Fstoppers Original Articles

When I last spoke to photographer and former America's Next Top Model judge Nigel Barker a couple of months ago, he was preparing to begin filming the debut season of his new Adorama series. Entitled "Top Photographer," the show aims to find the next emerging talent of the photo industry, with prizes including $50,000 worth of equipment and an exhibition in N.Y.C. Before the first of five episodes goes live via YouTube tomorrow, November 1, I caught up with Barker to gain further insight into what we can expect from the series.

It’s going on day number 587 of being confined to my home during social distancing, or something like that. And while this experience has turned life upside down, it has also reminded me of a thing or two.

While Beto O'Rourke and Ted Cruz face off for Texas' Senate seat in one of the fiercest battles of the midterm elections, one man has been able to photograph Rep. O'Rourke throughout the campaign.

Taking a successful portrait may seem easy to someone who has never tried it. Transforming something from the simple concept of a camera pointed at a person (or a puffin) into a story-telling captivating photo involves skill.

On April 29 we launched our first ever weekend hashtag project over on the @officialfstoppers Instagram. The theme for the inaugural shooting event was black and white photography. Many photographers contributed wonderful photos and here I’m sharing a selection of images that I enjoyed. We welcome you to join in on the second weekend hashtag project that was just launched and you too can have your photo published on Fstoppers. This weekend’s theme is "pattern" and I have all the details for you at the end of this article.

The Sony World Photography Awards, a recognized platform for emerging talents, has come under scrutiny for its age limit policies within its Student award category. There's a growing concern about the fairness of age limits that exclude mature students, with questions raised about imposing an upper age limit of 30 years for participants in the student category.

Our behind-the-scenes series on the creation our photography tutorial "Photographing The World 3" continues today with Episodes 5 and 6. In these episodes, we continue to struggle to film a usable lesson in Pietrapertosa, Italy.

A couple of weeks ago a tax-pro-turned-photographer named Brandon Scott helped us navigate the approaching tax deadline with some helpful tips. Now that most of us have (hopefully) filed our 2016 returns, I thought it would be a good time to chat about 1099 forms. If you're like me, you not only hire independent contractors, but you act as one too. Here is a rundown of all things 1099.

Ever get stuck looking for photographic ideas when the conditions or timing of your shoot aren't right, or perhaps you are at a location for a day and need to find things to do and photograph after sunrise and before sunset? Try this technique to not only challenge your photographic eye, but to also help you learn something new should the situation arise again anytime soon.

This week, our readers were challenged to find shots containing circles. Using a shape opens up the possibilities and the results are wonderful. Be sure to share with your photography circles if you enjoy.

This past October award-winning photographer Jérôme Brunet published his 20-year retrospective coffee table book "Into The Light" that collects over 150 of his amazing music images.

So you’ve fallen in love with photography and you’re trying to decide if your new passion could become a career. Well, here are a few questions to ask yourself before you take the leap.

One area a lot of photographers can focus their quarantined free time is updating their portfolios. Unfortunately, taking new and fresh photos is probably not part of that process, but that doesn't mean you still can't find new images to add to your website or social media stream.

Providing a service to clients as a small business comes with risks. At some point during the course of photographing a wedding, every photographer will run into an unforeseen circumstance. Are you prepared to face the unexpected?

There are four interrelated ideas that some photographers create a song and dance about. However, for most photography, you can forget them and adopt a different approach.

Drone photography is becoming increasingly popular for landscape photographers and for good reason. Drones offer a unique perspective of the world we live in that can be used to capture stunning landscape imagery. If you're new to drone photography or if you're looking to improve your skills, here are 10 tips to help you take stunning landscape photos with your drone alongside equipment and accessories to consider.

It looks like the worldwide pandemic has finally hit the biggest sports and photography event of the year, as the international Olympic Committee is looking at rescheduling the 2020 Summer Olympics. With this news, the big camera and lens companies may be looking at their newly announced, but as yet unreleased models, and could be wondering if waiting out the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 virus is the most viable idea.

