Interested in learning some new lighting setups when using a beauty dish? I've created a video sharing five different ways that I utilize a beauty dish for my studio portrait work as well as discussing some of the benefits of each setup.
Ever wondered how people created those "impossible" photos of them sitting off the ground? Here I teach how to make a levitation photo in just under 10 minutes using some simple tricks in camera and finishing it off with Photoshop.
Photography in its pure, abstracted state is generally a happy pursuit for those who are passionate about it. In its practical implementation, there are lots of things that can make us grumpy or even disillusioned. This great videos talk about five ways to be a happier photographer.
Portrait photography can be a tricky genre, as it relies very heavily on your ability to interact with and bring the best out of the people in front of your lens, making it just as much psychology as photography. This great video will give you some tips for working with subjects as well as some helpful career advice.
Of all the focal lengths, I personally think wide-angle lenses might take the most getting used to when it comes to creating compelling imagery that takes advantage of their unique properties and avoids their pitfalls. This helpful video will give you some great tips for taking better shots with them.
In an ideal world, we’d have every aspect of our business set up correctly from the start, but that isn’t realistic. The future version of your photography and your business will be shaped by the lessons that you are learning now.
You book a commercial job and the client wants a beautiful face to grace their next ad. The client relies on you, the photographer to help with the process of hiring the model. The crew you hire rely on you to select the right candidate for their needs. That's great, right? Get the most radiant face, possibly the one with the highest social media numbers for that extra bump and you're set! Is that how it works?
Pixellu is a startup known for making extraordinarily intuitive and time-saving software for professional photographers. A company started by photographers for photographers, Pixellu aims to help streamline the workflow of product delivery, effectively giving photographers back their time, while simultaneously adding value to the final product the photographer delivers.
If you've ever considered uploading your work to Unsplash, you should probably watch these two videos, or at the very least, familiarize yourself with the points raised by legendary commercial and editorial photographer, Zack Arias. If nothing else, Arias wants photographers to understand the risk of facing a lawsuit as a result of uploading their images to the site.
The one constant in our industry (or most industries for that matter) is change. Few things change faster than the algorithms that power social media, thus the bulk of many photographers' presence to the world. With the new year, there are new things that we must be aware of if we wish to maintain our place in the algorithm's placement to our own followers and hopefully grow instead of just maintaining.
Everyone wants to get better in their photography skills and we keep learning constantly. Eventually, we keep accumulating so much knowledge that once in a while a reminder of few of the basics is always good. Here is a quick tip that will make you a better photographer anytime.
Taking the leap of fate to freelancing is probably one of the first major milestones and commitments we can make to both ourselves and our career. Jeff Rojas has now been working as a full-time freelancer for roughly five years. This video helps breakdown some of the tough questions and quips of wisdom that can help us push forward to being able to stably work as a freelance photographer.
Hidden within the heart of Adobe Photoshop is a filter that many are familiar with, yet most fail to use to its full potential. It is a powerful, all encompassing workhorse, and its abilities may just change the way you approach your Photoshop edits. Ladies and gentlemen, let's explore the often ignored Camera Raw Filter.
For me and many photographers that I know, compositing and post-processing is fine, even needed in many cases. The thing that we all seem to get wrapped around the axle about is when a fellow artist is not entirely forthcoming about how a work was produced.
A few days ago, I published a copycat video on my Vimeo account. After the video was first shared by DPReview, the file became viral and got shared hundreds of thousands of times all over Internet. How did I produce this little funny video? How does having 250,000 views per day affect your visibility and social network accounts? And finally, what does this video really mean?
The art and business of photography has had no trouble in inspiring millennials into finding a path to success within the field. Twenty-somethings have embraced the use of new technologies in their workflow, marketing, and creativity, but there is one lesson on reaching your goals that has not changed since the dawn of commercial photography.
To celebrate the release of our newest product photography tutorial, the next episode of Critique the Community will be focused on product images. After having spent weeks with Brian Rodgers Jr. and watching him work, Lee and Patrick are ready to see how your images stand up against the highest rated product photographers on Fstoppers. From the submissions, we will choose one lucky person to win a free Fstoppers tutorial. We will be accepting submissions between now and Friday, February 2nd, at midnight and will select a total of 20 images for the video. Make sure you follow the submission guidelines below to be eligible to participate.
