Fstoppers Original Articles

Looking back at my early portraits often makes me cringe. I’m not even afraid to admit it now. It was always a goal of mine to be a competent portrait photographer, but I was incredibly shy and didn’t know how to engage with the people in front of my lens. I was always somehow dissatisfied with my results, as I could never seem to connect with my subjects on a level deep enough for them to let their guard down.

Imagine being tasked with photographing press events featuring some of the most famous people in the world, on a regular basis. Are you confident that you can come away with photographs as strong or better than those of your peers? Can you find the small, personal moments taking place in the chaos to create images that are unique? Christy Bowe is a photographer who has successfully accomplished these tasks for the past three decades.

If someone gave you $1,000 and told you to buy a camera and lens combo, what would you do? Yes, it is hard to get a good kit for relatively little money. Yet, there are some hidden gems that are great to kickstart your career and offer an improvement over existing gear.

One of the most exciting topics for me to cover during my time as a professional newspaper journalist was fires and firefighting, and the potential for great images is there for anyone who approaches the matter with a little preparation and knowledge.

Whether you're brand new or have many years experience, printing your work can be the most satisfying part of photography. Something you might not realize is how much your work might change after you make that first print.

Those who wish to practice their off-camera flash technique or simply, wish to create a successful concept shoot to boost their portfolio, should strongly consider practicing the arrangement with themselves as the subject.

Fujifilm gets a pretty bad rap these days from the film photography community. So, it’s easy to forget that from the 1980s to the early 2000s, Fujifilm produced some of the best cameras ever made: medium format, point and shoots, the extraordinary Xpan, and a sack full of other interesting goodies.

We've all heard of the stereotype of "the starving artist," but a new study from the UK put concrete numbers on this portrayal, showing that graduates with a degree in photography truly do (on average) become starving artists. Adding insult to injury, the study reveals that photographers are not only on the list, they are ranked the worst for post-graduates making low income. Ouch.

We all have genres that we usually shoot, but sometimes, we want to dabble in photography outside our comfort zone. It is possible to start getting great photos in other areas without them becoming a full-time occupation or costing a fortune in the extra kit. Here's how to do that with wildlife photography.

There are different breeds of wildlife photographers. At the top of the food chain is Photographicus Obsessius. They study individual species, so they know all their behaviors and can call them by their Latin names. They get up at 2 a.m., drive fifty miles or more,...

I love a good quote to put things in perspective when I'm having a crisis of confidence in my creative output, or feeling like a project or goal is taking too long to reach. There are many lessons you, and I, as photographers can learn in these 5 quotes from famous artists, entrepreneurs, and sports stars. Get ready for a boost of inspiration and a mindset shift!

Some tools are just too powerful to not have in your tool bag as a photographer, and the plate composite technique is one such method.

Do you have a Canon EOS R5? In that case, you’re probably aware of the overheating issues when filming. It isn’t of any concern if you’ll never use the video function. But what if an overheating warning occurs while photographing? I experienced that situation, and I have the solution.

While bringing color to your images is best done manually, LUTs accelerate things. Here’s how I customize LUTs to get the best of both worlds in a pinch.

Did you know that Canon introduced the world to eye control focus back in 1992? In this retrospective, I will discuss the Canon EOS A2E, the world’s first camera that allowed the user to select a focusing point by simply looking at it.

If you’re starting out in product photography and you’re not working with a props stylist, it can feel overwhelming when it comes to building out a props collection. Here are my go-to props for laying the foundations of a versatile collection so that you can save money and space and speed up your workflow.

I take photos to get them printed to either hang them in my apartment or sell them to customers. And while it's important for me that those prints appear sharp and detailed, it's crucial to get a correct representation of the colors and contrasts. To achieve this, a process called soft proofing should be used during print preparation whenever possible, and in this article, I show you how to do it.

A new toy brings more joy into my photo workflow.

We all love a great landscape under an amazing sky. Clouds, sunlight, sunrays, and colors are often preferred over a simple and dull sky. But sometimes, nature doesn’t show us the things we like to see, something that can be frustrating if we can’t go back a second time. Is there a solution?

Photography is blessed and cursed with both scientific and artistic rules. We always hear that we should keep or break them, but there is much more to it than that.

The industry has been putting out some really hard-to-resist gear these last few years. Ever since Sony released the a7 mirrorless line, it’s been a tsunami of gear upgrade options that seem too good to pass by. Whether it’s the new tack-sharp, image-stabilized Canon RF lenses, the 61-megapixel Sony a7R IV, or the new "creator-ready" Nikon Z 30, it’s not just a case of “Shiny Object Syndrome”: these developments in technology really do reflect in the quality of the work creatives can produce. That’s where MPB comes in.

We see patterns everywhere. Related to rhythm and texture, they are powerful tools in photography for a host of reasons.

It’s safe to say Nikon’s Z 9 is the company’s most advanced flagship camera yet. Here, you can read into some of the unheard stories from the camera’s development process. This is the behind-the-scenes story of the Z 9 from those who made it.

Seascapes have always been one of my favorite subjects to photograph. For most of my travels, I visit and photograph at least one spectacular coastline, and in this article, I share the five most photogenic beaches I have photographed so far.