So you’ve decided to transfer your skills as a photographer to shoot video and have quickly found that some skills, such as composition, transfer well to motion pictures; but some do not, such as color grading. The main issue is that photographers get used to the amount of data in the raw format that can be saved and manipulated in post. In video, the data rates of almost all consumer DSLRs give you limited room to grade video without the image falling apart. Using the tool set of FilmConvert is an incredibly easy and efficient way to get to a cinematic look with almost any DSLR video file.

There’s no question that photographs from this week's Republican National Convention, merely days after an assassination attempt on former president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, are going to define the narrative of this tumultuous time in U.S. history. There’s also no question about who overwhelmingly seems to dominate the photojournalism field based on this photo that I've linked to below: white men.

Taking photographs of cities at night can be a veritable feast of colors, reflections, and light, but it can also be tricky. Here are my five best tips for taking shots of cities at night.

If you have been around Facebook and other social media platforms, it’s almost certain that you have heard of Clubhouse. But what exactly is it and should you even be interested?

At this point in our lives, the majority of us have come to understand our capabilities and our limitations. If we were never good at sports, we have come to accept this as truth. If we are great at math, we have likely received this "gift" and possibly moved into a career field where we can maximize the ease of which numbers have come to us. As photographers, you have the "eye" for it, or you don't. Are these established beliefs, based likely on past evidence in reality, or are they limitations we have placed upon ourselves?

To capture this affecting photo series, photographer Emily Teague traveled to India and met with the women affected by sex trafficking and the women fighting to stop it.

Jonathon Keats is an American conceptual artist based in San Francisco. This year Jonathon began a new project he calls Century Camera in which he (and the people of Berlin) hide 100 pinhole cameras with the hopes of creating the first series of century-long exposures. Jonathon was kind enough to make time to speak with me and share the details, inspiration, and process behind this ambitious project — you don't want to miss this.

Today is the International Women's Day so while it's nice to celebrate how far gender equality has come, it's even more important to look at the issues still present in photography industry today.

If you’ve been following along, you may remember that back in July, I packed up my apartment, loaded up my car, and set off on a month-long cross country tour of the southern United States with my girlfriend Holly and my dog, Olive. Along the way we met and hung out with some incredible people, had the opportunity to take great photos, ate at some great local places and most importantly, got to experience first hand the freedom of the open road.

Can photography be more than just work? Can it be a calling? How do you know? And what if that calling coincides with a transformational period in world history and you are called upon to document every move? Lauren Greenfield’s new exhibition and book, “Generation Wealth” is a time capsule a quarter century in the making.

A couple of years ago I was tasked with getting a shot of grape stomping for a local food magazine, Edible Ozarkansas, who were doing a story on the history of local wine production in Arkansas. Right away, images of Lucy and Ethel of "I Love Lucy" stomping grapes in the giant barrel came scrolling through my mind. Challenge accepted.

In the world of photography today, it is pretty common that the relationship between creative concept and photography skill is intertwined and very much expected from a photographer. In this article, we’ll dive deeper into this discussion between these two relationships to see how photographers can unleash their artistic potential and bring their work to the next level and how one skill affects the other skill. Everything from the spark of inspiration from the basis of creative concepts to the technical skills required for project execution will be discussed in hopes of achieving balance between creativity and technical skill to push a photographer’s work to a greater height.

In today’s article, I’d like to pose a fundamental question. Has the growth of social media been a net positive or negative for the world of photography?

Anyone who's shot Comet NEOWISE has noticed one thing: it looks a bit small in the frame when shooting on wider lenses. That's why with the help of some image editing, creating a composite where we replace the sky may be the best way to produce a stunning comet composite.

It's Christmas, you finally got that camera you wanted, and you are ready to dive into the world of photography. How do you get the best pictures possible immediately, though?