If you haven't tried out night photography before, you sure are missing out on some fun and creative opportunities. One thing for sure, it's quite different than shooting during the day, so I understand why some of you may be hesitant to venture out at night with your camera.
This week's episode of Critique the Community brings a lively discussion between Lee Morris and Mike Kelley on what makes a quality fine art photograph. We received hundreds of image submissions from the Fstoppers community and Lee and Mike hold nothing back with their critique. In the midst of everything, we also play a prank on Mike.
Have you ever wondered what it takes to assist the most successful photographers in the world?
Frequency separation has long been a popular technique for skin retouching. However, for a lot of photographers new to photo editing, beauty retouching, and ACDSee, it can seem like a very difficult process. Within ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2018, the process has been made easier with the addition of an automated frequency separation tool.
Are you doing your best in client consultations? I wasn't, and my work was suffering for it. A thorough client consultation is a free, simple tool that can make a huge impact on your portrait photography business, both in terms of shoot quality, and in getting happy clients to come back for more. The best part is, it’s not difficult at all. You just have to do it.
This week, Adobe released an update to Photoshop CC that features a new selection tool capable of automatically selecting the prominent subjects in an image with only one click. This video does an excellent job of revealing exactly what you get with this new technology and how to use it to its full potential.
When you drag all your photography gear to a location, do you ever feel a certain pressure to come away with a shot? Certainly, we all want the time and effort we put into each shoot to pay off, but sometimes, it's detrimental to try to force a shot that isn't there.
Shooting portraits with beautiful, creamy backgrounds is a very popular look right now. Using the right gear, you can achieve this look in camera, but one common question that arises from shooting wide open is how do you get perfect focus?
Candide Thovex: legend. The French skier’s latest cinematic marvel was released today, and it’s the most epic action sports video of all time. Of. All. Time.
Product photography is all about the details, where every ray of light, every angle, and every placement can make or break a shot. This great video will walk you through setting up and shooting a watch image while working to minimize the amount of time spent in post-processing.
The Godox AD600 Pro Strobe was recently announced to the public. Having myself recently shifted from a fantastic (but also pricey) pair of Profoto B1s to jump into the Godox (Flashpoint in the U.S.) system, I took notice.
The Clone Stamp Tool is probably my favorite thing in Photoshop, as it's a simple, straightforward, versatile, and most importantly, powerful tool for editing a wide range of images. This helpful video will give you five tips for getting the best results out of the Clone Stamp Tool.
If you're in the market for a new gimbal you're probably overwhelmed with options. In today's video, I will compare the five most popular gimbals and let you know which one you should buy.
The chaotic nature in which photographers send their final galleries to a client is something I've often noticed. Galleries will jump around between scenes and cameras without any flow or organization. I am a wedding photographer, and maybe this means more to me than it would to other genres of photography. However, taking a few minutes to put everything in an order that flows well for your clients can create a tremendous difference in how your brand is perceived and in how you tell the story of their photoshoot.
There is a reason people say that your price range usually determines what kind of clients you attract, and this also often holds true for photography workshops, not just for weddings or photoshoots. I found this out in the hard way; I burned out, made hardly any profit, sometimes even loss. So, how did I end up in this situation and why did I keep going instead of learning from my mistakes early on?
If you're a photographer, retoucher, or videographer, you likely spend a lot of time at a computer. And since you're spending all that time there, it makes sense to make sure you're as comfortable and efficient as possible. Here are six non-photography items I use to make my workspace better.
Let’s face it, many photographers these days utilize Lightroom presets to either expedite their workflow or to help spur creativity when they are in a rut. But have you ever wanted to use a Lightroom preset as a layer in Photoshop, or potentially layer two presets together? Well look no further, Preset Brewery by Adam Bardon makes life easy with a click of a button.
There are a lot of people switching from DSLR to mirrorless these days. But while Sony has the full frame side of things pretty much locked down, a ton of people, including Fujifilm X Photographer and Fstoppers tutorial maker, Elia Locardi, are recognizing the great, more compact, systems that Fuji is producing. In this video, Photographer and YouTuber Mark Duffy explains why he moved from Canon to Fuji.
Recently, Spiffy Gear had released a very unique-looking light named Spekular. What caught my attention was its ability to combine, shape, and separate one single "light" in so many different ways. From my perspective, having the variety of options for on-the-go shooting held value. I ended up taking the LED light kit for a spin. There were some aspects I liked and some that could use some improvements. Let's dive in.
