I always love when I get a few days to get caught up on all my YouTube subscriptions and watch what other photographers are creating. One of the photographers I always look forward to seeing new content from is Detroit-based fashion and lifestyle photographer, Jessica Kobessi.

This week we continue our Puerto Rican Photo Challenge. In our second challenge, two photographers explore the elaborate cave systems hidden deep within the central hills of Puerto Rico. In the full article, you can vote which image was the best and later this week we will reveal the winning image.

I live just a few miles outside of New York City, so when 911 happened, my world was rocked harder than most in the world. After getting my daily dose of hate mail this week about taking pictures at the 911 Memorial at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, I thought I'd write about it.

Traditional advice says that prime lenses are best for portraiture for many reasons, particularly a wider aperture and better sharpness. Nonetheless, modern zoom lenses can offer very high image quality coupled with increased flexibility, and that can cause some photographers to reach for them before a prime lens when doing portrait work. This video explores one photographer's experience with both.

Portrait photography is one of the most popular genres, but it can be a particularly tricky one, as you have to have not only solid camera technique, but the ability to work with people well. If you are new to portrait photography and looking to improve your images, check out this fantastic video tutorial that features a seasoned shooter sharing five useful tips.

If you’re getting started with portrait photography, I recommend checking out this video to get up to speed on the most important things you need to know.

One of the most fun things about being a creative individual is seeing the reaction people have when you finally publish your work. In just two days my Taser Photoshoot video and photo series has gained viral status with over 2 Million views on Youtube alone. After reading hundreds of comments, replying to an overflowing inbox, and talking on the phone to more organizations than I could imagine, tonight the Fstoppers crew took a break to watch the coverage spill over to CNN. Enjoy a laugh with us!

I had the fortune to sit down recently with London-based photographer Ivan Weiss, whom I consider one of the great portrait artists of our time. Weiss’ unique body of work has been featured by Canon UK, Affinity Photo, Vogue, BBC, and Forbes, among others, and he also leads the Portrait Track in Peter Hurley’s Headshot Crew, where he mentors other photographers. Our conversation focused on the illusion of originality in art, mentorship, and why you need to “stay on the bus” in order to reach your full potential.

A 20-year-old New York-based photographer takes a stance against the practice of using Photoshop to edit and retouch blemishes from portraits.

The notion that “race has no basis in reality” is at the forefront of the thought-provoking "I Am None of This" campaign by London-based portrait photographer, Slater King. King's insightful views on society and the primitive assumptions which people have about others (based on race) are reflected beautifully though his eye-opening body of work.

How would you feel if a random photographer stopped you and asked you to pose by embracing, touching or hugging a stranger? Richard Renaldi has been creating his intimate series "Touching Strangers" for years and has learned plenty about human behavior through this process.

So much of portraiture is of women that you would be surprised at just how much posing knowledge you might have without trying. However, for many reasons, with men, it's trickier. This video goes into some tips, tricks, and mistakes when posing men for portraits.

Approaching people on the street for photographs can seem incredibly uncomfortable, but as this short video proves, overcoming that fear and creating portraits of complete strangers can be incredibly satisfying and make for some fantastic images.

Beauty and fashion retouching has been controversial for so long that some of the argument's ground has been conceded. For example, skin retouching is rarely debated anymore and it's merely a "given" that someone in an advert or magazine will have had their skin corrected. However, criticizing body manipulation in Photoshop is very much still in vogue (if you'll excuse that glorious pun).

We are often taught that when it comes to portraits, soft light is the most flattering, while hard light, which introduces stark shadows and emphasizes skin texture, is to be avoided. While it is true that softer light is considered more flattering, that does not mean you should never use hard light; in fact, it can be fantastic for the right look and scenario. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to shoot and edit a portrait shot in hard, direct sunlight.

You have probably heard it a few times: photographers raving about how Capture One is awesome for developing portraits from raw files. However, just like when I first installed it, you might not see any advantage over the current raw processor you are using. Then I found a few functionalities that made my workflow that much quicker and my images look a tad better before even retouching them in Photoshop.

You never know what’s going to happen in New York. Last week, photographic gold was struck in Times Square in the deep cavernous archives inside the Conde Nast building. Two thousand prints shot by Edward Steichen, one of 20th Century’s most influential photographers, were found after lying hidden for over eighty years. The story behind them, and of Steichen’s rise to photographic fame and acclaim, are almost too unbelievable to be true.

Point and shoot. That's how many people think about modern photography. A lot of things we take for granted today developed in the 1800s, including photography. Exposures took days until Louis Daguerre invented his daguerreotype process, which reduced days to minutes and produced clearer, more detailed images. At about the same time, the Victorian Period began with the ascension of Queen Victoria to the British throne. Disease was rampant and mortality rates were high, especially among children under five years old. Arguably, these were contributing factors to the unintended birth of portrait photography.

We all have our pictures online. But do we have a picture that defines who we are as a professional and what we do? In this competitive world where your digital presence is a business card, what difference does a professional portrait make?

How do you spot a good retoucher from a novice? It's in the skin. Sure, that’s an oversimplification, but one thing that separates the best from the lesser is how they treat skin.

Portrait photography is a popular but challenging genre that requires you to be at the top of your game in handling a camera, creating lighting setups, post-processing, posing, interacting with a subject, and more. If you are new to the genre and looking to improve, check out this great video tutorial that offers some helpful advice sure to improve your images.

I'm guilty. As a commercial and fashion editorial photographer as well as a writer for Fstoppers, I love lighting, bokeh, rigging, and all technicalities involved with cinematography and photography. For many months, content fell second to setup. From my experience, there are three types of photographers: those that confide in instinct and sunlight, those that rely on post processing, and those that excel at artificial lighting and formalities.

Recently, I had the opportunity to have a conversation with photographer Noah Abrams. I talked with him about his work, some ongoing projects, and his day to day life. Noah grew up skateboarding in Columbus, Ohio. He also mentioned to me that he never truly considered photography as a career until later into his 20's, although he had dabbled with it for years throughout high school and college. To learn all of this, I began with a question that many people have for working photographers: where did your initial interest in photography come from?

Justin and Kirby share some great tips on how to pose normal people. What do you do when your subject isn't an experienced model? Give them lots of encouragement, and show them the poses you have in mind.

An annual award that TIME magazine started three years ago has chosen it's official 2015 winner. Stacy Kranitz is an Instagram photographer who is most famous for her work in the Appalachia area. The poverty stricken, drug and alcohol filled area is certainly an eye opening subject. But why her in particular?

How many times you had to come up with ideas for creative portraits and got stuck for days with the same boring ideas? I can guess it happened many times. Sometimes anything cool or creative can seem too complicated to execute and sometimes you think you need a whole team of professionals to help with with creating it. Here is one super simple idea that is very easy to shoot, and the results are always interesting and creative. I'm talking about paint. A lot of it.

Posing can be one of the trickiest things to really get right in photography, as it has a lot of nuances that all need to be correct to really make an image work. This video will give you some useful tips for improving your posing and creating better photos.