According to what I've been noticing in a lot of the comments posted here on Fstoppers, there seems to be plenty of photographers who absolutely hate Photoshop. So lets have a bit of a discussion.
Technology has become part of everything in our lives. Cars get better and better. Phones have become portable and are now the size of a credit card.
Have you ever felt inadequate as a creative artist? Have you internally credited luck to your success rather than give yourself credit for the hard work you put in to get where you are today? Maybe you even just feel like a fake? All of this even though you have worked your ass off to become the successful artist you are today. I know I personally have felt this way on numerous occasions. It wasn't until photographer Sascha Reinking shared a post he got from Brian Friedman in a Facebook group that I realized there is a name for this condition.
I wrote recently about the importance of developing your own style. One of the worst things any creative professional can do is to get sucked into thinking about what work we should be doing or how we should be doing it. When was the last time you looked at someone else’s work and thought “Wow that’s really good. I really need to be doing something like that”? For me, it was earlier this morning. It’s totally normal and intuitive behavior.
When was the last time you looked back at an image and noticed something about the lighting that you wished you could tweak or alter slightly? I’m sure most of us have been in this position at one time or another. Up until now, it’s simply not been possible to even imagine being able to do this. Welcome to the strange new world of “computational lighting design”
When this post is published I will be on my way to Moscow, Russia somewhere above the North Atlantic Ocean. I have a couple of shoots booked with my regular clients there, and my relationships with those clients are so great and long-lasting that they inspired me to write this article.
As a fellow commercial photographer I know that clients come to us for consistency and reliability. They hire us because when they are spending the big bucks on advertising campaigns they don’t want to leave things up to chance. It is part of our job to deliver the end product on time and free of flaws, but even a professional at the top of their game still battles with human error.
It’s interesting times for those of us shooting photo and video. I enjoy highlighting photographers or videographers who are utilizing elements of both stills and motion work, and are pushing the creative envelope by integrating them so that the end result is more than just the sum of the individual parts. I'm going to go all in and lay my cards down here and say that the video in this post is going to be the most innovative, creative use of combining stills and video together that we’ll see in 2013.
A plan which cuts about $4.1 billion of debt for Eastman Kodak was approved by US bankruptcy judge Allan Gropper yesterday. The plan allows Kodak to reorganize itself into a company that will actually provide no consumer products but will instead focus on printing technology for corporate customers. This is good news for the company on the whole by saving it from extinction, but it does nothing to compensate shareholders.
So you know your business inside and out and your image quality is top notch, but there's always room for improvement. A factor that many people overlook is the experience that a client has when they work with them, being on one side of the operations gives you a very different perspective and because of this you could be overlooking little important details that make the world of difference. I've been working as a full time commercial photographer for a year now, and in that time I've learned a lot from not only my own client interactions, but the other businesses I've worked with as well.
There is nothing I love more than when someone takes the gloves off and drops a serious dose of truth. Especially about getting better as a photographer, and even more so in the age of "I'll fix it in post." In this video from 30-year veteran documentary photographer John Free offers some great advice for becoming a better street photographer, and absolutely perfect advice on becoming a better photographer overall.
In continuing to bring you low cost or free resources to improve your photography, I’d like to introduce you to The Candid Frame (TCF), a podcast that features interviews of different photographers that’s been running since 2006. TCF is hosted by Ibarionex Perrello, a photographer, writer and educator based in Southern California. Regardless of what you shoot, I consider it one of the most outstanding resources for photographers. Did I mention it’s also completely free?
A while back I was struggling with a creative impasse in my work. I wasn't inspired by anything, and really wasn't motivated to do anything related to photography. So I did what any self-respecting creative would do. I asked Google to help! What it gave me was a poster that listed 33 ways to stay creative! I have no idea who created this nugget of amazing, or where it was originally posted; if you know, fill me in because this person deserves some major credit!
The music we use in our work, whether for videos or slide shows for stills images, is an integral part of the narrative and story we are trying tell. The genre, artist and music track we choose, sets the tone for the entire story we wish to tell. I treat music as the keystone that underpins the visual story of a BTS video, commercial work, documentary piece or creative editorial shoot that I am working on.
How important is it to have a graphic tablet and do I really need it? This is a question that I get asked quite often and wanted to elaborate on it. It may be that you've never tried one or perhaps you never got used to it and did not like the experience. Is that normal and how imperative is it that you get used to using one?
What is a first look? Guest writer and wedding photographer, Susan Stripling shares exactly what a first look is, her personal opinion, why this trend is so popular, as well as the pros and the cons.
