Behind The Scenes

We can often get swept up in the world of digital video. Topics like 'What it will mean for the future of photography when we can pull stills from video?' occupy a lot of time and thinking.

Discussion like this is relevant but I sometimes think we miss the most important element of all. The single biggest contributor towards great video is actually making sure we understand what it is that makes a great still image in the first place. To go faster, we should actually slow down. Maybe even stop.

A few weeks ago, I flew to Los Angeles to shoot a commercial project for Mitsubishi. They had a custom Outlander built by RIDES Magazine and were in need of press shots. Studio shooting can be among the most challenging of all types of photography, but with a little patience and some care, its really not that difficult. Here's how we did it.

“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have”. I’m sure we’ve all heard this saying at one point in our lives. Even though I never took the advice (In your face Mom!) it can easily be reworked into something I firmly believe. “Film for the job you want, not the job you have”.

One of the first very important skills I acquired in my Australian Photography course was the ability to breakdown lighting and determine approximate camera settings in images taken by other photographers. If you understand how the direction of light and its degree of diffusion are controlled and how they affect images, it should be easy for you to train yourself to "read" lighting in the images you see in magazines, on billboards and in your favorite photographers’ portfolios.

Where we’re going, we don’t have roads. The North Face sent photographer Celin Serbo on assignment to an area near Canyonlands National Park to capture stills of Alex Honnold, Daniel Woods, and Matt Segal establishing new climbs in a place called Labyrinth Canyon. In this post, Celin reveals the challenges of shooting a 10 day expedition, and shares his amazing images.

There have been many books written on the subject of face anatomy and how it impacts not only our perception of someone but our reaction to them as well. There are features we deem as authoritative, feminine, funny, somber, and so on. With over 7 billion people in the world we've got quite a few unique faces out there, and yet, certain features and proportions are universally and subconsciously interpreted as "appealing".

7 years of shooting Automotive Editorial Photography has taught me to streamline as much as possible. One area I've simplified to fit my needs is my lighting kit. I used to rent gear wherever I could, but after you use your own gear long enough you almost develop a relationship with it and now I definitely prefer to use my own lights.

Yesterday, I showed you the process of pre-producing a successful photoshoot and used a recent session as an example on all the steps it takes to put together a successful session with a large team. Today, I put together a breakdown of the entire production and post production process on creating a successful portrait session and a behind the scenes look into what all goes into it.

"Trevor, I see that a lot of people are visiting my site, but no one is contacting me for business. What can I do better?" I get this question quite a bit either via email or at the workshops I teach and while there is no magic solution that will work for everyone, I'd love to share what has been the biggest game changer for me in my business.

Recently, a duo by the name of Cruz + Jacob released an short documentary about a niche of concert photography known as EDM Photography. EDM, short for electronic dance music, has swept up the top music charts and its popularity is spreading quickly. The filmmaking duo snuck into this year's ULTRA, one of the biggest EDM festivals in the US, and did a pretty good job at showing what it's like to be an EDM photographer or videographer.

Looking on photography groups and forums, you'll quickly find a reoccurring problem among photographers. No Call, No Shows. It’s going to happen regardless of your location and the seriousness of the industry, and security deposits sometimes scare clients away all together. So how do you counteract this and ensure that your talent and team are timely, and even show up?

Pye from SLR lounge shows us how he used light painting and a strobe to get this amazing engagement photo. Pye booked an engagement session where the couple were both into track racing and had very nice cars. They decided to incorporate the couple's hobby with their shoot. With only a 15 minute window Pye and his team knocked out this great photo.

Before we get into the meat of this video, I've got to warn you...it's long. Like nearly 20 minutes long. That said, if you'd prefer not to gawk at the model and get to the parts that will truly help you with your photography, I have them listed out below. Despite it's length this may be one of the better BTS videos I've come across in a while. I say this because it's not often that a photographer will actually

Automotive Editorial Photography will teach you many things. Mostly though, it'll teach you how to make something out of nothing and how to operate quickly and efficiently. I can't tell you how many times I've shown up to shoot a car only to be told it can't be moved from where it sits. It's those situations that will really test your mettle as a photographer and I've actually grown to love those challenges. One challenge from last year that I really enjoyed was a RIDES Magazine cover that would require fitting and lighting 10 cars. Here's how I did it.

When we talk about on-location mixed lighting we usually mean shooting with light sources of different nature, such as natural ambient light and artificial, or shooting with lights of different color temperatures (tungsten, fluorescent, flash, etc.).

There are dozens of cool effects that one can achieve when mixing ambient light with controlled lighting, but today I would like to talk about mixing lights in studio - impulse (i.e. strobe or flash) and continuous. I love this technique and hope my article inspires you to try it out too.

