Today, I conclude my two part essay about a difficult two months of negotiation over a commercial photography shoot that may not have ultimately come to fruition, but taught very valuable lessons along the way.

With a blacked-out studio setup and iPhones mounted to what looks like selfie sticks, they’ve documented experiments that showcase visual reactions. It’s all on display here.

Northern Virginia Magazine wanted a fun and different approach to an ad for their bargain locator website, Specialicious.com. Jonathan Thorpe, an amazing commercial photographer and a regular on our Fstoppers Facebook group, was assigned the task of shooting the project. The concept, a beauty queen who shopped on the website and is trying a paintball experience for the first time.

Today I take a trip down memory lane to identify a few of the television commercials that, for me, have exceeded the level of infomercial pitch to touch the mantle of enveloping art. As with any "tops of all time list," these are thoughts are completely subjective, but I'll do my best to explain my thinking behind each choice and hopefully, my list will inspire you to start thinking of your own.

Let's be honest, how often do we get perfect conditions where everything just simply falls in the right place?

Sometimes, to grow as a photographer, you have to take two steps back to go three steps forward.

When V-Flat released the new Karl Taylor Light Cone, the comments ranged from dismissive jokes about "the cone of shame" to excitement for a product designed by esteemed commercial photographer Karl Taylor. I decided to take the cones into my product studio and see for myself if this simple tool really delivered the effortless results it boasted.

A couple of weeks ago, I published a piece on the Jack of All Trades Photographer, which covered the plight of the gigging photographer just starting out, doing what he or she can to build portfolio content and generally begin to make a living from it. Imagine my surprise when just a few days later, the topic was covered by straight-talking, commercial super talent and formerly of this parish, Scott Choucino!

The New York Times published a video about photographer Philip Toledano's fear of growing old. Philip decided to grow old as many times as possible. Joshua Seftel produced the short film by following Phillip's process of "seeing" himself ageing, and even dying.

For many of us photographers in the commercial world, the key to getting good jobs for exciting campaigns is having the right agent by your side. However, finding the right agent and with space on their books for you can be incredibly hard to do.

In order to effectively reach your clients as a photographer, you must first know what product you are selling.

Ella Grace Bell is a commercial photographer based out of Vancouver British Columbia who has worked with brands like Bootlegger Jeans, Poppy Finch, and Mobiado Watches, but freelancing isn't her main gig. She has a nine to five photography job that pays her bills, which seems to be a vanishing commodity outside photography studios.

Today at 6 p.m. EST there will be a live Twitter chat with Russian-born, Indianapolis-based commerical photographer and Pattern Fashion Magazine creator Polina Osherov. The chat will cover a lot of ground, from the impact of recent trends in mobile on commercial photography to what it takes to build an international community from a mid-sized city like Indianapolis with virtually no budget to begin with. To participate in the chat, follow along at Element Three's Twitter account.

I'm excited to announce a new weekly segment, where you the Fstoppers community can submit your favorite image to be edited and retouched by me, Lance Nicoll. Post an image you recently shot, that hasn't been retouched yet, in the comments below. On Thursday I will retouch it an post the recording of the entire process! If you guys love it, I will continue to do this every week! – And maybe in the future even do it as a Live Retouch with Q&A. The rules are as listed below. Really excited to see everyone's submissions. Submit your image by Wednesday at Midnight to be selected.

To celebrate the holidays and all the delicious meals that are being prepared around the world, we invite you to share your best looking food images for our next episode of "Critique the Community." We will be critiquing the pictures from a commercial standpoint so submit the pictures that you think sells the food itself. Please get in your submissions by the end of Wednesday, December 2, and you'll have the chance to have your image critiqued by the Fstoppers team. For this episode, we will be giving feedback to 20 pictures. To qualify, you must follow the submission rules below.

To look at Jabari Jacob's life as a successful commercial photographer who flies from coast to coast working with brands like Nike and Sony, you would never guess he slept on an air mattress on the floor during the beginning of his career.

