Articles from Rebecca Britt

It seems that every week a new camera bag hits the market, and while the majority are stylish and functional they all have one unifying trait. They all seem remarkably masculine in appearance. Whether this is a reflection on the industry of photography as a whole (seeing as men outnumber women) the fact of the matter is that there isn't a whole lot of selection for women... until now. Introducing, the Cologne camera bag/purse by Pompidoo.  

I’m always fascinated when a photographer uses their talents for a greater cause than themselves. SlickforceGirl is a commercial and creative pinup brand that helps raise awareness for women’s causes and breast cancer. I recently had the opportunity to review creator Nick Saglimbeni’s Mastering Lighting series, and I wanted to sit with Nick to discuss his SlickforceGirl campaign and how he uses the techniques taught in Mastering Lighting within the campaign.

If you are one of the thousands of professional and amauter photographers in the industry at some point you’ve probably hit a creative rut in your work. It happens to the best of us. Lighting setups can quickly become repetitive and boring after shooting for several months. If you’re looking for some inspiration and instruction on how to kick-start your creative lighting skills I might have the perfect tutorial for you.

As a professional photographer I have always been curious about the art of videography since the two seem to go hand in hand, but I have never made the jump to shooting my own content because I was always quite unsure of where to start. I wanted to quickly learn the basics and start shooting right away. I’m a visual learner, and I figured a crash course in an online tutorial would be my best bet, but searching for tutorials scattered across Youtube seemed tedious. Recently Jared Polin, better known as Fro from FroKnowsPhoto released a comprehensive guide to shooting video using a DSLR called The FroKnowsPhoto Guide to DSLR Video.

In this World War II period piece a steeled tank commander (Brad Pitt) and his crew of five men trek past enemy lines to attack the Germans when they least expect it. Fury was shot on Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2 cameras using Panavision lenses. What I do love about this particular b-roll is that they show you what the raw footage looks like on the monitors that the director reviews before any post processing is done to it. You can catch Fury in theaters now.

Las Vegas based commercial photographer Michael Herb recently got his hands on Westcott's 59 inch Zeppelin  to test out on location in the Nevada desert. The photoshoot featured three models in an apocalyptic theme at a salt lake bed. In the behind the scenes video he shows just how difficult it can be to put together the Zeppelin on the separately purchased speedring. Even with the problems at set-up Michael still quite enjoyed shooting with the Zeppelin and plans to use it in the future.  

Earlier this summer we saw the release of Brett Ratner's "Hercules". The movie was a mild success despite critics' anticipations. Recently Milk VFX and Double Negative VFX houses have both released breakdowns of how they created the visual effects for the movie. Mike Seymour of Wired walks you through a detailed featurette on how Double Negative created the numerous creature effects for the film. In the second breakdown we get to see how Milk expanded the world in the movie with set expansions, matte paintings and other special effect touches. 

The Maze Runner, a new film by Fox and Dayday Films, is a new film in what seems to be a trending list of young adult dystopian movies to be released recently. In these behind the scenes featurettes we can see a small glimpse at how they filmed the movie and how the special effects were created. 

This weekend I had the privilege of taking my family to go see James Gunn's new Marvel epic Guardians of the Galaxy. The summer blockbuster has been hugely anticipated by both Marvel fans and science fiction fans world-wide. I'm happy to say that the movie did not disappoint expectations. In this behind the scenes b-roll video we get an up-close look at how the movie was shot.

A few nights ago, fellow Fstoppers writer Pratik Naik posted on his Facebook about a bizarre Kickstarter project that is causing a lot of commotion within several online photographic communities. Lukasz Wysocki, a self-proclaimed Canadian-based phoneographer looking to get into professional photography, decided to use Kickstarter to fund a brand new Canon 6D. Kickstarter, an amazing platform for bringing innovation to life, now has funding choices like this which arguably skew the entire platform is a direction it shouldn't be headed. 

