Fstoppers Originals

It wasn’t until English photographer Tommy Clarke wound up living in Australia, shooting fashion photography that he didn’t feel complacent with, that he decided to venture into landscape work. Since then, he’s found his niche in aerial photography, and recently unveiled his surreal abstract shots of Holland’s Tulip fields. 

If you’re trying to build your photography business, having a brand is essential to your success. Here’s why you need to focus on building your photography brand. 

As someone who shoots multiple camera systems, it’s easy to see that nothing out there is perfect. But while I’ve often thought about selling off one system entirely in favor of another, there’s always a lens or two for each system that is just about perfect and keeps me with a foot in many brands. 

Nano-drones are usually designed as indoor toys but they can be used to create some very unique shots. 

Just when you think we’re making huge progress towards equality, a stark reminder of how far we’ve yet to go emerges. Despite 126 years of publication at a rate of 12 issues per year, not one Vogue cover has been shot by a black photographer. If the rumors are true, Beyonce could be about to change that. 

There was a time in my life that weddings were my main source of income. After being laid off from my job as a scientist, my hobby soon turned into a career. When I was first starting out, I took any and every gig I could to make ends meet. However, I held a secret during that time that I would never had admitted until now. I hated weddings.  

Sometimes there are lessons that can affect both new photographers and veterans alike. 

For many photographers, Instagram is still the biggest and best social media platform for spreading and showing our work. Growing on Instagram is, however, a long, weird, confusing, and sometimes frustrating process. 

In a small town in West Texas, one photographer has established a thriving business that rivals big city photography studios. “We’re in podunk Texas,” Kaleigh Horelica says with a spirited, self-deprecating laugh.

The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess.

As raw processing software for wedding editing or batch editing in general, Capture One has nothing to envy from Lightroom. Quite the opposite, it’s perfectly tailored to help wedding photographers get a fast and efficient workflow. 

Drones are near ubiquitous for the capture of aerial imagery, but with their increased prevalence, their use and operation has become contentious. If you are seeking an alternative, then kite aerial photography (KAP) might be for you. 

I have been visiting the surrounding areas of Mt. Fuji for the last ten years and here are my five best landscape locations. 

As professional photographers, we spend a great deal of time in post-production making our images look their best. Sometimes, we spend too much time there. So, let’s look at five quick tips to keep your Lightroom workflow efficient and effective.  

Purists say they don't edit their photographs at all and they don't have to if the right camera settings were used. I'm fine with that philosophy if cheap old low-end cameras are used and they only can shoot in JPEG mode. Otherwise this approach is a complete waste of money on expensive cameras. 

Choosing which lenses to bring on an assignment is a constant back and forth between weight and versatility for me. As an adventure and travel photographer, I’m either hiking all my gear into a remote location or flying abroad for long periods with limited bag space. So when I got the opportunity to test out the Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary lens I was pretty excited. 

Rapidly advancing photo and video technology gives us a seemingly endless glut of new ways to create our visions. As creatives, it's tempting to explore every advancement in pursuit of our ultimate vision. The question is, should you? 

Weather conditions aren’t always perfect when shooting landscape photography; let's be honest they are usually not ideal. One way to turn poor weather into something special is by using a 10-stop neutral density filter which allows you to take very long exposures during the day resulting in some unique images.  

When I started food photography I was in awe of the beautiful backdrops. It took me a good 6 months to work out where to get them from.

Teamwork makes the dream work, but all good things must come to an end. Check out the final installment of our top 10 list series submitted by our loyal readers.  

Movies are one of my favorite things, so of course, movies about photography are even better. Here are 10 movies every photographer should watch.  

Some of these are about a photographer, while some use photography as a throughline, but all feature it prominently in some way (save for the third on the list). The list is in no particular order.

Godox has been disrupting the lighting industry for several years now with their budget-friendly options for studio strobes and on location lighting. The Godox system is growing even larger with the addition of their newest on-location light, but does this new light make sense to those budget-conscious photographers that have adopted the system? 

During that important pre-consultation with a client, most likely, she will ask to see an entire session. They have seen your amazing images on social media, but usually just one or two from a session. If you only show a few images from each set, how does your client know if those just weren't the best of the best?  

The New York Daily News, once called “New York’s Picture Newspaper,” has nobody left on staff to take pictures after its parent company, Chicago-based Tronc, cut the editorial staff in half on Monday. 

Time for a completely non-scientific, wholly subjective, not even remotely precise, but undeniably fun thought experiment for all to participate in. 

Ignorance is bliss. Whoever said that was a prophet. It’s not so much that knowledge could ever be a negative. It’s that when you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s impossible to miss something you didn’t know existed.