If you dive into flash photography, it is said that manual flash is the only way to go. It offers full control over the amount of light. Although this is true, there are situations when TTL flash measurement is the better choice. I’m talking about on-camera flash photography.
There was a time early in my photography career that I bought into the idea of becoming a natural-light photographer. In secret this idea manifested because using off-camera lighting to help shape my images meant learning about all of this crazy lighting technology. I’d rather just stick to what I was comfortable with forever and just not use it. Sound familiar?
Whenever I am working with models on a shoot, I always have their best interests at heart. You may say I care too much about my models, but I am alright with that. No one badmouths a caring photographer. I have seen firsthand how some models are treated badly on set and it saddens me to see how bad attitude from photographers can ruin the photographer-model relationship and also lead to bad photos. Knowing how to build a relationship upon meeting your model and engaging in a photoshoot with the latter is a must and I asked a couple of models for advice to write this article.
Sometimes your favorite shot out of a series would be perfect if only one little thing was fixed. For me, that is often shadows obscuring details I really wish were more visible. PHLEARN has released an extensive tutorial on how to get those shadows to reveal details in a way that doesn't look super fake, which an issue I have with other methods I have seen.
As you've learned in a previous article, a great time to photograph cities is during blue hour. But the blue hour often lacks dimension and depth in the sky. If you're lucky, you'll have some clouds that provide structure. But if you have a clear blue sky, it'll often appear flat. In this article, I show you a trick you can use to make such a sky more interesting and improve your blue hour photos.
Never say never, but there are several quick reasons that make business cards with images a bad decision — even for a photographer. Every rule has its exceptions, but for most, a photographic business card is certainly not something you should automatically assume to need or even want.
Do you ever come across someone and think "what were they thinking, why would they even do that?" Well, I will bet money you've scrolled through your newsfeed or Facebook groups and said this at least once. There are three main sections you should probably pay close attention to while using Facebook.
I wanted to explore if freeware can perform better than the most common software subscription for photographers. Find out where Darktable, the free alternative for Lightroom, is ahead — and where it falls behind.
There are times when I find myself shooting the same stuff or using the same lighting setup over and over again. Repetition helps to improve and fine-tune my skills, but sometimes it just feels boring and degrading, let alone useless for my portfolio.
But as much as I dislike feeling stuck and repeating myself, I now realize how such times in fact help me to become a better artist and shooter. It's usually the desire to entertain myself and experiment that leads me to new personal artistic discoveries. It's when I'm bored and want to "spice it up", I start searching for new lighting ideas, tricks and techniques.
Prefer traveling with a smartphone only but still want to take perfect shots? With the latest imaging system co-engineered with ZEISS, the vivo X70 Pro+ shoots high-quality videos and fits inside your pocket, so you can easily take pictures of any moment.
What if I said there was something more useful for our photographic careers than any social network we've ever been on? With the ability to reach many more people than all your followers on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter combined; no restrictive algorithms, no paying to boost posts, no adverts. Do you want in?
Canon Japan left us all scratching our heads with the announcement of the M15P-CL - A 15MP monochromatic industrial camera. Designed for the high accuracy of the manufacturing industry, the M15P-CL is not a camera shape or size you're familiar with, as it's designed for the Camera Link system. Whats weird about this? Perhaps the fact that it sports a Nikon F Mount.
My business is about 90 percent dealing with individuals, and about 10 percent working with brands. I just moved into a new live/work studio and, to help break it in, I decided to hold a "Pay What You Can" sale and the results made me change my entire business model.
If you are a regular reader of Fstoppers then you know how many times I've said this, "Peter Hurley has changed the way I photograph people more than anyone else". During his Google+ Conference Keynote Presentation, Peter explains why it is the photographer's job to make every person look amazing while they are in front of their camera. Photographers cannot rely on a model's good looks, perfectly crafted lighting, their own technical prowess, or old fashioned luck
So how do you make that mountain appear as large to the viewer as it does to you? How do you get rid of noise in your nightscape images? And how can you get everything in perfect focus, front to back? This might as well be titled “5 Things you can’t do in one shot,” since each technique in this essay relies heavily on layering multiple exposures of a given landscape scene. I’ll show you the techniques I often use to translate my vision to the image. Let’s go.
