Just a couple months ago Patrick and I made the last minute decision to move to Puerto Rico. We've rented a giant house to live and work in and we will be sharing the process of turning this empty home into the new Fstoppers Studio.
I'm not a strong supporter of business cards nowadays. It's not because they don't do any good, but because most people are throwing them in the trash bin without even visiting your website and seeing what you do. Despite of that it's good to have some in your pocket. Here is my solution to using a special type of business cards that your potential clients may not throw away.
Packing cubes and camera inserts are pretty straightforward in terms of their purpose. But as an anxious packer who obsesses over making sure that everything is in place, using these packing tools revealed a hidden benefit.
At first, packing cubes and camera cubes seem to have only the benefits that they physically offer, which would be having dedicated compartments for different kinds of things. Camera cubes are there for objects that need a lot of padding and internal dividers, while packing cubes are there for personal items like clothes and other travel essentials....
Something that happened last week really hit home for me. Everyone probably already has heard, as it has been reported by almost every single news agency in the world; Australian photographer Brett Costello was robbed of $40,000 of camera gear in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil last week while in town to cover the Olympics. However, this article isn't about him specifically.
I stepped into photography world over 10 years ago and was lucky enough to have a wide variety of clients from different parts of the world. This made it essential for me to be flexible while negotiating or taking jobs despite cultural differences, from Armenia to U.S., from Mauritius to South Africa, Singapore, various European countries, and more. Usually you will get hired based on your portfolio, but sometimes there are clients who don’t understand much about photography. This is where the danger is. Everyone wants to get top results for the money they spend by hiring you, but what is considered the best for such clients?
We love to look at beautiful, flawless people in our ads, tv shows, and movies. For some reason drenching someone's face in makeup is totally acceptable but for many people, Photoshoping skin imperfections or removing fat is unrealistic, disgusting, and dangerous. Well most of these people haven't even considered video retouching.
Everyone has a different feeling on collaboration. I feel that it's a very good thing for a new photographer, but I also feel it can be greatly misused or misrepresented. I used a model/photographer finding website to gain skills and experience via collaboration, and I feel it was a shortcut to what would otherwise have been years of work.
Nowadays, it seems that every YouTube photography celebrity has a batch of presets that they want you to buy. This begs the question: is it worth handing over your hard-earned cash when you might be better off investing your time rather than your money?
In the six years that I've been using Lightroom, I've never paid for a preset. In the past, I've downloaded a few free packs, clicked laboriously through every preset and decided that they were all useless: blunt tools creating over-edited results and deploying settings that I could easily have achieved myself had I...
Polarizing filters are one of the last camera filters that cannot be replicated by software. But is a polarizing filter better to reduce haze in landscapes than Adobe Lightroom's Dehaze tool?
About seven months ago, we posted an article about an application called 'Paddy' that connects a MIDI controller desk to Lightroom. Unfortunately for me, that application is Windows only, so I set out to find a solution for this gadget that I needed in and around my life. The solution is something called 'Knobroom.'
Like many of you know, running a full time business in photography is difficult! What started out as a passion soon grew into a something much more. You slowly learned how much was involved in turning your joy into a business. Eventually, you began to realize there was a lot more than you anticipated. If you're lucky, you had a great game plan set. For many, they learn as they go along.
If you’ve been a fan of VSCO’s Lightroom presets, one of the company’s original co-founders has branched out and is releasing his own pack of presets, each of which automatically detects your camera type and color temperature.
I knew when I saw this image up in the photo section of our Fstoppers website, I had to inquire about how it was created. It is clearly a thoughtful re-imagining of the iconic painting "Liberty Leading The People", but I had no idea how much effort Anthony Kurtz went into creating this photo. Little did I know that it took three weeks of preparation, two days of set building, one day of photographing, and 50+ hours of retouching and it was all done on a shoe string budget with borrowed props and location. What he created with very little money and a lot of brilliant strategy and vision is inspiring. Read below to learn how Anthony did it.
In last week’s article, I discussed three mistakes to avoid when building a career as a photographer or filmmaker. Today, let’s look into three broader concepts that you might want to lean into.
