This year's most notable ski film, "Into The Mind" wasn't just your average sports reel. Camp 4 Collective and Sherpas Cinema put together a visually striking feature, along with a narrative that is filled with symbolism. In this behind the scenes video, the filmmakers discuss how certain shots came about, and how the story elements came together serendipitously.
I am continuing my series of articles about creating stunning Beauty portraits and I would like to talk about on location lighting today. Please note that not only are we talking about advertising Beauty photography, examples of which you may see in the cosmetics section of a department store, or in fashion magazine ads, but we are also talking about simple female Beauty portraits that many of you are probably often hired to photograph for your female clients locally.
This powerful timelapse video called "Wyoming Wildscapes II" was put together by photographer Nicolaus Wegner. Taking 14 months, this video covers the cycle of the seasons, the shifting of the landscape, and the ever-changing weather. To find out more about this project, I interviewed Nicolaus and asked about his gear, workflow, and experiences.
I’ve just had Selina’s answers back for this interview and feel sick. Some numbers - 80 hours shooting, 7000+ stills, 40+ hours of rendering, sleeping in shifts to meet deadlines. I thought my current project was tough - compared to her's, I feel like I'm sat on a beach drinking a piña colada. Her video “Limitless” has had 6+ million views in 2 weeks, so all her hard work paid off. Read on to find out how she put this beautiful video together.
One of the biggest niches in commercial photography today is food photography. We've all had the same experience, walk into a small local restaurant and ask to see their menu. The photos look atrocious and you wonder to yourself, "who took these photos?" You know you can probably do a better job, but how much better can you really do? "Photographing Food" an ebook series by Taylor Mathis helps you take ordinary food photos and makes them extraordinary.
Corey Rich's work spans both photography and video, often using Nikon DSLRs to capture both. His projects take him to hard to reach places, and being able to manage his gear in both modes quickly, enables him to come away with great images. In this video, Corey explains his choices for gear and shooting style on a climbing trip in Pakistan.
We all have cameras and know how to operate them. But how well do you understand the image forming principles? Modern technologies spoil us and we are often not required to possess any knowledge about the process behind the functions of a device. However, such knowledge can lead you to fun experiments like the one I am going to share with you today.
Michael Belcher is a young New York-based cinematographer who is creating beautiful and compelling work, with a rich and varied visual vocabulary. Come behind the scenes on his latest shoot with this Fstoppers exclusive, and find out what we can all learn from his philosophy, experience and insight.
This is it. By now, You will have been inspired, honed your ideas, found the perfect location and booked your talent. You will have taken that little bit of inspiration and nurtured it into a full fledged shoot. If you are anything like me, you will have tossed out far more ideas than you kept and you will have spent hours upon hours solidifying the few that stuck with you. It is safe to say that the hard part is over.
The [Framed] Network recently teamed up with photographers Brooke Shaden and Lindsay Adler for a very interesting show - "The Concept". In this show, they give Lindsay and Brooke the same missions, and they together have to decide on the concept and location. Both Lindsay and Brooke are leading names in the industry and both are amazing photographers, so it's very interesting to see how each one of them tackles the concept in a very different way. Both results are epic yet so different.
Recently I was lucky enough to have a day off, something that doesn't happen too often. I woke up that morning feeling a little burnt out from the daily non-stop marathon that is living and working as a freelancer in New York City. I dragged myself out into the kitchen, made myself some bacon and eggs and sat down to eat. Over breakfast, I realized I hadn't made a picture for myself in almost a full year.
Whether you’re a photographer or you focus on video, this article highlights the high octane visual set piece created by Slaughterhouse Pictures, who successfully combined principles of both stills and motion work to create high impact visual media with zero budget and very limited resources. Read the exclusive FStoppers article and watch the BTS video to get some simple and highly effective little tips that you will be able to apply to all aspects of your own work.
Whether we shoot stills, video or both, better utilizing light is probably the single quickest and most effective way to boost the quality of our work. I recently came across the beautiful work of cinematographer and DP Matthias Koenigswieser. If you love to shoot natural or ambient light and want to see just how beautiful applying lighting to achieve a natural light look can be, you’re in for a treat.
