In this series, I attempt to identify the key professional virtues I have found to be the most important in building my own career, as well as identifying traits of other successful photographers and business leaders that are most key to their success. Today’s virtue: adaptability.
You've seen him dive the deep depths and hang off skyscrapers just to get the shot. This time, photographer Benjamin Von Wong takes it a little easy on the daring part of his latest project, but the passion and message are just as strong. Let's take a behind the scenes look at Von Wong's latest shoot, "Toxic Laundry."
Be honest: when was the last time you drooled over the latest piece of gear? If you're like most of us, it was probably more recently than you'd care to admit. And while there has been a lot said on the subject, I think this rant really cuts to the heart of the matter.
In September I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of a couple of hours of Liam Gallagher’s time to shoot a magazine cover and 12-page spread. Here’s a detailed breakdown of my thought process, creative ideas and how the shoot was executed on the day.
Ultra-high-resolution photography has been around for years now but the technical difficulties associated with the creation of gigapixel images tend to limit the artistic output of this type of photography. People find it incredibly fascinating and like to explore every little detail of a scene, but they wouldn't want to put one on their wall as artwork. The aesthetic is often sacrificed in the race for resolution. That’s precisely why a group of photographers joined forces to create a collective called VAST in order to conciliate beauty and high definition.
I have heard several photographers complain about how slow Adobe Lightroom is. While I agree that Adobe needs to make some improvements to their photo processor and image organizer, there are a few things we can do on our machines to help Lightroom run a little more smoothly.
In a lot of genres, you have to shoot quickly and efficiently, lest you'll possibly miss an important shot. In other genres and situations, being in too much of a rush can be what actually causes you to miss the shot or come home with less-than-stellar results. This great video examines the idea of patience.
"Hell Is Here" is the title of Biplab Hazra's photograph of a burning elephant calf that got him this year's Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Award from Sanctuaryasia.com, which describes itself as India's leading nature and wildlife conservation portal.
I hate having my pictures taken. It’s common, but still ironic, to have a photographer who dislikes being on the other side of a camera. This fall, I made a promise to my wife that we would have our family photos taken and I was able to experience the entire process of hiring and working with a photographer. It wasn’t my intention to treat this as a learning opportunity, but now that all is said and done, I can say that I have learned a lot. Experiencing the client’s perspective, watching another professional operate, and the renewed perspective gained for what a photo is worth are among many things I came away with from our session.
Fashion Photographer Alexi Lubomirski recently sat down with Kyle Hagler, president of NEXT models, for an intimate and candid chat about the modeling industry and what photographers can do to succeed. Hagler offered an array of fantastic advice that almost any photographer can draw on. Solely focusing on abstract aspects of what makes a great photographer, he is able to provide advice that resonates in a unique way.
Philippe Halsman's "Dali Atomicus" is one of the most famous images ever, notable for its complex composition and remarkable timing that captured the soul of its famous subject. This modern re-creation goes to painstaking effort to replicate the original, and the process is very neat to watch.
Often when retouching skin we want to clone away high contrast blemishes without also cloning the texture surrounding it. Advanced techniques such as using frequency separation can be a great help to make this sort of thing easier by separating detail from broader tones. One often overlooked technique that does a great job of preserving mid-tone detail while cloning is to leverage the power of blend modes to target only bright tones or dark tones when cloning.
Most of us will have had that feeling of dread creeping up on us at some point in our lives; the racing heart, nausea, sweaty palms, and sense of impending doom. For some of us, this is just the start. And it’s not occasional. Working as a photographer with anxiety can feel very isolating and often impossible.
Fstoppers Analog Review is a quick throw down on some of photography’s greatest equipment. In a world where we are constantly defined by the rapid progression of technology, these posts are intended to remind us about our love for the fundamentality of capturing life in silver and light. Each week we’ll review another piece of pivotal photography equipment, discuss the history, review its capabilities, and share our results! This review will go to the fabulous Nikonos V, a waterproof 35mm camera with a history as deep as diving itself. This handy sidekick will blow you away with its capability!
They say the best camera is the one that is with you, but what if that particular camera is lacking in megapixels? Here's how to take advantage of the camera you already own and make some giant image files and extra large photo prints.
We all like to get results and to know that our efforts have not been for naught. Sometimes, though, getting that killer shot is just not in the cards, often because of forces outside our control, which is when it's important to remember how effort and persistence will eventually pay off.
Every video project is different. You can have a client looking over your shoulder at every instance, or you can have a client not giving you any direction of what they want, which leads to multiple re-edits to produce a video they like and need. This means that where you can save time, you should. And one of the areas you can cut down is to know your NLE (non-linear editing system) and optimize it to suit you and the project you are busy with. In this video, Pond5 shows how you can streamline your editing and speed up your workflow.
