Fstoppers Original Articles

Cable management is one task that for me is bizarrely fun and rewarding. In my last article, I wrote about creating a DIY portable charging station built out of a Craftsman tool box that is serving me quite well in the studio and in the field. Clients have been impressed with the simplicity and intentional design in keeping a lot of gear charged. It communicates quite a bit about how you take care of your investments. Here are a few tips to help you manage the clutter in your office or studio.

Thomas Stewart made headlines back in 2015 when he posted a rant about wedding guests and their mobile phones. Fast forward 3 years and things don't seem to be getting any better. So should we put the cameras away?

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, home to the most dangerous object that man has ever created, is more than an abandoned city and a crumbling nuclear reactor. A new book by historian Darmon Richter reveals the closest you can get to an authentic depiction of a huge swathe of land and its history, giving readers a view of Chernobyl that has never been seen before and may never be seen again.

All photographers can agree that you won't stay in business long if you do not charge for your work. But what if I told you that the best way to gain exposure to high-paying commercial clients was to give away your images for free? Today, we sit down with commercial and composite photographer Josh Rossi and explore the concept of free.

South African Photographer, Filmmaker, and Influencer Gareth Pon has recently been named the top African Instagrammer for the third consecutive year, and looking at his ridiculously eye-catching Instagram feed, it's easy to see why. I caught up with Gareth recently while he was speaking at a conference in Dublin alongside other content-creating heavyweights, such as Dan Rubin and Philip Bloom.

Every video surveillance system I've ever used has been horrible. Surprisingly, the cameras, no matter how cheap they are, are actually pretty high quality these days, but the software used to actually record and retrieve the footage is almost unusable.

Photographing a certain group of people or documenting lives and events can be really exciting. It can also be emotionally confusing, because we frequently have to enter a field and also leave it after a while.

Spots on your images caused by dust on the sensor can be frustrating and hard to deal with, especially when you have lots of images waiting to be retouched. Although most recent cameras have built-in sensor-cleaning mechanisms, the dust inside your camera should be removed completely in order to prevent existing dust particles from clinging onto the sensor again and again. There are lots of products on the market, but which one you should choose?

Editing software from Skylum has gone through a lot of changes over the past few years, and with its new software Luminar Neo, there's still lots of room for evolution in what the software can do for its users. HDR Merge was recently added as an expansion for the software, and this is one feature that had been asked for by its users for some time. Another feature that has been requested in forums quite frequently is the ability to stitch panoramas.

When it comes to DIY hacks, there are some absolute beauties out there that demonstrate the wonderfully creative imaginations that people have. It’s no different when it comes to photography, and these hacks I’m going to share with you today might be some of the most outrageous you’ve ever heard.

Staying focused is a premium in the 21st century, and nothing makes you feel more lost in the sauce than not knowing which way your lens is pointed. This method will help you stay focused and help create a system to save all the information you come across in a searchable database for future reference.

Do you have Gear Acquisition Syndrome? Are you a bit of a camera gear savant? Test your knowledge and let us know how you get on?

The camera technology in today's phones is one of the most competitive areas of modern electronics. Every big phone release leads with the specs of the camera. This includes megapixels, low light capabilities, auto focus, and of course HD video. While the capability to capture higher quality imagery has arrived, the included storage on the phones has essentially stayed in the 16GB to 32GB range. Since that storage has to share with the phone's operating system and all the apps, it is good to have all your photos on a constant conveyor belt to the cloud.

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 2016, we'll be featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

The voyage we opted to take is exactly that, an adventurous voyage and not a straight, smooth road to success. Remember that when you doubt yourself and question your potential. Unlike most occupations, the artist has no roadmap for their success. We’re not handed a list of classes to take in a preferred order created by the educational institute.

Contouring has become a popular technique that women use to give shape and enhance facial structure by using makeup. Since most men aren’t willing to use makeup during portrait shoots, I’ve devised a way for photographers to achieve the same results simply by using lighting techniques.

