This is just a friendly reminder that the winner for our monthly contest will be chosen in 2 days. If you haven't entered yet, you can submit your pictures with the theme of "motion" here. This months winner will get to have their website/image on our banner on the top of Fstoppers.com and Photoflex will be giving the winner a LiteDome Kit for your on camera flash.

Our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest ends on December 31st which gives you a little less than 2 months to submit your video. I want to make it very clear that you SHOULD NOT wait until the 31st to submit your video because something will go wrong; it always does. Plus, videos submitted early will be posted to the front of Fstoppers and many that come in at the last minute will not get the same exposure. Stay tuned until the end of this video for a little "surprise" for all of you gear heads out there.

It's almost April which means that two of our photo contests are about to wrap up. The March Photoshop Contest challenges you to create the best tshirt graphic art of Noam's Stolen Scream for a Think Tank Photo Bag as well as a custom shirt featuring your design. For the March Photography Contest you can submit your best interpretation of the theme "COLLABORATION" and win a Photoflex Starlight and a custom banner on the top of Fstoppers.com! The chances of winning either contest are really good because only a few dozen people have entered so far. Click on the links above to submit your entry and as long as you have it posted before 6am Eastern Time then you will be eligible. And remember Noam is judging his contest and February winner Julius will be judging the Photo Contest. Good luck to all!

Here at Fstoppers we are kicking off summer with 2 ways to win some hot prizes. In our Flickr group you have the chance to win a Lowepro Pro Roller x100 Case in our Behind The Scenes contest. Last month was our 1st Flickr contest and we had 440 entries! Thank you to everyone for making the contest such a success. You can also head over to our Forum's June Photo Contest to win a StarLite Digital Kit from Photoflex. This month's theme is "Sand". So put on some SPF 50, find yourself a beach or desert and have fun creating. Good luck everyone!

Hey everyone, the Fstoppers Flickr contest for August, 2011 is in full swing HERE. This month you can win a Lowepro Fastpack 250 bakpack. This is my bag of choice, I use it almost daily. It fits my Nikon D3s with the Nikon 70-200 VRII in the main bottom compartment, my SB-900 with it's battery pack and Nikon 24-70 up in the top compartment. PLUS I store my 13" MacBook Pro in the laptop compartment (although it'll fit up to a 17" laptop). This bag is solid and I LOVE it, and it fits a bunch more, but enough talk about the bag ... GO HERE and WIN IT! This month's theme is WONDER

Just a friendly reminder that you have 3 days left to enter our monthly photography contest. Submit your "technology" pictures by posting them here. We just got back into the states yesterday and we should have the BTS contest for the camera figured out and running again on Tuesday.

This months Fstoppers Photoshop contest is all about helping Noam Galai (The Stolen Scream). His image was stolen hundreds of times and to make a small portion of his money back he is selling a few of his personal "scream designs" in his scream store (both Patrick and I have already been sporting a couple of his shirts around town). The winner of this months contest will win a shirt with his or her design and an Urban Design 70 bag from Think Tank. Learn all of the details and download the high res image here on the forum.

Amateurs and pros alike know that in order to get themselves and models in the zone, the right tunes are a must for any studio. Well now you can get a library of music that puts Pandora to shame with Slacker Premium Radio. We're giving away three free months, and all it takes is a simple tweet. For the official rules, read the full post.

Happy July everyone, just in case you didn't know, Fstoppers has a FLICKR GROUP! So join it ... now, go do it! And in this Flickr group of ours we run a monthly contest with some really great guest judges. Last month Noam Galai did us the honors, and this month it will be Drew Gurian. For those of you who don't know Drew, he is the dreamer that birthed the Flash Bus Tour, and is Joe McNally's right hand man. Check out his work at www.DrewGurian.com. This month's contest theme is HEAT, and Lowepro is hooking the lucky winner up with a Lowepro Classified 250 AW which is an awesome bag for the photojournalist or street shooter inside us all. Go submit and have a blast creating! -Corey Melton

I know everyone who entered the contest is patiently waiting for the voting to begin and I wanted to give you all a quick update. We are going to take this week to continue to post our favorite contest entries on the front page. Then we plan to create a post that has every video submission in one post so that our readers can easily find and watch all of them. We were then going to pick our favorite 5 videos and allow the community to vote on them. We got a lot of great submissions though so we may choose more than 5 favorites. To combat cheaters, the voting will be taking place on the forums and each member will get 1 vote only. We don't want this contest to be a popularity contest where whoever has the most friends wins. By having the poll on the forum we will be able to track votes and make sure that everything is fair.

