Building a shooting space in your home can be difficult to say the least. For most photographers, a home studio is never large enough and every inch of space becomes a commodity. In this video we show you perhaps the easiest and cleanest way to hang seamless paper in your studio space.
Depth of Field, or a lack thereof, has become a buzzword of sorts in photography circles. Many times the term is used as a blanket nomenclature to cover anything to do with how much or little of a subject is in focus. What we often fail to consider is why. Why are we choosing to use as much or as little depth as we do?
A few weeks ago, I beat Lee Morris in our Puerto Rico Landscape Challenge. With that victory, many of our readers said my edit in Photoshop was simply too over the top. Today, I try to re-edit my photo to see if I can create something a bit more realistic.
Have you ever made a picture of a landscape? Sure you have. Everyone has. Making the photo is the easy part, but showing the landscape how you experienced it, is something else. Often the photo does not show the landscape from you perception. Finding a subject is often one of the solutions.
A quick trip into downtown Los Angeles allowed me a closer look at one of my photographic heroes.
Annie Leibovitz is one of the main reasons I am a professional photographer today. She was the photographer that made me (and still makes me) look at her work and simply say, “Wow, how the heck did she do that?”
One of Darwin's most seminal remarks on evolution, quoted en masse throughout the internet and various text books, is a profound piece of advice to any photographer looking to build a lasting career in the industry. The only catch is, he didn't actually say it.
Fstoppers wouldn't exist without Ritz Camera. Patrick and I met each other working there 13 years ago. But, as many of you know, Ritz Camera went bankrupt, and we know why.
With one simple change to my everyday routine, I suddenly feel more creative, able to generate ideas more quickly, and with greater clarity. You can achieve the same thing with one simple trick that won’t cost you a penny.
Were you one of the early adopters who jumped to a Fuji X series, selling your extensive Canon camera body and lens range, to be thoroughly unimpressed with the image quality to then jump back? Or did you fork out on a PhaseONE medium format, drooling over that dreamy tonal range to then see Pentax release the rather good 645Z for a quarter of the price a year later?
We've all heard of saving less than perfect images by turning them black and white, but when should you really do it? Here's how I decide.
Travel photography is mostly associated with exploration of wild, untouched spaces, but in my experience, most commissioned travel photography takes place in cities. This article provides five tips for getting started in urban photography.
Maybe you've had a prospective client — someone you've never heard of — ring you up to discuss your photography services... and had your brain freeze, making the conversation awkward. Even if you've been landing photography gigs for years, the excitement of an unexpected phone call can throw you off course.
So you upgraded to a DSLR to take your photography to the next level and you now feel a strong urge to step into the big bad world of professional photography. You have the kit lenses, but you know they won’t cut it. Let me introduce you to the must-have kit lens of professional photographers.
As a photographer or a videographer, do you routinely get stuck in the same cycle when working on a project, which may or may not include Imposter Syndrome, exasperation, and more? What's your unique "cycle"?
I love shooting film, it's not always the best choice, but the idea that I am forced to slow down and really be sure I like my frame before I hit the shutter overall makes me shoot more efficiently, reduce the amount of culling at the end of the shoot (which is my least favorite part of any photoshoot to be honest), and with shooting with 6x7 I can get a very specific look that is hard to
Instagram TV has been a bit of a flop, which is a shame as the idea really excited me. However, it hasn’t stopped me from using video on Instagram.
I recently started shooting with a Nikon Z 7 and noticed something interesting when reviewing some images from a shoot. There was a feature that I didn’t pay much attention to, but I think it’s really undervalued.
Plans are good. Most of us live by plans, and we like things to go as planned. But sometimes just showing up and going with the flow can yield immense rewards for photographers.
If you want to continue to grow as a photographer you need to have honest, real time feedback and yes, criticism. Sure, you can ask a friend maybe see if Mom wants to flip through your portfolio and you might get some feedback but more than likely you’ll get some “wow, that’s a cool shot” or “Honey! This picture is lovely!” but no really push back on your composition or lack of.
We create tons of free content on a weekly basis for our YouTube channel, but until now, we have exclusively sold our "professional" photography tutorials on the Fstoppers store. But today, thanks to a few sponsors, we've created a free 45-minute tutorial on product photography.
Wireless audio monitoring is meant to be a cardinal sin, but isn’t youth about breaking the rules?
Photography is hard. It's even harder when you forget your camera. But, as Chase Jarvis always says, the best camera you have is the one you have with you and with the rise of computational photography that is becoming more true than ever.
For almost every photographer who shoots bulk works of images, Lightroom is an essential tool. But we often make the costly and frustrating mistake of letting our Lightroom catalogs grow too large.
For many of us, marketing ourselves to potential art buyers, publications, and agencies is the stuff of nightmares. Cold calling is certainly one of the most feared.
It didn't seem like very long ago that I reviewed Luminar 3, and while I liked the editing features, I dislikes the fact that if you weren't using Luminar's "Lightroom lite" catalog feature you were stuck with it and couldn't turn it off.