When I tell people that I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, everyone always asks me what it's like to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). I always try to explain how it looks by relating it to a laser show or smoke streams but I've never found a way to describe it to someone who hasn't seen it for themselves.
Yesterday I got an email from one of the Red Bull brand managers inviting me out to 2010 Illume Photo Exhibit here in Charleston, South Carolina. Illume is a traveling exhibit where dozens of images from the world's best action and extreme sports photographers are displayed on huge 6'x6' backlit panels.
The girls over at [Framed] have started a really great web series that profiles photographers and shows them in action behind the scenes. In this video they dive into children photography with Shannon Sewell. I know a lot of photographers have made a side business out of shooting families and children but what Shannon is doing is completely different.
When it comes to my photoshoots, I almost always look for shade. I find managing harsh, direct sunlight to be a problem for a number of reasons but I may have to give it another shot. In the video below Phillip Dixon shows us that not only is it possible to directly light your subject with the sun, it can produce stunning results.
In this video from AdoramaTv, Mark Wallace sits down with Mark Peterman to discuss camera gear, location scouting, lighting, and overall creative drive. Mark Peterman is an editorial and commercial photographer from Arizona who has a portfolio that is a bit tough to describe.
In 2011, Greenpeace - the world's largest environmental campaigning organization - celebrates its 40th anniversary. French photographer Pierre Gleizes has shot some of the organization's best known photographs over the three decades he has worked for Greenpeace. Some of these pictures have truly changed the way we look at our planet and the environment.
Scott Martin and Lance Keimig teach a night photography workshop in Texas and they created a quick BTS of the experience. The video is beautifully filmed and incredibly interesting to watch.
Michael Nichols is a photographer for National Geographic who was recently faced with the task of photographing a 300 foot Redwood in Northern California. In order to capture the tree in all of its glory, Michael had to use 3 Canon 1Ds Mark II cameras, several pocket wizards, a cinema dolly system, and dozens of bracketed photos all shot at f2.8.
One of my favorite things about Charleston, SC is being close to the ocean. I love being in and around the water, and although I'm not very good at it, I do enjoy wakeboarding. Charleston has become a pretty big hub for sports like kiteboarding and wakeboarding over the last few years, and this city is not short on talented athletes.
If you are not already subscribed to Freddie Wong's YouTube channel, you should go there right now and watch one of Youtube's most popular animators. Well this week he has created a really simple video called The Freeze Shootout and has provided a quick behind the scenes video on how he did it.
A few months ago, Patryk Kizny with Dito Gear shared a really amazing video called The Chapel with Fstoppers. I was absolutely blown away by the footage but I knew our readers would want to know exactly how he created it. So I was able to persuade Patryk to create a second video that outlined exactly what he did to create the original HDR timelapse images featured in The Chapel.
Clay Enos is a laid back photographer who is probably most well known for his portraits from the movie The Watchmen. Today he is taking his portrait photography to the streets and doing something most of us would find pretty intimidating by asking random people to pose in front of his white backdrop.
Jordan Matter is a headshot photographer based out of NYC but does some rather quirky personal projects. One of his on going projects is titled Dancers Among Us where he places professional dancers in urban environments and tries to capture a spontaneous yet thought provoking image.
Ella Manor is a fashion photographer based out of New York City who approaches her photography in a rather unorthodox manner. Much of her work combines beautiful models and extravagant clothing with dreamy camera effects and often times double exposures.
Jeff Johnson is a very talented lifestyle and advertising photographer based out of California. He is probably best known for his adventurous images as the staff photographer for Patagonia. He has also worked with Best Buy, Macy's, Target, and General Mills. So when he sits down with Marc Silber to talk about how he produces great travel photos you better take notes.
Scott Schuman runs a really popular fashion blog called The Sartorialist, and the whole idea is that he takes timeless looking images of fashionable people in cities around the world. A few days ago we ran a viral story on Vivian Maier who may have been the greatest unknown street photographer of her era.
