Below are the most bookmarked articles by our members.
Despite the rise of social media, having a website is still imperative in order to showcase your best – and not just latest – work as a photographer. Here, five professionals, including editors from the Guardian and the British Journal of Photography, offer an insight into what makes a photographer’s portfolio stand out.
Every photoshoot is different, but depending on your concept and style, you don’t always need a massive studio space with tons of lighting. If you happen to have a decently sized living room with some amazing windows to take advantage of some natural light, it could be your perfect in-home studio for some of your projects.
The only times my strobes see the light of day is when they are facing down onto the surface of the water from poolside for my underwater work. In the studio, the amount of natural light that fills the space has created a look and signature feel to my images. However, I started to wonder if I was just taking advantage of this light and not truly challenging myself to the work that can be created using a strobe light.
Photography, perhaps by virtue of the medium and its readily accessible nature, is a pursuit often learned by copying the work of others at least to a degree. This great video examines the importance of finding an original creative voice and being brave enough to show it to the world.
As Adobe continues to grow its customer base with its easily accessible subscription plans, other companies are looking to capitalize with their own software solutions. Luminar has been around for a while, but their new 2018 version introduces some amazing features. Regardless of how you look at it, at $69 for a perpetual license, it’s a steal. Nevertheless, how does it really compare to industry standards such as Lightroom or Photoshop?
I hold these truths to be self-evident. One, things don’t always go the way we’d like them to. And two, how we respond to failure is equally, if not more important than how we deal with success.
If you are a user of one of the popular Nik Collection photo editing plugins, you have probably experienced errors in using the software recently. After Photoshop’s latest update, several users have reported that using the plugins will now force Photoshop to close when the plugin attempts to save its changes. This not only limits your use of Nik’s software, but it also will also cause you to lose all unsaved changes to your image prior to using the plugin. Luckily, there is a very simple workaround.
I created a photobook with captions, for my sister, featuring her two daughters. I had never created an album or photobook before, so I wasn’t sure how to organize the shots. Added to that, the photos were taken over a four week period. So, how did I combine all these to make a cohesive narrative? I wrote a bedtime story.
With the advent of digital photography, more shutterbugs than ever have taken to calling themselves photographers and many have even gone into business for themselves. Now, with those same digital camera manufacturers offering better and better video options embedded into each iteration of their flagship still cameras, more and more photographers have added the word “filmmaker” to our business cards and taken aim at everything from short films to features. But being a real filmmaker requires more than the ability to just produce stunning images.
Airport authorities officially say that film at or above ISO 800 may be damaged by X-ray scanning. But they really should tell you that ISO 800 film will be damaged and that less sensitive film still could be affected. I found this out the hard way. Here's how I learned an important lesson along with a few other tips for avoiding issues while traveling with film.
Having a flawed mindset about yourself or your photography is often the biggest hindrance to your creative work. From each of our unique life experiences, we have all developed ways of thinking that can either allow us to move forward or could greatly hold us back. Here are four mindsets that, over time, I have seen negatively effect creative people, including myself. I encourage you to read through each one and see if any of these have hindered you as well.
There are many methods and reasons behind dodging and burning method for photography. Some use it for retouching and some for adding a more punchy and contrasty look. While those are the only reasons to use dodging and burning, those seem to be the more popular uses out of the many. Interested in seeing a quick and easy way of dodging and burning to add some stronger contrast to your work?
Eric Flores Garnelo has made a short film using mainly cinemagraphs to create the scenes. The audio is well produced, and the production of the scenes are done with craftsmanship. Watching each of these shots with only one item moving opens up the capacity to contemplate. Being a photographer, the first phase was to think how he did it and what it must have taken to actually get the shot. Secondly, it takes you deeper, into the human condition and the small moments during the day that can seem insignificant, but holds so much beauty if we just opened our eyes.
Shooting film is a lot of fun, but part of what pushes photographers away from it is the cost, a lot of which is tied up in developing. This awesome video will show you how to develop your own black and white film in your bathroom with a minimal kit and much lower costs than sending it out.
World-renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh has given a candid interview on his thoughts about the use of airbrushing, ahead of the release of his new book.
Even with all the notes and advice, it’s typically a tough job to find a quality monitor in any price range. This is why I’ve decided to hand you my top recommendations as of November 2017. After sifting through literally hundreds of monitors, I’ve distilled five classes of monitors, among which are Fstoppers top recommendations in either class.
If you shoot a lot portraits or beauty work, you likely spend a lot of your time thinking about lighting, including what the right modifier for the look you're going for is. This very comprehensive and well-explained video will walk you through the standard octabox and beauty dish, as well as the more exotic adjustable parabolic reflector and Satellite Staro.
As filmmakers and photographers, we tend to guess how other people shot specific scenes. Depending on our level of experience, we may be right or wrong. In this video we can see the approach of master DPs to deconstructing the cinematography of their favorite moments from "Blade Runner."
The fashion industry is home to some of the most dynamic and fluid trends that the world has ever seen. No doubt, the existence of this ever-changing and highly creative environment is mainly as a result of the diversity and creative uniqueness of the individuals that constitute it. However, even with this seemingly all-inclusive and globally encompassing genre, there is a prominent neglect that seems to be growing even further: the underrepresentation of black female photographers.
There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 ways to convert an image to black and white, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. This method shows why just pulling the saturation out of a photo probably won't give you a satisfactory result and how you can take more control of the final product.
Photoshop is a tremendously intricate and nuanced program, and you can never have enough tips and tricks to navigate all its features and options and make your workflow both more powerful and more efficient. This helpful video will show you 20 more tips and tricks you might not have seen before.
It's easy to get caught up in thinking of only photographically intended accessories when trying to expand your creativity and as a byproduct, getting locked into paying photography accessory prices. However, with a little imagination, some very cheap items can make for inspiring and fun portraits.
Last Tuesday, Adobe hosted an event in London, which was headlined by a keynote speech from Nick Knight OBE, the world-renowned fashion photography visionary. He spoke about his views on the world of photography and innovation in his field, whilst offering some fascinating takeaways for his audience, not least the blending of formats and mediums that has lead to himself retiring the term “photographer” from his CV.
There are many different ways to sync social profiles, and most have some form of interaction with one another via API calls. An example would be Instagram posting to Twitter automatically, but there are sometimes issues such as when the photo gets pushed to Twitter the image is not shown, rather a link to the image is provided. Without that thumbnail, it's likely to lose 80-plus percent of possible views because people aren't going to click an image when they don't know what it is. I am now using an app called IFTTT which stands for "If This Then That" and it's essentially a mobile version of Mac's Automator app that I love so much.
Antti Karppinen is a digital artist, photographer, retoucher, and instructor from Finland with a unique eye for visual storytelling through photography. His work relies on traditional photography skills combined with an active imagination and complex Photoshop editing work to create fantastical images. He spoke with me about his work, process, and the inspiration behind a couple of his most popular composites.