Using Heavy Cross-light To Make Headshots That Glow
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Recently, I have been experimenting with creating a sort of more intense style of headshot for certain clients who are interested in a more surreal, vibrant, look to their headshot as opposed to the more traditional headshot which is designed to to more closely emulate realistic lighting. The heavy cross-light look uses powerful lights that are positioned perpendicular to your the main light to create a strong highlight to the side of the face while living a distinctive shadow down the subject's cheek. Heavy cross-lighting can do a great job of building a sense of three dimensionality without sacrificing the soft, flattering, feel of a traditional headshot.

How an Elementary School Teacher Took the Most Popular Viral GoPro Photo To Date
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Elementary school teacher turned shark tour intern, Amanda Brewer, recently took a photo of a great white shark emerging from the depths with her GoPro. After sharing the image with GoPro on Instagram and it being published as their Photo of the Day, the image has received international press coverage, amassed over 360K likes, and already been commissioned for a billboard near the port at which it was taken. In this interview with Jared Polin, of Fro Knows Photo, Amanda tells the story of how the photo was taken and, in Jared's words, "What to do when your photo goes viral, real bleeping viral."

Why You Don’t Have to Fear Street Photography
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If you have a camera and access to a street, you can play with street photography. Like landscape photography, it’s one of the most accessible forms of the craft. If you’re anything like me, however, it scares the hell out of you. But it doesn't have to.

How Off Camera Flash Elevates Your Market Value
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Many photographers start their careers by learning natural lighting techniques. Once these skills are established, complacency can set in and the photographer might choose not to stretch themselves to learn more advanced lighting skills. When photographers do this, they leave a significant amount of value on the table.

Atlas With the Sun - The Most Complicated Photo I've Ever Shot
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About a year and a half ago, I was walking on a local beach and realized that for a few weeks of the year, the sun would set in a perfect line of sight down the beach. I thought it might be a fun photographic challenge to create a super telephoto picture with a body builder "holding" the sun in an Atlas style pose. In my mind, the entire scene would be lit rather than have a typical sun silhouette image. Little did I realize how much work I was getting myself into.

Hyperfocal Distance Made Simple: Forget the Charts and Calculators
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The majority of landscape photographers tend to prefer keeping the entire scene in focus from back to front, using smaller apertures to maintain greater depth of field. Using this simple technique, any photographer can quickly find the hyperfocal distance, or the focusing distance at which a lens, given any aperture and focal length, will produce the greatest depth of field.

Why Now Is the Best Time to Go Pro
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The world has never been more uncertain in our lifetimes. However, now is a perfect time to start up as a professional photographer. And as a pro who started in the last recession, let me explain why.

The Rarely Discussed Reason To Shoot Raw
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There are endless articles and videos discussing the pros and cons of shooting in raw versus shooting in JPEG. I’ve long been a proponent of raw for the editing capabilities, but what's more important than file sizes and editing? Longevity.

What We Discovered by Posting 30 Videos to YouTube in 30 Days
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For our New Year's Resolution, Lee and I decided to attempt to post 30 new videos to our YouTube channel throughout the entire month of January. We were not only curious if we could find the drive and motivation to complete such a feat, but we also were curious what sort of traffic, advertising income, and excitement it would bring to Fstoppers.com. Here is what we found out.

Speed Light Comparison: Can You Spot The Differences?
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Let’s be honest, there are a lot of advantages to using speed lights. They are light, portable and they run on batteries. Speed light modifiers that accompany them are also usually quite light and portable as well. But speed lights do have their draw backs and they can be a real pain to use when you encounter issues, such as a painfully slow recycle time between flashes and a lot less power then you need on a bright sunny day. If you have a love hate relationship with speed lights then this article might just have a solution for you.

From Google Maps to DJI Inspire: How I Find Places to Shoot Aerial Photography
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After about two years of doing aerial photography, I have decided that I will share one of my little secrets for finding a location to shoot. A lot of people tell me that my aerials are really cool, but not too many ask how I find these places. It is funny to answer and say I use Google Maps, but honestly that is the truth and it's the one and only thing I really use when looking for something new to photograph with my drone.