We are almost done with 2010 which means you are running out of time to participate in our monthly forum photo contest. What better way to test out those new Christmas cameras than to submit an entry and take a chance at winning a new photo toy we actually use here at Fstoppers. As we do every month, the winner of the contest gets to pick the next theme, and November contest winner Janis Amolins has chosen "Illusion". This month's winner will also win a custom image and website link on the Fstoppers rotating banner above as well as a Photoflex LightReach Kit which is perfect for lighting your location photos (no assistant needed either). As always, our contests are judged by the winner of the previous month's contest so you have to impress Janis and not anyone on the Fstoppers Staff. Have fun submitting to the December Fstoppers Forum Contest and good luck to everyone!

We all know that as DSLR technology improves, more of us photographers are trying our hands at creating video content. One of the easiest ways to do that is to shoot music videos for your pre-existing music photo clients and friends. I know that's how we built the portfolio for our production comapny, orignially. Well, our friends over at Silver Sound are throwing a music video film festival and you now have a great chance to have your music video work recognized and even win prizes!

We received over 1400 entries into our sweepstakes to win a Lowepro Photo Sport AW 200 and this morning I used a random number generator to draw our winner. Congratulations to Kara Marnell! To claim your prize, send me an email with a link to your facebook profile so I can confirm your details (this may require that you accept me as a friend). Stick around and look forward to more contests launching this month! More chances to win great prizes from awesome brands like Lowepro!

Hey Fstoppers! This week we have a new photo contest in the FS Forum. The winner walks away with a free year of Animoto Pro, the way to turn your photos and videos into pure amazing. Lee Morris is an avid fan and subscriber, so make sure to check it out. For all the rules and how to enter, view the full post. NOTE: The timeline for this contest has been quartered! You have only ONE WEEK to submit your images, so hop to it!

We will be giving a way a Canon 7D or D300s (whichever the winner wants) in a contest in the near future. What are we waiting for? We want at least 1000 twitter followers (we are at about 750 right now) before we start our contest. So if you have twitter you can help us hurry this along at www.twitter.com/fstoppers.

As most of you know, Lee and I decided to close the voting of the BTS Video Contest because of some fishy voting patterns we saw the day before voting was to end. Collectively, we decided that the best thing to do was to pause the voting until we could investigate the suspicious votes. Unfortunately both Lee and I were out of the country and could not look into the issue until last week. What we found was no one was actually cheating. After talking to the creators of the top 4 most popular videos, we all came to a fair compromise: we would open the contest voting for an additional 4 days and change the poll so voting remained hidden. You can watch the top 10 videos and cast your vote HERE if you have not already done so. All previous votes are still valid and part of this contest. The whole idea behind this contest was to have the Fstoppers readers vote on what video they though was the most instructional and innovative. We clearly said that if we found users creating multiple accounts then their video would be disqualified. What we found was some of our readers are just better and campaigning for votes than others and having your friends vote for you was never against the rules. So again, we think the most fair solution is to allow a few more days for voting. To be eligible to vote, you still have to have 3 posts after being registered for 24 hours. I personally hate that this voting experience wasn't as smooth as we had planned, and we definitely want to get a camera in the hands of the winner. Good luck to everyone and feel free to use facebook, twitter, and even the good ol telephone if you want to drive votes to your video. Thanks again to everyone who participated in our first ever contest and be sure to check out the monthly contests over at www.fstoppersforum.com

Ok guys, here is the deal. We did some poking around and I am happy to say that it doesn't appear that anyone has been cheating. Multiple contestants got many of their friends and family members to sign up and vote for them and although that wasn't our ideal plan, it is totally fair and within our rules. So, we were about to start the voting again but one of our top contestants asked us to postpone it a little longer because he is leaving the country this week. I am trying to be as fair as I can to everyone here. Perhaps it was a bad idea to pause the voting but we are doing the best we can. We knew that if there was cheating and we let the contest end it would have been much worse.

