Fstoppers Original Articles

Whether you're a travel photographer or you specialize in portraits, there are different filters for different clickers. I find that using filters helps your overall mood for your photos. From protective filters all the way to UV filters, I myself have problems identifying which is which. Going to the store is simple, but when you're waiting for help and not knowing how to ask the questions about filters, that's a whole different story. Here's a quick guide on different filters and how they work.

I have a lot of respect for photographers who solely focus on beauty imagery. It’s definitely a skillset that I’ve been honing over the past few years, but ultimately one that I’ve come to develop an appreciation for. However, beauty photography does not have to be terribly difficult. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create beautiful beauty lighting with a single studio strobe and a reflector.

There are plenty of sources that will give you photogenic hard light. The sun comes to mind, obviously. Even a bare bulb strobe. But there’s something magic about the light that pours out of a traditional style tungsten Fresnel.

In the past few months, there have been a few articles circulating around the photography community emphasizing whether or not you should commit to making this your career. Regardless of your position, I feel it’s my moral obligation to express five things most aspiring photographers don’t realize before they make that commitment.

I've always heard that Adobe Photoshop will not allow you to import pictures of U.S. currency because you could potentially be using the software to "copy money." Today I ran across a video that also claims that all current copy machines will not copy currency due to a hidden pattern on the bills. I decided to put this to the test.

I've had a few months to play with the Phantom 4. I can say with certainty that it is better than the Phantom 3 in almost every way but it costs a good bit more and the Phantom 3 is still one of the greatest drones on the market today, especially at these incredibly low prices.

Recently I bought a new Vizsla puppy named Leo. I decided to take a few portraits of Leo in the studio and I put them on Facebook. They became my most liked images of all time. Yesterday I went back to the studio to create a video on how I did it.

Freckles are in. As more and more brands and publications start opting to hire models with realistic “imperfections,” we’re bound to see more and more ads with speckled skin. Score one for realistic expectations! However, lighting freckles isn't easy, as most broad light sources will flatten the tone in the skin. Here’s a quick tutorial on how to bring back and enhance freckles in Adobe Lightroom.

Two weeks ago, SkyPixel teamed up with DJI and launched an aerial photography contest that could win you a brand new DJI Phantom 4 and a Huawei P9 Plus smartphone, along with several other big prizes. Contestants have been invited to submit their best 360-degree aerial photos to the world's largest aerial photography community before noon on June 20, 2016. The submissions have been pouring in, but the best image has yet to be chosen. If you would like to join the fray and take home a brand new drone, check out the details below.

Several months ago, Fstoppers and ViewBug teamed up to host a landscape photo contest with Elia Locardi as the judge. Thousands of images were submitted with some heavy competition but the best have surfaced to the top. Check out the winning images below and get a little inspiration from the Grand Jury Winner below.

Hey there, Ben Sasso here! Learning new things is one of my favorite parts of what I do, and I want to be able to pass that on. If you're looking for some quick and basic natural lighting tips to play with on your next shoot, you're in the right place. Check out five easy tips! Hope you enjoy!

Photography is a game of emotions. Think about some of the most powerful images that you’ve ever seen. The ones that have left a lasting impression on you. Sure, they might have gorgeous tones, light, or composition, but the reason they have stuck with you for so long is probably the emotion or mood that the image evokes. Our job as a photographer is to control those moods and to decide which emotion we want our viewer to feel.

Are you a Photoshop expert? Fstoppers is starting a new weekly Photoshop contest for our community! We want you to submit your best photoshopped images in the groups where fellow photographers will vote for their top five favorite images. Of those top five, one lucky winner will be chosen and win their choice of an Fstoppers tutorial. This week we are focusing on your most creative photoshops within wedding photography!

For those of you may not know, we recently created a 20 hour photography tutorial with the incredible Joey Wright on all things swimsuit photography and retouching. We've been posting a weekly behind the scenes series of the creation of this tutorial. This is Episode 4.

The world of photography and imagery is a rapidly evolving field. As stills and video have been exponentially improving over the last two decades, a more advanced kind of imaging is making it's way onto the scene. Virtual reality is actually becoming a reality, and Fstoppers writer Douglas Sonders is one of the individuals leading the industry. Tomorrow at 2 PM EST, join Douglas Sonders, Alex Chechelnitsky, Ben Nunez, and PJ Morreale for a B&H hosted live discussion as an intro to VR as a medium and a progressive methodology for content creation.

Hello, I'm Steven Meyer-Rassow. I was contacted by Wise Ink creative publishing, who wanted a photographically based cover image for an upcoming fantasy title by A.M. Justice. The following is the process of photography and design that went into the creation of the final cover.

Strap yourself in, and get ready for a really dorky article on lighting. I promise to get only slightly technical and hopefully open your eyes to the amazing differences you get from the various options available to both motion and still photography.