Creating a custom email signature is easy if all you want is plain text. It’s worth it to create your own HTML signature to stand out with something fresh. And it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds.

When you jump into doing photography professionally as a business, you quickly learn that your website’s search engine results are an essential part of making your business successful. Here’s how to improve your visibility on Google.

Do you love photography and hate numbers? Are you afraid you don’t know what you don’t know when it comes to starting a business? Here are nine critical items to consider before starting your photography business.

Wedding photography is not what it used to be. I don't mean this in a good way or a bad way, it just seems like with any advancement in technology comes a new challenge. Many couples today want both still photos and video of their wedding. This makes sense since it is often the biggest day of their life. Does that mean we now have videographers to deal with in our shots? No, it's a two-way street. We, as professionals, both have to work together to deliver the best possible product to the lucky couple. Saying someone got in the way means you didn't try hard enough.

The Super Bowl isn't only a competition to find out who is the best football team in the NFL, it's also a competition between mega brands to produce the year's best commercials. This year, NBC charged at least $5 million per 30 seconds of ad time. Who do you think got the most for their money?

The coronavirus has affected most of the world. In the UK, freelancers have been hit hard with no financial help until June at the earliest. Here are some brutal business lessons that we are all going to have to swallow.

Hey, who doesn't like a good vacation? If you're anything like me then a big part of the vacation is not just going to be what you see and what you eat, but a good portion of it will be what you get to take home with you.

Comparing your work can be one of the healthiest reminders of just how far you've come in your photography even if those early photos are a bit embarrassing. Come share yours!

There are a bunch of different ways to make your photos stand out: great light, gorgeous model, amazing locations, idealized retouching, but one that is often overlooked in favor of these less subtle approaches is color. We photographers tend to schedule a shoot, show up, capture what's there, and pat ourselves on the back for our genius, but what goes into the shoot before we schedule it can be just as important to the end result as what we do with our lights or our camera. Let's look at an example from my work for Lifetime. No lights. No reflectors. Just color.

Last year we released Photographing The World 3 with Elia Locardi. To film this tutorial we traveled around the world with Elia for 3 months, and in the process, we used a ton of new gear. In this video, we talk about everything we used to produce this tutorial.

Studio photographers are often admired for their lighting skills, and for good reason. Creating compelling portrait lighting is not only extremely difficult, but requires lighting gear, backdrops, and a shooting space. Editing can play either a small or large role in the final image. Have you ever wondered how much of what you see was created in camera, as opposed to in the editing room? In this article, I will show you some before and after images from my own studio work and lift the veil on my editing process.

If you’re making a film, obviously the focus needs to be on the story. It seems that’s become the popular counter to a lot of debates about the fine-tuning of an image. While Roger Deakin’s mentality of “the type of camera doesn’t matter” can hold true on most levels, if we’re going to take ourselves seriously as creatives we need to be actively making decisions about how and why we create. Why do you choose this over that? And how does it affect story? One of the most important decisions you make as a director of photography or cinematographer is about lenses.

What do you think of when you hear the term "composite"? Lots of hours with the Pen tool cutting out elements or fiddling around with the Refine Edge tool?

With a concept of traveling back through your childhood and experiencing that care-free, fantasy world of "pure imagination," Permagrin Films has put together an incredible time-lapse music video. In the article below, there's a full behind-the-scenes video and the producers of the film answer a few of my questions in a brief interview.

Whether you’re a photographer who carries a heavy camera kit or an image editor that spends all day hunched over a laptop, these seven gentle exercises can help alleviate pain and keep you feeling fresher for longer.

As the holiday season approaches, the towns and neighborhoods in my neck of rural Utah light up with the magical glow of Christmas lights, presenting a wonderful opportunity to capture dynamic scenes that are heavy on holiday vibes.

