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Flash Photography for Beginners: Intro to Off-Camera Flash

Last week, I posted an article about how to create amazing portraits with on-camera flash. My hope was to help anyone who was on the fence about shooting with flash feel more comfortable and confident in their ability to shoot with flash. Granted, shooting with on-camera flash has its caveats, so in this article, I am going to go over some of the benefits of shooting with off-camera flash.

Get Started with DaVinci Resolve 12.5 in Less Than 35 Minutes

When getting into video, filming may not be the biggest issue. Post-production plays a significant role and can be quite overwhelming. There is tons of software out there, and it’s difficult to know which is best for what. Learning how to use these programs is even worse when you are a photographer. The interface looks totally different than what we are used to with Photoshop, Lightroom, or even Capture One. So it’s always nice there are people such as Casey Faris producing comprehensive videos to help us out in getting started. If, like me, you can’t seem to get a perfect grading with Premiere or Final Cut Pro, this crash course on DaVinci Resolve is exactly what you need!

Zooming With Your Feet and Your Lens Aren't the Same Thing

A common saying among proponents of prime lenses when confronted with the versatility of zoom lenses is: "Zoom with your feet!" However, that does not produce the same effect. Learn about the difference between changing your crop and changing your perspective in this quick lesson.

Several Ways Photographers Can Earn a Little Extra Income

There are a lot of variables to consider when discussing the income we generate from our photography. Aspiring professionals often site a lack of work when defending their status as either hobbyist or part time photographers, but the truth is often a little more complicated than that. When times get tough, many creative photographers use the skills they’ve collected to generate income in other ways.

Learn the Basics of Lightroom With This Tutorial

So, you decided to kick iPhoto to the curb and step up to Lightroom, but you need a little help getting started. This great tutorial will show you the ins and outs of the application and get you up and running in no time.

Tips To Improve Your Photos

The video has some great points with practical tips on how to get your creative juices flowing and basically setting yourself up with some barriers to challenge yourself and making the best of the situation. Peter McKinnon goes through a list of things he does to challenge himself to keep being creative and to get out of the comfort zone and push your creative being to another level.

How I Photographed and Edited This Motorcycle Shot Inside an Arcade

As a professional wedding photographer, I spend a lot of time with people in front of my camera. But because I grew up racing motocross and driving fast cars, I have always been intrigued by automotive photography. So when I was asked by a friend of mine if I wanted to help shoot a 80s-styled cafe racer motorcycle, I jumped at the opportunity. Add to this that the shoot was going to be inside of an arcade filled with old-school machines, and this shoot sounded like one amazing time.

Call Sheets: What They Are and Why You Need Them

Whether you're shooting for a client or just creating something for your portfolio, working with a team of people can be one of the most difficult and intricate parts of the job. Don't worry, because there is a simple piece of paper that can make your life a whole lot easier; it's called a Call Sheet, and I'm going to tell you why you need one.

A Remarkable Photo Book 12 Years in the Making

About six years ago, we wrote about this incredible project by Environmental Artist and Activist Jack Gescheidt. Now, The TreeSpirit Project is being turned into a hard cover coffee table book, with over 175 pages of 120 high-resolution photos.

Five Tips to Make Your Next Sunset Photoshoot Amazing

Spring has arrived, which means the time for gorgeous golden hour shoots in wonderful weather is nearly upon us. Sunset (and sunrise) are indisputably the most consistent crafters of amazing natural light for portraiture. The warm soft glow of the sun as it falls towards the horizon not only creates fantastic atmosphere but also some of the most flattering light that can be found. For portrait photographers the golden hour as the sun rises or sets is the perfect time to shoot.

Stunning New Time-Lapse of Tenerife, Spain

For us English folk, Spain has been the go-to summer family holiday location for decades. So much so, in fact, that I'm almost repelled by how familiar it is to me. Then, this morning, I received an email from Peter Jablonowski of FilmSpektakel informing me that he and Thomas Pöcksteiner produced a time-lapse of the Spanish island Tenerife and all my preconceived notions melted away.