One of the worst gut wrenching feelings any content producer can face is opening up a memory card only to find that a file is corrupt or missing altogether. Recently we sold most of our Nikon gear and switched over to the new Panasonic GH5 cameras because of their better video features, superior image stabilization, and overall smaller size. Unfortunately we have found that unlike our Nikon cameras, the GH5 can corrupt files pretty easily if you are using their battery grip. In this video, I show you how these files can easily corrupt as well as a few software options you can use to recover any files corrupted during a loss of power.

My photographs are hardly ever representative of objective reality, but they are representative of my vision, my artistic interpretation of the scene. In this article, I will talk about why I made a particular photograph, what was done in the camera, and then what I did in the darkroom to realize the finished image—or at least the image as it is right now. Realizing that I hardly ever reach a final conclusion on a photograph, especially when I am working on it in a wet, traditional darkroom, everything remains a “work in progress.”

Most of the time, photography relies on good relationships. They make the business run smoother and ease the shooting. In some areas of photography, smooth jobs are not the best, though.

When we think of history and how dry it may appear as a subject to some, what role do visuals play in increasing genuine interest and cultivating understanding of things that have happened?

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?

The business of photography can sometimes be fairly cutthroat, but it can also be a community full of great people who care and support each other. This is precisely the experience that one photographer shares after losing everything to the recent wildfires in California.

Can you emulate studio gel lighting with Lightroom's new masking tools? In short, yes, but is it as good as the real thing?

I love using reflections for my landscape photography. A nice sunrise or sunset with a reflection of the colored sky in a pond or lake is very rewarding. But you can find reflections everywhere. I tell you about it in this article.

Branding is important for any photographer, and with 2020 behind us, I thought it best to update my own personal branding with some new profile photos across all of my socials. This is how I got the shots.

Photographers can be greedy when it comes to knowledge, hoarding techniques, shoot locations, and general valuable information on our craft. While we photographers need to be competitive, we also need to share our knowledge.

Needless to say, there's a fair few logistical complexities when photographing ice cream. After shooting for a vegan ice cream brand for a couple of years now, here are my best tips for running a smooth shoot when you’re capturing ice cream.

I begin with a story about a location nestled in the picturesque landscapes of Cork, Ireland, where there lies the ancient friary ruin of a monastic settlement—a scene that, despite its historical roots, breathes life through the ever-changing interplay of light, atmosphere, and clouds. In the pursuit of capturing the feeling of this timeless location, I embarked on a photographic challenge that spanned two hours leading up to sunset. The unique challenge? To take 10 shots from the exact same composition, without altering my camera position or perspective.

One absolutely invaluable thing that a person can learn in life is how to deal with negative people in a healthy way. The unfortunate truth is that at every stage of your creative journey there will always be people looking to bring you down. How you handle this negativity and choose to respond to these kind of people can say a lot about you too. Is there a right answer or does each situation demand a different kind of response?

As photographers we tend to always look for the big sweeping image; one that says as much as possible. But sometimes it's the little things that say a lot. In the context of storytelling, the detail shot is often overlooked for its power and simplicity.

Online creative marketplaces seem to pop up often. Most are laughable jokes that devalue creative work to the point of absurdity. They all seem to promise great things, in theory, but in practice they are just filled with potential clients looking for professional service for the price of a latte.

If you happened to see the recent press release and subsequent articles, you may be under the impression that Canon has become the number one brand of mirrorless cameras. And this data is probably correct. But after their release, Sony was asked about it and decided to share their end of the same data, which also says they are number one in mirrorless. So what's the deal?

Your client’s terminally-ill grandfather is the only one not smiling in the shots of the entire family. Do you liquify his facial features to make it look like he might be smiling? Do you transform a flat gray sky in your latest landscape to a dramatic sunny one? Where do you draw the line?

Would you judge a photography competition? Do you compete with other photographers? Although competition is accepted in photography, it has significant drawbacks that prevent you from succeeding.