Pictures

In this interview, I speak with Russ Turner, a photographer who is relatively new to shooting fantasy portraiture, but has already received awards and praise for the quality of his work. Russ talks about working with costumed models, how he incorporates Photoshop, and shares some of the places where an aspiring shooter can get started doing photography in this genre.

Merek Davis today announced the release of the image enhancing Mextures app for iPhone. Over the last year iPhone photographers have downloaded Mextures textures more than 200,000 times directly from Merek Davis’ store and tagged 140,000 images on Instagram; now they have an iPhone app to more easily create and share visually stunning images. I have got to say that after buying and playing with the app this morning, this is one that you don't want to miss out on.

If you follow us here on Fstoppers, you know how much we love food and food photography. For the past few months we posted here countless of tutorials, methods, tricks and business tips to help you take your food photography to the next level. Now it's time for some inspiration: Check out this set of delicious-looking dishes that will leave you hungry. Very hungry.

Think Tank launched “About A Photograph,” a video series that features stories from photographers about the photographs they have created.

The videos are co-produced by Think Tank Photo co-founders and award-winning photojournalists Kurt Rogers and Deanne Fitzmaurice. Each video will feature some of the world’s leading photographers recounting the stories behind these images that captured global attention.

Photographer Adam Voorhes out of Austin, Texas, has documented a collection of approximately 90 human brains that the University of Texas had amassed over the past 30 years.

The story goes that Voorhes found the collection a few years back after meeting Dr. Tim Schallert, while searching for a way to illustrate a Scientific American article.

When you think group shots, what lens immediately comes to your mind? Often, the initial reaction to a "group picture" is to reach for the widest lens in your bag. It's a safe option that makes sure you'll fit everyone in the frame. It could be said group shots are more about accounting for everyone who was present rather than being a work of art. However, if you care about the quality of images you're creating, maybe your widest option shouldn't be your default.

At 14 years old, I personally, was riding bikes, drawing and playing video games. I had literally no clue that I was going to become a professional photographer, or even how to really use a camera. So when I see photos from 14 year olds, I expect work as scatterbrained as I was. Boy am I wrong. Meet Zev, a 14 year old photographer who has the creativity and photo manipulations that will put most of our photography portfolios to shame.

Aaron Nace at PHLEARN teamed up with professional product photographer Rob Grimm to demonstrate how a super high-end watch shoot would be put together. Check out how Grimm takes numerous shots and combines them into one advertising-quality image.

Have you ever wondered how different diffusing fabrics affect the quality of light that you shoot with? Jay P. Morgan from the Slanted Lens walks you through the different diffusion materials by Rosco. He explains how the different fabrics can lessen the stops of light and how it can affect your color temperatures and look of your shoot.

Couples spend a lot of time, effort and money to make sure their wedding day will be captured the best way possible - after all it's one of the most important days in their lives. But what about another major life event, like the proposal itself? Most times, unless it's meant to be a viral proposal, the proposer is not thinking of documenting it and the moment will never be shared or shown to family and friends. Wedding photographer Richard B Flores proposed earlier this week, and he knew he wanted to have this memory documented forever.

On May 20th, one of the deadliest twisters in known history touched down in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City. The Tornado caused catastrophic damage to homes (over 13,000 of them were destroyed), infrastructure, schools and a hospital. Take a look at these powerful images showing the aftermath of the deadly Tornado as found on (the new) Flickr.

Benjamin Von Wong has finally wrapped up his long and productive European tour, Von Wong Does Europe. The very first shoot that he was able to do was also ironically the last to be published and for good reason. It will blow you away. Taking over 60 hours to retouch Ben collaborated with talented retouching guru, Chester van Bommel.

This might be an extreme take on the all-too-common client request of "get it done quickly," but it serves as an excellent benchmark of what can be done in a short amount of time. Odds are, you won't ever be asked to do a full post-production retouch in such a short amount of time, but the idea behind what Aaron Nace of PHLEARN is showing here is solid: with the right tools and knowledge you can streamline your workflow with extreme effectiveness.

In efforts to make Flickr "awesome again," Yahoo unveiled today their new and re-imagined Flickr with a new design and new features. Some of the major design changes include a new homepage featuring large images posted by your friends, new beautiful profile photosteam and new photo pages. Flickr also announced each user will get 1 Terabyte of storage for free, with the ability to upload hi-res photos, and many of them.

