Articles from Noam Galai

If you're into macro photography, Adaptalux could be your new best friend. The new Kickstarter project is aimed to solve a lot of the lighting issues macro photographers face and offer new ways to light objects in creative ways. The Adaptalux is a small device with five ports and five adjustable LED lighting arms with different color outputs. The device can be mounted on the camera itself for on-the-go outdoors shooting, or can be placed off-camera in more controlled environments.

This week Adobe celebrated 25 years to the birth of Photoshop, the most successful photo editing software in history. No other editing software was ever able to compete with Adobe in that market — other than Paintshop in the early 90s maybe — and Photoshop became a must-have tool for all photographers and creatives out there. Many of Photoshop's users never really experienced the art of developing film, but many of the tools we use and love came directly from the darkroom. Check out the video to see what dodging and burning looked like before Photoshop.

Casey Neistat is one of the most popular filmmakers and YouTube creators of the past decade. By the age of 33, Neistat created some of the most viral videos ever posted on YouTube, sold a show to HBO for about 2 million dollars, and produced numerous commercials for major companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Nike, and Google. In his latest video, Neistat shares his very interesting personal story — from growing up as a trouble-making kid to being a dad at age 17 and the things that made him become a filmmaker.

Brandon Stanton and his blog Humans of New York need no introduction. In recent years, we featured many stories about the success of Stanton's unique project, and HONY is now a household name. About two weeks ago, Stanton went out to photograph new random people in the projects of Brownsville, Brooklyn. One of the people he shot was 13-year-old Vidal Chastanet. His photo and quote went viral, and made a real change to his school and the community.

Color grading is a term most of us associate with video editing, where the colors get shifted to create what's known as the "Cinematic" look. In recent years, photographers adapted the term and the appealing look, and made it a very popular process in the community. There are many different ways to apply cinematic color grading and achieve a cinematic look on images. Some can take just few seconds, and some can take hours.

Last year we told you about 1 Second Everyday, the app that lets you record and organize your memories in the form of short videos. This is basically a 365-video project where each day of the year can hold just one second of video. People choose to use it in many different ways: some people record behind the scenes at work, some choose to document their family and personal life and some go in more artistic and creative routes. Check out how 2014 looked like for some awesome people around the world.

What is the value of a photograph? What is the right price for an hour of your work? Those are questions we tackle on a daily basis. Each of us has a different pricing structure depending on the type of job, overhead costs, difficulty, length and reputation. Two years ago, photographer Shantanu Starick decided to abandon the idea of money as a form of compensation and went with the unique concept of shooting for trade, and made/spent no money since. Instead of asking for X-amount of money for each job, all he asks for is a place to sleep, something to eat, and transportation.

"Mayokero" may be the best music video that came out in 2014, yet you probably never heard of it before. In the video, famous vinyl album covers come to life and they all lip-sync to Roy Kafri's singing. Michael Jackson, Abba, Madonna, The Beatles, Elton John and Bob Dylan are only few of the "collaborators" in the video. Check out the BTS video below and also the amazing final result.

Bryan Bedder is a freelance celebrity photographer based in NYC. This week Bryan was hired to shoot few key events during Art Basel in Miami, which ended yesterday. Three days ago, while on a break from assignments, Bryan had a horrible accident: while at the beach, he dove into a sand bar which caused his C5 vertebrae to fracture and slip, which pinched his spinal cord. Bryan is now in ICU, totally immobile, far from home and really needs your help. 

The Smithsonian recently joined forces with the White House to make an exact 3D model of President Barack Obama, the most accurate visual-and-physical replica of any head of state to date. In the past, when presidents wanted to have a fairly accurate 3D model/sculpture of themselves, they had to hire artists to make the closest-possible-looking sculpture, or go one step further and have their faces plastered. The guys at the Smithsonian decided to ditch these old methods and use modern technology instead in order to create this 3D portrait, and the process may be much easier than you might think.

Remember those days when you totally forgot what ISO/ASA film was inside your camera, or when you just had no idea if the photos came out until you went somewhere to get them developed? You know what I'm talking about. The film days. Simple to set up - just pop in the right roll of film, attach it to the gear, close it down and it's ready to shoot. But what happens when you let iPhone-generation kids take photos with 20th century cameras?

Yesterday the internet went crazy when it was announced Taylor Swift pulled all of her music from the popular music streaming service Spotify. A lot of speculations and rumors started running around the web on the reasons why it happened. Some said she just wanted to create a buzz, some said she wanted to just increase album sales and some said she just wanted to make a statement. And how this story is even related to the photography world, you ask yourself?  