A few days ago Frank Doorhof posted a great interview with headshot photographer extraordinaire, Peter Hurley. In the video Frank asks Peter what his thought process is while coaching the people that he's shooting and what photographers should do if they're wanting to get into headshot photography. Peter gives some great insight and advice on headshots and on how to to approach the people you're shooting to capture the perfect expression.

Ultra Music Festival is one of the largest electronic dance music concerts in the world and brought in over 300,000 people last year in Miami. The heavy-hitting festival along with Winter Music Conference and Miami Music Week just wrapped up this past weekend. I reached out to members of the EDM Photographers group that attended Miami's craziest week and asked how their experience was shooting these massive events.

With the release of the next installment of Marvel's Captain America series "The Winter Soldier" less than two weeks away it's great to see a full sixteen minute behind the scenes video (b-roll) to prepare us for what's to be an action-packed, movie-going experience. The movie was shot with both the ARRI Alexa and RED Epic cameras with Panavision lenses.

Matt Davey, a music photographer based in Essex, and iPhonographer Dilshad Corleone take to the streets of London and go on a fun journey of self-discovery and in the process create a collaborative project of creative individuals using the power of photography. I caught up with Matt and he broke down the project and the great experiences that he gained from collaborating with his fellow colleagues.

Prime Focus World’s Richard Baker and Matthew Bristowe breakdown a scene from Gravity, explaining how they converted the movie from 2D to 3D formats using View-D™ and how the special effects were fully integrated in the process. The videos below show the full breakdown of the special effects used in the film with interviews from director Alfonso Cuarón and more.

Eric Paré is back with another breathtaking timelapse project known simply as "Windscale". Eric is best known for his amazing light-painting and bullet-time project, "Lightspin". While on a vacation journey from Montréal to Nevada for the popular Burning Man festival Eric and friend Marie-Line Migneault stopped to film this breathtaking short film.

Simeon Quarrie, owner of wedding production company Vivida, is back with another amazing and unique editorial-style pre-wedding photoshoot for one of his couples. In this behind the scenes video he shows just how much planning and work goes into a great quality photoshoot production. The concept for the shoot is a whimsical story about severing the ties of restriction with the power of love starring a beautiful couple as its centerpiece.

Wedding Chicks has responded (located at bottom of article).

Advertising utilizing social media has been an uphill trend for those of us in the photography profession, but when does it become unscrupulous for a company to charge photographers for more exposure using their social media sites? When the social media sites say it's against their terms of service, apparently. Wedding Chicks, a popular wedding blog, is doing just that to wedding photographers on Pinterest and other social media sites.

This brilliant video edited by Nelson Carvajal shows just how much visual effects have changed throughout movie history. The video starts with 1977's Star Wars and ends with this year's nominees for "Best Visual Effects". It wasn't until 1977 that the Academy Awards created an official category for "Best Visual Effects". Although, until 1995 the Academy Awards occasionally fell back to its old umbrella of "Special Achievement Academy Award".

The Academy Awards nominations were recently released and it's no surprise that "The Wolf of Wall Street" received nominations in the "Best Picture" and "Best Actor" categories, but what about visual effects? The visual effects for the movie while extremely subtle are outstanding to say the least. The company behind the special effects for the movie is Brainstorm Digital. They released the VFX breakdown of "The Wolf on Wall Street", and proves just how much special effects can have an impact on modern storytelling.

Speaking on camera can be stressful. Some people are born with that fearless gene that allows you to get that first take right out of the gate... the rest of us are not as fortunate. Thankfully for us there's teleprompters that help walk us through the process of speaking on camera. One of these popular teleprompters is the Pad Prompter by OneTakeOnly. A prompter that utilizes your portable tablet and transforms awkwardness to smooth takes.

Follow Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) as they explain how they created the design for the city of San Francisco in the year 2259 for the film Star Trek: Into Darkness. They also go into depth over the creation of the visual effects for the scene where the USS Vengeance crashes into the city and exactly how large some of the files ended up being.

