No matter how uncomfortable it might feel to send out a photography contract at the beginning of your commercial photography journey, having a robust contract in place is essential for creating professional relationships with your clients.
A 50mm lens with a wide aperture is one of the most versatile a photographer can carry, able to handle everything from portraits to low-light events coverage. For photographers looking for some of the best quality they can get from a 50mm lens, there is the Sony FE 50mm f/1.2 GM, and this great video review takes a look at the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in practice.
When it comes to creating a professional-level portrait, knowing how to light, pose, and photograph your subject is only half the battle. A great portrait also needs a strong edit to be complete. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to edit a portrait from start to finish and show you some helpful tips along the way.
Skylum, known for their AI-enabled Luminar Neo software, has launched a new update. To celebrate, they are offering a special discount to Fstoppers readers! Read on to find out what’s new and how you can save up to 50% on the purchase.
SmugMug, known for its photography management and sales platform, is launching a new marketing campaign titled “This Lens.” Aimed at celebrating the power of photographers to change perspectives and the world, “This Lens” aims to tell stories of real-life photographers and their pursuits.
Take a nice subject, awesome conditions, build up a pleasing composition, and you will get a great photograph. But there is still something important missing for getting it to world class. Therefore, we have to go even one step further.
Street photography is a unique and challenging genre that requires fast reactions, solid technique, the ability to anticipate action, and a dose of creativity. If you would like to improve your street photography work, check out this fantastic video tutorial that discusses five common mistakes photographers make and how to fix them or avoid them in the first place.
If you fancy yourself as a good pet photographer or think you have some images of pets that can beat the best of them, enter this year's Comedy Pet Photo Awards and earn a chance to win more than $2,000 in cash. Here are some of the best entries so far.
The 4th of July is just about here, and that means fireworks will soon be filling the skies all around the United States. They make for fantastic photography subjects, and they can be a great technical challenge as well. If you are thinking of heading out to capture some images, check out this helpful video tutorial that will give you a range of tips to ensure you come home with the best possible shots.
One of the biggest mistakes I made early on as a headshot photographer was using the dreaded phrase, “I'll fix it in post.” In today's article and accompanying video, I share five reasons why I never say this to my clients, and why you shouldn't either.
Great cinematography can elevate an average video far above its station, and conversely, poor cinematography can damage an otherwise great picture. In this video, Mark Bone goes through the six most important rules that he believes every cinematographer and Director of Photography ought to know.
The Canon EOS R3 has some of the most advanced capabilities and features the company has ever put in a camera, making it an appealing option for a wide range of creatives, particularly sports and wildlife photographers. This great video review takes a look at the camera and the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in the field.
With so many new methods to create images, photography has gone beyond simply just taking a photo. This new device from MIOPS brings the photographer closer to the images they envision by making the process simpler.
There are few camera series more iconic and recognizable than the Hasselblad 500 series, which has become a popular collector's camera that still commands a high price on the used market today. This great video review takes a look at a camera from the series and what it is like to shoot with seven decades after they first hit the market.
Few images are more iconic in landscape photography than the long exposure of water. It is about a lot more than simply throwing an ND filter on the front of your lens and going to town, however. This great video follows a photographer as he shoots and edits a long exposure of a seascape and offers a lot of helpful insights into and tips on his creative decisions and process.
Only if you buried your head for the last few months would you have missed the enthusiasm for the OM-1. The new camera from the company previously known as Olympus caused quite a stir. How is it faring in the real world? I've owned the OM-1 for a little over three months. Am I still as enthusiastic about it as I was when I first bought it?
In our profession, we think of every piece in our gear closet as designed to take pictures. If you were assigned to walk into your gear closet and redesign one piece for the purpose of saving human lives, what would you create? North American company Dranganfly has taken drones and has created gear that is used in new ways for smarter and safer warfare.