After 17 years in the video game industry, Bert McLendon decided to change things up and become a full time portrait photographer. For the past few years he shot many interesting people and families in the studio and had great local success in Austin Texas. Earlier this year Bert decided to try a fun experiment in his spare time, and the result went viral. Check out his great and unique Caricature portraits and learn how he's creating them.  

Photographer Tyler Shields is known to be one of the craziest photographers in the world. Just few months ago we posted about how he fed a $100k purse to an alligator, all in the name of art. That seemed to be a bold move that can take years to recover from (financially). This week Tyler proved once again that money doesn't mean much to him and that he'll do anything for art, even if that means blowing up his own Rolls Royce Silver Shadow car he got just few months earlier. Check out the BTS video explaining the idea behind it, and of course the final slow-mo video.

Since digital cameras came into our lives like a storm a decade ago we photographers became more dependent on post processing programs and many times prefer to achieve the needed result by retouching instead of using on-camera products and in-camera settings. "I'll just fix it in post" is something we all say to ourselves during photoshoots, but it's not always the right or smart thing to do. This video gives a short overview of some of the less known lens filters many photographers don't even know exist and shows how it can elevate images in no time.

You've finally made it - You booked your flight, double checked your gear and... You're in the Arctic. It's your first night, and the northern lights begin to form up in the sky. The adrenaline starts to flow as you're gearing up and rushing outside to find the perfect location for your perfect shot. It's only when you're settled in your spot that you begin to realize - It's not exactly a walk in the park to operate the camera with your warm and cozy gloves, and just as you get the hang of it - Your camera warns about low battery level. As you probably have guessed by now - photographing in the Arctic weather during the winter can be somewhat challenging and different, especially if you're coming from temperate climates. 

So many times people post cropped photos on social media in order to get rid of their ex or someone they don't care about anymore. While cropping gets rid of the unwanted face, it still leaves other body parts in the frame, and makes the photo look weird - and makes people focus on the fact someone was cropped out instead of focusing on that great photo of you. This very informative and easy to follow video shows a very easy way to get rid of a person in just few minutes, and how to leave no trace behind.

British photographer Jason Bell is probably one of the most accomplished photographers in the world. By age 45 Jason shot some of the biggest names in the entertainment world (Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie), many film posters (Billy Elliot, Bridget Jones) and some very intimate family portraits of the Royal Family and Prince George. And he did it with style. Not many photographers get to shoot 'personal' work/projects with high-caliber names, but he's one that proves us all it is possible. 

If music and EDM photography is your dream job, this next interview is just for you. The fourth session in the Fstoppers series over at the TogTools Podcast is finally up, and it's a very unique and interesting one. This week's guest is Fstoppers Staff Writer Rebecca Britt who is an amazing commercial and EDM photographer based in Texas. Aside from being with Fstoppers for a very long time, Rebecca is also a team member at Retouching Academy and runs the largest collective of EDM photographers on social media. In this interview, Rebecca shares her own story and gives a lot of useful tips on how to be a successful music/commercial photographer. 

The NBA is known to be one of the most organized and savvy organizations in the world when it comes to media relations and coverage. They attract hundreds of TV stations from around the world, they get online and print coverage in the most remote countries and millions of people follow the league on a daily basis during the season. Getting access to photograph NBA games was always a hard task because of the high demand, even if shooting for a major outlet. But now the NBA announced few changes that will make it even harder for photographers to work and cover the games. 

It is a known fact that places like airports or sports venues are equipped with hundreds of security cameras which can track and document any and all suspicious activity. You can usually spot them very easily in strategic areas on the ceiling, but now new technology is going to make them harder to recognize or avoid. New types of LED lights are making their way into high-profile venues, and they can do much more than just illuminate and lit the areas: they can track movement, record conversations and basically perform like any security camera currently out there.   

What happens when you take a technology from the early 90's and use it in your photography business in 2014? Just ask Jeffrey Bennett, a professional wedding photographer based in Detroit who in 2011 decided to start producing GIF animations for each one of his engagement sessions and wedding nights, which resulted in many happy clients, a lot of interest from potential clients and of course beautiful results he can then share online. 

Smartphones have undeniably taken over our lives in the past few years and most of us carry one everywhere we go. One of the most-used features on a modern phone is the camera, and it's being used all the time. In many cases, more than one person is taking photos or videos of what is going on and each person gets different angles and maybe a different part of the action. There has not been an easy way to edit it all together, but Disney Research announced the development of an automatic editing tool that takes the different videos from a scene and intelligently combines them.