Not too long ago we featured a tutorial that showed you how to make a fantasy desert kingdom out of tourist images, and thought I would share with you another amazing project by a talented artist. Alexander Koshelkov has quite an impressive resume of outrageous Photoshop compositions that excellently use real world items to create fantastical scenes. He just released this time lapse where you can watch his latest composition which took him just over 7 hours and uses 284 Photoshop CC layers.
After my initial thoughts article, I have now spent the past month shooting with the new Nikon Z 9 pretty much every day. A month may not be enough for a long-term review, but I’ve already found myself in an incredibly diverse set of situations, and while some question the existence of love at first sight, I must say this camera has been something special right out of the box.
Why fix it in post when you can do it right in camera? Learn how you can get a perfect exposure in camera every time!
Landscape photographers usually want stunning detail and excellent image quality, so why would you shoot landscape photos on a cheap lens that rarely delivers sharp images?
An Iranian music streaming site is causing public uproar after it emerged they erase all evidence of women from the front of their own album artwork. A handful of notable new releases from the likes of Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Taylor Swift have had their covers altered to remove the women.
Detail shots are one of the most neglected shots I see missing from boudoir photographers portfolios. Not only do they compliment another image when placed in an album, they can help to create larger sales in the end. Keeping a mental note of which detail shots to not forget can help you in your flow during the session as well as helping you see another angle you might not have thought about before.
As Omar famously said on "The Wire," you come at the king, you best not miss. When GoPro decided to get into the consumer drone market with its Karma quadcopter, it was taking aim squarely at the king of quadcopters, DJI. And it missed. Now, DJI is coming for GoPro with the release of its new Osmo Action.
A few months ago, I wrote an article about using Lightroom calibration to create magic in your images but found out from many readers that this feature sadly didn't exist in Lightroom mobile... or does it?
Storage has become increasingly inexpensive which means there are a lot of options out there to back up your photos. One of those options is reliable, unlimited, and even free if you already have Amazon Prime.
The Fujifilm medium format titan was already called into question by many because 100 megapixels is overkill for most photographers. Well, Fujifilm didn't just double-down on that, they used a Pixel Shift mode to quadruple-down.
What is "perfect lighting?" It will differ for every style of photography and every photographer's style. For my food photography, I think the perfect lighting is the soft, beautiful, natural light found from a large window with indirect sun coming through. Unfortunately, most of the locations where I have to go and shoot food don't have this light that I am looking for. In order to get the shoot done, I have to to create the light. What if I could create this "perfect light" and have it for every assignment?
For those that were early on the list, B&H started shipping Fujifilm's X-Pro2 earlier this week. The review process is certainly under way, but in the meantime, here's a quick first look at the much-awaited Fujifilm X-Pro2.
When it comes to taking photos on your mobile device in low light, the options are kind of terrible: a super bright flash that blinds everyone and a not so great photo or ambient light in a dark room where everyone ends up blurry or even grainy. This ridiculously easy iPhone hack will take your low light mobile photos to a whole new level.
At this point in time, I have lost track how many photographers I have run into who view other photographers around them as mortal enemies. Don't be that person; instead, realize that your camera-laden peers can be incredible sources of friendship and reciprocity.
You don’t have to be into photojournalism or documentary photography to know that Robert Capa was one of the seminal names in 20th century photography. The last few years however, have seen various accusations surface that his iconic photo “Falling Soldier” - apparently showing the moment of death of a Spanish solider - was set up. This week new evidence came to light that might once and for all confirm the true story behind one of the most debated images of all time.