Sony mirrorless cameras have become some of the most capable and popular cameras on the market. With tiny cameras such as the Sony a7C and high-resolution systems like the a7R IV, there are plenty of options available for almost all photography genres. This seems especially to be the case when you put 144 Sony cameras together into a synchronized rig.
Getting views on YouTube isn’t easy, especially now in 2022. With so many of us hoping to get more eyes on our work and possibly make YouTube a successful side hustle, the struggle is real when trying to get any traction in the genre of photography.
Being new to photography can be a bit daunting, requiring you to tackle a variety of technical and creative ideas and approaches simultaneously. However, there is one lesson every new photographer should learn as soon as possible, as it will save them a lot of money and headache down the road and help them become better faster. This important video discusses the topic and how to get yourself on the right track.
Hasselblad's X1D and X1D II 50C medium format mirrorless cameras have achieved some popularity for being incredibly portable while still offering extremely high levels of image quality. An updated body is expected fairly soon, and it looks like Hasselblad is planning some major upgrades to the camera.
The craft of photography has arguably changed more in the last 20 years than in the century before it. With each improvement to the equipment comes the inevitable groans of many photographers who believe the technology takes away from the craft. Is that well-founded or mistaken?
Ultra-wide angle zoom lenses are useful for a wide range of applications, with professional models generally employing an f/2.8 aperture. However, not all photographers need to spend the kind of money or lug around the weight that comes with such a lens. Nikon's NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S offers all the benefits of an ultra-wide angle zoom without that bulk or expensive price, and this great video takes a look at the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it.
While Lightroom and Photoshop are probably the most used post-processing programs, they are far from the only options. Many professionals prefer Capture One for their work, particularly for the way it renders color and for its tethering capabilities. If you are new to the program, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you how to edit a portrait using it.
Yousuf Karsh is widely regarded as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the twentieth century. In this essay, I discuss five ways that studying Karsh's life and photos can impact our own work as portrait artists.
We all know that the best gear isn't essential to creating great photographs, but this camera is really pushing those limits! It's no wonder James Popsys loves it.
There has been a huge rise in the popularity of portraits with shallow depth of field in the last decade, and while those can be compelling, they are certainly not the only way to shoot. In fact, you can give your images an extra dose of visual interest by integrating the environment around your subject in clever ways. This helpful video tutorial will show you just how to go about doing so.
Canon makes a lot of fantastic portrait lenses that fit a wide range of needs, aesthetic preferences, price ranges, and more. Four of their best are the RF 85mm f/1.2 L USM, RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM, EF 135mm f/2L USM, and RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM, and this excellent video comparison takes a look at all four to help you decide which is right for you.
Life as an artist is a never-ending series of peaks and valleys full of both joy and inevitable disappointment. But adding a bit of routine into a life seemingly devoid of it can make you both a better photographer and a happier human being.
A 35mm lens with a wide maximum aperture is highly versatile, useful for everything from portraits to landscapes, astrophotography, and more. Such lenses can easily run north of $2,000, which, at $799, is what makes Samyang's 35mm f/1.4 AF II quite the attractive option. This excellent video review takes a look at the lens and the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in practice.
Whenever I'm on assignment, I'll typically bring a film camera along with me. For breaking news work, they're not particularly useful; no editor in their right mind is going to wait for me to return home, develop, process, edit, and upload my film frames, no matter how good the final product might be. However, this lens has made me rethink my process a bit.
A camera bag can carry a lot of stuff. It fits a camera and lenses, but also other things that may or may not be helpful for your photography. Sometimes, there’s too much stuff that seems to be essential at first, but isn’t used at all. How many things have you collected in your camera bag?
As a photography instructor, one of the most common questions I see from students is about back-button focus. It's easy to gloss over it to keep things simple for new users, but doing so on the latest generation of mirrorless cameras leaves a lot of useful features on the table. It's worth learning.
