Fstoppers Original Articles

Leigh Campbell served in the military for six years as a photographer, documenting the war in Iraq. Learn how his time in the service shaped his commercial photography career.

The other day, I had my first real accident with my Inspire 2 and I learned a lot from it. After flying her for about two years, I ended up making a really stupid mistake and crashing into a tree.

Once you learn how to make Parkinson's law work for you as a photographer, you'll be taking your career to a whole new level in no time.

There's yet another short film in your feed. You play it, and a few minutes later, you wonder why it ended in such a meaningless and abrupt way. Sound familiar?

Some of us can't afford or can't justify buying a full macro lens but still want to try out the mysterious macro photography world. So, what's a cheap and easy way to do it?

Get your eyes ready for some truly beautiful shots of the sky shared to our ongoing weekly photo theme by talented Fstoppers readers.

Last week, I asked Fstoppers readers what their plans were for the inevitable moment when Canon and Nikon release professional-level full frame mirrorless cameras. I was genuinely surprised not only by how many readers responded, but where their opinions fell. Here are the results.

Light trails are a perennial favorite for long exposure shooters, and a right of passage for any budding photographer. So why restrict yourself to cars in a street scene when the sky's your limit?

Straight to the point today: is photography, or the pursuit of anything creative or artistic as a legitimate profession, a thankless pursuit and vocation?

As with land-based photography, patience and planning can go a long way underwater. And while some aspects of topside image composition are the same below the surface, there are other elements at play underwater that you should keep in mind when composing your shots.

Legally, the first amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of speech. Given the current trend of hysteria on social media towards just about everything, is it right being censored by political activists and guardians of moral hygiene in the artistic world?

Light can easily make or break a photograph. While there is truly no such thing as bad light, there is a good and bad way to use light.

When it comes to protecting our photography data we all know we should do it, but for a lot of us, we don’t know how to protect our data from loss. Should we use a RAID 1 or a RAID 6, striping or mirroring, NAS or DAS? I use KISS, or Keep It Simple Stupid.

Sometimes it pays to appreciate the one you’re with.

Monte Isom is a super successful commercial photographer based out of New York City. However, before he made a career of his own, he assisted some of the biggest names in the photography world. In this video he recaps his experience shooting the president of the United States of America.

Retouching is one of the main reasons most photographers use Photoshop. Understanding how and when to use the specialized tools can be trial and error until you find which works best for your workflow. A few tips on what each tool is doing behind the scenes can help with these choices.

When making Stories for Instagram, it's not always ideal to chat straight into the camera, and speaking while presenting a single photograph or a webpage that you've created can be fiddly. These simple tricks make the process a lot easier, and simplifying the workflow, making it more enjoyable.

Photography is a lot of fun, but it can also be a very lonely journey filled with worry and self-doubt. It is important to surround yourself with other like-minded artists and people who inspire you and that you can learn from.

“My client wants all the raw images,” or, “My client wants to see the raw images. What do I do?” The general consensus seems to be a resounding no, but handing over raw files to your client might be a great idea. Here's why.

What does it take to create a body of work that provides a lasting legacy? As Thomas J. O'Halloran shows, it's about always being in the right place at the right time.

I experienced one of the photographic highlights of my life capturing the beauty of the midnight sun on my recent trip to the Lofoten Islands in Norway. Here are three tips on how to make the most of your next summer journey north of the Arctic Circle.

In the early throes of your career, demanding clients with highly specified briefs can seem far more trouble than they are worth. I initially would be far more interested in the clients who offered creative freedom, but looking back, I believe I was wrong to do so. I'll explain why.

A video production technique is any method that you use to capture video. It's often incorporated into a specific style of video production, such as live event video production or staged video production. Here are a few things that you should consider when trying to determine which techniques to use.

For a lot of us, being able to spend all of our time taking photographs is very enticing. Here are five markers that suggest you are ready to make the leap from amateur to professional.

Have you ever thought that your photography may have a positive impact on someone's life so much so it helps them cope during traumatic life transitions and illnesses? Because it can.

When i think drones, I think of an amazing tool used for photography. However, there are many other uses for drones and FPV is one of them that has slowly been benefiting me when it comes to practicing my flying.

I had a party, but no one showed up. We made due anyway and came up with a worthy list to get us into next week.