Sometimes the greatest tool for creating unique movement is your own body. Using human-powered camera moves, an aggressive color grade, and high-speed cameras, the final video in the full post is definitely worth a watch. In this behind the scenes video, Sebastian Linda explains how his vision came together using a high speed camera to create a fascinating 'dream world' of skateboarding.

Casey Neistat was approached with an unusual proposition from Mercedes Benz. They wanted Casey, a successful Youtube filmmaker to make a car commercial for the new Mercedes Benz CLA, even though Casey has never filmed a car commercial or anything close to resembling one. The following set of the three videos is his rather interesting journey so far. With Casey's charismatic personality it's curious to see how the commercial will turn out. I will update this when the final commercial is released. Enjoy.

When people think of high end commercial automotive photography, they’ll sometimes call to mind images of cars with that distinct light streak down the side. That light streak that so many automotive photographers lust after is actually not a product of black magic, as it seems to be when you’re starting out, but actually incredibly easy to replicate with a technique called light painting.

Melissa Rodwell is easily one of my favorite fashion photographers. It's not even because of her work, although it is phenomenal for sure. She is at the top of my list due to how involved she is with us mortals. If you're unfamiliar, she runs FashionPhotographyBlog.com, a site so popular it holds the number 1 spot on google when you search for fashion photography. That's not an easy feat. Every now and then she puts out a behind the

During the film era people would often use different tools, such as prisms, to create new and interesting images. Without the use of tools like Lightroom and Photoshop, camera malfunctions, such as light leaks could be very valuable in creating unique art. Perhaps its time to remanufacture these ideas, and use them to help create something truly interesting.

If you've ever wondered what it would be like to work with a retoucher on a concept you've had in mind, this may be just what you're looking for. Photographer Justin Bettman wanted to create a concept but didn't have the ability to do so on his own, so he teamed up with creative retoucher and manipulator Krzysztof Rejek to bring his idea to life.

As many of you know, I earn my living as a wedding photographer, It’s a job that I wouldn’t trade for the world, but occasionally I get the opportunity to do something a little different. In this case, it's about as far removed from wedding photography as you can get. If you remember at the end of last year I showed you how to photograph a World War Two machine gun, this time though, we’re going after something just a little bit bigger.

Night photography is a very broad category, open to many different approaches and techniques to create a unique image of the world, or universe around us. The team at Walley Films has done a great job in this video, documenting the night/light painting photo workshop led by Scott Martin and Lance Keimig in Texas. While you won't get the full hands-on workshop experience, hopefully you can pick up some tips or inspiration for your own work.

I've been working on a personal photo series capturing movie and television cars (real and replica) for about 5 years now under the title "The Unicorn Project". I've posted about this before on Fstoppers (here, here, & here), as you may recall. Most recently, I had an opportunity to photograph a replica A-Team Van and KITT from Knight Rider while I was in Los Angeles. These happen to be two of my favorite television cars of all time. Watch the video and read the full post below to learn how it was done.

Not too long ago we featured a tutorial that showed you how to make a fantasy desert kingdom out of tourist images, and thought I would share with you another amazing project by a talented artist. Alexander Koshelkov has quite an impressive resume of outrageous Photoshop compositions that excellently use real world items to create fantastical scenes. He just released this time lapse where you can watch his latest composition which took him just over 7 hours and uses 284 Photoshop CC layers.

Today my Facebook Newsfeed has been bombarded with posts about people going to see 'The Conjuring'. Released today, the supernatural thriller is getting great reviews from critics and viewers alike. Check out this b-roll and behind the scenes footage of the movie. With James Wan behind the helm the camera work is nothing short of amazing.

Fro Knows Photo received an email from Fred Dingelhoff, a blind photographer in the Netherlands. Fred lost his right eye when he was 9 months old to a tumor and then when he was 21 years old a tumor in his optic nerve took his sight in his left eye.

I've seen a lot of DIY setups over the years, but every now and then one comes along that's so unstable it's scary and yet way too cool not to try. You can tell by the title that this isn't going to be some amazing setup with a hundred cameras arrayed. This is what it sounds like...A GoPro on a ceiling fan whipping around your subject while

It seems utility companies are looking for more creative ways of bringing their message across to television viewers in their commercials. Ontario Power Generation has recently come out with two commercials using miniature sets in their commercial production. Watch this very detailed behind the scenes video on how they created the sets, and how they filmed the fresh new take on water safety.

My good buddy and fantastic car photographer Richard Thompson (check out his facebook page) shared a unique shoot he just completed recently. He photographed over $20 million in rare exotic cars using the Phase One IQ180 (80 MP medium format monster) in an extremely rare and beautiful location over 3 days. Even better, the shoot benefitted a children's charity. Check out the full post below to see more images & to learn more about how everything came together on this remarkable shoot!