Phase One announced a couple of new medium-format digital backs this year, the Trichromatic and the Achromatic. The latter is available for a whopping $63,000 in a kit with the XF body, and for that price it only shoots in black and white. At least that’s the way many seem to consider it. However, it’s much more than that. It captures black and white images like no other camera, and for the photographers that like black and white shooting film, this gorgeous beast offers a very similar workflow. See how it works and performs in this video.
Lightroom is likely where you spend a lot of, if not the majority of your post-processing time. And so, any little shortcuts or tricks you can pick up can add up to more efficiency and better output down the road. This helpful video will show you five such tricks to add to your arsenal.
I'm just starting to look into adding drone photography to my commercial photography services, so I've been trying to learn as much as I can about it when I have the time. Quick videos like this one usually teach me a thing or two, and they don't take long to watch. I'm all about learning something new while eating breakfast, editing photos, or even folding socks.
For many photographers, particularly hobbyists, making an image black and white is almost arbitrary. I remember in the early days of my photography, I was the same. I would mutter: "I wonder if this would look good in black and white," and then, I'd try it. Sometimes, it would look better, but usually, it would not. I presumed it was all just down to taste, but that's not true. After years of reading around the subject and experimenting, I began to understand why it worked when it did and conversely, why it often didn't. Here are some key elements that ought to be present in black and white images, and why.
Although I now work in the commercial world, my passion started with documentary photography. I was, and still am, obsessed with Annie Leibowitz’s work with the Rolling Stones and I loved William Egglestone’s color observations of the mundane world he found himself in. When I find a free day, there is nothing that I enjoy more than walking out with my camera to document someone else's life. However, unlike the plethora of studio lighting tutorials available, there seems to be a real lack of articles on documentary photography. Here are six tips on how to improve your images.
Following the announcement of the Sony a7R III, I had the chance to use the new a7-series flagship mirrorless camera for an evening of studio shooting. Here are my first impressions on handling, Pixel Shift Multi Shooting, the much improved autofocusing system, and 10 fps continuous shooting.
The Hasselblad X1D-50c is one of the more recent of the more affordable medium-format digital cameras to come out. And it sports Sony’s 50-megapixel CMOS sensor that has made these cameras much more affordable than their predecessors — all in a body that is by no small margin the most compact and portable in its class. The only question is can it perform?
The cool part about Photoshop is that for any desired result, there are numerous ways of getting there, allowing you to choose the method that works best with your workflow and what you know. This helpful tutorial will show you another way to color grade your images that you might not have seen before.
One of the coolest things you can do with Photoshop is get rid of stuff you don't want in the picture fairly easily in most situations. If you're relatively new to the app, this helpful video will show you two such tools for doing that: the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush.
Every single photographer from rank amateur to seasoned pro makes mistakes. Of course, the idea is to minimize the occurrence of said mistakes so you can focus more on being creative and not have to worry about missing a shot. If you're just starting out, here are five mistakes to be aware of when you head out to shoot.
When creating videos, sometimes finding that perfect song, music score, or track takes a while. Then when you place it together and the music isn’t long enough, manually cutting and extending the track can take some time. What if I told you there’s an easy and automated way to extend your selected track to any length.
Photographer Ryan Taylor recently worked with Red Bull to shoot a highlight story on Hilary Knight, one of Red Bull’s professional athletes and member of US Olympic Hockey team. With Knight going to the winter Olympics this February it was the perfect opportunity to showcase her journey to Gold.
Perhaps a better question to ask is: “Why am I a photographer?” In recent months, I feel like I've completely lost touch with why I became a photographer. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do, but sometimes I forget why. When I was first starting out as a photographer and all of my shoots were “just for fun,” it was easy to see why I enjoyed it. After all, there were no consequences if I screwed something up, and I looked at photography as more of an escape from reality than a job.
The cat is finally out of the bag: Sony is giving us a look at their new a7R III this week during the Photo Plus Expo. The just-announced mirrorless camera mixes the best of the a7R II with some of the technology first seen in the a9, plus a little bit of all-new treats that landscape, architectural, and still-life photographers will want to take note of.
Photography is, by its nature, an interruptive thing: it freezes a moment in time, and in doing so, it can either subvert the dynamic nature of time and all that moves in it or (if done correctly) can enhance it. This helpful video shows you one element you can add to your images to breathe dynamic nature into a still medium.
There have been all sorts of strange trends in photography throughout its vast history. Some of those trends raise the question, where would you draw the line when it comes to taking on commissioned work? Would posing and photographing the dead be considered too taboo in today's society?
If you do this long enough, you're going to be asked to do work by friends, and they're going to want a discount or simply not value what your services are worth. Here's how to handle that potentially awkward situation.
