Behind The Scenes

Frequency separation is an amazing technique used to retouch skin. It separates the color from the texture and allows you to work on them separately. In this tutorial, Elena Jasic goes over how she uses frequency separation in her retouching workflow.

Martin Schoeller is a very successful portrait photographer whose work has been featured in The New Yorker, Outside Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Time Magazine, GQ, Esquire, and Vogue. The style of these portraits is beautifully simple regardless of the nature of the person in front of the lens, and the guys at PHLEARN wanted to try and recreate his unique style.

Skreened is an eCommerce company that specializes in on-demand screen printing. Shirts are their biggest sellers. Since each shirt design is unique, they needed a library of images with models in blank tees so they could overlay the latest designs in post. When they approached me to shoot for them, their main request was that these portraits be fun and energetic.

Whether you watched the Super Bowl or not, it's very possible you saw the now world famous PSY perform an adapted version of "Gangnam Style" for a pistachio commercial. I have to admit, when I first saw the commercial, I was taken off guard by the lack of connection. Still, I've thought about pistachios since, so I guess the marketing campaign worked.

Everyone remembers the 2012 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover. It brought a lot of discussion for the wrong reasons. If you don't, you should refresh your memory here. This time around, the 2013 cover also features Kate Upton. Although it is much better, it seems that some people are still unhappy with it because she's the cover model again. At least the focus went away from the processing of the image.

Over the last 100 years, National Geographic has brought us some of the most iconic and incredible images of wildlife spanning across the globe. Though on rare occasion, we're able to actually see the work that goes into capturing these images. Some of these amazing photos take days, or even weeks to capture. The film posted above is a great look into all the images that National Geographic captures during a migration period for various animals.

Nikon Pro Photographer Craig Kolesky went to Capetown and packed in his bag not only the Nikon D4, but their Coolpix P7700. His subject for the shoot was Redbull Athlete Sifiso Nhlapo, a BMX racer from the South African Olympic team. In this video, you can see Craig working in various environments, from dirty racing tracks to a small studio setting with ring lights.

Freddie Child-Villiers was invited as one of two photographers worldwide in November of 2010. "He was officially allowed to photograph the only White Lions to be successfully reintroduced back into their endemic habitat after being technically extinct for over two decades." The images in the series were shot with the Hasselblad H4D-50 for entry into the wildlife category of the 2010 Hasselblad Masters competition

I really like the team at PLEARN because they consistently come up with great photo shoot concepts, but they don't just leave it at that. They also show you have to make those images yourself in a casual yet informative manner. This week they show you how to create a composite that takes a woman and puts her in a room that's just a little too small.

So, how do you shoot at the legendary Disney Concert Hall without breaking their rule of 'No Professional Photography'? You do it with finesse. Benjamin Von Wong was faced with the task of shooting the Trio Dinicu at the location without looking like a professional photographer. In this behind the scenes video he shows you how he accomplished that and also walks you through cleaning any distractions from your photo using Photoshop.

A month or so ago I was touring NBC's studios at 30 Rock with a friend of mind who works on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and he introduced me to the show's photographer, Lloyd Bishop. After meeting Lloyd I checked out his work online and discovered that this guy has an impressive portfolio! I knew I had to catch up with him for an interview to share his work and his story with all of you. Enjoy!

The guys over at FROKOST FILM / FEIL FILM put together this awesome music video for While You Slept. Watch the behind the scenes video on how they shot this epic video in one take. The shot took 18 second to film, which translates into three and a half minutes in slow motion. "Havoc" was shot in one take at 300 fps using a Red Epic with a 75mm master prime. It takes a lot of comunication and planning to get this right, and the end result is quite impressive.

So much is done as computer graphics these days that I've grown to really respect photographers who still want to truly make an image. Last week Fstoppers twitter follower Patric Bergkvist asked us to take a look at an image he made, and I'm glad we did.

In a fun and unique approach that combines many different facets of art and multimedia, production group CanCanClub out of Buenos Aires worked with Antonio Balseiro from Gazz and 1st Ave Machine, Art Director Hernán Aragunde, and the crew from Nintendo to create a 30-second commercial for "Paper Mario Sticker Star." In this first of two behind the scenes videos, you catch a peek at the live action video shot,

David Loftus has been working with food television star, Jamie Oliver, for over 15 years taking dynamic imagery of the culinary masterpieces that Jamie creates in his kitchen. In this behind the scenes video David is shooting with the Nikon D4. In a few short cuts Jamie is also seen trying his hand at taking his own food shots with the Nikon D3200.

Marc Donahue from Permagrin Films has been busy since his production of Dream Music, which got over 2 million views on YouTube. Most recently, Marc has been experimenting with GoPro camera arrays for a unique effect, most similar to bullet-time like in the Matrix. Click on to see the final video and read an interview with the man behind the lens.