Max Riché is back with an amazing shoot this time for Bicycle Magazine. During this past summer Max received a surprising email from Stacey, Photo Editor at Bicycling magazine wanting him to shoot the magazine cover for the special 100th Tour de France Anniversary issue. With the help of Google Maps and some friends who lived near the Alps Max was able to pinpoint the best location for the shoot.

Academy Awards season is swiftly coming and to get the buzz going a little earlier the Oscars have come out with a brand new trailer with talk-show darling Ellen DeGeneres and 250 dancing extras. The trailer was directed by Paul Feig who is best known for "Bridesmaids" and "the Heat". It looks like they used an ARRI Alexa to film the trailer. It's a fun and cute glimpse into what we can look forward to at this coming year's Academy Awards show.

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" has been dominating the box office the holiday season. In this thorough fourteen minute b-roll video we get an up-close look at how The Hobbit was filmed using the RED Epic, how the crazy stunts were preformed and the expansive sets that were used. So, if you're curious about epic filmmaking this might interest you.

If you're a fan of listening to photography podcasts then you're probably no stranger to Jared Polin's (Fro Knows Photo) RAWtalk where Jared and buddy Stephen Eckert (an incredibly talented concert photographer) chat about all things photography. The podcast is also recorded for Youtube and is actually a pretty extensive setup.

A few days ago I covered a story here on Fstoppers about an online altercation between a massively popular music producer, Diplo, and a Canadian based photography collective under the name of Visualbass. Diplo has recently stepped forward and has made a statement on Fstoppers about the incident.

Last night on the EDM Photographers Facebook group a member posted a tweet from an upset photographer who wasn't properly credited for an image that famed music producer, Diplo, posted on his Instagram feed. The concert photography collective, Visualbass, tweeted their irritation to Diplo about the uncredited photo and was met with a rather unpleasant and public exchange from the artist.

A new time-lapse of the planet that we call home has been released by editor David Peterson using photographs taken by astronaut Don Pettit while he was aboard the International Space Station. The sequences were taken during expeditions 29, 30 and 31. It's quite impressive seeing the sequences put together and witnessing just how beautiful our planet can be from space.

One of the biggest niches in commercial photography today is food photography. We've all had the same experience, walk into a small local restaurant and ask to see their menu. The photos look atrocious and you wonder to yourself, "who took these photos?" You know you can probably do a better job, but how much better can you really do? "Photographing Food" an ebook series by Taylor Mathis helps you take ordinary food photos and makes them extraordinary.

When you're successful you get tons of requests, but sometimes there's that one that captures your interest and intrigues you. That's what happened recently to Benjamin Von Wong. A woman by the name of Nicole emailed Benjamin's agent asking what she thought was an impossible favor, to be featured in one of Ben's magical and dream-like sessions, on very short notice.

It's no secret that I love the music phenomenon of EDM or electronic dance music, and it seems I'm not the only one with fans ranging from all ages across the globe its popularity only seems to be spreading. With so much new music and artists coming into the scene it's interesting to see how the music can be visually interpreted into music videos.

French newspaper, Libération, published their November 14th issue without a single photograph. The stark blanket of text is all that is left of the issue. Their reasoning for leaving out the photos? They wanted to show their support of photographers who help bring the paper to life. They decided to publish on the same day as Paris Photo's opening day, to make a stand for photojournalists who risk everything and receive very little in return.

With the November 22nd anticipated release of the newest installment of "The Hunger Games" series upon us; Lionsgate has just released a brand new four minute behind the scenes b-roll video that shows a small glimpse of what we can be expecting this Thanksgiving season in theaters. I always find these b-roll videos to be especially interesting and seeing how much effort goes into creating these blockbuster films.

A few days ago Creative Live posted this video of Benjamin Von Wong explaining the importance of creating meaningful behind the scenes videos and how they can help shape your career. It's no secret that I do post Ben's videos to the site often. His videos are not only educational, but fun to watch, as well. You too can go on to create your own informative and noticeable BTS videos with these tips.