Landscape Photography

To celebrate our newest video tutorial with Elia Locardi, “Photographing the World,” Fstoppers has teamed up with our friends at ViewBug to host a landscape photo contest for your most epic images. The contest will run until January 5 and one of the judges will be Elia himself. Whether you win or not, all participants will receive complimentary access to the first lesson of “Photographing the World” for free! See the contest details below.

I happened to see the lead image in nikonrumors weekly news flash, and I knew I had to click. I'm a self-admitted sucker for space photos, and this shot of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko posing with all the gear I would love to have pulled me right in.

Iceland has become a naturelovers' playground and a hotspot for adventure photographers looking to visit the home of some of the most popular Instagramable locations on Earth. But many travelers visit the island nation during the warmer and more accessible summer months. Winter is when most of the country is covered in snow and ice and tourism drops dramatically. But that isn't stopping four British adventurers from attempting something that has never before been accomplished; crossing the country unsupported in the heart of winter in what they're calling "The Coldest Crossing."

When I was younger, my dad took a class on photography at a local community college. To this day, he says that the biggest thing he learned from the class was that to take interesting pictures, you have to go to interesting places. I suppose that if you are a travel, landscape, or nature photographer, that is true. What a lot of people don’t realize is that interesting places are all around us. Having grown up in Ohio, I always thought that I was stuck in a dreary, featureless landscape of corn and soybeans.

As recently as yesterday, we've seen all kinds of articles comparing various cameras' qualities to one another, pixel-peeping to see which one edges out the competition by a razor-thin margin. You can put your magnifying glass away, however, and trade it in for a beer as you sit back and watch a real comparison. Photographer Jim Goldstein took the pleasure of comparing two of Canon's top-of-the-line DSLRs from different time periods: the 5DS R and the Canon D2000.

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. But the latest video suggests the ME20F-SH could be used to shoot incredibly beautiful footage of our world that wouldn't have been able to be captured the same way in the past.

Cinema5D founder Sebastian Wöber's latest three-part tutorial on drone shooting starts off with quite the introduction in Part I. Wöber could honestly be saying anything to accompany his to-die-for footage, but what makes it so fantastic is how great the information in this video is. From safety to beginner tips on getting started and how to get that cinematic shot you have in your head (don't worry, Wöber has plenty examples if you don't), Part I has you covered. And there's more to come...very soon.

Over the summer, photographer Mike Olbinski spent an astounding 48 days on the road chasing storms during the monsoon season in his home state of Arizona. His epic new video, “Monsoon II,” is a captivating collection of the best of the best time-lapse footage he captured during his extended time on the road witnessing these giant storm systems. This is one time-lapse video you need to check out.

Nine-time Emmy award-winning TV producer and writer John Marshall found himself on Maine's Frye Island with too much time, talent and imagination. The result photo series, which he calls Sunset Selfies, is creative, whimsical and inspiring. I'd be ridiculously surprised if this doesn't spawn a whole slew of creative projects within our community, as enthusiastic shooters start cutting out their own cardboard silhouette to use during magic hour.

There are times when taking in something beautiful is good for the soul, such watching kittens attack shoelaces, bacon sizzle on a camping stove, "The Empire Strikes Back," or this ridiculous hyperlapse of Paris.

Nope, we're not joking. Photographer Kotama Bouabane is creating photographs using coconuts. While he used the fruit in several different ways to create images, his most interesting method simply involves tape, a coconut, and some photo paper! Read on and check out the video for more!

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. I wish I could say that it is with regularity that I throw my camera bag into the backseat and make some dust. I usually don't.

Aerial photography has always been something that I have found interesting. Seeing so many of our writers like David Geffin, Mike Kelley, and Noam Galai capture exciting photos and video from the sky has inspired me to finally attempt my first doors-off helicopter excursion. In just one short one-hour ride, I've learned a lot of do's and don'ts as well as a bunch of things to experiment with again. I even attempted shooting with a $7,000 lens that everyone told me would be a disaster — and it nearly was!

It's always impressive to see a subject that's shot so often used in a new and creative way. This conceptual shoot of the Milky Way by George Malamidis was beautifully conceived and executed. George picked two possible names for the image, both of which perfectly describe the outcome, "The Iris of God" or "The Peacock Milkyway." Want to know how he got the shot?

