Fstoppers Original Articles

There have been many books written on the subject of face anatomy and how it impacts not only our perception of someone but our reaction to them as well. There are features we deem as authoritative, feminine, funny, somber, and so on. With over 7 billion people in the world we've got quite a few unique faces out there, and yet, certain features and proportions are universally and subconsciously interpreted as "appealing".

There is one thing above any piece of gear or software that can improve the quality of our image making. Best of all, it's free. Call me cheap, but I'm constantly trying to think of ways and means to improve my work for either no or low financial cost. I want to try and showcase some ways we can improve without necessarily buying new stuff and this article kicks that thinking off.

Yesterday, I showed you the process of pre-producing a successful photoshoot and used a recent session as an example on all the steps it takes to put together a successful session with a large team. Today, I put together a breakdown of the entire production and post production process on creating a successful portrait session and a behind the scenes look into what all goes into it.

"Trevor, I see that a lot of people are visiting my site, but no one is contacting me for business. What can I do better?" I get this question quite a bit either via email or at the workshops I teach and while there is no magic solution that will work for everyone, I'd love to share what has been the biggest game changer for me in my business.

Nick Suarez is a beauty and fashion photographer based out of New York City. Early in his photographic career, he has already developed some pretty impressive skills. It’s that visual competency combined with his high level of photographic literacy that give him an edge with the next generation of photographers.

Ever spend hours editing photos, only to review them later and wonder what you were thinking? The environment and mindset we're in will greatly effect the final results of our work, and can lead to countless hours of re-editing simple mistakes. Here are a few steps I've put together that help me ensure that my final product is always the best representation of what I'm capable of, simply by recognizing the conditions that my mind and eyes need to work properly, and incorporating it into my work strategy.

Chilling to the bone, Joshua Hoffine's children horror series is one that will keep haunting you even with the lights on. He uses his own daughters as the terrified dreamers in the images, and the results have definitely caught the attention of many people, going viral recently. We get to know the man behind the maniacal machinations and how he captures these childhood fears.

What does it mean to have a successful business? What does it mean to have a successful family? What does it mean to have a successful life?

Obviously, there is not one definition for success, although there may be some social norms that we base our definitions on. Maybe it's making a certain amount of money. Maybe it's staying married for a certain amount of years. Maybe it has nothing to do with either of those!

When scooping other sources, being the first is king. Everyone knows that and the race is constantly moving faster and faster to do so.

There has been some buzz around companies like CrowdMedia, Scoopshot, Rawporter and Blotter whose sole purpose is to get imagery out to major news outlets that have been scraped off of Twitter and Instagram.

It’s very easy to get used to the option of being able to “spray and pray” – shoot a nearly obscene amount of photographs and hope for a few that meander over the line to above average. I know I can be guilty of this sometimes – modern shutters are both a benefit and a crutch. So I issued myself a challenge: go out and shoot without looking.

As a wedding photographer I am always on the hunt for that perfect second shooter. Over the last 4 years I have shot 120+ weddings and worked with over 70 different second shooters. Most of them have been fantastic but I have always thought it would be nice to have a list of second shooter tips I could send them before the wedding day. I'd love to hear what you think of the tips in the comments section below. Let me know what I left out and feel free to share stories (good or bad) about working with second shooters in the past.

Running a photography business is hard work. As many of you know, it's usually more pencil pushing and email writing than standing behind a camera taking photos. With it being among the art community, it's incredibly easy to find excuses on why your business isn't reaching its full potential. But is it your business thats lacking, or your motivation?

In case you missed it, Google recently rolled out a pretty big change to their Gmail system: tabs. The new layout comes standard with a few, but you can also add your own. One of the standard options is the “Promotions” tab which, as you can imagine, is quite good at catching and segmenting marketing emails. This is great for users, but scary for marketers, especially given the data MailChimp just released.

There are times when I find myself shooting the same stuff or using the same lighting setup over and over again. Repetition helps to improve and fine-tune my skills, but sometimes it just feels boring and degrading, let alone useless for my portfolio.

But as much as I dislike feeling stuck and repeating myself, I now realize how such times in fact help me to become a better artist and shooter. It's usually the desire to entertain myself and experiment that leads me to new personal artistic discoveries. It's when I'm bored and want to "spice it up", I start searching for new lighting ideas, tricks and techniques.

As many of you know, I earn my living as a wedding photographer, It’s a job that I wouldn’t trade for the world, but occasionally I get the opportunity to do something a little different. In this case, it's about as far removed from wedding photography as you can get. If you remember at the end of last year I showed you how to photograph a World War Two machine gun, this time though, we’re going after something just a little bit bigger.

Color reproduction, loading color profiles and calibrating monitors & printers can become an endless tangled mess that leads to frustrating headaches.

Proper use of a color chart can get you a lot closer to actual colors and save you a lot of time dialing in your post production work by adding a simple step to your workflow.

A couple years back I pickup the X-Rite ColorChecker Card and by doing so I have saved a ton of post processing time.

Quite often when Facebook rolls out new changes people start raising their pitchforks and torches. This time however Facebook got it right and I have a feeling it is going to be nothing but high praise. They are rolling out new fan page analytics (insights) that are quite impressive and definitely worth checking out. While many of you might not have received it just yet, I have a sneak peek and I have a feeling you will love what you'll see.