When I first started shooting, I would spend absolutely no time planning my shots. I would focus tons of time and energy into every other aspect (location, wardrobe, mood, etc) but in some weird turn of events, it must have slipped my mind that the end goal is "The Shot." How that slipped my mind still baffles me. Instead of putting in the effort to plan what my actual finished images would look like, I found a model, found a location and showed up on shoot day with a plan to wing it.
Dani Diamond is a talented portrait photographer based out of Connecticut and is also an active member of our Fstoppers Facebook Group. His headshot work is impeccable and eye-catching. Recently Dani has started a personal project coined simply as "The Project." His mission is to find fellow photographers from around the world, take their headshots and challenge his craft under the scrutiny of his talented peers.
Because most of us fear rejection to some degree, speaking to a complete stranger and asking them for something, let alone asking if you can photograph them, tends to be pretty challenging. I’ve never been one of those naturally confident people but over time I’ve developed some techniques that have provided me with the confidence to work with strangers, which has brought additional benefit when communicating with paying clients.
Photographic educator Dirk Fletcher decided his summer Modern Alternative Photographic Practices class would try and test the Holga camera and boldly send one where no Holga had gone before — space. To get a shot of the earth’s stratosphere, Fletcher and his students created a four Holga box unit to float by balloon into the lower stratosphere and capture an aerial of earth.
Joey Wright is a swim and lifestyle photographer based in Florida. Despite only picking up a camera a few years ago, Joey is a already regular contributor to SI.com with clients ranging from Callaway Golf, the Atlanta Falcons and the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and is recognized as a Wescott Top Pro. He's also really, really likable.
There is a fine line between having a well defined photographic style, and constantly putting out the same stale, boring work week after week. A fine and dangerous line. A line that can make the difference between being a successful, inspiring photographer and a photographer who has lost his audience and has even lost interest in his/her own work.
Guest writer, Corey Rich is primarily an outdoor/adventure photographer, but last winter he decided to do something totally different and shoot CrossFit—the masochistic athletic craze sweeping the nation. More than anything, he was keen to experiment with heavy-duty artificial lighting in an indoor environment–not exactly what he's known for. His goals were simply to elevate his lighting skills, unlock his creativity in different ways, learn some new things, and have fun in the process.
Django Greenblatt-Seay and JJ Dreier joined together to form Tree Speed, self proclaimed as "A of couple of Mid-Western guys who spend vacation time traveling the country shooting time lapse photography."
Based out of Omaha, Nebraska, the duo recently took to the road and self produced a 10 day trip to Utah to create a series of time lapse videos. In order of appearance, the team shot in Latuda, Utah (a ghost town), Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park, and Lake Oahe.
While on a kayaking trip in the Great Lakes, I stopped just after sunset to shoot some images on the beach. The sky was still bright and very saturated, while the sandy ground was losing light and getting dark in my exposures. My kit was small, and I had no graduated ND filter, but I came up with something that worked well in a pinch.
A few years ago we featured photographer Kevin Kozicki in a behind the scenes video using pointsettias for a beauty shoot. Kevin is back with an amazing glamor photo and video shoot with filmmaker Christopher Park in a beautiful pool location using the Phase One IQ180 that was featured in Sessions Magazine. We had the opportunity to speak with Kevin and get his insight on the shoot.
It felt like yesterday that we featured Underwater Dogs. Seth Casteel took those incredible photos and it definitely was a really memorable series of animal shots. How could you not love them? In fact, Seth is such a great animal photographer that he didn't just stop there. He's created some great tips on photographing animals for the intent of getting them adopted.
Wolfe Air is a company that specializes in creating air to air footage for airlines, big-budget movie productions, the military, and private commercial clients, and they recently released their updated reel, which is absolutely mindblowing. Not many people think about what might go into these shots, so as the Fstoppers designated aviation photography dork, I've decided to write up a reader's digest version of how they're made.
