Fstoppers Original Articles

A rainstorm and a muddy field can make football look great, but if your camera gets soaked, you might miss some great shots. Being inadequately prepared to shoot in inclement weather could be a really expensive mistake.

When I talk to a lot of photographers, they seem to think that business and creativity are at odds with each other. Being a salesperson and an artist just don't go together, right? I think we've just been mislead on what it really means to sell.

There are so many ways to approach photography. We can search for artistic expression, money, Instagram fame, or any number of other things. Photographer Damari McBride believes we should all do a volunteer photo-journalistic project at least once. Let’s find out why.

As I was browsing Facebook, my attention was caught by a short video made by Arthur Nguyen. The brief video depicts demolition of two university residence buildings but what got me hooked was the way Nguyen recorded and edited it, which made me want to watch it several times in a row. I reached out to the young artist behind this video to find out more about why and how he created it (and on a student's budget!).

What matters more, gear or creativity? For this camera challenge, I set out to do a portrait shoot with an 8-megapixel camera that is almost 20 years old. Yes, I am talking about the Olympus E-500.

Photographers could talk about soft light and color temperatures all day long, but what could we bring to interior design? Could photographers do a better job than an interior designer?

If you have a camera, a love for video, and a couple of hours to spare each week, then a sneaky little side gig in stock video creation might just be the perfect thing for you.

Have you been told to stop messing around shooting models and get a job? Do your loved ones wish you'd do something more stable instead of wondering when the next job will drop into your email? Well, I believe they're on to something.

A new player in the photography industry, ClickASnap, offers YouTube-like payments for creators who simply upload their images. The business model is simple: take everything that’s good about photo-sharing platforms and make it better by adding features photographers long wanted.

Have you ever gone to a photoshoot you were so excited about, had the greatest time there, just to go home and realize all the images were shot in JPEG? Or you go through the photos and you realize a lot of the shots the client’s hair was in the way? These are both examples of a Photoshoot Hangover.

By now, most of you have figured out that light is everything in photography. When the time of day isn't a variable you have control of, you may have to visualize how the available light will work with your subject.

The weird thing is that I've actually learned something from Snapchat Spectacles, so much so that I actually want to become the Snapchat of my photography brand and industry. Just like Snapchat captures these random moments of your life and broadcasts them into your story for others to enjoy watching, so too have they gone and made it an experience to wear their glasses.

In a world dominated by short-form video content, integrating your still images into this new trend can seem challenging. However, there is an easier way to bridge this gap.

It’s always fun to take pictures of a waterfall. It doesn’t matter if the waterfall is small or huge. The movement of the water, the mist around it, and the patterns in the water are amazing subjects to capture. I have 10 suggestions for a variety of creative waterfall photos.

In case you have not been poking around the Fstoppers website enough, you may not realize there are groups specifically geared to each photography genre. These groups are designed to be your community outlet to show off your work, and here is your chance to get recognized.

There are parameters within which a camera is supposed to work, and one extreme I had not tried with mine was the severe cold. So, I headed to Northern Finland, where I would experience temperatures I had never felt before. Here is what happened to my camera.

Recently, there has been a viral story going around about an ice cream truck doubling the cost for influencers. The anti-influencer perspective is real and understandable, but I wanted to write about the other perspective. Can influencers be useful for you and your business?

Creating the perfect photograph used to be my ultimate aim. It was a pursuit that left me feeling like a failure. What follows is an argument to give up on perfection and the suggestion of a beneficial alternative.

The winner has been announced. Congratulations to...

So your kid just started playing pee-wee football, or maybe you are a portrait photographer who just landed a sports gig. Maybe you’re shooting your first assignment for the college newspaper. In any case, while sports photography isn’t for the faint of heart, here are four technical tips to get you started on the right path.

If you’re starting out in product photography and you’re not working with a props stylist, it can feel overwhelming when it comes to building out a props collection. Here are my go-to props for laying the foundations of a versatile collection so that you can save money and space and speed up your workflow.

When I started photography, one of the hardest things for me was to pick the editing software I should use. Indeed, a lot of photographers face the same problem every day. Looking beyond the classic choices, there is arguably much better software you can choose: ACDSee Gemstone Photo Editor 12. It combines the functionality of several Adobe products into one affordable and intuitive software.

In-camera special effects are a great and fun way to emphasize a story in photography. Many of these special effects that seem high production are actually quite easy to accomplish using the tools we already have or are easy to get. Today, I'll be showing you how to create one of my signature portraits, the Day vs. Night.

Today, we will have a brief battle between the two most compact prime lenses for the Fuji GFX system.

Lately, I've been in somewhat of a slump. For a couple of months, I haven't shot very much other than products in my office studio.

The late summer moors, hills, and mountain areas are turning purple with blooming heather; Now is time to photograph it.

The top question that haunts wedding photographers is: how do I get more clients? When it comes to wedding photography, get creative with your marketing tactics. These ideas to attract wedding photography clients will refresh your routine and expose you to clients you may not otherwise reach.