The Fstoppers team has been working on a new project with Mike Kelley. Two weeks ago, we asked you all to submit your best Architectural images to be critiqued by Lee and Mike. We had some great submissions, and 20 images were selected to be reviewed. Check it out to see if your image was selected, and hear great advice on how to better your architectural photography.

The Fstoppers team has been working on a new project with Mike Kelley. While we're with him, we wanted to give some of our readers the chance to have their architectural images critiqued by one of the best in the field. Join us for our next episode of Critique the community by submitting some of your pictures below in the comments. We will be selecting a total of 20 images to give feedback to. See the instructions below to submit your images correctly.

Let me preface this article by saying that I LOVE Billy and the rest of the team at Resource. I’ve shared quite a few hung-over mornings with you guys at misc. photo conferences and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I would also like to note that I disagree with much of the article that they just ran.

Most photographers have a difficult time turning their social following into income – Yes, even those with HUGE social followings. The great part is, it doesn’t take a genius to learn how to capitalize from your social following, whether it’s 100 people or 100,000. It just takes some research and small bit of effort.

I keep seeing Community Over Competition everywhere. People get upset at another photographer for "stealing" a client or undercutting their prices, and go on tangents about how creating community is more important than competing with one another. While I do agree that community is extremely important, (I mean who else is going to listen to us gripe about the industry and let us bounce ideas off of them?) I also believe that competition is healthy for the industry, and for you.

Retouching, much like photography itself, is a really subjective topic in the community. What one photographer considers great, another considers mediocre. While there are many debatable topics regarding retouching, I think it’s important to note these three things most photographers get wrong when they’re retouching.

I recently posted an engagement photo in a Facebook group and immediately got a comment on it. The comment said: "Awful expression on her face... would not keep this picture." Although I have pretty thick skin when it comes to snide comments and CC on my images, this comment really got under my skin.

The winners of the contest have been chosen. Congratulations to:

Joshua Jeppesen

Hector Reyes

Ian Johns

We will be in touch with you via your Fstoppers messaging system to receive your prize! Thank you to everyone who participated.

You don’t need the best gear to take good photos, but it sure doesn’t hurt to have them. PRO EDU just dropped the covers on their latest tutorial featuring one of world’s greatest, two-time winner of the esteemed “International Photographer of the Year Award”, Sandro Miller.

Today Facebook announced a partnership with Flixel and their Cinemagraph Pro app for iPhone and iPad. You can now make a cinemagraph for your Facebook profile in just a few seconds, and totally for free.

Once you start adding up all of the fees, cost of prints, cost of matting, and cost of shipping, entering photography competitions can start feeling a bit expensive. This is why learning where you can cut corners without compromising your work is important.

Artists struggle with many emotions throughout their day. One of the most typical emotions is a sense of inadequacy, both in business and creativity. How many times has budget, fear, and challenge stopped you from getting things done? Whatever your excuse is, it’s just that: an excuse. Here are three thoughts that are holding you back as a photographer and how to overcome them.

It's strange to think that I have been a photographer for over 10 years now, yet I have never printed my own work larger than an 8x10. Unfortunately we live in an age where sharing low res digital photos on social media has become the end all be all for the majority of our images. Recently I decided to celebrate some of my favorite personal photographs by printing them LARGE and installing them in the Fstoppers Studio. The resulting 60"x40" acrylic prints I made through WhiteWall.com has me wondering why it has taken me this long to install fine art on my own walls.

It's true that doubt can be so bad it’ll make you want to stop creating or showing your work to the world. But if you flip it on its head, it can actually help you become a better photographer.

Most photographers who learn the basics of lighting usually take light for granted. Lighting seems pretty simple at first: If there’s an absence of light, just add a strobe. Isn’t that why we all love on-camera flash?! I’m joking. Learning how to give light motivation is truly the easiest way to create cinematic lighting, and it’s a lot easier than you’d think.

As a photographer, you’re in the business of making people look and feel their best. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to make every single client happy. You’re inevitably going to encounter an angry client at some point in your career. Learning how to either defuse or compromise in that situation can mean the difference between losing and keeping a client or even avoiding a lawsuit. Here are three steps every photographer should use in those situations.

Every couple of years Red Bull hosts one of the coolest photo competitions in the world called the Red Bull Illume. If you aren't familiar with this photo contest, the Illume showcases some of the most unbelievable sports photographs in the world. Many of the photos are landscape in a nature which give them an almost fine art feel but there are plenty of edgy closeup shots to grab your attention as well. The deadline to contribute to this year's Image Quest has been extended by 12 hours to April 1st 12:00 (CET) which I believe to be 6:00 PM Eastern if my brain is working correctly.

