Behind The Scenes

Each and every photographer has their own unique way of working with models, cameras, and light. It’s something that clearly shows through in the series Jessica Kobeissi has developed in which different photographers shoot the same model. In the most recent episode, she brought Dani Diamond and Brandon Woelfel back for a new shoot, but this time they added a few obstacles to make the challenge more fun.

Photographer Ryan Taylor recently worked with Red Bull to shoot a highlight story on Hilary Knight, one of Red Bull’s professional athletes and member of US Olympic Hockey team. With Knight going to the winter Olympics this February it was the perfect opportunity to showcase her journey to Gold.

Art is about storytelling. It’s about using all the tools at one’s disposal to convey and idea or an emotion. To connect an audience to a brand, or a personality, or a moment in a way the no other medium can. Along with my own technique, the ingenuity of the on-camera talent and the creative team behind it, plus the tools necessary to complete the job, the location you select for your shoot is one of the many raw materials that will have an effect on the eventual alchemy you bring forth to produce a great image.

A few weeks ago we released "Photographing the World 3," the newest installment of Elia Locardi's PTW series. As with with many of our tutorials, we have also produced a behind-the-scenes series that shows exactly how we filmed and produced this landscape tutorial. You can watch all of the PTW 3 behind the scenes here, but in this week's episode Elia covers the importance of scouting, Lee discovers a way to make his sandwiches even tastier, and I test out one of Tamron's newest lenses for time-lapse.

As Halloween nears, we are all soon to be bombarded with a litany of images in our social media feeds of our friend’s unwilling pets being forced to don cute/embarrassing outfits picked out by their fawning owners. In fact, it’s highly likely that we have perpetrated this subtle canine fashion abuse ourselves at some point and time in our lives. How can you help it? They’re just so darn cute. But what is far less likely is that any of us will have achieved the rakish heights of the world’s foremost purveyor of canine imagery, William Wegman.

Nikon's recent choice to promote the new D850 with a pro team of 32 men has started waves of conversation of gender inequality in the arts. During the uproar, I received a few messages requesting for me to share my own experiences that are unique to being a female photographer. Whether we like to admit it or not, America is pretty far from complete gender equality. Many are surprised to learn that the accepting arts industry isn't an exception to the current gender norms. As to not a let male-dominated industry intimidate me, I try to ignore the upsetting gender-specific challenges I face. But there are a few too hard to ignore as they're present in my life daily.

A few months ago we released "Where Art Meets Architecture 3" with Mike Kelley, a photography tutorial that covers photographing hotels and resorts as well as the business of high-end architectural photography. For the past few months, we have also been releasing a behind-the-scenes series on the creation of this tutorial. Today we are finally releasing episode 8 which is also the final episode of this series.

Who's a good boy?! For around 45 years, William Wegman has been working with canine companions and exploring all of the peculiar possibilities that come to his mind. With a studio, lots of props, and a playful disposition, Wegman has crafted a career the revolves around man's best friend.

There aren’t many photographers whose work I keep tabs on consistently. I barely have time to keep up with all of my own work, so while I may follow some photographers on Instagram, that’s about it. One of those select few that I check in on is Benjamin Von Wong, and once I heard about his latest project for Nike, I was excited to check it out.

I found Irene Rudnyk a few months back when I was looking more into portrait photography. I found that her work stood out amongst a lot of other work because of how clean and straightforward her style was. In this video, Rudnyk goes over how she shoots in a small bedroom inside her house using only natural light and a reflector. This video goes to show that a good photo really can be created anywhere if you know exactly what you want and how to do it.

Anyone who pursues photography professionally knows all too well how absolutely time consuming the business side of the industry truly is. Between managing clients, keeping your inbox at zero, and still trying to find time to pursue personal projects or just have a life outside of photography, you can sometimes lose yourself to the rat race. That’s why when I saw Evan5ps' newest video it really struck a chord in me.