When Adobe changed its Creative Suite software to a subscription-based Creative Cloud a few years ago, there was much gnashing of teeth and consternation amongst the photo community. We were used to paying a one-time payment for software to use for many years, without being forced to upgrade. So why is it that photo apps get a pass for doing the same thing when it comes to subscription models?

Sometimes the who, what, and how is surpassed by the when. Timing can be everything. It’s a fact of life, even if a rather cruel one.

Mark your calendars for this Thursday, March 23 at 2 p.m. EST for a chance to talk with Clay Cook, the instructor of our newest tutorial covering fashion and editorial photography. This is a great chance to ask Clay anything you want to know about shooting, lighting, post-processing, and the business side of his work. The event will be held over Facebook live on the Fstoppers Facebook page.

In this article, I share my experience with a new NFT marketplace called Fantasea.io. There's not much information available about it online. The domain has been registered just a little over a month ago, and the homepage currently feels like a work in progress. Because more and more photographers seem to get contacted to sell NFTs on this site, it's important to determine if it's legit.

Occasionally, it’s worth Googling your name to see what turns up. When I did it, it showed that a website was plagiarizing Fstoppers articles and stealing my photos too. This is what I did about it.

Are you tired of always leaving your personal projects unfinished? Or do you lose your motivation halfway through? Here are some tips to see you from start to finish, whatever your project is about!

GuruShots, creator of "The World’s Greatest Photo Game,” hosts hundreds of various themed challenges open for anyone to enter. They recently hosted a challenge entitled "World of Water" that received thousands of entries and had millions of votes. Check out the three winners of the challenge below as well as the 100 top rated images.

A week and a half ago we asked the community to submit their best environmental portraits to be critiqued by Lee and Patrick. We got some awesome submissions and one lucky entrant won a free Fstoppers tutorial.

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.

There is a bamboozling range of different camera bags on the market, and deciding which to buy is a veritable minefield. Here are some explanations of the various bags, their purposes, and what to look for when choosing yours.

Iceland is the land of fire and ice, but what happens when there's neither? Travel plans can change at the last minute due to many factors, the weather being a big one, lost luggage another. So, how do you adapt and make even a short trip memorable? Do you push your creative boundaries and try something new, or do you just step back and enjoy experiencing each new adventure?

World-renowned travel and landscape photographer Elia Locardi has teamed up with Skylum Global to bring you a creative editing challenge, editing Elia's images.

Art mimicked life and photography captured it. Then photography mimicked art until it too became an art form. But will it follow the trajectory of paint and canvas trends?

An updated version of the Biotar 58mm f2 will join the already announced Biotar 75mm f1.5, as the first two pieces in Oprema Jena’s lineup of modern remakes of classic lenses, the company announced today. Oprema is offering 58 people the chance to get the Biotar 75 and Biotar 58 – both originally produced by Carl Zeiss -- as part of a special rewards bundle in the current Kickstarter campaign for the Biotar 75. The 58 Biotar 58s will be pre-production models with serial numbers between 1 and 58. A pledge of $1,999 USD would allow someone to get both lenses at $2,500 less than the combined projected retail price for the lenses. The Biotar 75 is expected to go on the market next summer at a projected retail price of $2,499, with the Biotar 58 following by the end of 2018 at a projected retail price of $1,999.

Digital cameras are so pervasive in photography that it is difficult to remember a time when it was only possible to shoot on film. Yet as pervasive they are with the market is only about 30 years young, what are the six greatest "firsts" that we have seen in that time?

As the stigma around discussing mental health begins to improve, join me in this article to learn about how I have used photography over the years to help with my fight against PTSD and depression. Trigger warning: this article contains references to suicide, which some may find upsetting.

LinkedIn is not just a platform for jobseekers; it is a powerful networking and marketing channel for entrepreneurs, such as photographers. If you ever serve other businesses with your photography, then LinkedIn is a great place online to find and connect with the right people in your niche. As they say, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Printing is hard. Rather, printing well is hard. It's been a little bit science. It's been a little bit art. Trying to make digital prints look like traditional darkroom prints is even harder still. But is it possible?

If you pick up a camera, you need to know some things about photography. You need to know how the camera works, and how to acquire the results you have in mind. Are you willing to take the effort to get it right the first time, or do you rely on repairing the errors?

Our new studio in Puerto Rico had so much echo that it was ruining the audio in all of our videos. I'm happy to say that we have finally figured things out, and we've learned a few things that might help you as well.

Cross polarization transforms images of a variety of clear subjects into rainbow, fluorescent works of art with equipment that you probably already have. Learn the easy process behind this clever optical technique to create some masterpieces of your own.

Why do all lenses, including the one in the human eye, flip an image upside-down? Or do they? It's far easier to understand than you might think.

I’ve been working as a full-time professional photographer — meaning that 100 percent of my income is from photography — for over eight years. For the most part, I know what I’m doing. But I still make the time to assist other photographers when I can, and here’s why.