Tutorials on using a 1-light setup for portrait photography are commonplace, and rightly so. There are several ways that a single light source can be positioned to create flattering lighting on a subject. You might think that switching to a 2-light setup would be twice as complicated. This isn’t the case. There are several 2-light arrangements that are easy to understand and quick to set up. Using 2 lights can make it easy for you to transition between a clean headshot and a dramatic portrait.

Every photographer has likely struggled with the implications of using social media. If you've ever felt lost, sad, or insecure because of social you are not alone and I hope this article might help find balance in your journey as a photographer.

I started my journey in photography back in 2011. Since then, there are only a handful of photographers that I have really paid attention to in terms of actively keeping up with their work. One of those photographers is Commercial Photographer Dave Hill. His work has taken a more drastic turn in just a few years than any photographer that I’ve followed. That’s one of many reasons that I reached out to Hill to chat about his work and photography.

There are many ways to sell prints online. In the last article of this series, we already looked at one of them that was free and easy to set up. But it might not be the right way to sell prints professionally. If branding and customer relations are important to you, a customized online store might be a better solution. In this article, I share how to set one up.

The best analogy for photographing well-photographed locations is to make covers of famous pieces of music. Just like a musician practices his guitar skills with “Nothing Else Matters” and makes his own version, a landscape photographer might do the same at Skogafoss in Iceland or Mesa Arch in Utah. When you are done practicing, or made enough covers of the same location, you might want to make your own original pieces.

It is always hard to gauge what photos in your portfolio might interest people. What do you do if someone likes a shot but wants the crop rotated?

This week I spoke with professional motorsports photographer Drew Gibson to find out what 10 things he couldn't live without in his camera bag. With clients such as Aston Martin and Top Gear, Drew certainly knows his way around motorsports photography.

It's 2018 and I have no idea where I'm supposed to share photos anymore. There was a time though, when Google+ and its booming photography community was the clear answer.

How much gear is too much? And is there such a thing as having too little gear on hand?

Color gels are a lot of fun to work with and when done well can add a certain oomph to your photo. It can also be intimidating and hard to get just right. And when I say just right, even that itself is very subjective. Some people prefer it to be subtle while others want the color to dominate in the image. There are also photographers who only use it for color balancing.

The Panasonic GH5 is my dream camera. It's like having a pro level video camera in the palm of your hand. It's almost perfect, but there are just a few strange quirks about this camera that could and should be fixed by Panasonic in the next firmware update.

Have you ever framed a shot that you thought you'd be happy with only to snap an image that doesn’t quite live up to what you had in mind? Perhaps using that extra speedlight in your bag could help you capture the image you were after.

Knowing what gear you need versus what gear you want can both save your money and save your sanity. Knowing why you want it can help you to maximize your investment.

In this week's lighting breakdown, I'm going to explain the three-light setup I used to create these striking portraits in studio.

I recently made a trip to the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona to photograph college graduation portraits. It was my first time on the ASU campus and my first time shooting college graduation photos. Here’s what I learned.

It’s time to answer the often-asked question I hear from many wedding photographers. Is it worth the money to advertise with online marketplaces for professional wedding vendors? I track everything in my wedding business. If you can record it, track it, analyze it, and summarize it, I’m aware of it. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as opening up a spreadsheet of raw, unrefined data and pulling out the hidden truths that lie dormant in the numbers.

An industrial photographer is someone who photographs the people and the products associated with multi-million dollar companies that make machines and tools for industries such as power and electric, trucking, and construction. As an industrial photographer, you will photograph everything from a two-ton drill used underground to a two-inch screw that secures a safety harness used by workers from a state electric company.

Computational photography is quickly becoming one of the leading threads for the future of our industry. Whether we realize it or not, it is already deeply integrated into our DSLRs and cameraphones in a supporting role, while other manufacturers have embraced it as the fundamental basis for equipment. Recently, I chatted with the team from Algolux about how they’re tackling some of the most relevant problems in photography to enable a future in which software and hardware work more in tandem than ever before.