The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2021, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

While technical education and quality equipment become more accessible every year, one thing remains the domain of each individual photographer: vision. As proof, see how three different photographers interpret the same brief.

After 17 years in the video game industry, Bert McLendon decided to change things up and become a full time portrait photographer. For the past few years he shot many interesting people and families in the studio and had great local success in Austin Texas. Earlier this year Bert decided to try a fun experiment in his spare time, and the result went viral. Check out his great and unique Caricature portraits and learn how he's creating them.

DJI has recently released the winning photos from this year’s SkyPixel Photo Contest. The grand prize winner this year was Florian Ledoux for his image “Above the Polar Bear.” With over $90,000 worth of prizes being handed out, Ledoux was one of over 40,000 people who submitted photos into this year’s competition.

A few years ago I started this blog for my photography students to help re-enforce the most fundamental aspects of photography. Understanding how your camera works and all the variables that make up a proper exposure is as essential to photography and breathing is to life. I've now decided re-transcribe these for Fstoppers. I will be posting all of my basics and fundamentals posts, about two a week, over this next month.

Alex Koloskov has had a few of his behind the scenes videos featured here on fstoppers. In this charismatic behind the scenes video, Alex takes the photography assignment of shooting some liqueur bottles in an attractive way and walks us through his set up. His in depth explanation of the lighting and staging process gives you a great understanding of how he got his final "sexy" shot.

I have never been a huge preset guy. I love having total control over my images, so presets were never really a big thing to me. I also love shooting film, and no matter what kind of tinkering I do in Photoshop I never really nail that film look with my digital files. Then I discovered VSCO Film.

Week after week, month after month I am continually blown away by the talent pool found in our Fstoppers Facebook Group. What is more stunning is the level of improvement seen from members. I have watched those who went from boring, amateur, flawed images in January improve to jaw dropping, heart stopping dramatic masterpieces of posing and light in June. This past month has seen a slough of outstanding images, each truly great on their own merit.

Seeker Stories defines itself as taking a deep look at some of the world’s most unique individuals, places, and cultures. With weekly short documentaries set out to expand our perspective and transform our understanding of the world. Having watched their latest documentary about the role photographers play during wartime, I have to say, they've achieved what they set out to do. I've often thought about being a wartime photographer and this video has rekindled that desire.

The protests against the leadership in Turkey are entering their 7th day today, and Flickr is flooded with thousands of images showing the violent clashes. The protests started when the government decided to destroy Taksim Square, one of Istanbul’s only public parks, and transform it into a development project - But the protests quickly became about much more than that. They escalated to those against the Islamisation of Turkey, the brutality of the police, and the autocratic behavior by PM Recep Erdogan.

Photographers directing virtual photoshoots through video calls has become the new trend, since lockdown laws were enforced throughout the world. However, one photographer has gone a step further and has managed to produce what may just be the first ever wet plate portrait taken over a live stream, through video call app Zoom.

Recent years have seen the internet awash with outlandish wedding and engagement shoots, with photographers venturing to incredible locations for their backdrops. But Priscila Valentina recently decided to shoot an unconventional set-up, enlisting a model in order to document him relocating a piano to the grounds of the Eiffel Tower to sing his vows on his wedding day. The series of images are a stylized shoot in response to the Paris riots.

Have you ever snuck into a concert before? How about a huge festival? Well, in 2010 James Marcus Haney really wanted to attend Coachella... the only problem was he didn't have the money to get a ticket. So what's the next best thing? He figured out a way to bypass security and get in for free and got to see some of the bands he had admired for years. He continued sneaking into festivals around the world for the next few years, and filmed every minute of it.

“Expect the unexpected” is great advice for anyone, especially for a photographer. Making the necessary preparations for a photoshoot is essential to success, but what about matters that are beyond your control? We will review three of the most common obstacles that can potentially derail your next session, and how to best handle them both preemptively and after the fact.

About a month ago, you might recall my bitter disappointment with Canon’s new 40mm f/2.8 STM pancake lens. Aside from being light, it presented very little else that I could see as a positive. So my search for a great pancake lens continued, eventually leading me to the Voigtländer Ultron 40mm f/2 SL II Aspherical lens.

Since being founded in 2010, ONA has made a huge splash in the photographic community with their high end camera bags. I used The Berlin II for Leica bag everyday for the last month and these are my thoughts.

The votes are in, and you've helped to choose our Fstoppers Photographer of the Year! We've also randomly selected one member who voted to receive a free Fstoppers tutorial of their choice!

The most expensive and largest book project of the 20th century was Helmut Newton's SUMO, which sold out at $15,000 per copy, complete with its own book stand (the book is about as big as a medium-sized seven-year-old). Now, Annie Leibovitz' SUMO follows in its footsteps. At 476 pages, the Taschen-published art piece comes enveloped in your choice of four different dust jackets and is limited to 10,000 editioned copies, with the first 1000 coming in a leather-bound hardcover with a signed 20" x 20" archival pigment print and all four dust jackets.

Nikon has teamed up with sports photographer Tom Miles and world champion martial artist Tom "Fire Kid" Duquesnoy for its new #MomentOfImpact campaign – which largely involves epic action photos of the latter smashing watermelons, cakes, and pumpkins. Check out the intense photo series here, and learn more about how it was lit and executed.

Everybody know's Hawaii can be a dream vacation. Aaron Feinberg shows us how beautiful it actually can be. In three days, he traveled around the island of Kauai and spent the best hours of the day photographing some of the most beautiful places of the island.