A standard zoom lens with an f/2.8 aperture is one of the most versatile options a photographer or filmmaker can have in their bag, capable of tackling a multitude of scenarios ranging from wedding coverage to landscape photography. Such lenses are not cheap, though the Tamron 17-70mm f/2.8 Di III-A VC RXD seeks to buck that trend by coming in at just $799. This great video review takes a look at the new lens and the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in practice.
The film look continues to gain popularity, and whether you use it as part of your personal aesthetic or for clients, knowing how to create it from digital images is a good skill to have. This helpful video tutorial will show you everything you need to know to create the look using nothing but Lightroom.
If you've used Instagram in the past six months, you might have noticed the slow decline of photography on your feed. Reels are the main culprit of that change, but there's more to it than you might think.
A park is a fantastic place to shoot portraits, full of interesting architecture, compelling light, and eye-catching foliage. If you would like to explore your creativity a bit, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you five easy concepts for shooting portraits in a park.
A 35mm lens with a wide maximum aperture is one of the most useful and versatile optics a photographer can have in their bag, suitable for a huge range of applications, including weddings, astrophotography, portraits, and more. For Fuji shooters, there is the XF 23mm f/1.4 R LM WR lens, and this excellent video review takes a look at the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in real-world usage.
Another magnetic filter holder system option for landscape photographers. Let’s take a look at how this can improve your shooting process out in the field.
Machine learning and AI are quickly becoming commonplace with the tools every photographer uses. There are neural filters for Photoshop, AI enhancement tools in Luminar Neo and PortraitPro, and even programs that use AI to generate captions for photos.
Luminar Neo from Skylum has added a much awaited feature: background removal in portraits. Removing a person's image from a photo is nothing new, but it's generally time-consuming if the background is not simple or solid. Luminar Neo does it usually in one click, and if you're a professional or an advanced hobbyist, it is a time-saver.
You can certainly just head out with your camera and create photos as you happen upon interesting scenes or subjects, but when it comes to shooting things like landscapes and cityscapes, planning ahead can really help you get next-level images. This helpful video tutorial features an experienced photographer discussing how he plans a shoot and showing some useful tools to give you a better chance of coming home with the shot you want.
After shooting more sunsets than I can count along the Pacific coast, I've experienced many different conditions and learned a plethora of valuable lessons. These are the most important tips I found throughout that journey that will help you the next time you're shooting along the coast.
Color grading is a good chance to add your personal touch to an image and to take it from good to memorable. It is a deceptively complex thing, though, and it takes a good eye and light touch to do it effectively. This helpful video tutorial will show you some great first steps and techniques for color grading images that are sure to get you up and running in no time.
Even if you follow all the guidelines for keeping your sensor free of dust, it is something that will probably happen to you at one time or another, and worse yet, you might not notice it until you are at home, looking at your images on your computer. Thankfully, though, it is not very difficult to take care of it using Lightroom, and this helpful video tutorial will show you how to quickly and easily take care of it.
In this behind the scenes video, I'm going to walk you through a pretty complex photograph I shot in our garage studio. Using strobes, LED lights, a crazy light modifier, and ACDSee's new photo editing software, Gemstone, this final image turned out much more interesting than I originally thought.
Summer is coming! Your kids are just a moment or two away from finishing the school year. If you want to keep them occupied with something you can share as they grow, check out Camp Canon, an online summer camp for photography and videography. Schools out for summer, schools out forever... why not encourage a love for photography?
It's hard to believe but the Nik Collection is 25 years old, going back to a commercial product that was very popular long ago. It was snagged by Google, then, as often happens, Google sold it to DXO, who has made a great many enhancements with each release.
Creating an eye-catching and successful food photo is about more than simply lighting and arranging the food in a compelling way; you need to be able to create a set that complements the food and enhances the overall mood of the image. This helpful video tutorial features an experienced food photographer discussing some ways you can go about doing that.
For more than 30 years, I tried different camera settings for my landscape photography. With the settings I use today, I don’t only feel more flexible, but they allow me to nail each of my photographs technically.