This is your last reminder to submit your entries to our Facebook Group! We are looking for your best image that you shot with either a point and shoot or your phone Make sure you note that it is a contest entry in the caption or tag Fstoppers in the post. These days, great photos can be made with the smallest hardware and we want you to prove it. Contest ends January 3, 2012.

Our November Contsts, sponsored by Lowepro and Westcott, are coming to a close! You have just one more day to enter to win some great prizes. On Facebook you can win the new Peter Hurley DVD just by entering a before and after photoshop image to our group page. On the Fstoppers facebook page, just click the Contests tab, answer one question, and you're entered to win a brand new Lowepro bag. On the FS Forums, submit your best self portrait and you could win a new Westcott Apollo Orb. Just click any of the images below to go to the contest you want to enter. Hurry, all contests close tomorrow!

If you are laying on your couch reading this after a Thanksgiving binge, then there probably isn't much hope for you. But if you didn't over due the calories (or aren't in America) then you still have 5 days to participate in our Monthly Fstoppers Forum Contest! This month's theme is "Emotion" and I still think the winning image is up for grabs. The winner of this month's contest is going to win a Photoflex Multidisc Kit which is a great tool for when you need extra light and don't have a strobe with you. We use these all the time with video, and it is crucial to have the reflector holder when you don't have an extra set of hands on set. If you win, you will also get your image and website at the top of our site for a month. So head over to the Forum Contest Thread and post your best "Emotion" photo.

I am happy to say that today we reached 1000 followers on Twitter and that means we can finally begin our contest. Please give us a few more days to film the video explaining all of the details of the contest. We cannot give out too much information yet but I will say that it has something to do with the best behind the scenes video. The exciting thing about this contest is that we may not have many entries because we aren't very big yet. This means that if you do decide to submit, you have a very good chance of winning. Get your creative juices flowing, this contest will be underway soon.

The final day to film and upload your submission to the Fstoppers BTS Contest 2010 is here! Over the last 90 days we have received over 60 submissions and have seen some really fun and creative photoshoots. It has also been exciting to see the talent from the Fstoppers community and to be able to see our readers in action. Lee and I will continue to feature some of our favorite videos in the upcoming weeks as the final process of declaring a winner gets closer. Since many of our readers are from across the globe, we think it is only fair that everyone has a chance to submit their video up until the last minute. So please make sure that your video is uploaded to Vimeo.com or Youtube.com by the end of August 1st, and being the kind people that we are, we will give everyone a grace period of one day to have it posted to the Fstoppers Forum. Everyone at Fstoppers encourages you to continue creating BTS videos for all of your projects even after this contest is over. Thanks again to everyone who has taken part in this contest. We hope you have not only been able to grow as a photographer but also as a video editor as well. If you are interested in seeing what everyone has done for the contest, you can view all the videos HERE.

We had a great showing for our random drawing to win a Lowepro Pro Messenger 160 AW over at the Fstoppers Facebook page. Using a random number generator, we have a winner! Congratulations to Lisa Morris-Murray! Send me an email at Jaron@fstoppers.com with a link to your facebook profile so I can confirm your details (this may require that you accept me as a friend) to claim your prize. Love winning free things? Keep checking back to Fstoppers.com for more contests and more winning brought to you by the best brands in the business.

Watch "The Chase", a behind the scenes look at a 360º panoramic car chase. Submitted by photographer/retoucher Eric Herrmann, producer Steven Hasegawa, BTSV Austin Kearsley with music by Zack Hemsey. The panoramic final image is pretty impressive, so, be sure to check it out here: thechasepano.com.

Last week we announced a contest on our Facebook sponsored by our friends over at Lowepro. It was only supposed to last one week, but we decided that we would show a little New Year's generosity and extend it an additional week. That means you can still enter to win an awesome Lowepro Pro Messenger 160 AW simply by telling us what style of bag is your favorite over at the Fstoppers Facebook page. Just click the contest tab and submit your answer. Enter now by clicking here. All entries must be received by January 3! Good luck!

Each month this year, Fstoppers is running a genre specific Critique the Community contest with some amazing prizes. The theme for March is "Weddings," and we are giving away $3,000 in prizes to 3 lucky winners. Oh, and one of the most successful wedding photographers I know, Pye Jirsa, will be guest judging the images. Here are the details!