This week we released the longest photography tutorial Fstoppers has ever produced; Joey Wright - Swimwear Photography: Lighting, Posing, and Retouching. Our entire team headed down to the island of Curacao for 10 days to film a variety of photography lessons ranging from how to pose models, how to use scrims, reflectors, strobes, and how to create portfolio worthy images with minimal gear. During this incredible journey the behind the scenes cameras never stopped rolling, and each week we will be releasing a new episode of all our adventures. This is episode 1!

One in twelve men suffer from color vision deficiency (CVD). It’s a guarantee that many of the people reading this suffer from it as well. There is now a company that offers a solution to color blindness.

All too often in our business, we are thrust into a job in which we either have no time for or cannot afford lighting tests. I find that these gigs force me to fall back on my old tricks and techniques. This can lead to the dangerous place of shooting stuff that all looks the same. Sure, you can try out new ideas on personal projects, but sometimes, the job calls for stuff that you don’t own or cannot afford to get. Usually, when planning a shoot, I have great theories and fantastic ideas on how to pull off a look. However, the idea of winging it in front...

Partnership success stories are everywhere. From business innovators like Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, to less formal partnerships like authors JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. There is a trend in the creative world to tout either big collaborative teams or solo introverted lone-wolf style work. I’m here today to tell you that the magic number is actually two, and why having a business partner is the best choice I ever made.

We have finally made it to the end of our behind-the-scenes series of Elia Locardi's “Photographing the World” tutorial. In episode 18, we continue our travels through New Zealand as we hike out 4 miles to the base of Mount Cook for an interesting astro photography lesson, the team celebrates the end of this trip with a skydiving session in Queenstown, and Lee and I say our final goodbyes to Elia and Naomi Locardi.

Are you a photographer or videographer who loves to write? Fstoppers.com is looking to hire several creative professionals to write for us. If you enjoy reading Fstoppers, and think you may have something to offer, we want to hear from you!

Ever since Facebook changed to curated news feeds, there has been endless grumbling in the photography community about diminished reach and post engagement. That shouldn’t stop you from trying to beat their algorithms. You can still have a ton of success with Facebook posts. You just need to know how to work the system.

Let me tell you: there’s nothing quite like a new camera and a change of scenery to recharge the old creative batteries, especially after a long British winter. I just came back last Sunday from a fantastic three-week trip to Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand and therefore, had plenty of time to intensively test the new Pen-F by Olympus, which I've had since mid-February.

Let's face it, you can never have enough memory cards laying around your studio. Today only, Sandisk is having a ridiculous sale on their U3 SDXC Memory Cards. The 128 GB cards are only $44 and their 64 GB cards are only $24. These cards are great for high megapixel cameras, shooting HD video, and can also be used as small hard drives to transfer files from computer to computer. Instead of having a half dozen smaller cards that might potentially get lost in the shuffle, I always encourage photographers to use a single larger memory card and only remove it from their camera once after each shoot. If you haven't upgraded to 64 or 128 GB cards yet, this might be the best sale until the end of summer.

Photographing The World Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 17. This is the second to last episode in our series. In this video, we head back to New Zealand to photograph astrophotography with Elia Locardi.

Photographing The World Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 16, our final few days in Cambodia. In this episode we visit a gun range, we fly in a hot air balloon, we ride an elephant, Patrick eats "happy" pizza, and we have dinner with our tuk tuk driver's family. We also get to see the most spectacular sunrise of our lives.

Marketing your photography business in 2016 doesn't have to be expensive if you’re willing to put in some elbow grease.

A few weeks ago, we asked the Fstoppers Community to submit their best Concert Photography, you all rocked out! It took us a little longer to get the Critique back in front of your eyes with Lee Morris' wedding and finishing up the new Joey Wright Swimwear tutorial, but we finally have it ready for you. We selected twenty of our favorite images to review. Take a look at the selections and add your thoughts in the comments below!

Creating a music video for a national act is one of the most intense tasks for a modern day filmmaker. Sure, the tools are more affordable, but declining budgets and insane turnaround times can turn your production into a sprint. Last month, my company, McFarland & Pecci, was tasked with creating two new music videos for the Grammy-nominated metal act, Killswitch Engage. My partner, Ian McFarland, and I drop everything when these guys call.

Professional photographers understand the quality of imagery that can come from a camera phone will never contend with the pictures and video you can capture with your DSLR. Phones will likely always have an innate handicap with sensor size, which leaves it's images lacking. That said, it would be quite unwise for photographers to neglect the most recent developments in camera phone technology. The ease of use, accessibility, and ability to quickly share your imagery can make your phone one the most important pieces of gear in your business. So, when phones like the new Asus ZenFone Zoom come out with a 3X optical zoom, it's best to pay attention.

More often than not, things aren’t going to go the way that you want them to on set. Things are going to break. Things aren’t going to work. Models aren’t going to show up. That’s life. Deal with it.