Education

If you're just getting into shooting film, one of the first decisions you'll have to make is what format you'll be shooting. If you ask around, you'll get many varied responses as to the advantages and disadvantages of shooting 35mm, medium format, or large format, but I wanted to make an article that shows some basic advantages and disadvantages of each medium as well as a photo test to give you some concrete comparisons of the same subject.

Nikon has been running the Nikon School program in the U.S.A. for the past 30 years and just a few days ago they announced the expansion of this program by offering paid online classes through the introduction of Nikon School Online. The original Nikon School program has taught over 100,000 students in the United States but was always a regional option. By moving to an online platform, Nikon hopes to reach a wider audience and expand their popular program.

Back in July of 2016, Adobe released a major update to Lightroom Mobile for iOS that allows it to work directly with any and all raw files supported by the desktop version and to also sync them seamlessly with the desktop. But what does this actually mean for real-world use? What problem are we actually solving? Let's go on a trip with epic travel photographer Elia Locardi and find out.

I bet everyone has done a baby shoot in their life even if it is not their genre. I bet majority has faced magenta skin tone on the final pictures of the newborns. Whereas it might be suitable for extra realistic or photojournalistic photos, most often it doesn’t look that adorable on final images, where we visualize those sweeties in a better light and color tones.

When photographing on location, be it a campaign for a clothing company, lifestyle images for a client, or just making portraits of someone outdoors, I always go through four steps before I actually take a photo.

This article will probably seem like a giant “duh” to a lot of you out there. Hell, even most avid selfie-shooters have figured this out. This is geared more towards the photographers who lust after huge, expensive light modifiers and overlook the amazing light source that is probably staring them in face. I suggest you start staring back!

During a two-day trip to the magnificent city that is Rome, photographer Milán Rácmolnár came up with the brilliant idea of photographing Rome in infrared. The result is a different and pink perspective on the cityscapes.

It's been going on for decades. Film chemicals that coat the film and react with the various colors coming through the lens weren't made to cope with a diverse set of skin tones.

I haven’t seen much on this topic, but a brief conversation with another photographer recently illuminated to me the fact that photographer anxiety is not at all uncommon. One of the reasons I believe it isn’t discussed a great deal is the general image of today’s top photographers.

If you are in the wedding industry, then I'm sure you have heard of Fearless Photographers. But in case you haven't heard, Fearless Photographers is a wedding directory that specializes in photographers that are not afraid to push their limits. Like most directories, they have awards for the best submitted photos as well as top photographers of the year, but they also do so much more. The founder Huy Nguyen puts a very large emphasis on helping other photographers get better as well as raising money for charities and organizations that help those in need.

You may have purchased your first DSLR camera, you may have already fallen in love with the art of photography, you may be thinking about taking your work to the professional level, but what would my best piece of advice be to an aspiring professional photographer? My advice may surprise you.

Something Thomas Heaton does a lot of us taking incredible and breathtaking landscape photos. Something he doesn't do a lot is show the full creation of a photo from conceptualization to presentation, including post processing. The real story here, though, is the desire to stay close to home and try to create art out of the "normal" and "familiar." What do you do when presented with nothing truly remarkable at first glance?

Full-time photography is a dream many of us have considered fulfilling. What could be better than to get paid for what you want do? A pursuit of passion is often a difficult start, but there’s one critical aspect that I think you should consider immediately: specializing.

In the wide world of video, one of the most important aspects of production is the sound quality. Sound sells the realism behind your favorite movies and TV shows. In fact, a lot of what you hear when you watch the latest blockbuster or HBO hit series isn't "real." It's created by Foley artists in a studio and mixed in later. This gives the editors maximum control over each individual sound, from footsteps, to gunshots, to engines. Of all the sounds, however, there is one in every feature film that just can't be faked: dialog.

Capturing emotion is not an easy task. It requires being in the center of the action and perfect timing to press the shutter. But that is not it. Creating moving images are more demanding than just placement and synchronization. Famous sport and music photographer Michael Zagaris joins Marc Silber on "Advancing Your Photography" and gives us his essential tips to come up with touching pictures.

The first time I saw streaky clouds and silky smooth water, I knew I needed to learn how to do that. However, after buying my first neutral density filter, I realized it wasn't so easy to do. It was really hard to focus, and some photos were too dark, while others were too bright. And why were the middle of so many photos pink? Hopefully, this article will help you avoid some of the mistakes that I made as a long exposure beginner.

One of the best ways to achieve a nice soft light on your subjects is to use a scrim. These scrims can range from large reflectors to giant sheets, but they all perform the same task, and that’s diffusing hard light. The problem with scrims is that while diffusing the light, they also lower the power of that light. This loss in power is dependent on the specific scrim you are using and can range from a quarter stop of light all the way to one and a quarter stop of light. The problem with this is that as you lower the light on your subject, while still getting a proper exposure on them, you are in turn raising the exposure of your background. In this video you can see how Joel Grimes uses a scrim net to help control this added brightness to his background.

