Considering that a fairly large portion of you may find yourself, like me, staying home due to current events, I thought it might be a nice moment to discuss one of the best ways you could be spending your time.
You can’t polish a turd, but you can do your darndest to make sure all your ducks are in a row, photographically speaking. To prove that you can make anything look good, I'm shooting an old potato. Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a lot to make your images sing, so here’s my top four tips to make any subject look good.
Continuous LED lights have made a ton of progress in the last few years, and they have become more powerful and versatile than ever, making them a viable alternative to strobes in a lot of situations. In this review, we will take a look at the Broncolor LED F160, a compact, high quality option.
Photographer Aaron Anderson has done it again, and this time, it’s with Paralympic gold medalist Noah Elliot. The collaboration was an incredible process, though Anderson admits that it might also possibly be one of the hardest productions they’ve worked on.
Long-time friend of Fstoppers, Pye Jirsa, goes over how to properly light a scene for the punchy and dramatic look, or the balanced and natural look when using flash.
As visual artists, one of the most powerful tools we have to tell our story is color. In todays article, learn the importance of using contrasting colors to create depth in your frame and draw your audiences eye straight to the subject.
It seems like over the last 10 years, more and more photographers, retouchers, and influencers have been accused of promoting distorted and unrealistic body image expectations to children and the general public. As a photographer, I was curious if retouching with Photoshop was more or less deceptive than using face-altering makeup. Today, I put my social experiment to the test.
There's a lot of different reasons why someone would need a new headshot, but producing one with a pure white background may not be the simplest task.
Shoot-through umbrellas are some of the cheapest and quickest lighting modifiers to work with, and despite often being cast aside for other modifiers, they can still produce great photos in a range of scenarios. This awesome video will give you four tips for working with shoot-through umbrellas.
Pye from SLR Lounge is once again visiting us in Puerto Rico. In this four-minute video, we each teach a quick and easy two-light setup.
Product photography doesn’t have to take a lot of equipment nor the most expensive lighting or camera gear to create highly polished images. Take a look at this breakdown showing how product photography taken with high, mid, and almost no equipment still delivers highly valuable results.
The ultra-clean, perfectly lit white background look is in high demand these days and is an important skill to have in your toolbox. In this video, learn how to create that aesthetic, no matter what budget you might be working with.
A couple of months ago I was given the opportunity to photograph Korean-American stylist, lifestyle blogger, and digital influencer, Chriselle Lim for the cover of Female Malaysia magazine. It’s always exciting to be able to shoot a cover for a magazine, especially one that is the leading fashion and beauty magazine in Malaysia, and I particularly love photographing strong, successful women. Gotta be around these role models!
Beauty lighting is a genre full of a range of nuance and subtlety, and one of the best ways to explore that is through the use of lighting modifiers. This excellent video will show the differences between a reflector, beauty dish, and scrim, along with a wide variety of sample images showing their uses.
Elinchrom has always been known for its superb light modifiers. But the strobes designed by the Swiss flash manufacturer are just as good. Now marks a new direction for the brand with the introduction of the ELC 125 and ELC 500.
It’s always interesting to see how gelled lighting can shape the aesthetic of a portrait, especially when we can match that colored gel with a small amount of post production to create an interesting background to a scene. Here’s a quick photography breakdown and post processing tutorial that will help you create a neon sign inspired portrait with just a few complementary colored gels and Photoshop.
Cinematographers help to bring the vision of the directors they work with to life through their use of practical and off screen lighting, motion capture techniques, and composition. Let’s go behind the scenes with Phedon Papamichael, ASC, the cinematographer from Ford v Ferrari, and see how he helped formulate the lighting and capture of some of the most epic racing scenes in years.
Mastering natural light can take a lifetime of practice, but there is one type of natural light that will produce amazing results in almost any situation: I call it "cave lighting."
Whether you are doing it professionally or simply looking to use your skills to capture lasting memories, family portraiture can be a challenging but rewarding genre. This helpful video will show you both how to light and pose family portraits.
I was recently in America doing more photography work and did a total of 11 photoshoots in the one month I was there. It was an incredibly long flight from Singapore, gotta make my time there worth it!
“Circus of Doom” is a circus-inspired conceptual portraiture with the Fujifilm X-T200. “Doom” sounds scary, but “Circus” sounds awesome, so I'm slightly confused, but I'm definitely in! This is not the first time Fujifilm ambassador Jan Gonzales has been written about and definitely will not be last. I mean, have you seen his work? There is no question as to why Gonzales garners the attention that he does. His work is fun, inventive, and unique, which is ultimately what every creative should be aiming for.
When you're working, are you shooting just stills? Just video? Is there a way to combine the two to tell better stories? Can gear help with that?
Starting off in any genre most photographers will go through the feeling of being on top of their game. This is until years later when they look back at their portfolio and cringe compared to the work being produced now.
We decided to film a commercial for our neighborhood in Puerto Rico. It was much more difficult than we expected.
Lighting in a studio environment is tough enough, but shooting on-location portraits presents its own set of challenges. This excellent video takes you behind the scenes on an on-location portrait shoot for a magazine and details the problems the photographer had to deal with and how he solved them.
Product photography is a fun genre that will challenge you to really fine-tune your lighting and post-processing skills. This excellent video will show you the process of building up an eye-catching image of a black product on a black background.