I have had the privilege of traveling all over the world as a photographer and love shooting photos of locals. They always light up seeing the images of themselves. However, I realized that while they loved seeing the images on the back of my camera, I was missing something important. Many of these people, especially those in third world countries, don't even have a single printed image of themselves. I found a way to change all that.

Since the dawn of digital cameras, the megapixel has been the one stat that camera manufacturers and uneducated consumers identified with quality. Sure, back in 2003, the difference between 1.3MP and 3MP was astounding, but in recent years, its became much more arbitrary. With phones like the Nokia Lumia 1020 sporting a 40+MP sensor, is the war back upon us? If so, how can we kill it?

Last week we saw a few news worthy announcements from a couple of the larger photography portals. Livebooks went dark from their clients until the announcement was made that they are now under Wedding Wire and PhotoShelter released their new Beam portfolio service. It seemed fitting that a post be put together to compare and contrast a handful of the larger services and find out which are best suited for photographers needs.

Whenever I take a moment and look at landscape photography it's like a tiny escape. An escape from the busy commotion of the cities that we live in and the chaos of the people in those cities. Most landscape photography is calm and serene with a beautiful array of colors acting as a canvas. Photographer, Benjamin Edelstein known for his stunning work sits down with us to talk about what it is to be a landscape photographer.

If you're like me, and you upgraded your camera body and Lightroom version before updating your RAM and Processor, you've probably experienced speed issues with your workflow. Lightroom 5 has come to the rescue with the amazing addition of Smart Previews. This is going to revolutionize your workflow!

Photographers are artists. That is one fact that the original photographers spent years convincing others to be truth. But how often do we consider the models to be artists? I would wager rarely, if ever. Model Jen Brook challenges that mentality by acting as the creative director on a group of images she calls her “Dreamcatcher Project.” She works with a group of photographers to capture her vision, and the results show that she has the “eye” as well as the unusual ability to create through others.

A single photograph from a photography session barely shows you all the planning and execution that goes into a photoshoot. Dozens of ideas, shooting styles and concepts often come into play in the pre production, not to mention the hours that can be spent in post production as well. As a result, I decided to give you all a breakdown of my recent photoshoot with good friend and model, Harmony.

Not since Matthew Brady’s work documenting the Civil War has the tintype photographic process been used on the battlefield. Staff sergeant Ed Drew, an aerial gunner in the California Air National Guard, brought tintype back to the theater of war to photograph his fellow soldiers during his deployment from April to June in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

Camp 4 Collective is an adventure film production group with clients like RedBull, The North Face, and National Geographic, so they are often found at the edge of the world, camera equipment in tow. Recently, some of the Camp 4 team traveled to Alaska to shoot some aerial footage. In this video, Anson Fogel explains the Cineflex helicopter camera system, and in the full post he and Tim Kemple answer my questions about its controls, production costs, and what it's like to play in helicopters.

Editing takes time, quite often it takes a lot of time and many of the steps can be quite repetitive and boring. The best thing I've ever done for myself to speed up this process is memorizing keyboard shortcuts, so I've put together this list of five resources (in no particular order) that I've found to practice familiarity with these shortcuts and become more comfortable with the programs themselves. In order to cater to the largest audience I will be focusing on Adobe-tailored tools, however some may crossover into other programs.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could open your inbox and not have to worry about sorting through all the spam to get to the messages that you actually want to read? About 6 months ago I learned of a tool that has been helping me do just that. The tool allows me to unsubscribe from emails with one click and combine all the other commercial emails (the ones I actually want to read) into one easy to read digest without all the clutter in my inbox. A true game changer for my email.

It's easy to overlook just how powerful the RAW processing engine can be. It's also pretty easy just throw an image into Photoshop and deal with it there, but RAW is where all the information is - and a dynamic RAW file is the most important aspect of developing your image. You will never have more information to work with than what is in your RAW, so it is important to draw every bit of tone out of it that you can - especially when it comes to maximizing the tonal range in the shadows and the highlights.

Combining her love for landscapes and risk taking, photographer Jody Macdonald is able to capture some of the worlds most gorgeous landscapes, from 20,000ft in the air. By paragliding, Jody photographs some of the worlds most beautiful places, with a perspective previously unseen, and the results are stunning.

On the Fourth of July, legions of photography enthusiasts like you will head out with their tripods to make images of firework displays. To minimize your failures on location, here is a quick primer to insure that you are in the ballpark to make successful images when the explosions begin.

There are many different surfaces that you can shoot your food photography on. You can use a table in your kitchen, a table in a restaurant, the floor, or any other flat surface that you can find. When selecting a surface, the colors, patterns, and textures of the surface will have a great effect on the look and feel of your final image. With the background playing such an important role in your image, there should be some thought put into what you shoot on. The best way to control this is to make your own backgrounds! Let me show you why wooden planks are my favorite surface to shoot on.

In this interview, I speak with Russ Turner, a photographer who is relatively new to shooting fantasy portraiture, but has already received awards and praise for the quality of his work. Russ talks about working with costumed models, how he incorporates Photoshop, and shares some of the places where an aspiring shooter can get started doing photography in this genre.