It has been ten years since I started work as a professional photographer and I had the chance to survive in this crowded business over these years. Let me share some of my experiences throughout this journey.
As fall draws to a close and we head into the colder winter months, the scenery around us shifts for the season. If there is something that you'll miss the most from the warmer weather, what would it be?
When you're getting into genres of photography that require working with models, navigating the landscape of who to hire, when to pay, and more can be a bit confusing. This great video will tell you exactly when you should pay for a model, when you should offer a trade, and where to find them.
Selling your images online can be seriously complicated. You can try to submit images to some of the larger stock image marketplaces, but getting approved is tough. Even if you do get some of your images through, the marketplaces will take up to 85% of your royalties away from you.
Adobe Portfolio is an excellent option for creating your first website or even as a replacement for photographers that don’t want to focus on web development, but not everyone knows how to get all the value out of it. With some simple customizations, Portfolio can become a powerful and easy to maintain site for photographers of all levels.
A chilly September morning. The crispness in the air added weight to the solemn moment. My composition was all figured out. I patiently waited for the final elements to come into place.
The Fstoppers community is full of talented photographers producing images beyond the average photographer’s capabilities. When you view them all together in a gallery, there are certain things that make excellent photographs stand out beyond the mass of above-average images being shared regularly. Here’re a few of the things that catch my eye.
It doesn’t always take expensive equipment to make big changes to the mood of a shot. Here are a couple ways I found to improve my portraits with a tool I didn’t so much buy as I found laying in the trash.
If the majority of what we and our clients see online are beautiful couples' portraits, is there a place for reportage wedding photographers, and how would you step into it?
It took roughly five years to learn the lesson the lesson that helped increase my bookings. That lesson was show fewer styles to book more.
In this article, take a behind the scenes look into how I shot this fall-themed shoot in my 8x8-foot living room.
Frequency separation can be a very overwhelming technique used most commonly for skin retouching. It is a technique that is very easy to overdo and destroy texture when not used correctly. If you are unfamiliar with this technique, where do you start?
A few days ago, I decided to challenge myself by attempting to photograph a toy car and make it look real.
Lament a lowlife that lurches and lurks the local lanes, and I'll let loose a listless laugh. But tell me tales of a memory card formatting itself in the middle of a wedding and I'll hide behind the proverbial sofa, toes curled in fright.
Most people do not understand lighting, frequency separation, or color grading. Here are some things to consider to make your next image even more engaging.
With a show of hands, how many of you have practiced long exposure photography using your camera and some neutral density (ND) filters? Whoa, that's a lot! Now, how many of you have practiced this type of photography with your mobile phone?
What’s the best way to advance faster as a photographer? It’s probably not buying a new camera or even spending more time on your photography.
Landscape photography can be a quirky genre in which you're by yourself, braving the elements in search of that elusive shot. This great video takes a lighthearted but educational look at everything that goes into creating a landscape photo.
Bit depth is one of the most fundamental and important parameters you're likely to come across in photography and videography. This great video will give you a quick introduction to what bit depth is and why it matters to your work.
A telephoto lens is not often the go-to lens for landscape photography. That accolade is usually given to your wide angle lens. However, over the years, I have been using my telephoto more and more to create powerful landscape images.
It doesn't matter what industry you work in, there are very few clients that won't try to squeeze you on your price. Here's how to spot the signs and the psychological strategy you can employ to make sure you get the amount you deserve each and every time.
In this article, go behind the scenes on a year-long photo project, a "Century of Portraits," and see what it took to make this ambitious series a reality.
If you are looking for something a little more sturdy and flexible than your standard tripod with a horizontal center column for doing overhead camera or video shots than this set up is a great solution.
Have you ever seen a small backdrop placed in the middle of an open field or exotic location and wondered how that was possible? In this quick video, learn an easy way you can mount a small canvas backdrop to a C-stand.
You're shooting the landscape, a dense forest rife with fantasy vibes perhaps, but there just isn't the fog you wish there was to complete the scene. Well this video has you covered and can help you get that little extra atmosphere in a pinch.
You've spent the time learning your craft, you've built a portfolio, and you've invested in your business, but the clients still aren't rolling in. Here's why how you craft your portfolio can hold you back.
