe McNally, Jeremy Cowart, Greg Slater, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Brad Trent and Melissa Rodwell all have in common? Well for starters they (to name just a few) have all agreed to write something just for you, our Fstopper readers. Starting this October we will bring you posts written by some of the biggest names in photography, exclusively on Fstoppers.com. You’ll have the opportunity to learn a little more about our Featured Guests and they will have an opportunity to speak directly to you and share whatever takes their fancy. Be it their latest projects, rants, opinions, advice, stories and more. Leave a comment telling us who you would like to see as a Featured Guest and we just might make it happen.
Are you curious as to what your shutter count is? Then head on over to MyShutterCount.com, where they presumably are able to tell the shutter count of “most cameras” simply by uploading a picture. And if you want to know how many of those clicks you can expect before your camera goes kaputs then check out the Camera Life Expectancy Database.
Now, I’m on the road posting from my iPad 2 and can’t check this service out for myself, so once again I have to call upon you, our special team of Fstoppers’ tester monkeys, to give this site a go and see if it lives up to it’s claims. More importantly I want to know who has the heaviest trigger finger. So post your shutter count in our comments and lets see, who amongst us, has the strongest camera kung fu.
When looking for a professional gear bag the main question seems to be Lowepro or ThinkTank. But now Manfrotto has thrown their hat into the ring by announcing it’s new pro line series of bags and apparel. The Lino line has feature packed bags, jackets, vests, gloves and more. It all seems incredibly functional, with pockets that expand to hold strobes and lenses and gloves that store memory cards. I’m not so sure about the style of the clothes yet but hey, they’re Italian, who am I to judge their fashion sense? To see product photos take a look at the full post.
September 27th will see the release of “Shutterbugs, a comedy web series about a group of obsessive photographers”. (Do you know anyone obsessed about photography? :P) It would be nice to have a weekly series to make us laugh. The question is: Will we be laughing with it or at it? Links to Shutterbugs’ promo video and info are in the full post.
Resting 120 feet below the water and towering 55 feet above the sea floor, lays the sunken ship Vandenberg and an exhibition of 12 photos by Andreas Franke titled, “Life Under The Sea”. I passed this article over last week but Reese made me take a second look and I’m glad she did. See sample photos inside and leave your comments.
If you’re like our adventurous duo Lee and Patrick and can’t help but want to capture every moment of your daredevil exploits be it wake boarding, rock climbing, snowboarding, etc, then this sleek little number just maybe what you need to put down your not so waterproof D7000. Contour’s latest, entirely hands-free mountable camera, the ContourROAM can shoot 1080p 30fps video and 5MP still images with a lens that rotates 270 degrees and includes a freakin laser line for leveling shots even when the camera is mounted at odd angles. It supports up to 32GB of storage via microSD and has a built-in multi-directional mic for catching audio. All aluminum construction makes this nice and rugged with a battery life of three hours per charge. Sample video and product shots inside.
Your “Likes”, “Tweets”, comments and clicks all help us know which are our best posts of the month. And because we don’t want anyone to miss any of Fstoppers’ goodness we put “The Best of” in a monthly newsletter for you. So, if you missed anything this August check out the top posts of the month and sign up for our newsletter here.
Mark Hogancamp suffered a brain damaging assault that left him having to relearn how to live. Lacking any memory of his past and being cut off from adequate health care for recuperation he created his own miniature fantasy world as a form of art therapy. The photographs created out of the narratives of Marwencol (his fantasy world) are creatively realistic and have resulted in the creation of “Marwencol”, a documentary movie (available on Netflix). You can click here to see some of the photos and a link to Marwencol.
Photographer Thomas Leuthard just published a second free book about street photography called “Collecting Souls… What Street Photography means to me”. That and “Going Candid… An Unorthodox Approach To Street Photography” can be downloaded here as PDF documents. Truth is I haven’t looked at these books yet… I need you guys to check them out and tell me if they’re worth the time to read or not. :P
The title pretty much says it all. Using LG’s new LMS-100 mouse scanner you are able to scan pictures by depressing a button and swiping across an image with a few quick flicks of the wrist. You can save PNG, JPEG, TIFF, and PDF and the device also features Optical Character Recognition that converts text from said images into an editable Word document. The potential convenience of this mouse is enough to make me want to get my hands on one for testing… hint hint LG.