I still try to learn, as much as I can, as often as I can, especially in the world of photography. No matter how much more experience I manage to gain or how many people I get lucky enough to work with, I think I will always still feel like a beginner who is just learning the craft. I was fortunate enough to begin my adventures into photography with a great darkroom class. My experience behind the camera quite literally started with black and white film and using enlargers to bring my images to life.
When it comes to filmmaking, a really popular look is the cinematic look. This is something that can be really difficult to perfect especially when you're first starting out in the industry. Fortunately, Armando Ferreira, a YouTuber and filmmaker has provided some techniques that are relatively easy to implement. The great thing about the techniques outlined in this video is that they're either completely free to do or may only cost a small amount, making them very viable. Personally, what I love about the techniques Ferreira discusses is that they're so simple to do and even a complete beginner shouldn't find them too difficult.
It's been at least four major updates to Lightroom throughout which so many photographers have been begging for performance improvements, even at the cost of feature updates. Finally, that day is here. Alongside today's announcement of Lightroom Classic CC (the new "normal Lightroom" for those who aren't yet aware of the name change), Adobe promised major performance updates. We know they're serious this time, but they've made similar performance enhancement claims in the past that have fallen far short of expectation. Do they mean it this time? Short answer: Hell yeah they do.
A photojournalist is often called upon to photograph a scene at a moment’s notice. It can be a car accident one day, a music festival, the next and a protest the day after. With that in mind, there are two useful lenses that every photojournalist should carry in their bag to cover such a diverse range of photographic opportunities.
A smile can make or break your portrait. While shooting the person who is forcing a fake smile, it can be obvious in a lot of people who aren't used to "smiling for the camera" and ruin the shot, while a genuine natural smile can make your photo that much better. So how do you get your subject to give you a better, more natural smile?
When you're creating a composite image, it's a game of balancing and matching a ton of parameters to make the different elements convincingly look as if they all originated in the same frame. This helpful tutorial will show you some of the most important aspects you need to have mastered to create your best composite work.
If you own a DJI drone and are anything like me, the first time you looked at the controller menu, you were both overwhelmed by the options and set abuzz by the possibilities all those weird buttons and symbols contained within them. This helpful video will show the advantages of and how to use the Intelligent Flight Modes on the latest DJI drones.
Industry icons like Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz often look to us plebs like they’ve been blessed by the photography gods with talent the rest of us can only dream about, yet their success stories often include incessant practice, unwavering determination, apprenticeships, and lucky breaks. What separates those of us at the bottom from the select few at the top? And, if you want to be front and center stage, how do you get there?
I don't care when the song was originally referring to, because fall is the most wonderful time of the year. As this great video highlights, autumn is full of inspiring creative opportunities that are an absolute joy to shoot and can yield some really impressive imagery. Here are seven ideas for fall photographs.
One of the coolest parts about being a photographer or videographer is that you often get to rub elbows or work with people you might not ever meet otherwise. Here's how to increase your chances of getting a response (and a positive one at that) from those celebrities when you reach out to them.
Every landscape photographer needs a good wide-angle lens. Popular YouTuber Thomas Heaton discusses his new Canon 16-35 f/4 lens and offers some tips on the best way to use an ultra-wide-angle lens.
Do you know what keywords are and the best way to add them to your photos? What about what options to select when you are exporting your images? Have you ever heard of the painter tool? In this final part of my three-part series on Lightroom for beginners, I will cover the final steps to take after applying your final edits to your images.
The importance of printing your own images cannot be understated. There are a number of reasons, but I believe that it mostly comes down to perspective. Currently most entry-level cameras have at least 24-megapixel sensors, however, most screens are full HD which is only around 2 megapixels in resolution. Even a 4K screen is only around 8 megapixels. Seeing your images on any screen can never truly express the image as effectively as possible whether that is due to the colors or resolution. For this reason, printing your images can not only improve your perspective but also help with regards to improving your photography.
For years, I've been the biggest supporter of everyone using a Mac, except gamers. Especially if you are a photographer or graphic designer, it just makes sense and it always has. But as current events unfold it's becoming harder and harder to stick with the platform, no matter how great it actually is.
A few months ago, I took an overnight bus from Pokhara, Nepal, to Kathmandu. Arriving at five in the morning was not a part of the plan; nor was losing a night’s worth of sleep to dangerous curves, heavy rainfall, imminent landslides, and music that blared until shortly before arrival in the city. When I got there, I wasn't in too pleasant of a mood.
Time-lapse photography isn’t anything new, but it is a process that takes a lot of time to produce a cinematography effect showing subtle motion speed up to make it pronounced. Many motion films and television shows use it to show when a storm is forming, day shifts into night and vice versa, or even showing a busy street or freeway over time. Not only is it used there, many photographers produce their own clips for various projects. So how do you shoot and process a day to night time-lapse?
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