You Are Responsible for Improving Your Photography
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Photography, as with any creative pursuit, requires the creator to have their hand in the process for the results to shine. Countless Facebook ads, online workshops, and even our camera companies would have you believe that they if you just buy that next magic bullet, everything will change for you. If they are to be believed, swiping your credit card just one more time is the key to making great images. Rubbish. It’s time to break away from that thought.

Canon Announces Three New Mirrorless Lenses
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Canon is showing no signs of stopping, with three new mirrorless lenses hitting the market, each with impressive features: the RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM, and RF 600mm f/4L IS USM, each with quite interesting features.

How a Photographer Captured His Own Marriage Proposal
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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.

What We Can All Learn From The Beautiful World of Cinematographer Mattias Koenigswieser
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Whether we shoot stills, video or both, better utilizing light is probably the single quickest and most effective way to boost the quality of our work. I recently came across the beautiful work of cinematographer and DP Matthias Koenigswieser. If you love to shoot natural or ambient light and want to see just how beautiful applying lighting to achieve a natural light look can be, you’re in for a treat.

How One Photographer's Open Letter Made a CEO Change Their "Work For Free" Policy
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Have you ever applied for a gig online through a place like Craigslist, Mandy, or even Facebook, only to find out that it is a no-pay job, and they want to own exclusive rights to your images? I know I have. Jared Polin came across a similar posting from Live Nation, notoriously known for having a "Work for Free" policy, and he decided to do something about it– which actually got a response, and might create a change in that policy.

US Airways Stole My Laptop and Won't Replace It
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On a flight from Philadelphia to New York my girlfriend was asked, as she boarded the plane, to "check" her carry on bag and put it below the plane because there was no longer any room in the bins in the cabin. When she arrived in NYC she was asked to retrieve her bag at baggage claim. Once it was apparent her bag was not showing up, the baggage department said that her bag would be delivered to her the next day. When she received her bag, her laptop was missing.

Three Critical Things Your Photography Website Better Get Right
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We photographers are notorious for having terrible websites. Hiring a professional web designer isn’t always in the budget so sometimes you have to figure out how to do it by yourself. Here are a few tips that most people completely overlook when building their own website.

The Biggest Misconception About Starting a Photography Business
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The journey that a photographer takes in turning an enjoyable pastime into a full-fledged career is a common path that that describes the origins of many photography businesses. With limited business experience, hobbyists-turned-entrepreneurs often make incorrect assumptions about what makes a photography business successful. There is one particularly common misconception that holds a lot of photographers back in the early stages of starting a business.

Westcott Announces the Ultimate 10-in-1 Omega Reflector
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Just when you thought the basic 5-in-1 reflector couldn't get any better, Westcott has announced their new 10-in-1 Omega Reflector. The unique design of the Omega allows you to use it like a ring light, a gobo and a flag rather than just your boring old traditional reflector. At 38 x 45 inches, the Omega offers your typical black, white, silver, gold and 1-stop diffusion surfaces. However, what makes the Omega stand out is its removable center frame on each surface that allows you to shoot through the reflector!

High Speed Photography Made Easy
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One of the reasons I love working for a magazine is that it forces me to be a Jack of all trades. While Automotive Photography and Portraits are my focus, Product Photography, Event Photography, Documentary Photography and any other discipline you can think up will also present itself from time to time and I'll have to adapt. The image above is the perfect example of the daily challenges I face as the Photo Director of RIDES Magazine, we needed something high speed and I had a day to teach myself how to do it. Here's how I did it.

Five Tips to Help You Slow Down and Improve Your Photography
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Slowing down while taking pictures is not always an easy thing. For those of us that learned with digital, the idea of shooting only a limited number of frames per session seems unthinkable. However, doing with what we have, and pressing the shutter only when we are sure to have a picture we are going to appreciate, is a very refreshing approach. Having just recently started shooting film, here are five tips I could give a digital portrait photographer to get better results, spend less time working, and slow down a bit.

Incredible Time-Lapse Shows the Time Consuming Labor Behind Stop Motion Animation
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The calendar is about to turn over to 2015, and in my feeble mind I just assumed we were so advanced, that all of those new high-budget animation films were created by using elaborate CGI. I envisioned a team of computer animators sitting in a dark basement with endless empty cans of Red Bull strewn about, working around the clock to animate the scenes on screen in their elaborate and complex computer programs. Little did I know, old school manual, and tireless physical techniques are still used to this day.