If you’ve ever used Adobe Photoshop’s built-in Layer Styles tool as-is for creating drop shadows, you may have found it lacking in realism. Here’s a better way to add shadows to your product photography.
When you think about crafting a lighting setup, you probably think about it from the standpoint of adding light. However, as important as it is to know where to add light, it is just as important to understand when and how to take away light to better shape your subject. This excellent video will show you three lighting setups using the black side of v-flats.
A simple click and boom, the background is gone from behind the subject of your image. It can't be this easy, right? It can be. It is, all thanks to the latest Adobe Photoshop CC 2020 update. And the fun doesn't stop there.
Lawrence Sher, cinematographer for the new “Joker” film starring Joaquin Phoenix, has released a video explaining how he uses hue, saturation, and light to shape the mood, style, and story of a film.
Have you ever made a shot list for a landscape photography location only to end up disappointed or disconnected from your final images? Maybe you need a new approach.
For many photographers, the first type of photoshoot they will ever book is an engagement session. In this extended tutorial, I will walk you through four different setups that you can use regardless of your location or skill level.
If you have ever wanted to create dark and moody images of people or food, then this video will help you understand how to light them.
It's a slightly uncomfortable question when said directly, but it's one you ought to answer. If you want any significant improvement in your work, being happy just taking pictures isn't enough.
If you use screw-in lens filters, sooner or later, you may end up with a stuck lens filter that refuses to come off. Have no fear, though: here are 10 ways to remove that stuck lens filter.
Many times, when we go to places that are exceptional for their landscape photography potential, we may not be arriving at the most optimal time frame. What can you do to still take exceptional imagery that recreates the look of beautiful light?
Portrait photographers know how overwhelming it can feel to create work that depends on collaboration with a complete stranger. With this in mind, I asked five professional photographers in central Texas for their top portrait photography tips.
Today, cameras are easy to use. The skill of photographers has shifted from learning how to handle a camera to learning how to handle what happens in front of it. Do you have this skill?
One of the most important aspects of any portrait is the eyes. The eyes are what any viewer is naturally drawn to when looking at an image, and thus, it is worth spending just a little extra time making sure they are just right. This great tutorial will show you a technique for enhancing the eyes in Photoshop.
In today's Fstoppers video, I set out to create some conceptual fashion images with Puerto Rican model Krystal Xamairy. Using the brand new Tamron 35mm f/1.4 lens, a few strobe lights, and a couple colored LED panels, I will walk you step by step through the entire process.
The bright reds, oranges, and yellows of trees in autumn make for compelling subjects, but it can be tricky to plan travel around nature. If you want to give yourself the best odds for success, you need to plan ahead. Crowd-sourced foliage maps and reports can let you know when and where the color is at the peak.
What do Monet, Van Gogh, and Manet have in common? They were all underappreciated in their time, thus struggling with the poverty endured by so many creative artists. Why do such geniuses of visual craft have to cope with rejection and low sales of their work?
Once you have mastered the basics of how artificial lighting works and what you can accomplish with it, it is time to move on to more complicated multi-light setups to better bring your creative ideas to fruition. This great video will show you the process of creating a three-light portrait from start to finish.
Modern editing applications offer a veritable plethora of tools to both evaluate the information in your photos and to edit them to whatever creative vision you have in mind. This excellent video will show you five fundamental tools that every photographer should know how to use to edit their photos efficiently and effectively.
The eternal debate: to prime or not to prime. Here are a few thoughts on why less can often be more.
Lightroom is an intricate program full of numerous features — sometimes so many that it can be easy to miss out on a particularly useful tool that can make your editing life both easier and more efficient. This excellent video will show you one of those tools.
Learning any new photography software can be challenging and time consuming. Even when we learn enough to do basic image edits, we often overlook tools that would speed up our process or give us better results. That's why we teamed up with Quentin Decaillet to produce The Complete Capture One Editing Guide.
Shooting out on location in a busy environment like New York City can be extremely difficult. When dealing with police, public safety, traffic, and pedestrians, it can often be near impossible to create the look you want without sacrificing your lighting. The way videographer David Geffin tackled these issues in his latest project, "Let's Dance," is pretty brilliant.
Have you ever been to a spectacularly picturesque location and envisioned a perfect image in your head, only to never commit and follow it through? I’m far too guilty of that, but this time, I was determined to get the shot I wanted, no matter how many ridiculously hilarious mistakes it took along the way. Here’s how I did it.
When you look at a photo, what are you looking at? Composition? Lighting? Color grading? With your knowledge and expertise, you look at certain things with more intent than others, but are you seeing the whole picture?
I recall reading an interview years ago in which Steve McCurry — a master at assembling powerfully wrought imagery — claimed not to think about composition. I was dumbfounded, even more so when I realized he was telling the truth.