Over the last two months we have been releasing one episode a week of our Behind the Scenes series of our world tour with Elia Locardi. In this first season (Season 2 is currently being edited), we visit both Iceland and New Zealand to film our latest tutorial on all things landscape photography.

When Ronald Soethje sent me the details of his timelapse project that spans the North American continent, I was simultaneously jealous of his experience and completely impressed by the outcome. Ronald spent three years giving up his vacation time to shoot over 108,000 raw images. He slept in tents for weeks at a time and drove over 18,000 miles to capture dozens of locations. The outcome is nothing less than admirable.

Creator and editor of Lonely Speck, pro night sky photographer Ian Norman is back with another great tutorial. Being nothing short of passionate when it comes to astrophotography Ian always seems eager to share what he has learned over the years. In his latest video Ian gives us the rundown on how he post processes Milky Way photos in Lightroom.

This week's winning image comes from Photographer Daniel Nordholm. It's a stunning landscape image that he captured in Lofoten, a beautiful archipelago in Norway. I was very excited to break from my norm of beauty and fashion retouching to tackle and share a landscape retouch. Many of the techniques and the workflow of a landscape can be very different from portrait retouching, while the philosophy can be quite the same. In this article, you will see the full retouch of the image in the short two-minute video. In all, the retouch took about an hour. I will also share some specific techniques for landscape editing that you can use in your images as well.

The final episode of this season of Photographing The World Behind The Scenes is finally here. In episode eight, we finally wrap up three months of filming and to celebrate, I go bungee jumping and Patrick takes a ride on the worlds tallest swing.

Photographing The World BTS episode 6 is finally here and this is the one many of you have been waiting for. At this point in the series I had flown this drone in 7 different countries in snow and rain, and I even crashed it into the side of an ice cave but it kept on working. The streak finally ends in New Zealand when I have my first and only serious crash.

Earlier in the week, we shared Michael Dyrlands, HAZMAT Surfing photo series. To recap, HAZMAT Surfing is a photo series that gives a futuristic look at what surfing could be like twenty to twenty-five years down the road and spreads awareness of our oceans contamination. Dyrland came up with the idea after he was unable to enter the water on a trip to LA because of ten billion gallons of run off that had polluted the ocean after an evening of heavy rain. Dyrland has now released a video version of HAZMAT Surfing, which continues to spread awareness of the contamination of our oceans.

Last week I made a list of 10 of my favorite photographers to follow on Fstoppers and a few people complained that too many of them were "portrait" photographers. I've scoured the community again and today I've created a new list with 10 incredible, additional photographers who shoot much more than your average portrait.

Three years ago, Photographer Christian Carollo came upon his grandfather's travel photography from across the United States. The initial spark for the "Past and Present" Project started with a particular image of the small coastal town of Winchester Bay, Oregon. Christian wondered if he could replicate the image and he succeeded. This was the start of an epic and awe-inspiring project now known as the Past and Present Project. Christian has traveled all over the United States, continuing to replicate his grandfather's images. The results are breathtaking and have re-inspired in me the true emotional potential a single image can have.

Last week, we asked the community to submit their landscape photographs to be critiqued by Elia Locardi and Fstoppers. Thank you everyone for all for posting your pictures! Since we only had time to critique a limited number of submissions, we selected a range which covers different skill levels and types of landscape scenes. Check out the images we've selected.

This week we released episode 4 of our behind the scenes series that covers our travel around the world. Siggy, our photography guide in Iceland, has become everyones favorite character in these videos and at the end of episode 4 he goes on a rant that is so hilarious that we decided it deserved its own video.

Some photographers like that soft, ethereal feel as they specifically seek out types of plastic to stick in front of the lens, or even go so far as to buy defocus control lenses and LensBabies that will allow them to distort an otherwise true image. That has its value. But this isn’t for that. This is the new go-to guide for absolutely everything to know about how to get your images to be tack sharp. Get ready to dive in: this is a no-questions-left-behind study on sharpness.

It is once again time for us to continue our behind the scenes series on the creation of our landscape photography tutorial: Photographing the World. Episode 4 of this series is our final day in Iceland before we move on to New Zealand in next weeks episode.