Vivian Maier's street photography was recently "discovered" just a few days after she died at the age of 83. The Chicago nanny took over 100,000 photographs and many say she may rank among the top street photographers of the 20th century.
Read The Vivian Maier Update post here.
There are so many photographer's who I don't know by name but recognize their work once it pops up.
It's Christmas time around the world which means many people are going to be photographing holiday lights and dark scenic shots. In order to capture the overall ambient light when the sun has set you are going to need to slow your shutter speed to allow more light to hit your sensor.
Bruce Dale is a veteran commercial and advertising photographer who has also taken some amazing nature and photo journalistic images over the years too. He's worked for National Geographic as well as the White House and companies like Nikon, Southwest Airlines, Caterpillar, and Acura.
Fstoppers Forum member DPC shared this teaser video about a new BTS series PBS is doing on US Presidental photographer Pete Souza. It's pretty interesting to hear the issues Pete faces day in and day out shooting one of the most well known figures in the world. If you are able to tune into PBS, you can check the schedule for The President's Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office.
To help raise money for the AIDs foundation, Diana Deaver did a photoshoot in a nearby church that was being renovated. Diana set up the shoot, did the models hair, made the models dress, and shot all the pictures with nothing more than some natural light and a little on camera fill. If that isn't enough to inspire you, I don't know what is.
If you really want to feel like your photography is complete garbage, which I suggest you do every now and then, head over to LA Fashion Photographer David Nguyen's Website. Lucky for us we have a nice little BTS video from David during his recent fall fashion shoot for ViViD Magazine.
Robert Hernandez created this video just for all of you FS readers out there. Robert's shoot isn't really that complicated from a photography stand point but I sure wouldn't call it easy. Robert is shooting images inside rooms purposely caught on fire for fire department training. The room reaches over 200 degrees while Robert attempts to get the shot and protect his gear.
Nobody ever said that California Sunbounce makes cheap gear, in fact, you may hear people complain that their products are over priced. I can say from experience though that their products are extremely well made and if you like having the best, their products may be for you. Check out their promo video below and click here to see their full product line up.
Back when Fstoppers was still pretty much just an idea, I contacted a few photographers I respected and asked if they would be interested in sharing their knowledge and images to an audience of photographers online. One of the photographers I reached out to was David Bergman.
The Fstoppers team just got back from Miami and the Bahamas, and while we were there we came across Peter Lik's newest art gallery in Miami Beach. I was first introduced to Peter's amazing landscape photos at his Las Vegas gallery in the Venetian Hotel, and I'm always blown away every time I step into one of his galleries.
With a bunch of hurricanes heading our way, I figured it might be fun to show everyone that rainy days do not mean you cannot still pick up your camera. Jim Reed has made a career out of extreme weather photography and has some pretty wild videos to document his craft. Some may call it a craft and others may just call it being out of your mind but either way it puts a smile on my face.
We have posted Tom's work before. Here is a little behind the scenes of how he actually does it.
Behind the Scenes: Timelapse Crane from Tom Lowe @ Timescapes on Vimeo.
Dave, Jono, and Braden are some fun lads from Australia who like to sling around burning metal during their photoshoots. Luckily for our readers they decided to participate in the behind the scenes video contest and show everyone how they too can get this wild effect. Check out this interesting video and feel free to leave comments for the guys below!
Philip Bloom is an amazing British DP, Director, and Film Maker who also works hard to bring us some neat gadget to use out in the field when filming DSLR video. When I saw this timelapse video of Monument Valley out in Utah, I knew this BTS video/audio would appeal to our landscape photographers who are often stuck watching fashion and commercial videos.
Diana Deaver is a talented photographer and good friend of mine from Charleston SC. A few weeks before the deadline she told me that she was working on a contest submission that would focus on natural lighting. Diana is a master of natural light and so I was very excited to see what she could come up with. Check out her very informatve video below.