It hasn't been that long since the Nokia Lumia 1020 made all sorts of waves with it's claims of a 41mp sensor and now (as if 41 were the magic number) we have a "smartwatch" on the horizon from Hyetis (pictured) with the same idea. It's called the Crossbow. If you're picking up some irritation in my tone you're not wrong. The mega-pixel war is still raging but we've shifted our attention from robust cameras to accessories with cameras built in.
Recently, fellow Fstoppers writer/astounding editor Pratik Naik posted a status on Facebook asking what people's editing routines were, you can read the discussion that followed here. With his permission I've decided to spin this off into a post, and offer some suggestions for our readers facing hours of repetitive retouching in their future. I'm writing from the perspective of a photographer, but I'm sure many if not all of these will carry over into the video world as well. Note that these aren't in any particular order.
Over the last couple years, more and more photographers are turning towards a new business model of sharing the digital files with their clients rather than requiring them to place print orders to generate revenue. The traditional business model photographers who rely on sales of prints to make money are furious with the growing popularity of "shoot and share photographers" even going as far as "declaring war" against it. Here's what photographers need to know.
There are many factors to success in the creative industry. Of course a big chunk of it has to do with the quality of the work, but we know quality isn’t the only factor to being successful as a photographer, otherwise, there would be a lot more of us. Yet most photographers put all their efforts into developing their technical or artistic abilities and leave the entire business chunk untouched.
We can often get swept up in the world of digital video. Topics like 'What it will mean for the future of photography when we can pull stills from video?' occupy a lot of time and thinking.
Discussion like this is relevant but I sometimes think we miss the most important element of all. The single biggest contributor towards great video is actually making sure we understand what it is that makes a great still image in the first place. To go faster, we should actually slow down. Maybe even stop.
If you’re an outdoor or adventure photographer, one of the situations likely tangle with regularly is balancing the line between comfort and size when it comes to your backpacks. You usually need a bag to both safely transport your expensive gear as well as your climbing supplies. However, our spines have limits and the bag also needs to be supportive and lightweight. Lowepro’s recent iteration of their popular camera bags is the Photo Sport Pro 30L AW, aimed to give you a light bag option for your adventurous ways.
Facebook changed up their News Feed algorithm again in an effort to constantly improve our experience on the site. Their goal is for us to spend as much time as possible on Facebook and in an effort to keep us there they will now be featuring the most highly ranked posts first in our news feed followed by those with less engagement. What does that mean to all of us? In short, it means if you post something boring it now has even less of a chance of being seen. Let me explain.
As photographers and videographers we often obsess over our cameras, lenses, stands, lights, etc. But often times, the most important tool in your bag is from the hardware store, something that allows you to temporarily fix an unexpected situation, whether it's a gear failure, or the need to fix something in an awkward space. Here are 10 items (in no particular order) that I recommend.
Have you ever thought what will happen in 10 or 20 years to all those digital images you take every day? Have you ever thought what photos the younger generation of your family will have access to when they grow up? We all pretty much stopped printing photos and making real photo albums because we just don't need to do it anymore (and because we are lazy). So what can be done to make those photos available and easily accessible to next generations? Here is my solution.
There is one thing above any piece of gear or software that can improve the quality of our image making. Best of all, it's free. Call me cheap, but I'm constantly trying to think of ways and means to improve my work for either no or low financial cost. I want to try and showcase some ways we can improve without necessarily buying new stuff and this article kicks that thinking off.
I'm not sure when it happened, but sometime in the last couple weeks my website received one simple update that filled in the single complaint I had with the design: it made right clicking to save my images to your desktop a thing of the past. I received no notice and ran into this update by mistake, but I might be happier with my service more now than ever.
Crazy thought, but not everything that makes a photographer's life better is camera-related. To be good at what we do, we have to unwind. We must find ways to relax. Sounds easy, right? Not so much, as it turns out. I've been looking for something to help me unwind while on the road, and I think I just found it.
Looking on photography groups and forums, you'll quickly find a reoccurring problem among photographers. No Call, No Shows. It’s going to happen regardless of your location and the seriousness of the industry, and security deposits sometimes scare clients away all together. So how do you counteract this and ensure that your talent and team are timely, and even show up?
What does it mean to have a successful business? What does it mean to have a successful family? What does it mean to have a successful life?
Obviously, there is not one definition for success, although there may be some social norms that we base our definitions on. Maybe it's making a certain amount of money. Maybe it's staying married for a certain amount of years. Maybe it has nothing to do with either of those!
The photography industry is so drastically different today than it was just ten years ago that if you’re going to survive, you absolutely have to be dynamic and ready to adapt to the things quickly. You have to find your niche and go for it full force or risk failure. Hasselblad is doing this with their form-over-function Lunar and Stellar. Yet I’m left thinking… Hasselblad, I’m not certain you thought this latest set of moves through. I’m not certain you know what’s happening to your brand. I’m not certain this is where you need to be.