A few years ago when I was still new to the world of beauty photography and digital photo retouching, I prided myself on the ability to "fix it later in Photoshop." I would welcome retouching challenges as I was still learning, but things changed forever after I started working with professional teams and shooting for commercial clients.
There are a few unarguable reasons for getting it right in camera.
Many times when shooting objects in an uneven light (usually outside), we have to choose if we want to expose for the darker areas, or for the brighter areas. This means part of the image will be exposed 'correctly' while the other parts will be overexposed (or underexposed). There are few solutions that can help us avoid these issues like shooting HDR or adding artificial light. But these solutions are not always handy and not always something that can be done. This great tutorial shows you how to fix overexposed highlights in only few minutes.
This is the second part of the article on how to learn to "read" lighting in photography. If you haven't read the first part yet, please start here: How To "Read" Light In Photography - Part 1.
And for those of you who have been waiting for the second part, let's jump right back in and see what other cues we can use to breakdown lighting in other photographers' work.
Just recently Zach posted a guest article on 3 Nightmare Lighting Environments and How to Photograph Them with tips from top shooters Lindsay Adler and Erik Valind. This simple behind the scenes video takes a look at some amazing tips not only covered in the article, but in their book, Shooting in Sh*tty Light. You can catch their creativeLIVE workshop starting tomorrow.
Photographer Lukas Renlund shares with us the second installation in his "Steal My Photograph" series. I was very impressed with this idea when I posted his Copenhagen Exhibit last August but Lukas has added a humorous new twist to his Barcelona installation by hiding a GoPro camera behind his photos to capture the reactions of the unsuspecting, would-be-thieves. I got a chance to catch up with Lukas and asked him a few of the questions that have been on everyone's mind.
One of the first very important skills I acquired in my Australian Photography course was the ability to breakdown lighting and determine approximate camera settings in images taken by other photographers. If you understand how the direction of light and its degree of diffusion are controlled and how they affect images, it should be easy for you to train yourself to "read" lighting in the images you see in magazines, on billboards and in your favorite photographers’ portfolios.
In the fall of 2010, I decided to shoot my dream assignment. I knew that no one was going to pay me to go out and tackle this subject matter, and I had not seen any photographer do what I wanted to do, so I did it. At the time, I had no idea what the assignment would turn in to or how it would change me as a photographer and a person. Here is what I learned from photographing 35 College Football Tailgates.
I've been shooting commercial photography for years and despite any fancy gear I might have in my arsenal, I never walk on a set without at least one reflector with me. SLR Lounge put together a great tutorial showcasing the power of one of the most affordable photography tools that every photographer should learn to use.
Every time I go to state parks along the lakeshore, I always see a few people with DSLR cameras walking around taking shots. Anytime there's an interesting bird nearby, it often becomes the subject of their attention. These colorful creatures are as majestic as they are quick though, and don't usually tolerate humans being too close to them. In this video tutorial from Tony Northrup, he shares many tips to get up close to birds in the field or even your own backyard.
Not since Matthew Brady’s work documenting the Civil War has the tintype photographic process been used on the battlefield. Staff sergeant Ed Drew, an aerial gunner in the California Air National Guard, brought tintype back to the theater of war to photograph his fellow soldiers during his deployment from April to June in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.
About six months ago, I wrote a piece comparing flash techniques to HDR and ambient-only techniques when shooting for architecture and interiors clients. There was some great discussion involved and many valid points raised, and I'd like to take a few minutes to bring up another scenario that really shows the benefits of using flash whenever possible when dealing with interior or architectural situations.
With a brilliant display and talent and planning, street artist Sofles and Selina Miles from Unity Sound and Visual joined efforts to create an epic dubstep music video. While Sofles spray paints the walls of abandoned buildings, a hyper time lapse precedes him, wrapping around walls as he works through different areas. How did they do it?
Portrait and fashion photographer Lindsay Adler is not only a great photographer, but also a superb educator. Just recently she did a session with creativeLive on studio lighting, and also taped a new show with Framed Network. In her most recent video, Lindsay shows a very cheap (between $0 and $20) way to create beautiful soft light just by using your window and some black foam core. No need in expensive strobes, no need in extra equipment. and the results are amazing.