One of the things I have always loved about landscape photography is the way the same scene can be rendered in vastly different ways by various types of light. This great video discusses the many different types of light you will encounter in landscape photography and offers some helpful tips for working with them along with some example images.
Product photography can be a very tricky genre with lots of specific techniques and hidden tricks, but you might be surprised by how much you can accomplish with just a single common modifier. This excellent video will show you how to create a professional product image using nothing but a single softbox.
Most photographers forgo using umbrellas for one reason or another, generally opting for other more advanced and expensive modifiers for their work. However, you might be surprised by the professional-level images you can produce with umbrellas. This excellent video will show you the stunning photos you can create using umbrellas and how they are made.
One of the most fundamental concepts any photographer or videographer needs to understand is the quality of light and how to change it to suit your creative needs. This excellent video will give you a quick lesson in hard versus soft light, both what it is and how to affect it.
If you are new to flash photography, it can be pretty tough trying to understand the combination of light behavior, technical parameters, and creative choices, but taking the time to power through and learn how it is done will open up many new avenues for your work. This great video will give you a comprehensive introduction to flash photography to get you on your way.
Lighting is about more than simply providing proper illumination that shows your subject off in a good way. With proper control of it, you can evoke certain moods or emotions that can go beyond simply illuminating your photo and create a more complete experience for the viewer. This great video demonstrates how this is done by showing two vastly different moods made using creative lighting.
The vast majority of studio strobes have modeling lights built in, which most of us think of as being useful for showing how the shadows are going to fall when we take a shot, but they are useful for more than just that. This quick and helpful video will give you three reasons why you should always use the modeling lights on your strobes.
Elinchrom focus has mostly been on light shapers and strobes ever since they've existed. However, the ELM8 they released last year may be a hint they are serious about getting into continuous light. After four months of use, here's my opinion on the Elinchrom ELM8.
If you are not proficient in artificial lighting, it can see a bit like its own world with its own language. Never fear, though, this great video will get you up to speed on what studio strobes are, how they work, and how to integrate them into your personal workflow.
Recently I got my hands on the new Fujifilm GFX 100 medium format camera and thought it would be fun to create a free fashion photography tutorial showing my entire workflow. The goal of this shoot was to create a bunch of different looking styled shoots using natural light in combination with a few strobes.
Are you up to a creative challenge today? No matter how many lights you have in your kit, I challenge you to shoot your next portrait or film using just one light.
Macro photography can be a fun and exciting step for a hobbyist or the full time photographer looking to shoot something different. It takes patience (in most cases if you are working with small creatures) and a keen eye for that interesting shot. So what do you need to know in order to start into macro photography?
In this video, I go behind the scenes on a drink photography photoshoot working with stylist Natalie Garforth, from set-building through to post-production with a professional retoucher.
Portrait photography requires studio strobes, softboxes, along with grip equipment like light stands, and C-stands, not to mention lots of money to acquire all the required equipment. Without this equipment, your images are going to look like your local police department’s Saturday night mugshots. Do you really need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to get good portrait shots?
The past several years we’ve seen an amazing amount of new and portable lighting options in the photographic industry with breakout performers like Godox taking on the giants of the lighting world like Broncolor and Profoto. One of the biggest names in North America for lighting has been ominously silent but Paul C. Buff has finally responded and just released a new mid-tier performer that is sure to make many of Buff’s lighting fans excited for what’s coming next.
When you are new to artificial lighting, it can be a bit difficult to navigate the world of modifiers — how they work and how they will render an image. Nonetheless, they are essential equipment for anyone who wants to learn how to light a photo properly. This excellent video will introduce you to five common lighting modifiers, including how they work and how they will make your photos look.
There are lots of rules when it comes to lighting, from the inverse square law, to lighting ratios, and everything in-between. But in this video, Lindsay Adler talks to us about the most important rule in lighting.
Learning the alphabet is the first step to becoming a great writer. Learning basic lighting setups with just one key light is essential for every photographer taking their first steps in portraiture.
If you’re diving into using strobes for the first time or if you are still learning how to use additive lighting in your photography, then definitely check out these three misconceptions that many photographers have about shooting with flash.
Lighting can be as simple or as complex as you make it. As someone who uses light meters myself, I struggle to articulate why using this handy tool can be a far more efficient way to light a scene. In this informative video, the simplicity of lighting a portrait using ratios is explained far better than I ever could!
Have you ever gone to the movies and was blown away by the lighting and cinematography of a certain scene and wish you could go home and recreate that look yourself? The problem usually arises that you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars of lights accessible to you. In this quick video, learn how you can achieve a cinematic lighting scheme on any budget.
A lot of the work photographers do in modifying and controlling light for portraiture comes down to softening the light to render facial features in a more flattering way. But that does not mean that hard light does not have its place, and this quick and great video discusses three good reasons to try it out along with showing lots of examples.
Recently Caleb Pike demonstrated an old trick with new tech, and it’s eye opening how much lighting one can cram into a tiny space these days.
When you are new to lighting, you might think you need a black background to take photos with, well, a black background, but you might be surprised to know that with some careful technique, you can make even a white wall into a black background. This great video video will give you a very practical lesson in lighting to show you how it affects the look of your background.