The wonderful thing about trees is that every single one is unique in texture, shape, curvature, structure, setting, and more, making them excellent subjects for landscape photographers. This excellent tutorial will show you how to create eye-catching photos of trees.
There are many smart tools and life hacks out there, which aim at making us more efficient in our work and life. The following method has been inspired by a former president of the U.S.
As I've gotten older, one thing I've learned is that it's often easier and quicker to learn from someone else who has "been there and done that" than it is to learn by trial and error on your own. In this video, Serge Ramelli interviews Joel Grimes about what it takes to be a successful photographer.
Whether you love watches, rings, or everything in between, as a photographer, you're going to want to take a picture of them at some point. What might seem straightforward can actually prove rather tricky.
With extreme wide-angle lenses on the market from all the major players now that don't accept screw-in filters, filter manufacturers have stepped up their offerings with larger filter holders and dedicated attachment rings. One such offering is Haida's M15 Magnetic Filter Holder.
There are a ton of different easy ways to create a video time-lapse. Today, I will teach you the hardest and most time-consuming method that professionals are currently using to get the best results possible.
If you are doing any business or marketing on Instagram, then at some point, you have been annoyed that you can only put one link on your profile. For a lot of users and most photographers, the ultimate goal is to drive traffic from Instagram to your website/portfolio.
Digital photography has changed the way we take pictures. We care able to shoot, and shoot, and never run out of storage space. But at the other hand, it did not change the way we treat all those photos. So I wonder: what are you doing with all the photos you took over the last year?
If you are new to Photoshop, the Pen Tool can be a bit difficult to master. Nevertheless, it is a tremendously useful tool, and it is well worth taking the time to learn how to use it. This helpful tutorial will show you how to get started with it.
When you think of ND filters, you probably think of 3-stop or 6-stop filters or maybe even a 10-stop if you really want to go extreme. But what about a 16-stop filter? This fun video shows what it's like working with such an insane filter.
During the past decade, the world economy has experienced steady, gradual expansion. But what goes up must come down, and the question photographers are wise to consider is: "how will the next recession affect me?"
When I received the RAVPower FileHub my first thought was "This thing is light. It can't be what it says it is." and boy was I wrong. While it definitely is not perfect, the RAVPower FileHub is an extremely versatile, handy, device for those that like to travel light.
Midday sun can be very difficult to work with, but that does not mean you can't get great images during the middle of the day. This helpful video will show you how to take better landscape photos when dealing with midday sun.
Sometimes it’s fun to set yourself a challenge, maybe shooting with limited gear or with a very quick turnaround. On this occasion, I had no choice. The shoot was conceived and captured in under fifteen minutes, and the images were edited and submitted less than half an hour later. Here’s how it came about.
It is pretty amazing just how much you can accomplish in post-processing software nowadays, but there is something particularly satisfying about creating an image that looks like it took lots of Photoshop work entirely in camera. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to recreate this fascinating day and night image all in camera.
Gonzalo Amat, who’s up for an Emmy for his work on Amazon’s Man in the High Castle, tells us the steps he takes to make a scene stand out in darkness.
As a landscape photographer and videographer, here is a detailed look at my gear list, my preferences, and the reasons behind my acquisitions.
Color grading is one of the final and most important steps to giving any image a really professional touch. This helpful video tutorial will show you everything you need to know about color grading using the Color Balance tool in Photoshop.
Some behind the scenes videos of shoots you just have to stop what you're doing, and watch.
The exposure triangle claims to explain the relationship between shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. At first glance, it looks like a useful diagram, until you realize that it’s not all what it's cracked up to be.
The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2019, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.
The mirrorless wars have been raging for several years now, with Sony going all in with its Alpha line-up of full-frame mirrorless cameras, but should you make the switch? Let’s talk about why you need to be shooting Sony mirrorless cameras and to ditch the Canikon cameras of olde.
Sex and stripping seem to go hand in hand, but in this edition of the A to Z of photography, I cover the acclaimed work of fashion photographer Bob Carlos Clark, "Shooting Sex" and then delve into the technical details of the photo finish.
Photography is a dream job for many, and everyone thinks we’re so lucky to do it. To that extent, they also all “would love to get more into photography.” While we get pretty good at sifting out which of our friends are actually serious about that goal, here are a few suggestions for how to get over the biggest barrier to entry by starting with film.
Getting new clients is exciting, but often difficult. If you've got no mutual connection, no contact to introduce you, or no event you can bump in to them at, you're against the odds. So don't make it even harder.
![Fstoppers Photographer of the Month (July 2019): Dasha and Mari K. [NSFW]](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/lead/2019/07/93df4c824ae0b4c902b82b84a60de3e9.jpg)