We are seeing it more and more these days. Short films being produced by amateurs and pros alike, sometimes with the most minimalist of equipment, that are making it big. Whether it be Drake Doremus’s “Little Crazy” (which was shot on the Canon 7D and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year and was later bought by Paramount for 4 million bucks) or this latest short done by Portal fan/filmmaker Dan Trachtenberg, there can be no doubt that all you need to “make it” is some creativity, dedication, know how and sweat. Portal: No Escape “A woman wakes up in a room with no memory of who she is or how she got there… This is a short set in the world of the Portal video games created by Valve Software.”
With more than 2.3 million views, “Portal: No Escape” has raised the question as to whether or not it should be turned into a feature length film and has been getting a resounding, “Hell yes!” from viewers. See the “Little Crazy” trailer and add to the discussion inside the post.
Ignacio Torres puts together a series of animated photos that are nothing short of cool. You maybe put off by the motion at first, thinking: “Just another set of animated gifs.” but the more I look at these shots the more I like them, especially once you understand the concept behind them. The technique Inacio used to create galaxies, though simple, was surprisingly effective. Take a good look inside.
Every now and then a cool photo series makes the rounds on the internet and it’s hard to miss. But because I like to play it safe and Stephen Wilkes’s “Day and Night” exhibit is too awesome to miss I had to post it. Stephen spends no less than 10 hours shooting each New York City landmark until he captures the perspectives of both day and night, to be combined into a single frame. The results are inside.
Once again I find myself impressed and vexed all at the same time. When am I going to produce a creative body of work like Croix Gagnon and Frank Schott’s “12:31” or something as intriguing as Ulric Collette’s “Genetic Portraits” where he virtually, splices family members together? The genetic similarities between family members allowed Ulric to create a portraits that almost look like normal people when together.
Our friends across the pond at the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA) have announced the winners of their 2011-2012 photo awards. To see what 16 items came out on top jump in to the post.
And if that list a gear doesn’t impress you, you can alway check out the detailed list of gear we here at Fstoppers.com are giving away to three lucky winners of our 2011 BTS Contest.
Besides being respected members of the photo community, what do Joe McNally, Jeremy Cowart, Greg Slater, Julia Fullerton-Batten, Brad Trent and Melissa Rodwell all have in common? Well for starters they (to name just a few) have all agreed to write something just for you, our Fstopper readers. Starting this October we will bring you posts written by some of the biggest names in photography, exclusively on Fstoppers.com. You’ll have the opportunity to learn a little more about our Featured Guests and they will have an opportunity to speak directly to you and share whatever takes their fancy. Be it their latest projects, rants, opinions, advice, stories and more. Leave a comment telling us who you would like to see as a Featured Guest and we just might make it happen.
Are you curious as to what your shutter count is? Then head on over to 
When looking for a professional gear bag the main question seems to be Lowepro or ThinkTank. But now Manfrotto has thrown their hat into the ring by announcing it’s new pro line series of bags and apparel. The Lino line has feature packed bags, jackets, vests, gloves and more. It all seems incredibly functional, with pockets that expand to hold strobes and lenses and gloves that store memory cards. I’m not so sure about the style of the clothes yet but hey, they’re Italian, who am I to judge their fashion sense? To see product photos take a look at 
September 27th will see the release of “Shutterbugs, a comedy web series about a group of obsessive photographers”. (Do you know anyone obsessed about photography? :P) It would be nice to have a weekly series to make us laugh. The question is: Will we be laughing with it or at it? Links to Shutterbugs’ promo video and info are in 
Resting 120 feet below the water and towering 55 feet above the sea floor, lays the sunken ship Vandenberg and an exhibition of 12 photos by Andreas Franke titled, “Life Under The Sea”. I passed this article over last week but 
