Fstoppers Original Articles

It is said that Instagram killed the personal photography portfolio websites, but having an online portfolio still matters. Even if your Instagram account or your Facebook page draws their attention first, serious art buyers or potential clients usually head to your website afterwards, and at that point, having an online presence with a decent portfolio makes a great difference.

Lately I've cottoned to the film beat quite a bit here. I've written about Super 8 and about film stock options for analog photography, about the revival of Ektachrome, and about instant photography. I love it all, but I'm also aware of the fact that we very much live in the twenty-first century. We live on computers and we live online, and if photos don't exist in these spaces, they may as well not exist at all. So what can be done about getting photos taken on film, old or new, into a form fit for such a universe? Let's talk about film scanning.

Procrastination is often the name of the game when it comes to aspects of maintaining our photography. Finding time and motivation to do fun shoots should be pretty easy throughout the year, but maintenance tends to be pushed to the back burner. The holidays season can be a great time to revisit some activities that can be a huge benefit to your photography but are often things left forgotten for far too long.

When shooting the night sky, we are looking at points of light that don’t always resolve well with the lenses we have in our bag. Whether the lens is a top-of-the-line “L” from Canon or a third-party lens that cost 1/10th the price, they may both have issues with coma and astigmatism. Here's what you can do to fix these issues and not be stuck with an underperforming piece of glass.

The iPhone 13 Pro is here, and it certainly has the best cameras of any iPhone, but how much better? And is it really worth the upgrade?

While it would be too early to say that we are in full-fledged film photography revolution, it is clear that the market for film is growing in a great way.

Whether you're looking to hire a photographer yourself, are looking to work with another photographer, or are being given advice or criticism from another photographer, what are some red flags that put you on high alert?

Hands up, who is doing a year-long photo project in 2017? I see. That's quite a few of you. Commendable. It's a big thing, to commit yourself to do something creative for a whole year. Heck, it's a big thing to commit yourself to doing most anything for a whole year. Imagine committing to eating chia seeds every day for a year, or biking to work, or giving up smoking, or giving up biking or chia seeds. I shudder to think. But you don't have to. It's fine not to. No, that doesn't mean you should slack off and do nothing. Here's the case for smaller, shorter, more concentrated projects. They're just as fulfilling, I promise.

Software and firmware updates are a fact of life for photographers. They don't come all that often and usually offer bug fixes or new or improved features. As a longtime Canon user, I found firmware updates easy and unintrusive. Having recently moved to a Sony a7 III, I'm rather shocked at the complexity of what should have be a simple operation.

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the photography community is an opinionated bunch, and to make matters worse, there are a lot of people outside of the community who are opinionated about it too! So, let's take the edge off by sharing the worst photography opinions and why they should be condemned to history.

One of the most rewarding things you can do as a photographer is to see your images printed. Prints can be made either at home or at specialist labs, such as WhiteWall. Having dominated the fine art printing industry for years, WhiteWall keeps on evolving. Their latest innovation is related to monochrome photography.

There comes a time where you need to cut ties with other artists who are not blending well with your company. Makeup artists are very hard to come by in my small town and when one failed to show for more than one appointment it was time to say our goodbyes. But what happens to the session that was a no show? While your client is waiting in that chair, with her excitement starting to wane, it is time to take action. If you are prepared this will be a breeze.

Have you ever wondered what makes a successful photographer? History can teach us a direction we should consider taking, and it may mean upsetting some along the way. But perhaps they deserve it.

Our video camera of choice is currently the Panasonic GH5 but we also occasionally shoot with our Nikon D850, and our iPhones. We happen to have gimbals for each of these cameras and so today, we compared them.

A groundbreaking court ruling has been overturned in Texas, and the ramifications could affect thousands of Texas creatives and their copyrighted property.

Developing an idea for a memorable photoshoot is not an easy task. It involves concentration, creativity, discipline, managing skills, and much more depending on the type of photoshoot. Often, we start with a barely visible image in our head. But having a strong sense what we want, will help us develop it into a final, achievable visual. An inspiration is a crucial part of this algorithm. Everything can serve as an inspiration: from a dress to a hair color you saw on someone; from music to a movie you watched last night; from a color at the shop counter to a tree in your backyard. When you have something realistic to build your theme upon, things get easy. But what do you do when you have no idea where to shoot it? Your mobile phone can be your savior here.

As photographers, we have a responsibility not to misrepresent the history and culture of our subjects. An exchange on Instagram gave me a stark reminder of how easily this responsibility is forgotten and abused, especially in the world of urban exploration.

