These Are The Finalists For The Fstoppers 2011 BTS Contest
We’re so excited to announce the finalists for our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest. Thank you to EVERYONE who participated. The videos this year really blew us away! We were forced to choose our top 12 videos to make it to the finals instead of the the top 10 we had planned. From this stage, they will be sent off to our celebrity judges for the final round who will choose a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winner! Good luck!
1. The 360 Project by Ryan Enn Hughes
Final Product:
This video was one of the first videos submitted and it caused a huge amount of interest. Obviously we have seen setups like this before but the power really lies in the final editing. Because the final product was not simply a single photograph, Ryan Hughes had to submit a behind the scenes video as well as a final product video. Lucky for us we have two final products, one featuring ballet and another featuring breakdancing, which you can watch below.
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2. The Whistleblower – Music Video by SIX NINE THREE
Behind The Scenes
Final Video
When we said we didn’t want to see anymore “Music Videos” what we were referring to was those uninformative highlight videos of photographers running around shooting everything without any substance. Luckily we did get some amazing true Music Videos with behind the scenes footage of how they created their final production. One such project was The Whistleblower by Maya+Nadia of SixNineThree. Just like any other video production, contestants had to include a behind the scenes video along with the final video. Check out both above to see an interesting use of a 3D pyramid.
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3. The Black Light Warriors by Julius Ise
We received so many videos about lighting, and everyone tried to come up with something just a little different. This video by Julius Ise stood out to us because he decided not to use strobes or natural light at all. Instead, Julius painted his subjects with fluorescent paint and lit his tribal portraits with a blacklight. Of course we’ve all seen images that use blacklight instead of 5000K lighting but we were all so impressed with the theme and final images that we knew our judges would enjoy watching this one.
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4. Street Fashion Photography with Nick Fancher by Andy Newman
When we first featured Nick Faucher’s How To Shoot Fashion Quickly In Any Location, people freaked out over his simple no nonsense product and portrait lighting. Blog after blog started featuring his original video. Clearly photographers were learning and enjoying Nick’s product work. So it was no surprise when Nick submitted a second video showing how he photographs up to 10 products a day for JackThreads. It’s easy to get consumed with perfect lighting and debating which light modifier you should utilize. Watching Nick shoot campaign after campaign with barebulb speedlights was probably as refreshing to us as it was to most of our readers. Congrats to Andy Newman and Nick Fancher for making another killer BTS video about their photography.
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5. Go Pro Wedding by Jaroslav Repta
One of the most challenging aspects of this contest was to come up with something not only creative but also informative. Having started out as wedding photographers ourselves, we know how saturated the wedding market can be and how much information there is already out there about wedding photograph. So when Jaroslav Repta created his Go Pro Wedding video, we were shocked at how easily he created something we had never seen before. Jaroslav not only allowed viewers to see what a day in the life looks like for a wedding photographer but he also stopped to explain some of his go to setups that work day in and day out. This video was a huge success with our readers so we knew this had to be included in the final mix. Check out the original Go Pro Wedding post here if you missed out on the conversation the first time.
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6. The Little People by Robert Simpson
It’s fair to say that Robert Simpson was the hardest working photographer to enter the Fstoppers 2011 contest. With at least 9 full blown entries, Robert proved that not only was there plenty of time to photography and film a contest entry, but there was also plenty of ideas to explore. Our favorite video of his is titled The Little People. Using nothing more than a Nikon D70 (yes Seven Zero) and kit lens, Robert created an interesting image that definitely pulls some influence from one of my favorite childhood books The Indian In The Cupboard. Congrats to Robert on all of his contest submissions and for making the final 12 with this entry.
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7. Trapped Under Ice by Cory Albrechtson
Cory Albrechtson wanted to take his contest entry into a more eerie direction, and his final image definitely got our attention. The way Cory constructed this shoot wasn’t rocket science however the images he got afterwards are fantastic. The post production really made a difference with the images in achieving the scary look. This video is simple, informative but also very creative. Even if you never plan on making your own horror movie style image, Cory’s frozen corpse shoot should inspire you to take your own concepts to the next level production wise.
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8. The Never Ending Fashion Shoot by Amy Lynn Straub
Click the image below to see the finished product.
Amy Lynn Straub was another young photographer who instantly impressed us with her ambitious photo idea. Running with the idea of a never ending 360 pano, Amy was able to stitch together multiple fashion photos of her friends into one seamless clothing campaign. Not only are the photographs themselves great but the amount of work required to produce the final interactive media showed us how much thought went into this project. Like all of these contest finalists, Amy’s original post The Never Ending Fashion Shoot sparked a lot of positive conversation.
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9. This Is How We Do Weddings….by Justin Wojtczak
As professional wedding photographers we are extremely critical when we see “how to shoot wedding” type videos. After only a few minutes of watching this video we knew Justin Wojtczak’s submission was going to make to the finals. Not only is the video fun to watch but it is also fantastic information. When you see the shots that these guys are getting, you will see what we mean.
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10. The Making Of ‘Grolsch Idents’ by Curtis & Kar Productions
Final Product:
We cannot say enough good things about this behind the scenes video. The concept is extremely simple but the finished product is amazing. Curtis & Kar took something that had the potential to be really boring and they made it fun to watch and wildly informative. Even if you don’t shoot video there is so much to learn from this BTSV.
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11. The HDR Strobed Action Snowmobile Shoot by Andy Kawa
We got so many submissions this year that it took us weeks to finally see them all. This video by Andy Kawa was one of the last videos that we watched. We really appreciate the fact that Andy packed this video full of useful information. When he had lighting issues, he didn’t edit it out, he showed us how he worked through it. After watching his BTSV we felt like we could attempt a similar type of shoot without any issue.
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12. The Chase by Eric Herrmann
Click the image below to see the finished product OR using your smartphone log onto www.thechasepano.com
“The Chase” by Eric Herrmann was one of the entries that made us all look at each other and go “wow”. These guys had an incredible concept and they made it happen even with major obstacles (like having to turn red cars black). The finished image from this shoot was probably our favorite from this entire contest. We all appreciated the fact that these guys did something completely out of the ordinary and they did it very well.
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Congratulations to everyone who has made it this far. Your videos will now be judged by Chase Jarvis, Vincent Laforet, Stacey Pearsal, and Scott Kelby. At this point you have a 1 in 4 chance to win one of our massive prize packages.
