Fstoppers Originals

All work and no play makes people crazy. I think there was a movie about that once. Luckily looking at these photos of people doing work requires very little effort at all and will help you ease into your weekend properly.  

Some things in photography take years to master, while others take just a few seconds. Here are three tips that take less than a minute but can have a massive impact on your photo results. 

Creating soft light can become an expensive pursuit. A large, indirect softbox will cost around $2,000 and the cheaper ones are often badly built, are small, or generally lack good light quality. Being a tight git, I set about finding a way to create high quality, soft light for my food photography, although this set up will work for pretty much all genres. 

Professional photography is a business, and like any business there are patterns and traits that exist when looking at what works and what doesn’t work. Here are a few traits every successful photography business shares that you can incorporate into your business. 

A photographer's online portfolio is paramount in this day and age, but you already know that. However, we are at a juncture in which the caliber of a photographer's website can be the difference between being hired and being overlooked. Here are five essential tips for ensuring your website gives you the best possible chance of being hired. 

Nature Photographer Kevin Ebi was tracking a young fox with his camera Saturday while it trotted with a rabbit in its mouth in northwestern Washington when he heard the screech of a bald eagle behind him. Knowing what was about to happen, Ebi focused in and readied himself to capture what has quickly become the most widely shared photograph of his career. 

Before sending wedding galleries to clients, I like to add a black and white alternative of every photo. Clients love this! So, here’s a quick time-saving trick to create black and white duplicates of an entire folder or collection of images in Lightroom CC.  

Videos are the next big thing, and it is happening already. With the advent of social media, the power of a video to touch minds and influence decisions is huge. We recently did a fundraising video for a children’s choir and were amazed by the response. This post is a quick recap of what we learned in the process. 

In this article I'll share five tips on how I actually improved my photography. Here I'm not talking technicalities such as sharper images, shallow depth of field, using a tripod, or removing your lens cap. 

Cameras are expensive. Anyone with a pro body and a few decent lenses won't have much change from $10,000. So how do we go about protecting them? 

Images of a Phantom 5 with an interchangeable lens have been floating around the Internet for weeks. The recent addition of two new pictures is fueling the rumor mill, but who is behind these leaks and are they credible? What about the future Mavic Pro 2? 

As I sit in my office today, subject of an unintentional silence, I am forced to reflect on the importance of communication in my ability to perform my job as a photographer. 

Macro photography is a popular, albeit outlying and smaller genre of the medium. However, it is rich in useful and transferable skills that mean it's an important discipline, valuable to all photographers. 

Every year, CreativeLive hosts an event called Photoshop Week that feature classes from world-renowned experts. These free classes range from beginner level classes to expert level education. While most people only get to see these classes through a computer screen, I got the opportunity to see first hand what goes on behind the scenes. 

Stock photography websites can be a great way to get your photos out there and gain some passive income. Choosing what to shoot or submit can be simplified by sticking with what you enjoy and letting your passion shine through your work. 

We've talked about this before on Fstoppers, but there still seems to be some debate about lens compression. Let's dive a little deeper into perspective distortion. 

Take a look at this Lightroom CC fueled, wedding day sneak peak for iPad-equipped photographers. 

Every day sees tens of thousands of copyright infringements on Instagram, and despite this vast number, reporting violations is very confusing — perhaps deliberately so. While my first attempt took almost 20 minutes, I can now complete a report in under 90 seconds. This quick guide walks you through the process and helps to make it as painless as possible. 

This is a rallying cry for photographers balancing on the edge of failure: don’t give up. 

As a Micro Four Thirds videographer, my most used lens has become the Panasonic 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. Today I will compare this lens to the cheaper Tamron 14-150mm lens.  

We live in the social media era and it is the preferred the marketing channel. Why should we talk about blogs? Here are some thoughts on giving more emphasis on your blog than the social networks. 

I bet you've always wanted to hold the crispiest glass yourself. Kai Wong is here with his selection of the ultimate lenses for Nikon full-frame cameras. Well, we have a couple of lists ready to compare Wong's choices with some other usual suspects.

The Kirlian photography technique is still one of the most spectacular ways to shoot different subjects. This method is a bit of a mystery, especially for those who are beginners in the art of photography. Here's how it works. 

As I always discuss, I am looking constantly for every way to streamline every little detail of my workflow as much as possible. Today I want to talk about what you do after you run your actions. It's a very simple thing that I rarely see anyone do. 

A video recently surfaced on YouTube showing a police officer pulling and pointing his gun at a man filming his activity. As a photographer, it would be easy to side with the cameraman but let’s try to see what happened and check both sides of the story.