Adrien Mauduit has released the second piece in his “Galaxies” series. Volume II features time-lapses taken against winter skies, a deviation from his first “Galaxies” film which captures our galaxy and the surrounding stars during the summer nights.
Post-process sharpening is an often overlooked tool that can significantly improve an image. There are several techniques available to sharpen photos. Usually, an editing software will have a simple slider delegated to adjust a photo’s sharpness that may include a few options with it as well. Adobe Photoshop, however, can take the ability to control sharpening much farther.
Most tutorials available for free on YouTube explaining how to color grade your footage are just ways to sell LUTs, presets, or to show you how to add teal and orange to your clips. Nate from Tutvid decided to make a more comprehensive video to help you get started with Adobe Premiere Lumetri tool so you can grade any of your videos the way you want.
Angle is everything. It's often the difference between a mediocre shot and a legendary one. Ansel Adams once said, “A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” It turns out he was actually pretty off because it's actually all about where you kneel, lay, and hang.
I'm a big fan of seeing photoshoots from conceptualization all the way to finished images, as I think that while it's of course beneficial to learn individual techniques and ideas, it's also important to see how all those really work together to produce the final product. This great set of videos will show you that entire process.
Flash duration is one of those terms you hear in the world of flash photography but may not know exactly what it is, or why it matters. It’s really quite simple, and pretty much exactly what it sounds like. The measurement of time from when the flash begins to fire until it’s completely off is what’s known as flash duration. Like a light bulb filament slowly burning off when it’s turned off, a flash tube does the same thing, but much quicker.
Wider was always better when I first began photographing landscapes. As an amateur photographer and outdoor enthusiast, all I wanted to do was cut down on weight in my pack when heading off on long, adventure-filled days in the mountains. But slowly my focus shifted from going out to hike, while maybe capturing beautiful moments, to fully focusing my time and attention on capturing beautiful landscapes. Hiking became the mode of transportation while photography became the reason for heading to the mountains.
Under mounting pressure from my peers and the industry at large, I finally tried getting into video creation. While filming myself in my first video ever (an unboxing), I ran into a whole slew of issues. How should I mount my camera? Where do I place it? Why does this look so gosh diddly darn boring? To say I struggled would be an understatement. To say I gave up would be spot on. But maybe it was for the best, because two days later, Toronto-based Photographer and Cinematographer Peter McKinnon came out with all the answers to my problems — well, my technical and inspirational ones. The rest I'm still working on.
I realized a while back that I watch a lot of YouTube videos. Sure, I'll kill some time while laughing at something completely idiotic, but most of my time on the website is looking for my next lesson in photography. For me, photography is something that I don't think I will ever stop learning, and it's one of the things I like most about it. I love the fact that there is always something else for me to learn, something new for me to try, and countless of other photographers from whom I can learn.
One of the most common complaints among Adobe Lightroom’s users is the issue of it restricting your catalog access to a single computer. Photographers who travel often or studios with multiple editors have continually looked for options that would allow them to sync their edits across several computers conveniently. If you search the web, you can find a few workarounds for this problem, but none that are as simple most photographers would like. However, the creation of the new Lightroom CC has opened up several new possibilities, including a simple option to easily edit your images from multiple computers.
There are several different ways to light your subject in photography. While light painting isn't a new or exclusive technique within automotive photography, it is a fundamental technique car photographers should understand how to use. If you are new to light painting or never used this technique to photograph a vehicle, you may have some questions on where to begin.
When Capture One 9 was released about two years ago, one of the most noticeable features was the color balance tool. It makes color grading very visual and effortless, even if you don’t have a solid knowledge of color theory. Along with tethered capture mode, the layers introduced last December, and the default color profiles, it has become one of the primary reasons why Phase One’s software is the standard in the commercial, fashion, and beauty photography industry. In this six-minute long video, Zoë Noble will show you how it can set the mood of your images and help speed up your editing process.
Most of us love photos with vibrant colors that seem to pop off the screen, but it's a subtle art creating such a look without making the final image gaudy and oversaturated. This helpful video will show you several methods for making colors burst using Photoshop.
It may be absolutely freezing where you are right now, but that doesn't mean it's not a great time get out and shoot some photos. This great video will give you seven helpful tips and ideas for better winter landscape images.