The bar has officially been raised. Thomas Woodson and Grant Lankford just submitted an amazing BTSV for the contest. This video has it all; it is fun to watch, it is informative, and it has fantastic final images. The most exciting part to me though is that they did all of this with just 1 strobe and a bed sheet!
This week we are featuring a few standout BTS videos created by our readers for the Fstoppers Behind the Scenes Contest ending this Saturday. If you want to see all of the submissions jump on over to the forum and see how the competition is shaping up. In the meantime, you have to check out what Parker Smith and his [jr]high school friends created for the contest.
As you all know The iPhone Fashion Shoot created a heated debate on the internet. I responded to all of the haters but according to my scientific tests, 95% of internet trolls are illiterate so they never read it.
Scott Holstein sent us this video a while back and it must have gotten lost in our email (thanks iphone fans). Being from Tallahassee, Florida, Scott decided to use the swamp as his backdrop. He also came up with a cleaver way to light up little lanterns used in the shoot.
I have been on Vimeo for probably an hour going through one terrible BTS video after another. There is so much talent out there but so many of these videos have no details and are so boring. That all changed when I ran across Patrick Boivin's "AT-AT Day Afternoon." The BTS video has no talking but it is still totally informative.
Back when Lee and I started the idea of Fstoppers, we contacted a few friend photographers of ours to see if they would allow us to film some of their shoots for our Behind the Scenes website idea. We first featured Eric Bradshaw's beach shoot at launch but I figured I'd post the second video as well.
Zak Shelhamer has just submitted his contest entry; a behind the scenes video of him shooting his buddy on a motorcycle. The shoot isn't complicated at all and that is why I love it. Zak uses a van, 2 lights, and a stick to create very compelling images. You can join the dialog about this video below in the comments or head over to his forum post here.
In this video Adam Swords takes us behind the scenes on his sports car photoshoot. Make sure you watch until the end to see the images he has taken. After the video you can head over to his website here. Adam Swords: BTS // Audi R8 from Adam Swords on Vimeo.
Check out John Chiara's home made camera; it's so big he had to build it inside of a trailer! If you thought it was tough getting out and shooting, you now have no excuse after you watch the amount of effort put into making these images.
When I first saw this video I was completely blown away. Using timelapse and high speed photography, Tim Shepherd and David Attenborough produce some stunning footage of plants growing over the course of 2 years. Check out this crazy video produced by the BBC
Sam O’Hare is an aero director/ VFX artist who likes playing around with his camera from time to time. When I first saw this video, I thought it was a cool little video that featured a tilt shift lens and some solid Nikon video work. It was not until I read his blog that I found out I was wrong on both accounts: no tilt shift lens and no video!
Dom Daher first started out as a professional downhill ski photographer. Now he shoots for some of the worlds largest publications and creates images of all sorts of extreme sports including mountain biking, snowboarding, skateboarding, and now wind surfing.
Simon Carter is a professional rock climbing photographer. I have to admit, after watching this video I'm a little jealous of Simon being out in the middle of nature shooting these amazing climbers. Most of us will probably never tackle anything like this but it is exciting to see artists like Simon sharing his talent in the video format. It's also nice to see more Nikon D3s footage.
Glen Writes:
This was a dream job! To shoot a bikini catalogue in an exotic country with a great team! We were flown over to Bali from Australia with myself (Glen Bowden - Photographer), Stylist - Michelle Bennett, Makeup and Hair - Mia Connor and Vanessa and her family from Veve Glamour Swimwear. The model was Amanda Klaassen.
So like I said, when we heard Eric's plan we knew that we had to document his photoshoot. This was actually the very first video that we ever made. We shot this with (3) D90 cameras (the D300s wasn't out yet) and for the interview we recorded Eric with an iPhone and then dubbed it over because the D90 didn't have any audio in.
If you are like me you may have first come across Danica Patrick during the Superbowl for one of those Godaddy.com ads. Most people probably know her best as an Indy Car racer or Nascar driver. Here she is in a behind the scenes video for the cover of Shape Magazine.