Miroslav Tichý, was a photographer that constructed his own homemade cameras out of cardboard tubes, tin cans, dress elastic and old camera parts he found. From 1960 to 1985 he used these homemade cameras to snap thousands of images around town often of unsuspecting women. It wasn't till 1981 that one of his friends gathered up prints strewn all over his studio, and organized them to share with the world through photo exhibitions, that Tichý's work would finally be discovered.
As photographers, we usually use two different techniques to capture our images: The first is freezing the moment and capturing the split second we are witnessing. The other option is using a long exposure, to show movement, changes, or show things we don't normally see with our eyes. But what if you combined these two concepts - freezing a moment while adding movement? Check out these creative and unique portraits using this technique.
Photographer Mario Testino shoots my favorite super lady, Kate Upton, for the June 2013 Vogue. Kate keeps things super classy for her spread and even rocks some rather large, dark eyebrows with her look. I am certainly one that appreciates some curves on a model, so I am glad to see Vogue is beefing up to the competition (see what I did there) instead of the same ol' too-skinny girl. Click through to see the shots from her upcoming feature
Over the years, I have taught numerous workshops for photographers and during those classes one of the most appreciated techniques that we discuss is shooting proper white balance using Kelvin temperatures. If it is something new to you, it might at first seem a bit overwhelming but I guarantee it is actually quite simple to learn. Read on to learn just how easy it is and the benefits of shooting in Kelvin versus Auto White Balance.
Seven months ago I shared the trailer for a documentary about French Landscape Photographer Alexandre Deschaumes, as he creates stunning landscape images all over the world. His travels have taken him to Patagonia, Iceland, Austria, and more, while the time he spends in nature is the time where he seems to get the most creative. The hour long documentary is finally available (for a small fee.)
If the guy wasn't already talented enough, now Brad Pitt is showing off his ability to shoot photos of his gorgeous "wife" and family using black and white film. The photos are quite spectacular and give us all an interesting insight into his life behind closed doors. You will want to see these.
We received over 1000 submissions from our readers to our new POTD contest, and yes, we looked at every single one of them. There were some brilliant entries and it was incredibly tough to select the top 30 for the month of April, but they've all been chosen, and you can check out the gallery here
DSLR Video pioneer Vincent Laforet partnered with Canon to create a 4 part instructional video series where he shares many great tips for getting started with shooting timelapse sequences. He takes viewers with him on a shoot in Bryce Canyon and explains his setup, and also goes in to detail on: finding a subject matter, lens selection, how to calculate properly to get enough frames, using intervalometers, and so much more. This is loaded with tons of great tips, a must watch if you do any timelapse work.
Tim Kemple has "always been an adventurer, an explorer, a climber", but how did he make the transition into being a photographer? A new web mini-series from F-Stop Gear is setting out to tell the story of outdoor and adventure photographers. In this premier episode, Tim Kemple shares his background while running around the mountains in France, and he explains what it takes to capture images in those environments.
I'm a strobist by heart. When I first got into photography, I didn't even begin shooting portrait work until after I had gotten at least a flash. That purchase, quickly turned into studio strobe after studio strobe until I found that I was completely controlling all light sources during my shoots. So who better to review SLRLounge's latest DVD, 'Natural Light Couples Photography Workshop', right?
There is that popular phrase that goes "the best camera you have is the one on you." That phrase has never been more true in this day and age with considerably powered cell phone cameras living in the pockets of nearly every person you might come across. Even as professionals with thousands of dollars in gear, sometimes we will find ourselves in a situation we shoot on our mobile cameras, whether by choice or by circumstance. I spoke to the product manager of Lightroom to get his take on the best ways to bring the most out of your iPhone images.
Denver photographer Michael Sasser got some attention when this behind the scenes video showed how a simple setup could produce some great portraits. He dropped a new video, so I reconnected with him to see what he has been working on. Turns out he has a new slow-motion video camera, and is now offering video production to clients. This video will give you a taste of one of his shoots, and in the interview Michael shares some insight on his methods, gear, and experiences.