Image sharpness is, for the most part, a false economy. It is mistakenly believed to be synonymous with image quality; that isn't the case. One major difference is that image quality has a ceiling and once reached (if that's even possible), the image cannot be any better in terms of quality. However, with the sharpness of an image, you can far exceed the perfect amount (again, if there is such a thing), and it begins to cost your image dearly.

Video Producer Chase Kubasiak shares how to achieve exciting and impactful video through the use of slow motion scenes. In this humorous B&H tutorial, Kubasiak highlights three key variables to consider when setting up your slow motion shots.

For most beginners, distinguishing hues, or noticing over saturated areas, can be an issue. Even some most advanced retouchers still have problems color correcting their images. Reaching the point where our eyes see colors properly takes time and a lot of practice. Fortunately enough, visual help layers in Photoshop can aid us separate luminosity, hue, and saturation. In this article, I will show you how to isolate the latter two to facilitate your color correction.

If you ever do any sort of composite work, chances are that you'll need to add shadows. They're one of the biggest aspects of making a composite image convincing, and yet, they're also very subtle and tricky to pull off. Phlearn is here with a great tutorial to get you started.

As the northern autumn draws closer, bizarre little creatures pop up all over the temperate forest. On the forest floor, underneath hedgerows and on trees, alive or the ones who have fallen. Fungi are the cleaning crew of the forest as they take care of layers of fallen deadwood and provide nutrients back to the forest. Surely they are great subjects for macro photography. Like everyone else, I’m looking to find their reproductive organs: Mushrooms. They let our imagination run wild as these little toadstools hint of fantasy worlds when photographed in a certain way. This is how I recreate my own little fantasy world.

"The immediate need for results, whether it's real or perceived, is a lot of what's going on today." Inspiration and opportunity hurry for no one. In this great video from B&H, Nicholas Pappagallo outlines what it takes to be a prepared and patient photographer, so when inspiration and opportunity do finally show, you're ready and waiting.

Dodge and burn is a well-known technique amongst the retouching community. Most retouchers will use it to smooth out transitions and micro-contrast on portrait, fashion, or beauty images. However, it can be utilized for any genre of photography and broader uses than just skin cleaning. It can be used to direct the viewer’s eye and create more compelling, dramatic images with a few clicks. If you shoot and edit weddings and are looking to step up your post-processing game, this article is definitely for you!

I'll never get tired of slow motion. Things are easier to explain, and they just look cooler. Check out this great slow motion video that takes you inside an SLR shutter system.

We have all seen the amazing and dramatic images that have shafts of light streaming through a window. The look seems really easy to reproduce. You buy a fog machine, fill a room with smoke and create amazing images. But like most thing in life, it’s not that simple. In this video we see some key points in how to really make this look work.

We’re living in a visual society. Every day, we see new ways of visual advertising. Some of the messages presented without the use of words can be very powerful, as if there's some subliminal code that makes us think. As photographers, we are used to delivering messages by solely providing the image. Or are we? This series is the go-to resource for compelling visual storytelling in landscape photography and closes this week with advanced communication techniques that help create spectacular images. Join me now as we dive into the deep end, far beyond compositional elements like lines and color and learn that secret code by heart.

There are many tips online. Five step listicles of composition, post-processing, editing, getting the model to smile more, and to capture a story in the best way possible. You can be friendlier to clients, communicate your vision to the team, client or model, use on or off camera flash, and setup your camera in a better way to enable easier ways to capture the shot. You can learn about better workflows and how to increase your productivity in post too. All these tools are available on Fstoppers.com for you to learn and use in your everyday photography career and life.

Workflow is everything: it makes your job easier, quicker, and more reliable. Travis Harris is a Miami-based wedding photographer who has one of the better workflows I've seen, and he shares it here.

Just like writing a good story, in photography, the setting is a character that shares equal weight with your main subject. It’s the relationship between those two elements that sells and tells the story. This is why at Cooper & O’Hara we start the planning of every shoot with a question: what is the setting going to be, and how does it tell the story?

I shot and edited a narrative film in the last month. It was a first for me. I had this scene in my mind of a person burying a suitcase or bag in the woods, like it’s something he or she wanted to hide or get away from. I had a second idea about a guy walking down a long passage way and knocking on a door with no one opening for him. I decided these two contrasting visual ideas will be my story.

Last week I showed you how you can use just a DSLR and a few accessories to digitize your negatives. However, that article wouldn’t have been complete without explaining how to convert the scanned analog picture to a positive image. The process is quite easy and only a few steps are required to achieve a great result. Let’s dive in!

With the recent flooding of the market with battery-powered monolights, it might seem as if the humble speedlight will only ever be found on top of the photojournalist's camera from now on. The Profoto B1 and B2, the Broncolor Siros, and offerings from various small brands have given us options for high-powered flashes in much smaller packages than before. But sometimes, it is still more convenient to use speedlights than to lug around heavier and bulkier offerings.

Even though technology has come a long way, you have to have some kind of lighting in order to film. Generally, cinematographers bring in giant ARRI lights to help make a scene look realistic, but for the BBC TV series "Wolf Hall," they opted for a more natural approach. Cooke Optics TV sat down with cinematographer Gavin Finney to talk about how he used candlelight as the only source of light during nighttime scenes.