Inspired by a video created by Maison Carnot, Photographer and Videographer Andrew Szeto created a memorable Iceland travel video by shooting through his Pentax 67’s waist-level viewfinder. Stating that he “wanted to bring something different to the table” while visiting the popular photography destination, the final result is uniquely light and personal. Check out the video as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how it was made.

Whether or not you are a filmmaker, making-of videos will always teach you new things. You can see how scenes have been shot, what cameras have been used, what lights were set up, if visual effects were used or it was a real shot, how the set was designed, and more. In a series of videos we will take a peak behind the scenes of the movie "Blade Runner 2049."

Being a photojournalist in the U.S. Air Force, there are often some pretty interesting opportunities to cover situations and events that most other photographers I know would probably never find themselves in. When new opportunities come up, there are usually two big questions to ask. One is, am I prepared for this? The other is, how do I even shoot this?

Children look to superheros as inspiration for strength and courage. They dress up as their favorite characters and act out scenes to empower their imaginations all over the world. One photographer set out to take his incredible talent to a special set of children to show them and the world they are stronger than the superheros they love.

Commercial shoots and photography can be quite demanding and even taxing on the body. But when I started out this art, I would have never thought it could go as far as taking out four of teeth out to create an advertising image. Well, that’s what Blair Bunting was willing to do for a campaign he shot for Discovery’s Deadliest Catch.

Clay Cook recently photographed Jennifer Lawrence for the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation, which "assists and empowers charitable organizations that fulfill children's vital needs and drive arts awareness and participation." In what's perhaps the most unique twist, Cook has always wanted to professionally photograph Lawrence, who he and his family actually grew up with in another lifetime. But he describes wanting to earn it, and finally did.

It's quite common to shoot photo sessions in unimpressive locations; it goes with the territory when shooting on-the-go and outside of a studio. Fortunately, we have options to help us transform boring locations into beautiful backdrops, and it’s easier than you think. Making simple light modifications and quick edits in post can mean the difference between creating average imagery versus creating imagery that impresses your clients.

The Syrp Genie Mini is a neat little tool to add a little motion to your time-lapse project (or a smooth pan to your video projects). But in a new post from the folks at Syrp, it turns out it’s pretty good for a home-brew 360-degree timel-apse rig, too.

Albert Watson. Legend. Period, end. With a career spanning five decades and multiple iconic images, his career in fashion and portraiture would be the aspiration of any budding photographer. Alongside Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, PDN recognized him as one of the twenty most influential photographers of all time. And in a new video by Profoto, the man whose subjects have ranged from Alfred Hitchcock to Kate Moss, discusses his approach to lighting, photography, and life.

Every year for the past few years, I’ve donated photo work to a local organization that puts on a half marathon in coordination with the local firefighters union chapter to raise money for local charities. Last year, I ended up doing a relatively simple shoot with just some firefighters and a ring light. This year, I wanted something different. And so, quickly and repeatedly, the question became, “Can we use real fire?”

If you ever feel like you're stuck in a creative rut, or having a hard time progressing in your field, know that you're not alone. Any professional photographer will tell you about all of the failures and challenges they had to overcome in order to reach new heights. This video shares a brief look at some of the struggles faced by seven leading photographers, as a trailer for a new season of podcasts from PRO EDU.

Nikon Ambassador Dixie Dixon got the chance to shoot with a pre-production D850 for a few days. She used a few fashion shoots to break in the D850 and shared some of those images with us here, explaining her experience "shooting in beast mode," as she called it in a recent live stream with B&H.

We have featured Adrian Sommeling quite a few times over the summer and with reason. His composite photography work, or digital art if you prefer, is stunning and his videos give tons of inside tips to improve our very own work. In his latest creation, he Photoshopped his son and himself playing with foam guns replaying the famous bullet time Matrix scene. Learn all about the creation of this masterpiece in Sommeling’s video.

Being a commercial photographer means being able to deliver no matter what the conditions are and pushing the boundaries for the client. In this video, as you’ll see, French photographer Philippe Echaroux was given the challenge to go even further and create stunning portraits using only an iPhone, a flashlight, and a Big Mac box. Yes, you read that last item correctly! If you’re wondering how he did it, be sure to watch the full video.