Deciding which images to keep and which to throw away is one of the hardest lessons to learn for new photographers. One would think that it gets easier with experience, but the more you learn the harder it can get.

Its Monday so as promised here is the completed retouch for last weeks winning submission by Mitchell Flores. For only being the first week of this regular segment we had an great number of submission and it was hard picking, can't wait to see what you guys submit this week. In this post I'll go over some of the steps of the retouching process and talk about the challenges for this particular image. If you would like your image to be selected for next week, post your low-res image in the comments below by Wednesday of this week.

Photographing birds out in the wild seems pretty tough. Oregon photographer Jon Myers wanted to make the challenge even tougher by bringing the birds into his studio. Using large softboxes to create a space for the birds to fly, Jon was able to photograph eagles, ospreys, and hawks perfectly while in flight. The shots are spectacular, and if you click the full post you can see them shot against grey as well.

In our first two segments of building a business plan, we’ve talked about defining your product and forming a long term vision. In this final section we will talk about some of the practical steps you need to take to take those hypothetical concepts and put them into action.

Today brings great news for commercial drone operators. The FAA has finalized the Part 107 rules, which bring with them relaxed requirements. Experts estimate the new rules could generate $82 billion and 100,000 jobs for the U.S. economy in the next 10 years.

The third episode of Mike Kelley's Behind the Scenes series from his architectural tutorial is now live. In this episode, Mike shows you how you can turn an overcast day into a sunny afternoon, how to photograph a resort from a helicopter, and also teaches you an effective way to make a hotel lobby look more inviting. You can also watch as the Fstoppers crew goes night diving with massive manta rays off the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.

I had been a photographer long before I wrote for Fstoppers. After a few years writing here I decided to give YouTube a crack. What was very interesting was the response from photographers and agents to seeing me on the platform.

Yes, you did read the title correctly, Pixels.com has launched a new image licensing marketplace, and you're in control. Pixels.com is an online image licensing marketplace that enables artists and photographers to self-manage their images, prices and licenses. Take a look at how Pixels.com is structured, works, and proves to be a major game-changer for our entire industry.

Director and designer Karmin Zariffa was hired by SpaFax and AirCanada to turn out their promo videos in celebration of AirCanada's 75th anniversary. The spots showcase air hostess uniforms and airplanes used over the years. Karmin used a lot of in camera effects and object building to pull these off and we are thankful to be able to see how he and his team did. Enjoy this BTSV. You can see the final videos in the full post.

Production safety might not be the most exciting aspect of your photography career, but these days, like it or not, it’s one of the most important.

Even as the corresponding shifts from film to digital and from print to online have brought with them an expectation of instant feedback, sometimes you gain more as a photographer from being forced to wait.

This month I'll be traveling to 5 European cities with Vincent Laforet to shoot and edit video for him as part of Project AIR, his new night aerial stills project. We have been working hard to offer something pretty unique – a totally free, direct first hand social event open to anyone who is interested in photography, video or the creative process, where we can share skills, technique and project support for your own projects as a result of what we’ve learnt with AIR. If you live in London, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris or Venice, we are throwing the doors open to you all.

We here at Fstoppers are all about 'Behind The Scenes'. We are dedicated to finding the best behind the scenes content for your viewing pleasure. Most photographers usually have their videographer buddies film their shoots for videos, but Larry Perez and the people over at Kanga Marketing went a step further. They created two virtual tours of their shoot for the 2013 Pinch a Penny catalog.

It's all about light painting today. German collective group, Lichtfaktor took what we normally see in photographic form and made a dreamlike video animation for the brand dENiZEN™. Taking only five nights to film, this crew spent many hours planning and rehearsing the story line and, incredibly, no post production was needed once they were done filming.

Monte Isom EA Sports FIFA World Cup 2010 behind the scenes advertising photo shoot from monte isom on Vimeo.