In my recent Natural Light Tutorial with RGGEDU, I went through every aspect of natural light photography and retouching... Or so I thought. During a shoot this week, I realized I missed one thing: enhancing freckles with Photoshop. In this article I will show a simple method to making those freckles pop.
Throughout my career so far I have failed over and over again. Although it’s the successes that I'm remembered and known for, it’s the failures that are always the catalyst. At the end of the day, the key to success lies in failure. This improvisational beauty shoot was only a success because I set myself up to fail.
If you’ve made the transition, or are planning on making the transition from photography as a hobby to photography as a job, you’ll invariably come to a point where you’ll just want to throw your hands in the air and give up. These bouts of self-doubt and frustration will likely occur many times and seem to appear not only during your lows but even at the highs. These feelings are normal, and it is those that rise above them time and again that end up successful.
If you’ve ever struggled to put together a video demo reel, or you’re planning to make one in the future, this post is for you. Below, I’ll share some tips that will help you be more efficient in your process to prepare for editing hours of your footage down to a montage of a couple of minutes.
Exactly one week ago we marked the 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks which resulted in the deaths of nearly 3,000 people. As they do every anniversary, The Municipal Art Society of New York created two vertical columns of light ("Tribute In Light") right next to the World Trade Center in remembrance of the Twin Towers using 88 powerful searchlights pointing up to the sky. Every year I photograph the Tribute In Light from a different spot, and this year, for the second time, I decided to photograph it from above. From a helicopter. Here is how and why I did it.
Whether you’re a photographer, filmmaker, video editor, first assistant, or even just starting out as a PA, you’ve got to work to survive. There are many lengths of time where the work might seem to be non-stop; you work so much that when you do have free time, you might not even know what to do with yourself. The winds of fate can change quickly though, and you might find yourself all of sudden not having any new jobs lined up. After doing this dance for over ten years as a video producer and photographer now based out of Lexington, Kentucky, I’ve learned a few things about dealing with the stresses of when business is slow.
Now that the Superbowl is behind us we can all start talking about the best commercials we saw. All over social media it seems the one that got the big win for the night was the excellent commercial from Dodge truck with photos of farmers. Great commercial indeed... but did you know that it was inspired by an idea posted to YouTube back in 2011 by Farms.com. I have shared them both below.
Caitin Stickels, a 29 year old model, actor, and singer from Seattle, Washington who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder known as Schmid-Fraccaro, or "Cat Eye Syndrome," realized a dream she never dared to hope for when she recently starred in a high-fashion editorial, photographed by famed photographer Nick Knight.
At the most basic level, photographers seem to be in two camps when it comes to image file types. There are those who care about the look of their images and shoot with big RAW files and those who don’t and use the smaller JPEG files.
RAW files offer a tremendous level of control over noise, tonality and color; a hearty file that can cope with the demands of our creativity.
I've used older digital medium format cameras in the past but the FUJIFILM GFX 100 is the most powerful camera I've ever held in my hand.
As I continue my articles on interior, architectural, and real estate photography, I thought it would be interesting to see different approaches to shooting these types of subjects. So, for this month's article, I've invited a number of professional interior, architectural, and real estate photographers to share their images and techniques with everyone who reads Fstoppers.
This is it. By now, You will have been inspired, honed your ideas, found the perfect location and booked your talent. You will have taken that little bit of inspiration and nurtured it into a full fledged shoot. If you are anything like me, you will have tossed out far more ideas than you kept and you will have spent hours upon hours solidifying the few that stuck with you. It is safe to say that the hard part is over.
It was just a couple years into using Instagram myself before I noticed one name pop up regularly: Merek Davis. Having first been introduced to him as "The Mextures Dude," the fascination with him and the incredible inspriation he brought along with him had me hooked. I immediately began downloading free Mextures individually from his website and using apps like Image Blender to add them to my shots to enhance them with these magnificent colors, textures and custom film grains.
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).
At Fstoppers, we do our best to stay away from topics that are strictly political in nature. Generally speaking, it's not our place. We are a blog for creative professionals, not any number of sites that poke at hot button issues for the sake of sensationalism. However, once in a while, a situation arises that directly affects photographers and their decisions. One such situation occurred when Weddings Unveiled Magazine rejected a photographer's paid advertisement.
