Leica certainly has their share of both rabid fans and harsh critics, but no matter what side of the fence you may fall on, there are two undeniable facts tied to the red dot. The first is that they are priced into the stratosphere. The second is that their lenses are almost universally the best in the world.
For the next 10 days, the entire Fstoppers staff is down in Curacao filming our next full length tutorial with swimwear photographer Joey Wright. Recently Facebook just added a new live streaming feature called Livestream which means we can live stream while we film this tutorial.
Product photography is a great way to experiment with lighting and editing techniques. For me, it’s a chance to shoot in a relaxed environment where I have complete control over the subject, lighting, and camera. I can set up something small in the living room and find solutions that can be applied to my portrait work or professional product photography. It also requires a lot of creativity.
For years I have had the internal and professional battle to go through the motion of building a portfolio website to show off my absolute best and most recent work while also being able to allow clients to easily contact me. In today's day and age there has never been an easier way to do all of these things all in one place, for me that's Instagram and it should be for you as well.
Photographer Tony Northrup got his hands on the new Osmo from DJI, which records a 4K image on a gimbal stabilizer through its built-in camera. The whole thing fits into an incredibly small, handheld package and sells for around $625. Is it up to par with competing products, and is it as awesome as the hype has led us to believe? Northrup answers those questions and more.
Whether your business is in photography, videography, or the evolving field virtual reality (VR), your job is to create a visual experience for your clients. As VR grows in popularity and in quality, its potential to create more immersive experiences in relation to more traditional media types increases immensely.
As a photographer and an artist, one of the most rewarding accomplishments you’ll have is when you see your work featured in some type of way, whether it is in a magazine, an art gallery, an advertisement, etc.
Forming quite the super team duo, Sports Illustrated teamed up with Fashion Photographer Yu Tsai this month to shoot the cover shot for their Sportsperson of 2015, Serena Williams. You can watch the video for a behind-the-scenes look at how Tsai got these great shots.
Last time I wrote an article for Fstoppers was almost a year ago when I had just picked up a Hasselblad V-system medium format film camera for the first time. If you remember my first post, I taught myself to shoot 120 film while traveling in Europe. I reported my findings as best as someone with only a month of practical experience could.
Social media and online content can make everything look a little more perfect than it actually is. Hồ Anh Đức of Vietnam has created a hilarious video that gives us a true to life behind the scenes experience. As photographers many of us can probably relate to manipulating reality in order to show a better version of our selves or our circumstances.
Dave Sandford is a professional sports photographer from Ontario, whose roots in photography keep him coming back to bodies of water, capturing images that move him personally. What he found close to home in the shallow water of Lake Erie turned out to be some of the most dramatic waves he’d ever seen, and Dave came away with an incredible series of images to share.
As a follow up to my most recent article about making a living using nothing more than an iPhone camera, I wanted to dig a little deeper into my entire gear setup.
The Syrp Genie caught everyone's attention with its contemporary design and advanced automation features that made it a time-lapse photographer's best tool in the field.
The unveiling of the Pirelli calendar is due... well, it just happened... and it's going to blow your socks off. Or not. Check out the behind-the-scenes video below.
Last year I profited nearly half what I made at my day job in freelance photography using nothing more than my iPhone. I've spent the last 4+ years on Instagram building a following and client base that has allowed me to vie for projects and relationships with clients to make money.
No stranger to unique and challenging photography pursuits, Ben VonWong's latest adventure sent him across the Western United States in search of summer thunderstorms, with an entourage of assistants, filmmakers, and models helping along the way.
It can be a real creative challenge to try and concept, as well as execute, something that has never been done before, especially in photography. Adventure photographer Craig Kolesky accepted that challenge and ended up in the desert of Namibia, with two unlikely athletes for such a location. I asked Craig a few questions about this project that he shot for Red Bull Photography.
The porn industry is a bit of an early adopter. It is some of the most consumed content and as such its creators are always keeping current with the latest technology to gain an edge over the competition and to bring the consumers the best and latest experience.
The world’s best photographers are defined by their styles. For example, you can instantly look at an image by Martin Schoeller or Annie Leibovitz and recognize what you’re seeing. Their work is distinctly theirs. I believe that a big part of a photographer's success lies in finding this style. It may not come easily to everyone, however.
So I get this message from Chelsey, "Kenn I know how much you love these guys!" with a link to a trailer for a new series, to premiere exclusively on Hulu. And as usual, Chelsey wasn't wrong. I do love these guys.
Peter Jackson's first steps into Middle-earth with “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” was incredible as it followed Frodo and his good friend Samwise Gamgee as they fight their way to Mordor in one of the greatest trilogies of the early 2000s.
There is an innumerable amount of articles and tutorials teaching parts and pieces of retouching portraits. However, finding the ones with quality techniques and information can take days. Furthermore, there is no singular tutorial that teaches a complete set of methods to retouch portraits free of charge.
By now you've likely seen this crazy commercial that features a couple of stunt flyers taking to the skies in personal jetpacks, maneuvering around a giant aircraft above the city of Dubai. If you haven't the finished video is below, but you might find more interesting is just how this insane concept got off the ground.
At some point every photographer uses a backdrop of some sort. The problem is that they are usually large, heavy, and cumbersome. Hanging them can be a bit of a pain and mounting hardware can get pricey especially if you are dealing with multiple backdrops. Jay P.