Do you ever find yourself repeating yourself over and over again to prospective clients in your workflow? If so, here are the templates I’ve created that both anticipate my clients’ questions and save me valuable time in my product photography business.

With long days and shorter nights, summer is a good time to consider getting into solar astrophotography. The Sun is also heading toward the active phase of its 11-year sunspot cycle and promises to make the Sun more interesting than the featureless cueball look of the sunspot cycle minimum. Solar astronomers use the count of visible sunspots as a measure of the solar activity, and sunspot cycle #25, as counted by astronomers, looks like it will be peaking sometime around 2024.

In the final part of my four-part series, I want to focus on the one person who can make or break your photography business: you.

A bit of panic leads to a fun diversion. Today, we pose a hypothetical question.

A strong community and invested mentors are crucial ingredients for sustainable growth and success. I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with two Canon Canada FUTURES alum, Eli Meadow Ramraj and Gessy Robin Shumbusho, about the importance of community in their careers. The deadline for Canon Canada's FUTURES Year Two incubator program is fast approaching. If you need that boost you can only get from a committed mentor and supportive community, don't hesitate, don't be nervous, apply.

When does landscape photography become digital art? In this article, I address the longstanding debate in the community about purism versus artistic expression while showing you my own image from start to finish.

Photographing cars and motorsport is a unique and exhilarating genre of photography, here are 5 good reasons you should try it.

Photographing waterfalls is more tedious than it looks. In this instance, physical aspects of the gear you use heavily impact the success of each shot. Here are some important and helpful tools to have out in the field.

Corporate events are perhaps my favorite thing to photograph these days. There are so many different shots I can create at a conference that I am never bored. Networking opportunities are in abundance at any given corporate affair, and most of the people in the room are working for a company that has the budget to hire me to shoot for them.

Believe it or not, headshot cropping and orientation is a controversial topic in the photography community. In this article and the accompanying video, I give you five reasons to crop horizontally and take just a bit off the top of the head.

Photography, whether photojournalism, documentary, sports, wildlife, or even landscapes, is much about camera placement and timing. But there are some fundamental mistakes that most of us photographers make that are barriers to getting great photos.

The game of landscape photography is 90% the quality of the light. It is the most crucial and uncontrollable factor in your shot. Here are some tips to make the best out of it.

Even if you are a landscape photographer who has mastered the art of taking and editing photos, knows how to plan and compose a shot, and creates good images on a constant basis, you might reach a point at which you feel stuck with your photography. In this article, I share one way of breaking through this barrier to take your photography to the next level.

Coloring outside the lines is a good metaphor for when a photographer decides to take a leap outside the norm in a photographic genre.

Having trouble getting more out of your photography? Perhaps the answer is to do less.

Many photographers start their careers by learning natural lighting techniques. Once these skills are established, complacency can set in and the photographer might choose not to stretch themselves to learn more advanced lighting skills. When photographers do this, they leave a significant amount of value on the table.

Since the pandemic, running remote photoshoots where the client is not physically on set has become more commonplace. In this article, I'll share my best tips on how to run a successful and efficient remote photography service.

If you are like me, you probably have a closet full of random tiles, boards, and construction scraps just in the event you need an interesting surface to shoot on. These new photography surfaces by Duo Boards set out to change my messy studio, and this photography tutorial shows you how useful these backdrops can be!

The modern autofocus systems are advanced. Sometimes, it looks like you will never again miss a shot when it comes down to focusing. But the autofocus can still fail under certain circumstances. Let’s look at the moments when even the most advanced autofocus can give up.

Once upon a time, we would learn a skill, practice it, hone it, and that would be our main area of expertise and way of making a living. In 2022, however, it would seem that mastering your camera, actually taking photos, editing them, and then applying that skill might not be everything you need to be a successful photographer in today's climate.

Night photography can be technically daunting. Even with modern cameras, it's not easy to capture high-quality night photos. While photographing the stars already requires high ISOs combined with wide apertures, capturing details in the landscape is even more difficult in the dark. In this article, I walk you through my night photography workflow, which combines image averaging with time blending and focus stacking to achieve high-quality results.

Lightroom presets come with a mixed bag of acceptance. Some think they are an abomination to a learned skill and craft and should never be used, whereas others enjoy the look and feel they provide to their images. It's not just as black and white as that, and it's down to the individual whether to use them or not, but one thing to make no mistake about is the time it takes to create them.

Needless to say, there's a fair few logistical complexities when photographing ice cream. After shooting for a vegan ice cream brand for a couple of years now, here are my best tips for running a smooth shoot when you’re capturing ice cream.

Good organization skills are crucial in almost every business environment. The same obviously applies to professional photographers, especially when it comes to managing photos. Many photographers will use the built-in catalog system available in Lightroom. However, a company called Mylio may have a much better solution available for you.

Outdoor Photographer awarded the grand prize of their "Great Outdoors 2021" to a composite image that violates the rules of the competition as stated on the official website. This controversy gives rise to an ethical question regarding photography competitions that fail to enforce their own rules.

I have likely made a great many mistakes over the course of my photography career, but one could well still be impacting me today. The question is, are you making it, and if you are, should you do anything to change?

Seascape photography is so different from shooting landscapes. Its dynamic nature makes it one of our most exciting and challenging subjects. The distinct difficulties of capturing the ocean require a different set of skills and learning some of the secrets of the sea.