Interested in trying out macro photography? This quick and helpful video will give you three tips to keep in mind when you start shooting the small stuff.
“Exposure doesn’t pay the bills.” As photographers, we’ve all heard this saying, and we’ve all probably even said this at least once. It’s frustrating to be expected to work for free at all as a creative professional. You and your work need to be taken seriously.
Being in a creative rut can be a vicious circle of trying too hard to get out of it and only meeting more frustration when you can't find the results you're seeking. This great video will give you some helpful tips to bust out of that rut in no time.
Dynamic range has become one of the most important camera specs for a lot of photographers and videographers, but there's a lot more information and science behind it than you might have realized. This excellent, comprehensive video will teach you everything you need and ever wanted to know about dynamic range.
Going on a photography trip can be a wonderful adventure and a chance to come home with lots of portfolio-worthy shots, but there's more to it than simply grabbing your camera and booking a plane ticket. This great video will give you seven helpful tips to maximize your returns from a photography trip.
One of the most fundamental parameters of lighting is the height at which you place the light. This excellent video will teach you everything you need to know about properly placing a light source or reflector at the right height.
One of the best and most common uses of Photoshop is the ability to remove people and objects from photos in a convincing fashion. This great video will show you how to use a combination of tools to make it look like they were never there.
Put your camera down. Over there. Immediately. You don't need it if you want to earn more money as a photographer.
Probably the most important factor in creating a convincing composite photograph is matching the lighting, but that's also something that has a lot of nuance and can be very difficult to do. This helpful video will show you a quick and powerful technique for better matching the lighting in composite photographs.
Medium format photography offers a wide variety of benefits in terms of image quality, but is it possible to try to achieve those results when shooting on a camera with a much smaller sensor?
If you look at the work of the best studio photographers, you'll probably notice most of them use multiple lights to achieve their final results. And while there's certainly nothing wrong with that, you might be amazed at what you can accomplish with just one light, and this great video will show you every step in the process.
I have always been obsessed with color. Skin tones are one of the most challenging things for many people if you are picky, because there are so many factors that can affect them.
There's a lot of advice out there about the techniques and gear a professional photographer should be aware of and use, and while those are certainly good things to know, there's another aspect that often gets overlooked, even by seasoned photographers.
Like most things in Photoshop, there are several ways to color tone an image using the program, but this one is very straightforward and easy to control and adjust, and this helpful video will show you everything you need to know to do it.
This is your chance to participate in the Flashlight challenge, prove you can make an amazing photograph with any light source, and have your photograph featured in an Fstoppers article all about you!
It's easy to assume that the best portrait locations are tricky to find and awkward to get to, but this short video shows you that some of the best spots might be just around the corner.
Landscape photography can be a sneakily difficult genre to master, as the leap from good to great is much more difficult to navigate than it might seem upon inspection of successful images. This great video examines seven lessons learned about landscape photography.
No one likes rejection, but it can hit particularly hard in photography, where you feel like you've invested a bit of yourself in your creative endeavors. This excellent video talks about how an early rejection almost caused a now quite successful photographer to hang up his camera permanently.
Getting a degree in photography can seem like a great way to get a college degree and still pursue what you love, yet many, many college graduates end up failing, despite having four years of intensive training in photography. This great video explores just why that is.
Hyperfocal distances are an arcane, over-technical art for some photographers and just another tool to whip out at the necessary moment for others. So, how do you put those hyperfocal blues to bed?
If you've ever looked at the list of file formats available in the save dialog box in Photoshop, your head might have started to spin trying to keep track of all the available options and to understand which you should use and when. This helpful video will talk about all the file formats you need to be concerned about and in what situations you should use them.
There are a ton of tips for improving your photography out there that apply to specific situations or require you to purchase some sort of product, but this tip applies to almost every genre and is free and easy to begin applying immediately. And I promise it will improve your photos.
Most landscape photographers will agree that post-production is essential to the art, but while the debate of how far you should go is left to individual preferences, the question is how far you can go while maintaining the image’s believability.
Lightroom has all sorts of lesser known features, and some of them can save you a ton of time in your editing workflow. This quick and helpful video will show you the range mask in Lightroom.
![The Flashlight Photo Challenge [NSFW]](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/lead/2018/10/morgaine-of-the-faeries-by-nicole-york-177.jpg)