How to Create Fantasy Composite with Your Photos in Photoshop

Peter McKinnon is back with another video, this time to show how to create a fantasy composite in Adobe Photoshop. A composite image is an image made up of various photos which are placed and blended together to make one image. When it comes to fantasy, it’s just that... fantasy. When you have an idea that you want to bring to life, you have to use the tool in your trade to bring it to life, as you can't just snap a photo and be done with it.

Five Ways to Edit Skin Blemishes in Photoshop

By and large, one of the most common uses for Photoshop is editing portraits. Retouching skin is a delicate art that takes a while to master, but this great video will help you get started.

Review: PRO EDU Starts Podcasting, and It's Brilliant

PRO EDU, a company known for producing photography tutorials, has come to the podcast game nearly a decade after they became popular. Late to the game or not, the podcast should not be quickly dismissed. In a world bombarded by media, this broadcast is refreshingly analog in nature.

Take Your Time Composing For Stronger Symmetry Photos

I'm a symmetry snob. If you are going for the down the center shot, get in the middle. It may seem obvious but at the end of the day a few inches can make a huge difference and actually make or break your photo. So as much as you want to start filling that memory card, slow down and make the fine tune adjustments.

Six Simple Yet Creative Ways to Enhance Your Portrait Sessions

The most creative ideas are often the most simple ones. Here is a video a team from France put together showing you ways to enhance your portraits using cheap and basic tools that you can find at any grocery and hardware store. You don't have to worry, there is no French explanations, it's all done visually and is quite easy to follow.

Three Alternative Drone Shots to Add a New Dimension to Your Aerial Videos

Anyone who has flown a drone for aerial video capture has likely done one of the few shots that are pretty much the standard of any aerial video. In these two videos from Mark Richardson, he is going to explain techniques for three different kinds of shots you may not have thought of before.

How to Shoot Company Groups

Have you been booked or plan on shooting a large group for their company team photo? Not sure what you need to do or even how to start? Jay P. Morgan from The Slanted Lens is back with another video with some of his tips on how he shoots his corporate group portrait photos.

Tips for Studio Portraits With Shallow Depth of Field

When creating portraits in your studio, there are instances when you may opt for a shallow depth of field, which produces portraits with a more artistic flair. In this video, Gavin Hoey describes some techniques for maximizing that look of a shallow depth of field portrait.

Five Simple Tips For Fast-Cut Video Editing

A lot of photographers have embraced adding video to their business offerings. With the rise of video-capable DSLRs, shooting video as a photographer comes naturally. Editing video, however, does not always make for an easy skill transition.

Strobes vs. Natural Light Portraits in a Studio Setting

Sometimes when I'm shooting in a studio setting I find myself using strobes even when the shot doesn't lend itself to being lit with artificial light. After all, I'm inside and it just seems natural to use flash. That is of course until I stumbled across this behind the scenes video of Calgary based photographer Nathan Elson explaining some of his techniques for using both natural light and strobes in a studio setting.

Save Your Empty Food Box for This Great Lighting Effect

If you're into that film noir look à la "Double Indemnity" (and who isn't?), this is the tutorial for you. Using only an off-camera flash, a food box, and some tape, you can create this moody and cool lighting effect.

Fstoppers Reviews: Mastin Labs Portra Pushed Film Presets

Mastin Labs out of Seattle is the creator of some of my favorite film emulation presets for Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw. Today they're releasing their latest preset pack, Portra Pushed. Check it out my review of the pack after the jump.

Using Nondestructive Editing To Avoid Making Permanent Commitments While Editing In Photoshop

Being able to preserve the ability to alter any of the edits you have already made while working on a photo is critical to ensuring that you are able to maximize the influence of your creative vision on a photo. There are few greater frustrations than realizing that an adjustment you have made was not quite right but it is so far back in the history that it cannot be altered without starting over. In order to avoid such situations it becomes quite critical to build an editing workflow designed to let you make alterations at any time to any aspect of the photo without the need to start over to undo work.