As photographers, we usually use two different techniques to capture our images: The first is freezing the moment and capturing the split second we are witnessing. The other option is using a long exposure, to show movement, changes, or show things we don't normally see with our eyes. But what if you combined these two concepts - freezing a moment while adding movement? Check out these creative and unique portraits using this technique.

I love animals and many of us do. They're so expressive and it makes you wonder what they're thinking of. You see the innocence in their eyes and you know it's genuine. Let's not forget to mention their ever ready playful demeanor. When you combine these vibrant attributes with photography, it sets up for some endearing work. Cue in animal photographer, Jessica Trinh.

After looking at all of the great submissions for our April POTD contest, it took a few weeks to narrow them all down and come up with commentary for what were some outstanding photos. Like I said in the original post, it was truly humbling to have people from all over the world send us their images to view and judge against others. It was great to see images from all over the world of various cultures and places, and I'm happy to announce that we've finally settled on our top portraits and the winner of the $100.

Of course many of us want to always nail a shot in camera, but sometimes things happen. Maybe it looked great on your camera's LCD, but entirely different once you got it on your computer. Maybe your sensor is too small and shallow DOF is hard to nail. It's for these cases that Aaron Nace at PHLEARN does tutorials like this one, where he shows how to adjust depth of field in post.

In this amazing split second moment of time, Travis Roe captured a bolt of lighting striking the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The once in a lifetime photograph was shot last year but recently surfaced after Roe submitted the image to the U.S. Department of the Interior.

We have all witnessed it, practiced it, you might be doing it now while reading this post. Sadly, seeing someone staring down at a mobile device in public has become such a common sight, that we might walk right past without even thinking about it.

While on a recent visit to Taipei, Tao Lin created photographs of strangers interacting with their mobile devices.

This new video from the Life In Focus series from F-Stop Gear tells the story of Brian Matiash, an urban and landscape photographer from Portland, Oregon. A departure from the usual mountain or expedition setting, it's cool to see a photographer who is working on the streets of a city and how he makes use of the rugged F-stop bags. Hear Brian discuss how he got into photography and what motivates him to shoot urban areas.

Photographer Mario Testino shoots my favorite super lady, Kate Upton, for the June 2013 Vogue. Kate keeps things super classy for her spread and even rocks some rather large, dark eyebrows with her look. I am certainly one that appreciates some curves on a model, so I am glad to see Vogue is beefing up to the competition (see what I did there) instead of the same ol' too-skinny girl. Click through to see the shots from her upcoming feature

Thanks to redditor Gypp and his amazing sense of humor and creativity in photoshop, the world now has an abundant new array of animals to appreciate. How would you like a Guinea Lion or a Purilla to be roaming in your neighborhood? Which one would you keep as a pet?

Maybe it is because I live in the dust bowl of Phoenix AZ, but seeing the ever-growing empire of buildings in Hong Kong strikes me as quite a remarkable sight. Photographer Romain Jacquet-Lagreze visited Hong Kong in 2009 and became obsessed with its marvel. As he began to explore the unique city, he realized each part he visited had an atmosphere individually unique. Wanting to show what it's like to be on the ground in each special place, Romain pointed his camera upward to share the awe one feels when gazing up at the sky between the huge buildings.

Wyn has been featured on Fstoppers quite a few times. Why? His work is outstanding. He comes up with some really cool concepts for shots. From using LED's on a basketball shoot to powder with Gymnasts. He does it all perfectly.

The follow-up to 2009's re-imagined (alternate universe) Star Trek film is probably one of the biggest blockbuster sequels of the 2013 film year. Follow J. J. Abrams as he directs the crew of the USS Enterprise as they fight off a new threat, John Harrison played by Star Trek newcomer, Benedict Cumberbatch. From the looks of the two B-roll videos and behind the scenes footage Star Trek: Into Darkness looks like an instant hit.

A Spanish organization called "Aid to Children and Adolescents at Risk" (ANAR) created a new ad campaign to bring awareness to kids at risk, using a cool new idea (but a very old technique). By using Lenticular printing, they were able to show two different ads in one print - one for kids, and one for adults. Adults see a different image and message than what the kids see. Smart, creative and important.

Over the years, I have taught numerous workshops for photographers and during those classes one of the most appreciated techniques that we discuss is shooting proper white balance using Kelvin temperatures. If it is something new to you, it might at first seem a bit overwhelming but I guarantee it is actually quite simple to learn. Read on to learn just how easy it is and the benefits of shooting in Kelvin versus Auto White Balance.