Fstoppers Originals

In this series, I attempt to identify the key professional virtues I have found to be the most important in building my own career, as well as identifying traits of other successful photographers that are most key to their success. Today's Word of The Week? Standards. 

The fashion industry is home to some of the most dynamic and fluid trends that the world has ever seen. No doubt, the existence of this ever-changing and highly creative environment is mainly as a result of the diversity and creative uniqueness of the individuals that constitute it.

Natalie Lennard, the British photographer popularly known as Miss Aniela, is well known for her stunningly surreal fashion work. Her new personal project, however, is leading her in an entirely different direction; showcasing childbirth through world history, celebrating the power of women who give birth on their own terms.

Photographers and filmmakers probably spend more time on their computers that behind a camera. We own thousands of dollars in gears, yet some of us waste a considerable amount of time struggling on a sluggish PC. However, for the price of a good lens you could dramatically improve your productivity by speeding up the entire post-shooting phase.

Are you still buying external hard drives? It's time you consolidated all of your data on a NAS device and today, you can win a Synology DS418 NAS.  

Cameras have always been at the forefront of technology. They've always pushed the boundaries of what's possible. Perhaps then it is unusual to have such a high tech sector so closely wedded to art. That is what makes photography such a passion for me.

Import and culling have always been two of the most time consuming and, frankly, annoying parts of Adobe Lightroom. Despite all of its improvements over the years, the process of getting files into Lightroom has remained a huge bottleneck in an otherwise swift workflow application.

Photography today is more accessible than ever before because cameras are everywhere: not only shaped as DSLRs, but in phones, tablets, laptops, and in the James Bond ball-point pen. It is easy to press a button a capture something your camera is pointed to.

When retouching we often place a strong focus on the primary subject of the photo, often demoting other aspects of the image as a fleeting second thought. Which makes sense, the primary subject of the photo is the most important aspect of a photo.

"Photographing The World 3" behind the scenes continues today with Episode 4. In this episode, we visit the most beautiful, and also most disastrous location of the trip, Pietrapertosa Italy.  

Last Tuesday, Adobe hosted an event in London, which was headlined by a keynote speech from Nick Knight OBE, the world-renowned fashion photography visionary.

Although everyone has a different "favorite" lens, the 24-70mm 2.8 lens usually ends up being used the most. It's standard zoom range and fast 2.8 aperture makes it usable for almost any type of photography. Today, I'm comparing the three most popular 24-70mm lenses to determine which one is best.  

Students often ask me a rhetorical question: “What is it like to be a professional landscape photographer?” Well, it’s fantastic if you’re into the outdoors, natural landscapes, and of course photography. However, that’s not entirely the point of the question.

If you’ve ever been to a photo event in New York City or taken a pilgrimage to B&H Photo, chances are you’ve noticed the man in the trench coat with the old news photographer’s camera – bellows, big flash, and all. 

The WeeklyFstop depends not only on its loyal readers and participants, it relies on light. Light determines what we see and how we see it. Our photos depend on us controlling the camera so the light coming through the lens exposes correctly. This week's list of photographers submitted some superb examples of photos featuring light. 

Composition is a complicated topic. It's easy to throw out the Rule of Thirds because talking about things like balance, rhythm, and focus can get overwhelming but, if you stop at the Rule of Thirds, you could be robbing your images of complexity 

If you spend any time surfing photography forums and Facebook groups, you will undoubtedly see a constant flow of questions asking for the best way to nail focus. Maybe you are one of those people that find themselves struggling. The trick is that most cameras have a setting that will help you focus like a pro.

In this series, I attempt to identify the key professional virtues I have found to be the most important in building my own career, as well as identifying traits of other successful photographers and business leaders that are most key to their success. Today’s virtue: adaptability. 

What we do in our free time is often connected to our innate passion. Such one random act of passion led us to launch a social documentary filmmaking brand. A lot of us, especially wedding photographers, have this bandwidth of free time where we are not shooting any weddings. In this off-season, do the things we do sum up to make a difference?

Isn’t Facebook time hop great?! Every day I get to see the last seven to eight years of my photography. Like almost every photographer, I sucked when I started out. My actual composition and use of the camera weren't too bad, but my post-production was horrendous. The best way to describe the post processing is “heavy-handed.”

Getting great light in an event setting whether inside or outside is a tough shoot. You have to understand exposure, people are moving sometimes erratically, ambient light is moving over your subjects randomly, and you still have to create sellable imagery. I photograph several nightclubs in Dallas, TX regularly and the imagery I’m creating is their marketing for new patrons.

Antti Karppinen is a digital artist, photographer, retoucher, and instructor from Finland with a unique eye for visual storytelling through photography. His work relies on traditional photography skills combined with an active imagination and complex Photoshop editing work to create fantastical images.

There are many different ways to sync social profiles, and most have some form of interaction with one another via API calls. An example would be Instagram posting to Twitter automatically, but there are sometimes issues such as when the photo gets pushed to Twitter the image is not shown, rather a link to the image is provided.

Whether you think about conceptual art, impressionism, or high fashion, they are all deviations from the traditional art expressions. Is the emperor naked, or do these forms of art have nothing to do with that well-known story? Is it possible to make more profit from impressionism than from traditional photography? 

For the last seven years, our video tutorials have taught the Fstoppers community how to take better pictures. Our latest tutorial, Making Real Money: The Business Of Commercial Photography, is the opposite of that. In fact, there isn't a camera or lens in the entire 14-hours of video. But, I believe it's the most valuable tutorial we've ever made.