Create a Portrait Composite Using Simple Techniques

Take a few minutes and look up Photographer Joel Grimes. His portraits infuse a unique and identifiable lighting style that is edgy, dramatic, and often shot in studio with fairly simple lighting setups. Even more interesting is the fact that most of his shots are taken with the intent of compositing them into different backgrounds.

BTS: Watch Patrick Demarchelier Shoot a Beauty Campaign for Guerlain

There are many different ways to learn photography. For me, one of the biggest keys to improving my craft has always been observational learning. I find that watching others do things I’d like to do is both inspiring and educational. It’s one of the reasons why I try to watch at least a couple of behind the scenes videos every day. What better way to learn something than from the best, such as fashion and beauty photographer Patrick Demarchelier?

Three Photographers Challenge Themselves by Shooting the Same Model

Inspired by a video of six photographers shooting the same model, Photographers Jessica Kobeissi, Irene Rudnyk, and Ruby James came together to collaborated on their own version of the challenge. Each photographer got the opportunity to choose a location and an outfit for the model before taking five minutes to get their shot.

Five Tips for Product Photography with David Butler

Have you thought about trying your hand at product photography? Most of us see it in some form or fashion everyday. Some people might not give it much thought when they look at the products in the photo. A great photo will help tell the story of the product, so where would you start if you wanted to try it yourself?

A Simplified Round-Trip Workflow for Davinci Resolve and Your NLE Program

In the world of film and commercial video work, there are so many working components that need to come together in order to have a successful production. So when it comes to bringing all those components together, you want it to be as smooth and simple as possible to minimize stress and streamline efficiency so that production does not fall behind schedule. One of those components that is insanely critical for a finished product is the coloring — not an area you want to skip on.

Review: Next Level Astrophotography With the Fornax Mounts LighTrack II

As shutter speed is the limiting factor in taking pictures of the night sky, we often seek out more expensive lenses that open up that bit more or check Fstoppers if there’s a new low-light, high-ISO king of cameras on the horizon. But what if I told you that there’s a device you can use today, with the camera and lens you already have, that has the potential to capture places that are light years away from Earth?

Improve Your Interior Photography With These Five Tips

Are you an interior photographer, or simply aspire to create better interior images? Mango Street Lab is back with another short video tutorial outlining five basic tips that may help improve your interior photography.

Learn the Full Power of Lightroom's Radial Filter Tool

Lightroom's Radial Filter Tool is one of the most useful local adjustment features in the program, allowing you to easily mask in a wide range of changes. While most of us are aware of its utility, this great video provides a few tips and subtler features you might not be aware of.

Use Photoshop CC Libraries to Speed Up the Color Grading Process on Photosets

What is your workflow when you have to give the same color toning on a set of images? I guess like me you open an image, make your changes, then copy all those layers one by one to the other files. This sounds a logical and easy way, until you watch this video from Steven Spaulding.

Mixing Smoke Grenades with Location Portraits

Smoke grenades: foul smelling, clothes staining, and a primary tool for celebrating the birth of our nation. Recently, while in Austin Texas, I was introduced to a model, Valerie who suggested we use smoke bombs during the shoot. I was immediately intrigued at the creative possibilities...

Tips for Shooting Black Light Video

It so happens that ultraviolet light bulbs (or black lights) weren't discontinued in the 90s. In fact there are plenty of photographers out there who are shooting some incredible stuff under black lights. But shooting video in this guise brings its own set of unique challenges. Here are some tips to create video in this hedonistic and fluorescent style.

Get a Chance to Be Featured on Fstoppers

In case you have not been poking around the Fstoppers website enough, you may not realize there are groups specifically geared to each photography genre. These groups are designed to be your community outlet to show off your work, and here is your chance to get recognized.