While some photographers stay close to home, others travel quite regularly. I’ve been traveling my entire life for one reason or another.
Maternity photos can be difficult. Shooting them isn’t different than an engagement shoot or senior portrait session, but the challenge is avoiding clichés. The typical husband’s hand on his wife’s stomach shot or the husband’s beer-belly imitating his pregnant wife’s are far too overused.
If you've been on Facebook or hopping around YouTube's popular videos lately, chances are you've seen the video advert for the "Squatty Potty," a step stool used to make, well, going poop much easier on your body. Sound like a tricky concept to sell? See how a team of creatives turned an ad about a dookie-easing product into an Internet sensation.
You know, I always thought that Chatroulette was a place you went to speak to random strangers in foreign lands and sometimes see the unwanted privates of strangers in distant lands.
It's hard to keep up with Casey Neistat's daily vlogs, but today's stands out in particular for its special ingenuity and because it's Halloween. Thanks to a little creativity with an electric skateboard, some red cloth, and an Aladdin costume, New York City has Neistat and his buddy, Jesse Wellens, to thank for a truly epic Aladdin and Magic Carpet sighting.
South Africa native Matthew Rycroft creatively combined creepy music, a creepy-looking dude, and some dark, chiaroscuro lighting techniques to create a video that brilliantly mocks the cliché Instagram accounts with which we're all too familiar.
Adam Elmakias is one of the most popular concert photographers in the world. Most known for his work with punk-style bands and touring with the Vans Warped Tour, he has a bigger following then a lot of the bands he works with.
It didn't take long for artists to realize they could literally paint with light once photography came around... but light painting was certainly popularized by Picasso.
I have mad respect for Swedish independent film outfit Crazy Pictures for their big-budget cinematography skills that are being utilized on a moderately small budget with rigs and labor that are within reach of almost any videographer.
Resource Magazine has a big issue out this quarter: Bill Nye is telling the world why photography will save it. Want to know the answer? You're going to have to grab this fall's issue of Resource. But a behind-the-scenes video of the photo shoot for this feature's spread shows just how much compositing there is in modern-day photography.
When people think of visiting the Everglades, wading around neck deep, alligator infested waters isn't exactly what most folks have in mind. For Florida-born photographer Mac Stone, this is what he calls his office. Stone has been steadily developing his work in conservation, particularly of wetlands.
Dixie Dixon has been a good friend of Fstoppers over the years, and she even came down to the Bahamas with us for the first Fstoppers Workshop. Lee and I have been preaching since the start of FS that photographers need to film behind the scenes videos their own photoshoots.
With over 40 years of portrait work under his belt, American Photographer Will Shively has become one of the most successful commercial fashion shooters in Columbus.
As Fstoppers' resident virtual reality content creator, I'm excited to share our most recent project we did for AOL. A few weeks back, the Autoblog/Translogic team flew my business partner and I to southern California and rented out a race track so we could film an awesome 1980s Ferrari that was converted to an all-electric high-performance sports car in virtual reality.
How many times have you seen that popular meme that inaccurately says today is the "Back to the Future" day?
Have you ever wondered how baby photographers (no, not babies that are photographers) pose newborns? Have you wondered how they got those little writhing, crying, flailing bundles of joy to stay the heck still for at least 1/200th of a second? Well, the crew over at Redhead Photography seems to have found the right combination.
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 ME20F-SH is Canon's latest, crazy-high ISO camera, able to record clean video at over ISO 4 million (not a typo). Early footage was lackluster in content, and early media stated the natural security-field uses for such a camera.
Having seen plenty of Apple iPhone 6s reviews and comparisons over the last few weeks, including the newly famed Lee Morris iPhone fashion shoot, it could be said we have had enough. Though as primarily a mobile shooter myself, I was looking for something a bit more in-depth and something that got down to the very details of the phone's camera capabilities.
“Star Wars” fans around the world are patiently awaiting the arrival of “Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens” on December 18. That being said, the hype train has been running full steam ahead since the initial trailer for “The Force Awakens” was released almost 10 months ago.
I've always been a big fan of Dave Hill's photography and creative vision. If you're familiar with his earlier commercial work, you probably know him for his progressive digital and composite techniques.
In this video we see Antwerp, Belgium-based commercial photographer Andy Van den Eynde tackling color correction on location. Andy starts by dropping his base temperature down to a cool 2800K and then recreates the warm glowing effect of torch light using gels from his Rosco Color Correction Filter Kit.
I'm definitely NOT a studio photographer, but I respect and understand why for a urban running photoshoot like this one, it can make things a whole hell of a lot easier by doing it in the studio. Steve Brown shares some insight into his process in this behind the scenes video.
Have you ever had aspirations to shoot for the movie industry? To travel to some of the most notable cities in the world? To rock the streets of New York City, Shanghai, Detroit, LA, London, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Paris?
With a concept of traveling back through your childhood and experiencing that care-free, fantasy world of "pure imagination," Permagrin Films has put together an incredible time-lapse music video. In the article below, there's a full behind-the-scenes video and the producers of the film answer a few of my questions in a brief interview.
Oftentimes, while tending to mundane household or business-related tasks, I glance out the window and say to myself, "It is way too beautiful a day out today for you to not go out and photograph something!" It's a wonderful sentiment that many shooters have, I'm certain.