One of my favorite books is Love Is A Killer App by Tim Sanders. In it we read that business love is “the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles (knowledge, network, and compassion) with your bizpartners.” One person who exemplifies this concept perfectly is Jasmine Star and her series of videos called Shooting Star. The videos are full of great advise for new as well as experienced wedding photographers ready to learn new tips that will help them grow their business.

Every Week Benjamin Von Wong releases new behind the scenes content for your viewing pleasure. This week Ben takes off for Paris and tackles the challenge of shooting a piece of fine art called the “WOM dog” by Cyril Anguelidis. Ben and his talented fire-wielding partner-in-crime, Andrey DAS, took their time in pre-production. They sketched out what exact effects were to be used around the expensive sculpture for the most dramatic look, while still keeping the crew and subject safe.

Here at Fstoppers we love sharing behind the scenes photo shoots with our readers so we can all learn and grow together. Every so often we come across one that while it could have been executed better is still worth sharing. Such is the case with the recent commercial shoot for the McPhee Inflatable Unicorn Horn for cats. I can gather from the video that it is best to shoot unicorn'ed cats against a white seamless, using Pocket Wizards to fire your lights and a number of cat petting assistants. Big props go out to the audio mixer on the video as well. Enjoy!

Sometimes your favorite shot out of a series would be perfect if only one little thing was fixed. For me, that is often shadows obscuring details I really wish were more visible. PHLEARN has released an extensive tutorial on how to get those shadows to reveal details in a way that doesn't look super fake, which an issue I have with other methods I have seen.

So this is pretty cool! MeCam is a tiny helicopter that follows you around capturing video of you "all day", or as long as the battery lasts I suppose. This new technology, which is still being refined by the creators Always Innovating, boasts that MeCam will be able to instantly upload the video to your social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more! This could be a great way to film yourself during a shoot, while setting up your lights or while stuffing your face full of Doritos while you're waiting for the "models" to "show up".

Whenever I talk to another photographer the topic of “personal work” always comes up. Usually in the casual form of, “hey, have you shot any personal work lately?” This standard artistic rendition of the workplace, “how’s the weather” is usually brushed off and more enjoyable conversations quickly replace it. However, for me, it is probably better that my “personal work” remains limited, for doing it usually leeds to bodily harm (or in this case recurring nightmares).

So I have seen quite a bit of caricature portraits and fell in love with them. I decided to try my hand at doing a few and kind of fell into a new little series with them. Everyone who has seen them has asked if I could shoot them or their families in this style. This little tutorial will show you how I go about doing these shots.

In this fun behind the scenes video, we get to see San Diego-based production company SaintWest staging video shots for the "Find Your Moment" campaign with Torrey Pines golf course. Get an inside look on how the crew captures the golf experience in a cinematic way, but also improvises to make a simulated golf hole for a unique POV shot. Inside are the final videos.

It might be easy to form a quick opinion about a picture like this. I'll admit it, when I first heard “trucks,” I was already curious about the people I was going to work with. It's not often that you run into someone who is passionate about their vehicle.

A few weeks ago I posted about the outstanding newly released internet series, The Underwater Realm, and as promised I'm back with the full behind the scenes look at the underwater photoshoot by amazing conceptual photographer, Benjamin Von Wong. He explains how he was able to accomplish the shoot in the pool and how he brought all of the elements together to create a wonderful behind the scenes image of the entire cast and crew at work.

What happens when you give a photographer free reign to come up with some crazy ideas, access to a ski park and all the day-glo they could stomach? A crazy 80's ski bunny shoot for Roastar Coffee Bags! This behind the scenes shoot from David E. Jackson walks us through the thoughts behind the thought process behind the shoot and we've got two great videos below that explain some of the post processing.

A few months ago, I hit up my buddy Paul Miller, who is a movie director out of Southern California. Regular readers of my personal blog site may recognize Paul from my previous Mad Max Interceptor shoot. Paul told me that he is part of a group of folks that essentially constructs clothing, weapons, and even vehicles to re-enact the Mad Max post apocalypse in the Mojave desert, much like some re-enact the US Civil War. They are often referred to as "Wastelanders" after their annual gathering entitled "Wasteland Weekend".

A few weeks ago Eric Pare released the 24x360 project which included 24 cameras taking a long exposure picture of a single subject. It's difficult to explain but once you see it you will understand. Eric was kind enough to write up an article just for us on how these incredible video clips were made.

Sherpas Cinema, who have been featured before on Fstoppers, produced a ski film called All.I.Can, and in that film was a segment directed by JP Auclair that shows a skier doing runs through a town in British Columbia. They threw it online and after getting millions of views, decided to post the making of video, which is posted here. It shows how they planned shots (and got lucky on some others) while running around Canada for two weeks with a RED camera.