There’s a handful of people on the Pacific Island group of Pingelap who can skip this episode. But if you don’t have achromatic vision like them, I suggest giving this bountiful reference a read, because California-based USA Landscape Photographer of the Year 2015 Ted Gore wrote all about color landscape photography.

It's all in the details. Adding elements like wind is a great option to add more life and emotion into your photographs. Studio photography and natural light photography can be very different genres. In the studio, you’re in total control of your environment and surroundings, and having an industrial fan that plugs into a wall is pretty standard in most studios. Unfortunately with natural light, you’re at the mercy of Mother Nature. But that’s OK; with this inexpensive tool you will add a little “studio flair” to your natural light portraits.

Whether you are shooting film or have a large collection of negatives, chances are you will want to scan them one day. The process to digitize your analog pictures can be expensive and sometimes even disappointing regarding image quality. When I started playing with my Mamiya RB67, I wished there was a cheap and quick scanning method that would offer me a good amount of detail and decent colors. I found it using gear I already owned and that most of you actually also have at home. It even surpassed my expectations to the point that I decided to share the technique with you in this article.

“The War In Every Portrait” is an interesting video from photographer Sean Tucker that explores the idea of capturing authentic moments in a portrait session. Tucker muses that there is a constant battle between the subject and the photographer. The goal is to find the kink in the armor of their exterior persona and expose the “real” person hidden inside.

Today, video is everywhere. Whether it be an iPhone shooting super-slow-motion footage, or a RED Weapon eating away at hard drive space in 8K resolution, capable cameras are available to almost everyone who wants them. And while we can’t all shoot on RED, it’s possible to get amazing production quality out of consumer-level cameras. Here are a few things to look out for and keep in mind when purchasing gear.

Whether you're a travel photographer or you specialize in portraits, there are different filters for different clickers. I find that using filters helps your overall mood for your photos. From protective filters all the way to UV filters, I myself have problems identifying which is which. Going to the store is simple, but when you're waiting for help and not knowing how to ask the questions about filters, that's a whole different story. Here's a quick guide on different filters and how they work.

Portrait photography is very diverse. While some enjoy the comfort of studio portraits and the flexibility it brings, others prefer the variety of backdrops the outdoors provides. While it is totally realistic to create all kinds of weather moods in the studio, it often involves a bigger budget, whereas one can achieve similar results for free by relying on the weather forecast and proper equipment choices.

Retouching in photography has many forms. Everything from skin work to background manipulation. With the latest software abilities to retouch and manipulate an image, there is an endless source of possibilities to create. Even with all the tools available, there is a fine line and perhaps sometimes too much is too much.

In today's world, content is generated and consumed at a faster rate than ever. The downside to this is that such a cycle makes it difficult to take the time to create truly meaningful work. In this video, Ted Forbes expounds the idea of what it is to create work of meaning in today's culture and how to do it.

We pride ourselves on being professionals who work incessantly to constantly become better photographers here at Fstoppers. Still though, we're human, and sometimes, we make mistakes. Here are some of the most memorable mistakes Fstoppers writers have made.

In their latest video, Film Riot's Frontman/Director Ryan Connolly comes to my backyard (Vancouver, BC) to film a truly epic bar brawl short. This entire series of videos is extremely useful when it comes to learning what it takes to film a quality short. The "Uncut Behind the Scenes" video is seriously my favorite of the bunch as you get a very candid look at every little detail and consideration the cast and crew had to make.

I love color. Black and white photography holds a special place in my heart, but 90 percent of the time I gravitate toward color imagery in my own work. When I started shooting film again, I decided that I would most definitely learn to develop my own black and white film. From choosing your film stock to mixing super-secret developer cocktails guaranteed to make your images sing, there are tons of resources out there for the aspiring hobbyist. When it comes to color, however, I had always heard that the machines needed were expensive, the process complicated, and the chemicals harmful. Not so!

As someone who has spent a life in mathematics, I see a lot of attempts to ascribe mathematical concepts to real-world ideas in an overly simplistic way. The media misinterpreting a single medical study and reporting that a glass of red wine is equivalent to an hour at the gym does not mean you should forget the treadmill and buy more Malbec. Weathermen in Kansas do not expect the flapping of butterfly wings to cause tornadoes. But in photography, there's one incessantly perpetuated myth that drives me crazy.

Overshooting may sound like it's a dumb thing to do, but over my time doing photography, I’ve learned how important it really is. Here, I will go over a few reasons why you should shoot more than you need to. They apply to almost any sort of shooting situation.

There was a time I used to live on a paradise island called Mauritius and the summer lasted almost the whole year round. The sun was not an issue back then, as the sun protection was a ritual. The times have changed and I relocated back to my motherland Armenia, which has very severe cold winters and really hot summers. As the summer lasts only limited time we usually forget to protect ourselves from sun when it suddenly starts burning like hell.

Mental images, dynamic range, luminosity masking... This week's article in this series is chock-full of terms that will send your head spinning. But when we want to communicate through landscape photography, it is best to speak the language first. I'll show you a big part of my processing workflow, introduce you to a great alternative to HDR photography, and tell you why Ansel Adams' invention is still applicable in digital photography.