Colin Smith of PhotoshopCAFE teamed up with Adobe Principle Creative Director, Russell Brown, and the Canon USA team to photograph the solar eclipse in Casper, Wyoming. In the nearly 16-minute behind-the-scenes video, we get to see some of the equipment Canon Explorer of Light Ken Sklute was using to capture the eclipse with the rest of the Canon USA team.

Daniel Dean knew the total solar eclipse would be an incredible opportunity for him to capture something amazing. A few months prior to the eclipse, the idea of being able to photograph the celestial event became a blip on his radar after seeing in the news that the first solar eclipse crossing the U.S. since 1979 would be happening again in August. Here is the story of how this awesome time-lapse solar eclipse video came about and how it was made.

You might be tired of hearing about the eclipse, but this video explores what took place moments before, and during the eclipse for Ted Hesser and Andrew Studer as they planned a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Who out there captured the eclipse this week? Did you plan ahead, travel hundreds of miles, purchase the right gear, and capture the phenomenon that is a total solar eclipse for that perfect shot? The photos are coming in by the thousands and each seems to be better than the last. Here is my photo capturing 90 percent coverage of the moon over the sun and also a little behind-the-scenes on how I shot and edited it completely with my phone.

Just like everyone else, my social media feed was flooded with solar eclipse images yesterday. While there were a number of truly amazing shots and at least one potentially politically controversial one, my hands-down favorite was the remarkable photograph of a silhouetted climber at the moment of totality, captured by professional Outdoor and Commercial Photographer Andrew Studer. I spoke with Studer and Ted Hesser, an adventure photographer who envisioned and planned the shot, to better understand how they pulled it off.

Vincent Munier is a Nikon ambassador, but more importantly, he’s probably one of the best animal and wildlife photographers. He’s photographed quite a few subjects in his career, but shooting the snow leopard in its environment was an exceptional project. It's one that Nikon supported and we now can enjoy through this beautiful video.

A few weeks ago, Adrian Sommeling showed how he Photoshopped his son and himself driving an Aston Martin in Iceland. He’s back with yet another video, and this time it’s a shattered iPhone 8 composite. This one is particularly interesting as it includes glass and thus reflections which are both amongst the most difficult things to keep natural looking when working on composites.

Sit down, strap in, and buckle up. This video is a long one but for those who can find 47 minutes to spare and watch this video you'll be rewarded with a casual insight and genuine conversation into the work space of premier hand-painted Backdrop Artist Sarah Oliphant alongside world-renowned Headshot Photographer Peter Hurley. If you've ever considered shooting on a painted backdrop, you'll undoubtedly find this video an interesting watch.

It’s already the fourth time Jessica Kobeissi got together with three other photographers to challenge themselves on a shoot. Each artist is given the opportunity to choose the outfit and location for one set, and then everyone has to come up with something in their own style. For this episode, the photographers were Joey L, Brandon Woelfel, Dani Diamond, and Jessica Kobeissi. Each having a very different photographic style, the video is quite entertaining.

Have you ever wanted to try your hand at dramatic macro shots of insects, but don’t have a studio setup or - let’s face it - the desire to cart strange insects back from your outdoor excursions? Entomologist Phil Torres has a neat solution. In this video, he takes us through his simple and elegant setup for shooting studio-quality macro photographs in the field.

When making films, we experiment with different camera setups, locations, times, and various equipment to try to nail that scene exactly how we see it in our head. Lately though I have been experimenting a ton with movement. It really immerses you into a location and gives you the feeling of being there yourself. It also is great way to piece a story together seamlessly. Now when I saw one of my favorite filmmakers make a video this specific subject I knew I had to share it.

There are many things that go into the final mood of an image. My intention was to have a California-like warm sun with a heading-to-the-beach kind of feel for this car photo. The challenge was that I had to shoot it in the high desert. We have pine trees and some lakes, but the ocean is far away. So we found a windy road heading down to one of the small lakes and planned out our session.