We are on the precipice of another major shift in the photography industry, as Canon and Nikon prepare to unleash professional-level full frame mirrorless cameras. Are you going to buy one, or is it too little, too late?

With drones being so accessible and easy to use, everybody is taking aerial shots these days. But there's nothing like crawling into a tiny Cessna and exploring the skies from a plane for yourself! Here’re 10 tips on how you can do just that.

I'm a big fan of speed lights, and I pretty much use them for almost all of my personal and professional shooting. That said, I'm not always using the biggest and the baddest the major brands have to offer, even professionally.

The power of a photograph is beyond time. As photographers who pursue various genres, it is also important that we understand how it is a social tool. I recently traveled to Kerala, India to document one such ancient tradition.

There is a tremendous amount of magic hiding just below the surface of our lakes, rivers, and seas that has yet to be documented. And while underwater photography certainly has a few barriers to entry, if approached in a pragmatic way the initial shift can be quite simple. Let’s dive in.

If you have never been to Copenhagen in Denmark, I highly recommend going in summer. All the locals are out enjoying the sun and heat. This 3 hour photo walk is only an introduction to the most common places you must visit.

Photography dreams can come true, and for Adam Coppola, that’s just what happened this year when he opened his newly completed photography studio. I had an opportunity to tour Coppola's newly completed dream studio a few weeks ago.

They say that when you find a career that you love, you will never have to work a day in your life. That’s bull. Well, sort of.

When Lightroom mobile was initially released a few years back, I, like many Adobe users at that time, was curious, and found myself finger tapping all the way to my phone's respective App Store to download it. After that addition to my phone was made, the once fresh home screen icon for a long time sat irrelevant, and relegated to the end of the bench, placed inside of a seldom seen, far lateral, home screen folder.

A photographer has found an amazingly cool way to capture and honor the art of facial tattoos from the indigenous New Zealand culture the Māori. Using the wet collodion process, the subjects appear to have their ink magically removed in portraits hung next to modern digital photos creating a surreal before and after effect.

With social media being such a critical part of a photographer's online presence, developing simple strategies for Instagram is a key part of presenting your work to the world. These simple tips will help you to grow your following and make the process enjoyable as well.

DJI's latest advertisement for the Mavic Air is incredibly woke. Not only is it targeting the growing number of women heading outdoors in search of adventure, it also pokes a little bit of fun at gender politics in the world of filmmaking and photography.

Internationally acclaimed nature and travel photographer Richard Bernabe said, “KelbyOne offers the best and most comprehensive photography instruction on the internet. No question.” However, KelbyOne’s Pro Plan was out of the reach of some aspiring photographers, which is why they cherry-picked over 300 of their top online courses and created a new subscription tier called the Plus Plan for $9.99 a month. If you just wanted to try it out, you could binge watch a whole bunch of classes including a ton of Photoshop and Lightroom courses for 30 days since you can cancel anytime.

What makes a strong composition? Let’s talk about how you can achieve striking landscape photos in which less is more. Here’s a practical set of tips for minimizing clutter.

There isn’t much worse than doling out a substantial amount of money and ending up on a less than stellar workshop. I’ve been there, done that, so here are a few thoughts on how to have a great photography workshop experience.

I am trying to brush up my photography skills in areas I am not overly familiar with. This week it was beer photography, and boy did I learn a lot.

Go to any live music event and if the crowd is big enough, there will be photographers snapping away for the first three songs. Concert photography is a blast, but does that blast produce bucks?

The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2017, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

We all know that you can make nice photographs with just one light. But is that sustainable at all? Aren't you too limited?

No one can deny Canon's prowess when it comes to making lenses. Fans of the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM have long waited for an update, myself included.

I’ve saved raw files for every shoot I’ve done since I’ve started. While I rarely revisit old shoots, there are good reasons that I should do just that more often.

This week's theme on the WeeklyFstop was something we all need but rarely appreciate as much as we should. Our readers got their feet wet with an awesome top ten list all featuring photos of water.

You may have read an article about how Getty removed their "sexiest fans" gallery due to receiving backlash from social media. What's interesting is Vogue Magazine posted a similar type of article about men, which didn't seem to receive much in terms of outrage. Is it more offensive to objectify women than it is to objectify men?