I’ve been sent a few messages asking how to get noticed by the people we want to work with and how to approach them. I’m never sure I can help because I’m no expert, but I do try as best as I can. In order to keep my advice consistent, this article sets about the rules I made for myself. By no means are they perfect, you may not agree with many of the points and I know for a fact that I sometimes fail in following them myself. But in general they work for me and I don’t mind sharing what I’ve found.
Editorial and commercial shoots are usually very lively and put quite a bit of pressure on the photographer. Managing a full crew on set and making sure all the required pictures are well executed is not an easy task. There are a few things to know in order to be certain everything runs smoothly. In this mini tutorial, Alexi Lubomirski gives you all his tips to get you started.
This year has proven to be more scandolous than provocative in the fine art photography circuit. More and more photographers are coming to the realization that the same stuff doesn't sell and the proverbial bar must be raised with every shoot. The photos below are probably the most extreme examples of this new wave of photographers resorting to such fine art methods in posing, makeup, and subject matter. NSFW
Several months ago I noticed a spike in our website traffic from a fairly large website called "The Fancy." From a web traffic standpoint I initially thought this was good news and that one of our blog posts was picked up again. After following the link provided in the backend of our Squarespace analytics referral page, what I found was outright unlicensed image use for profit.
My photographer-friend from Moscow Aleksey Dovgulya is visiting me in Los Angeles right now. We went to the same high school, but only met in 2008 after I got into photography. While I was studying in Australia Aleksey built an impressive list of commercial clients in Russia. In the past few years he has photographed for major brands such as Rolls-Royce, Renault, BMW, Schwartzkopf & Henkel, Benetton, Vogue, Christian Louboutin, and the list goes on and on.
One of the keys to running a successful photography business is to be constantly innovating and searching for the best ways to serve your clients. A month ago I made the decision to use Pixieset for my client galleries. Here are my Top 10 reasons why I feel it is a good choice for all professional photographers.
If there is one lens manufacturer whose heritage exudes excellence, it’s Zeiss. They are the Ferrari, the Lamborghini of camera optical glass and with that reputation comes their, usually, extremely high price. And much like a Lamborghini, the Zeiss is a no-frills powerhouse that does one well-designed thing: as the Lamborghini is fast, the Zeiss is sharp. Zeiss’ latest telephoto prime is no exception, and the 135mm f/2.0 APO SONNAR is truly magnificent.
I was shocked at my favorite product this year at PPE. Mostly because it wasn't digital, electronic, or even made of glass. I was most impressed with a product that helps our capture workflow in studio and on location.
A recent spate of camera purchases has indeed improved my photographic skill, but perhaps not in the way you may be thinking.
Personal feeling: we don’t give our websites enough attention. It’s usually a “good enough” situation. It shows our photos, gets our name on Google and it serves as a place for us to send clients and prospects. That attitude tends to result in an attitude of “settling.” We settle for what we find and it is, again, good enough. Or is it? I wasn't ready to just be happy with "good enough" on my website.
Sigma, hot on the heels of the outstandingly successful 35mm f/1.4 Art lens, has been releasing and announcing new lenses in their Global Vision realignment like crazy. Recently they released the 30mm f/1.4 lens for APS-C cameras, and I had high expectations for it after being told that the president of Sigma was aiming it to meet the performance set by the 35mm. So did it?
In Part 1 of our Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we looked at the lighting setup, gear breakdown, and shooting of our dramatic beauty shoot. In Part 2 of the tutorial we will now look at two different ways of exporting and preparing your image for retouching. The first method involves creating versions in Lightroom and exporting directly to Photoshop. The other method utilizes Adobe Camera Raw and the ability to make variations within Photoshop. I will also discuss the overall goal of our pre-edit stage.
Whether we shoot stills, video or both, better utilizing light is probably the single quickest and most effective way to boost the quality of our work. I recently came across the beautiful work of cinematographer and DP Matthias Koenigswieser. If you love to shoot natural or ambient light and want to see just how beautiful applying lighting to achieve a natural light look can be, you’re in for a treat.
Most of my food photography is lit with only one light source and after a few years of taking a special interest in shooting food and drink, I know exactly where I want the light to be and why.
![[FS Spotlight] Photographer Antoine Verglas on Lingerie, Swimsuit, and Fashion Photography](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Leigh_SaintTropez-fashion-photography.jpg)