I have been using a square filter system for many years. It proved to be a flexible system that allows one filter to fit on every lens I own. A magnetic filter system is a great alternative, though. I tried both during my recent travels over Lofoten, Norway and I want to share my experiences.

Over the last three years, I have built out four new photography studios, and each time, I find better and better ways to streamline my spaces. In this video, I want to share with you one of the coolest ways to mount your seamless paper or Gravity backdrops.

So you've got a few photos of the same thing and you don't know which one to pick. Do you publish them all? No, you read this and then make a decision.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last year or so, you probably have noticed that the force is awakening! After a wait that has spanned a generation, Star Wars fans are finally getting a sequel to the saga that started in the seventies! With the arrival of Star Wars come hordes of its most endearing fans dressing up as their favorite Jedi or Sith heroes! Which means an awful lot of opportunity for photoshoots, but there is one problem. Those dull, plastic, toy, lightsabers just don't have the same epic feel that will do the rest of the costume justice. Luckily creating a lightstaber blade in Photoshop using visual effects is quite easy!

Is buying a Leica akin to strutting around with the latest ridiculously priced Louis Vuitton handbag? Is it all hype and image? Is it mandatory that Leica owners place their camera on the table in a coffee shop and spend more time taking photos of it—with their phone, I assume—than actually photographing with it?

When your income disappears overnight, what do you do? Like many professional photographers during the lockdown, Tristan Poyser found himself suddenly out of work. He took a job at the Amazon warehouse, which led to a fascinating documentary project with unprecedented access to this notoriously secretive company.

David Bailey is a master of portrait photography. His four month gallery exhibition “Stardust” just closed in London. It took 3 years of planning to put it together, and looked at his 50+ years as a photographer and artist. I got to see it before it closed, but if you didn’t get a chance to go, don’t worry – here are five things that I think made Bailey the success we celebrate today, and what we can learn from him.

A basic formula to attain a fulfilling photography career does not really exist. The industry is abnormal, so your life climbing into it will be too. Whether your dream is to be the go-to photographer in a small town or to be a world-traveling journalist, this is what you can expect in a life full of photography.

To be clear, STARVIS is a new sensor whose technology is mostly meant for applications in scientific, industrial, and security spaces. And Sony won't give out any "normal" number with respect to ISO yet, either. Part of that might be because actual ISO is difficult to determine, since the back-lit CMOS sensor places its photodiodes in front of other hardware components that, conventionally, would block a substantial portion of light information. But as unclear as the exact results are, here, the latest advancements in ultra-sensitive sensor trickery point to a new level of attainability.

Whenever I bought a new lens, I always added a UV filter to it. It was obvious to do so, and I never gave it any thought. But there was a moment that I stopped adding that sort of filter and I never looked back since. Does a UV filter still have any benefit, or is it a waste of money? Let’s find out.

My heart sank when I first saw the headline that a photographer had been shot by a police officer because his gear was mistaken for a weapon on a rainy night. I didn't want to open the story because I knew it would instill some more fear in my own work while shooting around law enforcement and other potentially dangerous situations. After finally reading the news story, my curiosity led me straight to Andy Grimm's social media to see who he was. I only had to spend a few seconds on his Facebook page to realize that unlike the tragedy that struck him on the stormy night of September 4, his story was pretty beautiful and inspiring.

Photographers spend a ton of time working on their technical and creative skills both with their cameras and in their post-processing. But the most important skill you can have as a professional has nothing to do with either of those.

Whether you’re a fan of social media or not, it’s definitely here to stay and constantly evolving at lightning speed. It’s completely changed the fabric of how we (photographers) do business: from publicizing images to marketing tactics and communication, our daily life is inundated with a constant barrage of notifications and a conditioned head-down-to-phone routine. Unfortunately, if you aren't using social media to its fullest, then you may be left behind.

It has been gone since fall, but the galactic core of the Milky Way is back and rising up in the early morning. Spring is a great time to learn how to photograph the Milky Way in the Northern hemisphere, so you can have your process perfected and be ready when the galactic core reaches peak altitude in July and August.

Making the switch to Capture One from Lightroom is easier and quicker than you think. There’s this perception that given the two pieces of software are from different companies, moving your Lightroom catalogs to Capture One is some arduous and protracted process, that you’ll have to start from scratch with all your images, re-edit, re-rate, and create whole new folder structures. But that perception is not reality.