If you ever tried to extract a good still frame from a video, you probably know there are few different methods of doing this, but none of them are really great. The most popular way of getting a still frame is playing the video on full screen, pausing on the right frame, and using Print Screen to capture that frame - it's a very limited method and the results are average at best. In this video, Photoshop product manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes shows two new methods available on Photoshop CC in which you can extract specific frames from any video file and save them in hi-res.

On July 4th, 2011 Kevin Young's life unexpectedly changed forever, and what started as a fun day with friends at the beach ended up being a horror story for this very young photographer. At the time, Kevin was very busy working on few different projects but his friend convinced him to take a break and have a nice day outside with few friends. When Kevin jumped to the water to swim he broke three vertebrae in his spine and instantly became paralyzed from the neck down.

Drones are probably the hottest gadgets in the photography industry this year. We see them being used for commercial aerial shoots, for news coverage, for wedding photography and, well, just for fun. The guys at 'Earth Touch' recently decided to see if they can create a drone that instead of going up to the sky, will be able to go down under the water. After planning on paper, they executed their idea and built a fully functional underwater 'drone' submarine. Check out the BTS and the final result.

Photographer Lukas Renlund recently traveled to Cape Town, South Africa where he had his "Steal My Photograph!" photo exhibition. This is the forth show/exhibition of its kind, in which he asked random people who passed by to try and steal his work. He decided to create value (or at least perception of value) for his art by making it worthy of stealing. And of course make it into a fun exhibition people will share with their friends and will remember for a long time. Check out his short BTS video of his most recent exhibition, and read his exclusive interview about the whole project.

Slow motion is, certainly, one of the most beautiful cinematic inventions of all time. It can show us so many things that are not normally visible and can make any "normal" scene look magical and unique. For the past few years the slow motion technologies have continued to improve, and just last year the Phantom Flex4K Digital Cinema Camera was announced introducing some groundbreaking slow motion abilities like shooting at 1,000fps at at 4K resolution. Shortly after its release, Director Brendan Bellomo and cinematographer Greg Wilson got their hands on the camera and took it for a test and created this beautiful video called "Let Me Know When You See Fire."

As part of the Selfie generation, we (sometimes) find ourselves posting photos of ourselves in weird poses, or photos that make us look a little douchey in general. It's time to stop, reflect and change our habits - which is why this video above was created. This video shows us some of the most annoying types of posts we see (or contribute) on Instagram on a daily basis, and actually makes the selfie craze look.. well.. crazy. Hopefully it will make people think twice before they post a mirror selfie. Amen.

Stop motion is one of the oldest and historically most popular tricks in the industry. It was used in many great films, music videos, advertisements and children's TV shows for many years. Recently Lexus decided to take the stop motion idea and combine it with some cool practical effects to create their new TV advertising spot. In order to execute their idea, they hired 40 engineers and many stuntpeople to help them with that complex task. 

Rebecca Brown is a 21 years old filmmaker, artist and a Youtuber (100,000 subscribers and millions of views) from England. For the past 6.5 years she photographed herself (almost) everyday wherever she was each day, and recently compiled it all to one time-lapse video. Aside from showing mesmerizing physical changes, the video tells a touching and interesting story of a teen suffering from disorders and depression​.

Inverse Square Law of Light is something we all hear and know about, but don't always know how it really affects our photography. We always hear the math and the science behind it, but there is nothing like seeing it in a visual way to fully understand it. For people like me who find it hard to deal with math equations, those 2 great videos by photographer Karl Taylor will show you the important basics about the law you should know. 

Have you ever considered creating an accurate and detailed 3D model from 2D photos? Probably not, it's incredibly difficult. Now, if you try to do it on a truly massive scale and have a huge castle as your subject, it makes it almost impossible to do by hand. The guys at Pix4D took it as a challenge to their software and not only modeled the outside, but also the inside of the castle, all in one interactive 3D model. To prove that it can be done by anyone, they decided to  use only consumer cameras (GoPro, DSLR and a Mirrorless). 

Not everyday do you get a chance to take a photo that can make a difference in someone's life, or in my case help bring down governments. At age 21 I took a self portrait of myself screaming and posted it online and over the past few years that image has been stolen and used around the world thousands of times. We already shared the full story here on Fstoppers, but we never showed how wide-spread the photo went and how much it was used around the world. This video will show you just some of the different (unauthorized) uses.

Posing your subjects can be one of the most challenging tasks you have to face on shoot-day. If the person in front of your camera is not a supermodel who knows all the tricks, chances are you'll have to direct and pose that person (or people) in order to get pleasing images that make them look at their best. If you're in the business of photographing people, you should clear your schedule and watch this 2-hour B&H class as soon as possible.