There Is Nothing Like Photographing a Sunrise [Part 1]

One of my goals as I started taking photography more and more seriously was to shoot a sunrise. Although it seems easy enough to just "get up early and bring a camera," I've found more often than not if you aren't prepped, you'll sleep in. Join me in a walk through three of my successful sunrise shots!

How to Create Dramatic Skies in Photoshop

Properly post-processing the sky can be what really sends an action shot, environmental portrait, or landscape image over the top. This quick tutorial will help you create compelling skies that complement your scenery.

Couples Boudoir: How to Get Those Intense Steamy Shots

Being behind the camera for a boudoir session can be just as exhilarating for the photographer as it is for the client. You are capturing the confidence being displayed right before your eyes. Add in another subject and the room becomes intoxicating when you think about the final images you will be editing. However, understanding how to gain that moody light or that intensity needed for a couples boudoir shoot is just what one photographer explains to us all.

Five Tips to Mix and Match Travel Photos

This method is widely used in editorial magazines. It's a fun way to look at different perspectives of your work combined. Sometimes it’s just not possible to capture everything you want in a single shot. The solution is simple – shoot two photos and display them side-by-side. I find that displaying two images side-by-side is a great way to tell a story photographically, and to create ideas that are not necessarily evident when one or the other image is displayed by itself. If you're interested in trying this technique with your own images, here are some of the tricks I’ve picked up along the way. Make small prints and lay them out on a large table to play the mix and match approach.

Four Mega Mistakes Most Photography Portfolio Websites Make

First impressions are everything, and your website is often your first chance to make a great impression with a potential client or fan. Unfortunately, most website portfolios are pretty rough. I will try to skip the obvious and avoid telling you about having a nice design or great work, instead lets focus on some of the things that are a lot less obvious but also super important when it comes to putting your best foot forward.

Review: The Astrophotography Filter That ‘Deletes’ Light Pollution on Full-Frame Cameras

We've previewed this very special filter before, and now come back with results from testing it in the field. The STC's Astro-Multispectra Filter blocks out artificial light of our modern world in the form of light pollution and increases contrast to reveal faint deep-sky objects. While available for Canon too, Taiwanese STC brings an exclusive filter to Nikon full-frame to capture wide-angle shots of the night sky.

Still Not Using Off-Camera Lighting? It's So Easy a Seven Year Old Can Do It

There was a time early in my photography career that I bought into the idea of becoming a natural-light photographer. In secret this idea manifested because using off-camera lighting to help shape my images meant learning about all of this crazy lighting technology. I’d rather just stick to what I was comfortable with forever and just not use it. Sound familiar?

What Is the Difference Between Cinema and Still Lenses?

The majority of the readers of this article who shoot video probably use still lenses. You might ask yourself why you may need different lenses for video while your existing photography ones work just fine. In this article I'd like to show you certain features of the cinema glass that you probably always wanted subconsciously. Maybe after reading this you'll start saving up the money for one.

7 Steps to Stunning Seascapes For Beginners

I am not an early bird but living in Sydney, Australia on the east coast leaves me no choice but to get up early once in a while for a dawn to sunrise shoot. The coffee and breakfast at a beach cafe make it worth getting up at the sparrow's fart (Australian slang for very early). I've been shooting seascapes for over 10 years and I have always found it to be one of the most rewarding and challenging of photographic subjects. No two seascapes are the same and once you add variable weather and sea conditions to the mix there are endless opportunities for photographers willing to get their feet wet, so to speak! I am still learning everyday how to stay dry and not get washed away.

Fstoppers Interviews Dave Hill, Professional Commercial Photographer

I started my journey in photography back in 2011. Since then, there are only a handful of photographers that I have really paid attention to in terms of actively keeping up with their work. One of those photographers is Commercial Photographer Dave Hill. His work has taken a more drastic turn in just a few years than any photographer that I’ve followed. That’s one of many reasons that I reached out to Hill to chat about his work and photography.

Three Ways to Use a Reflective Umbrella

In this simple lighting tutorial, I discuss three different ways to create softly lit and dramatic images with a single reflective umbrella.