Oscar Wilde said, “there is no sin except stupidity.” Add narcissism to the mix, and stupid selfies killed 259 people around the world over the last six years.
Well, are you? How do you begin to assess your readiness to cover possibly the most important day of a couple's life? There is no black and white answer to this question; instead, I pose a series of questions to help you answer that for yourself.
Fstoppers Original: The Studio Wakeboard Shoot from FStoppers on Vimeo.
Instagram is the most popular platform for photographers to display their work and reach an audience. If you know how, you can even turn it into a business and make a living off it. Imagine now, you wake up and Instagram has deleted all your family photos, favorite memories, connections, friends, and portfolio work?
Lightroom is about 13 years old now, and over the last few major releases, Adobe has added a number of tools you’d previously need Photoshop for. While it’s great to see new features like color grading, luminosity masking, and more make their way to the program, their implementation still leaves them falling far short of just using Photoshop. Here’s why I couldn't ever use Lightroom without Photoshop.
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.
There's a new Facebook app on the market called 'Photos At My Door'. This new app enables your Facebook friends to browse through your galleries and buy different photo products (prints, mugs, keychains, phone covers) using your own images. The question is, do I want my friends to have the ability to sift through my public and 'friends only' albums and make mugs and keychains out of my images or worse yet, buy prints? The answer, on a professional photographer standpoint... absolutely not!
The debate whether to work for free is an old one. It’s also one that I don’t care to get into. However, for most of us, there comes a time when we do shoot something without payment, whether it be because we’re testing lighting, doing pro bono work, or we just aren’t very good at asking for what we’re worth. But what do we do with the images after the shoot?
Everyone wants to win the lottery. In this day and age winning the lottery can mean many things, one of which is hitting it big on social media. Creating a body of work, an brand image, and a following so massive it creates clout behind your name so high, it is easily seen by everyone as the best in the business. For photographers and creative alike, achieving something like that can easily be seen as difficult, but in reality for some it was outrageously easy and can still be done thanks to Instagram.
Sometimes a tripod just needs to be easier to carry for when you might need it. This tripod from SmallRig definitely fits that role.
The drive south from Akureyri had been eventful, to say the least, but the snow subsided and we managed to stop briefly and get some minimal shots every now and again. As color began once again to show in the landscape we began to feel more hopeful as we headed towards Vestrahorn.
Seascapes have always been one of my favorite subjects to photograph. For most of my travels, I visit and photograph at least one spectacular coastline, and in this article, I share the five most photogenic beaches I have photographed so far.
Anyone who has picked up a magazine with photographic content is well aware of the amount of retouching and massaging that goes into many of the photos displayed in advertisements or in editorial features. But at what point does the 'retouching' go too far?
Now this is fascinating: Lady Gaga worked with photographer Robert Wilson to produce a stunning video portrait. The portrait was one of a set of others that were on display in the Lourve last year, but are only released to American audiences last Saturday at the Watermill Center in New York. Likely as a marketing initiative, two minutes of those 6 hours have been uploaded to YouTube.
Recently Lee published a comparison between the images from several different-sized cameras and there was no apparent difference. What's the point of buying a camera with a larger sensor then?
Today, Tokina announced the next addition in their premium "Opera" lens line, the super wide-angle zoom Tokina Opera 16-28mm f/2.8 FF for full-frame Canon and Nikon DSLRs.
One of the most spectacular natural phenomenons to photograph, this year’s Horsetail Fall “firefall” event at Yosemite National Park is host of a new pilot program that will require one of a limited number of permits in order to access closed roads leading to the best vantage points.
I recently got the chance to use the new Hasselblad X1D II for a week. It was my first experience with medium format and required a bit of adapting on a learning curve. Here are my first impressions about the body, design, lenses, and general usability of the camera.
Retouching, much like photography itself, is a really subjective topic in the community. What one photographer considers great, another considers mediocre. While there are many debatable topics regarding retouching, I think it’s important to note these three things most photographers get wrong when they’re retouching.
Photographing waterfalls is more tedious than it looks. In this instance, physical aspects of the gear you use heavily impact the success of each shot. Here are some important and helpful tools to have out in the field.
Last week rumors circulated that on the back of a series of disastrous financial results, Olympus was about to announce that it would be closing its imaging division, ending its production of cameras and lenses. The Japanese manufacturer has since responded to these rumors.
It’s six o’clock in the evening; Joey Lawrence and I are having what could only be described as the trendiest cups of coffee in all of Williamsburg at that very moment. To be fair, this part of Brooklyn takes its coffee (as well as its trendiness) very seriously. Outside, it’s not unlike being inside of a freezer during a power outage – it’s bitingly cold, wet and smells like something somewhere is spoiling. Luckily, we’re inside, sans rainwear, meeting over a table made from reclaimed wood while Edison bulbs on simple fixtures drip unassumingly from the ceiling.
Nikon is expanding its list of D750 bodies affected by a shutter issue that may cause shading across a captured image. This is expansion follows a similar one in February 2016, which followed the original notice back in July 2015. The ranges of dates of manufacture of the cameras with this issue vary sporadically and include bodies produced from the start all the way through as recently as September of last year, so it's best to check your serial number (my personal body is affected).
There are many people out there who call themselves photographers. Probably most of them are able to take decent images, a few are professionals, and hardly anyone is a master of the art. Where do you put yourself?
It happens to all of us: you take some fantastic photographs, get home, and realize a camera setting was insane. Use these five checks every time you start a shoot, and you'll avoid making those mistakes.
Dodging and burning for cleaning skin is very common amongst high-end retouchers and for a reason: when mastered, it gives you natural, yet almost perfect results. The downside of the technique is that it can eat up a lot of time. When I say a lot of time, I mean up to a couple of hours for a single image, depending on the problems that need corrections. While spending this much time on big projects or perhaps on personal projects is conceivable, for someone that shoots portraits every day and has to retouch quickly, this is simply not viable. A couple of tricks exist to help you go faster, while retaining a high quality and natural-looking image. I have listed four of them here with the hope that they will save you as much time as they do for me.
Math is awesome: it can help you uncover hidden trends and weaknesses that might be present in your work. With this free online tool, you can get a great breakdown of your camera and lens usage, your favorite apertures, and much more. Here's what I learned.
Apple has now confirmed long-existing rumors about purposely slowing down their customers’ iPhones, although they dispute it being a tactic to make consumers buy their newer models.
A few months ago, I showed you how we build out our new 10Gbps network using a Synology NAS device as our central server. This setup is protecting us from a hard drive failure, but our data still isn't 100 percent safe. In this video, I'll show you one simple step to protect your files from all types of data loss.
It should be that it goes without saying not to be a creepy photographer. Sadly, there are creeps out there and our profession is a "good fit" for a pervert trying to look at young women. That being said, we need to be extra careful to make sure we maintain our good reputation.
![[News] Elle Removes Clothing Via PhotoShop, And The Model In Question Is Not Exactly What I'd Call Happy](https://cdn.fstoppers.com/styles/med-16-9/s3/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/coco-rocha-elle-cover.jpg)