Long takes in films are always impressive because they show a continuous performance of the actors within the scene without any cut. This requires very focused work both from the actors and the people behind the camera. I say "people" because it's not only the camera operator, as you can see in this behind the scenes from the movie "Atonement." It shows how they achieved a spectacular five minute long take that involved hundreds of people, horses (even dead ones), and an abundance of historical props. I thought it was all shot by a steadicam operator walking with the actors but I was surprised that it wasn't that easy.

It doesn't matter who you are, we all can get stuck for ideas from time to time. The crazy thing is you probably have everything you need to produce your next creative masterpiece already at your disposal.

Commercial Conceptual Photographer and Digital Artist Adrian Sommeling is one of the names that every retoucher and creative photographer should know. He has one of the most incredible portfolios out there with work that you simply can only wonder how the heck it was done. Well, to learn more about how he creates his stunning digital art, he’s started to push out short videos with explanations on every step. In this article, discover how he shot his son, himself, and an Aston Martin before compositing them onto an Iceland landscape.

After every trip I go on, I always end up with a favorite image. Maybe it’s the one with the best story, or the one that was the hardest to get, or the one with the nicest person I met on the journey. In 2014 I headed to Bolivia to shoot a wedding, and a few weeks later found myself wandering around on an island in Lake Titicaca. And there, my favorite image of the trip was born.

One of the ways the Hans Zimmer-produced score of "Dunkirk" maintained the growing tension throughout the movie was by using a sound that gives the impression of a build-up. What makes it strange is that the tension-building nature can keep going forever without ever going out of its original parameters and sounding weird. Tension and release is something needed in a production of a film, whether it's a short film or a full-blown blockbusting, award-winning movie. This video shows how it's done.

When I first started in filmmaking, I didn't want anyone in the world to know how I made my first video because I knew filmmakers usually have expensive tools and expensive software. At that time I didn't have either but I made that video anyway. Today I'm going to share the details with you.

Barry Harley, an editorial photographer from Northern Virginia, took whatever tools he had at hand to create an image reminiscent of nothing less than Annie Leibovitz's Vanity Fair group portraits. The difference: Harley was using two Yongnuo YN-560 II speedlites and a Canon 5D Mark II whereas Leibovitz usually uses Profoto strobes together with a Hasselblad and Phase One back or a Nikon D810.

Makeup artists and hairstylists are as much artists as we are as photographers. However, when starting out, they often lack quality content to promote their work. Even later on when well established they sometimes require content to keep their social network feeds regularly updated. While working for free all the time for everyone isn’t sustainable, helping out people we work with may be beneficial for everyone. Here are two simple things you can do while on set to help your team out with their social presence and marketing. Best of all, it may even boost your social engagement and followers base as well as your work.

I'll start with a rather obvious warning: this video and article may contain spoilers for anything that happens up to and including episode 2 of season 7 of "Game of Thrones." With that out of the way, we can look at how the incredible fight scene of that second episode was created.

Cranes are quickly becoming a staple in the bags of many videographers and for good reason. It has a smaller footprint, lower cost of entry, and has a relatively low learning curve than most gimbals on the market. Even though most users can pick up and go without ever opening the manual. There are still fundamental crane movements that you need to learn to take a good scene and make it a great scene.

Understanding light is at the heart of photography. The topic of light is a vast one but there are some fundamental concepts which should be mastered before all others. One of those is the difference between hard and soft light.

Our behind-the-scenes series on the filming of "Where Art Meets Architecture 3" continues today with episode 6. In this episode, Mike Kelley flies to the Fstoppers office in Charleston to start working on the post-processing portion of this tutorial.

Over the last several weeks, my social media feeds have been flooded with a torrent of lavender images, each seemingly more beautiful than the last. Late June is generally the high season for the lavender bloom in the famous Provence region of southern France. It's a time of year when photographers, tourists, and bees come together in perfect harmony to dance among the purple fields from dawn to dusk. Photographer Jimmy McIntyre was part of the crowds last month and made an informative and entertaining video on his ten-day trip photographing the bloom.