Crossover tech-heads will rejoice when they hear about this one. In addition to their BMW coffee maker, their 80-inch Corvette LED TV, and their Mercedes-Benz umbrella, they can now add a Porsche laptop computer to their collection. Really.
As of right now, you're able to stream all of Nikon School's online classes for free, right from the comfort of your living room.
Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson is being heaped with praise by fans online over the way he handled accidentally knocking a photographer to the ground. In a clip from the game, he is seen helping her up, and later private messaged her through her social pages to check she was OK.
In a recent interview, Fujifilm offered some interesting insights into the company, its accomplishments, and the future of its cameras and lenses.
Comet Neowise is probably going to be the most positive event of 2020, so here is how I immortalized this beautiful phenomenon.
Finally, Nikon has released a firmware update to address some minor issues. Some major features include 100% viewfinder in HDMI-out (up from 95%) in the D600, improved AF-C tracking performance for the D800, and support in both cameras for that new 800mm f/5.6 that I know you all ordered recently... Update: Even more DSLR firmware updates added from Nikon, too!
There is that popular phrase that goes "the best camera you have is the one on you." That phrase has never been more true in this day and age with considerably powered cell phone cameras living in the pockets of nearly every person you might come across. Even as professionals with thousands of dollars in gear, sometimes we will find ourselves in a situation we shoot on our mobile cameras, whether by choice or by circumstance. I spoke to the product manager of Lightroom to get his take on the best ways to bring the most out of your iPhone images.
When you decide to get serious and make your photo/video hobby a source of income, one thing that you need to look into is insurance. With the abundance of different plans available it's easy to become overwhelmed as to what coverage is right for you, but hopefully this guide can make that decision easier.
Tired of hunting for budgets as if they were unicorns? A few weeks ago I wrapped up our commercial pricing guide which is a great reference IF you can get a paying client. As many of us know, sadly, that can be a pretty big IF. Here are a few strategies to help you turn a client with no budget into a winner!
We at Fstoppers often talk about Instagram with a note of positivity, but not everyone tends to agree that Instagram is a "cool" thing or worthy anyone's time. In fact, many comments on those articles seem to be saturated in what appears to be a deep-seated hatred. But do we really hate Instagram, or do we hate something that we can only express by hating Instagram? I think it’s the latter, and here’s why.
There are many ways to improve as a photographer, but not all ways are created equally. One of the most effective and well-documented methods for improving at any skill is also one not undertaken by most photographers.
PRO EDU recently released a five-part video series on their YouTube Channel dedicated to RAID. RAID, for those of you new to the term, refers to a system of file storage that can write a copy of everything you save to a separate hard drive so that you have two copies of everything you save. The benefit here is that if your hard drive fails, you don't lose all of your data and you have an identical copy ready to roll. In this video series, Gary Martin of PRO EDU explains everything you need to know about RAID systems to get started on your first RAID setup.
A few years ago we featured photographer Kevin Kozicki in a behind the scenes video using pointsettias for a beauty shoot. Kevin is back with an amazing glamor photo and video shoot with filmmaker Christopher Park in a beautiful pool location using the Phase One IQ180 that was featured in Sessions Magazine. We had the opportunity to speak with Kevin and get his insight on the shoot.
Anyone who has dedicated themselves to photography long enough has felt the harsh undercurrents that run beneath the romantic facade: the self-doubt, the exhaustion, the unrelenting demands of an audience always hungry for more. We’re told to love what we do, but the unspoken caveat is that genuine commitment to photography—as with any passion—demands sacrifice, endurance, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths.
Packing for a shoot in your town can be a pain, but packing for an extended shoot in another country brings a whole new set of complications into consideration. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of extended trips for my personal project “Tattoos of Asia.” Over the few trips that I’ve done, I’ve managed to pare down my kit to what I absolutely need. It has been a long process, but I’ve learned quite a bit, and I’d like to share that with you as I prepare my kit for my upcoming India trip.
Benjamin Lowy, a photographer represented by Reportage by Getty Images, met Scott Sutton, a man panhandling, outside the Union Square movie theater in New York last November. Scott was holding a sign that read "Give selflessly and you will reap endlessly," and Benjamin walked over.
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