As an admin in a few photography Facebook groups about once a week I receive a private message from someone complaining about another member in the group. While I can appreciate the complaints and am sorry to hear about the situation it really is not my right to ban people from a group because of a personal feud they have with someone or because another group member doesn't like what they are posting. Instead, I always recommend using the best feature on Facebook that far too many people are not yet using: block people.

With Canon’s latest announcement causing a few waves, many people — myself included — are getting a bit sore from sitting on the fence. The EOS RP will no doubt sell a bucketload, but is it the right camera for you? It might be cheap as chips but I won’t be advising anyone to buy it. Here’s why.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. When it comes to sky replacements, if you're repeatedly making the same mistakes and forever unhappy with your results, these tips will help you.

Every year, The Knot compiles statistics from thousands of weddings in their annual Real Weddings Study, and we get to learn all sorts of things about the ins and outs of what makes up a wedding in America. While there's plenty of interesting statistics, such as how 83% of couples used a smartphone in planning their wedding, the marquee stat is cost, and for the past five years that number has crept onwards and upwards to a brand new record that's just insane when you compare it to the average wedding in Europe.

UPDATE: 3 Days left to enter! Yes, are giving away another camera to a lucky reader! Fstoppers has teamed up with our good friends at SLR Lounge and the album design firm Fundy for one of the most exciting contests of the year! On June 15th, one of our lucky readers will win a brand new Sony a9 mirrorless camera... and no, we aren't entering our own contest either! There are 7 easy ways to enter and if you do all 7, you can gain up to 23 individual entries to increase your chance of winning. We have the juicy details in the full post below and make sure to BOOKMARK THE LIVE EVENT HERE.

How do you recognize a talent? How do you predict if someone in the photography industry will become a good professional when they are just starting? Is it the level of the aesthetics you see in someone’s work, a sense of perfect balance in their compositions, their speed of mastering technical aspects of certain art, or do you just feel it in your gut? It might be an amalgamation of all, but the young Mauritian Photographer Karen Pang sure has it all, and I feel privileged to have spotted her right at the start of her career and watched her growth throughout the years.

We often try to avoid reflections in our photos. That’s why we use polarization filters. But reflections can also make your photos more interesting. In this article, I have some advice on how to find and use amazing reflections for your photo.

There’s a very real chance this COVID-19 pandemic could send some of the biggest camera companies under. If that happened, what would you do and how would you respond?

As a wedding photographer, outdoor couple shoots are undoubtedly my favorites. On the big day, it gets overwhelming with little scope to get planned shots. We tend to go with the flow. For this reason, outdoor couple shoots are a treat to any photographer as it offers a lot of time and space. Here are my two cents on how to make your outdoor couple shoot an enjoyable and a memorable one.

Okay, I get it, that’s a pretty bold statement, but hear me out. I’ve been working on this for nearly two decades.

If you’re an active user of Instagram, there’s a good chance you’re making this common mistake with your gallery images, and it could be affecting your business and relationships with current or future clients.

OK, that sounds a bit dramatic, but hear me out. At the beginning of 2024, I was looking for a community offering a weekly photo assignment, and I came across 52Frames.

Photographing interesting people will forever be a love of mine. But photographing a person who is unambiguously an expert at his craft while he works was all kinds of fascinating.

Last week Lee Morris wrote an article outlining the community rating system and we have been flooded with emails. The most common question has been "now that I have a rating associated with my images, how can I get honest critiques and suggestions about my work?" Well today is your lucky day because this weekend Lee and I are going to examine 15 images submitted to us and break down what makes each image great and not so great.

The holiday season is almost upon us, and I'm sure now is the time your significant other, family, or friends are scratching their heads on what to buy you. Perhaps, you are also looking for something new to put in your camera bag. In this article, I choose 5 items ideal for wildlife photographers.

Ah, the allure of the sea! The crashing waves, the salty air, and the breathtaking beauty of the coastline. If you're a beginner photographer looking to embark on a seascape photography journey, you're in for a treat.

A recent anonymous social media post is being spread like wildfire all over many photography groups and pages. In it, a woman claims she has had all of her accounts frozen, has a lien on her home, is being held liable for over $45,000 in delinquent taxes, and might possibly be banned from doing business in her county, because for five years, she has failed to report income she has made from photography.

As a photographer, my lens has been my window to the world, a conduit through which I've captured the grandeur of nature's landscapes. From the sweeping vistas of mountains to the tranquil embrace of forests, I've dedicated my craft to preserving the beauty of the outdoors. Yet, a whisper of curiosity has tugged at me, urging me to step outside my comfort zone and explore the realm of portrait photography for a long time.