Fstoppers Original Articles

I have a lot of respect for photographers who solely focus on beauty imagery. It’s definitely a skillset that I’ve been honing over the past few years, but ultimately one that I’ve come to develop an appreciation for. However, beauty photography does not have to be terribly difficult. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create beautiful beauty lighting with a single studio strobe and a reflector.

Recently, Ted Forbes over at The Art of Photography posted a rather interesting video that challenges the pervasive axiom of the artistic world that the action of making art will inevitably translate to an audience valuing and appreciating your work. Forbes asserts that our society is so saturated with creative content makers that it is nearly impossible to create photography that people care about unless you are pushing beyond the normal limits and expectations of what is already present in the world. I agree with this on the surface; however, I also feel that it doesn't tell the entire story.

The Fstoppers community is brimming with creative vision and talent. Every day, we comb through your work, looking for images to feature as the Photo of the Day or simply to admire your creativity and technical prowess. In 2016, we'll be featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

Last week, fellow Fstoppers Writer Ty Poland wrote an article called "The Power of Overshooting." Ty is a great photographer, and he made some very valid points, but I must respectfully disagree. To me, undershooting is what advances your skills as a photographer.

There are plenty of sources that will give you photogenic hard light. The sun comes to mind, obviously. Even a bare bulb strobe. But there’s something magic about the light that pours out of a traditional style tungsten Fresnel.

We pride ourselves on being professionals who work incessantly to constantly become better photographers here at Fstoppers. Still though, we're human, and sometimes, we make mistakes. Here are some of the most memorable mistakes Fstoppers writers have made.

As photographers and retouchers, we are often required to travel. But travel eats up a lot of time and thus it is crucial to optimize one’s workflow. While gear is not everything in our industry, it still maintains a critical place, especially to help save time. Spending more and more time on the road, I recently had to take a look at my editing workflow and find new solutions to make it better and faster. In this article, I’ll share with you some of the accessories I use or have since discovered to cut my retouching and keep me sane.

The UK voted to leave the EU and the British Pound plummeted, meaning this week might be the perfect opportunity to order equipment from the UK if you live within the European Union.

Any seasoned filmmaker or photographer will tell you that it’s not the size of your camera, sensor, or lens that matters, but how you use it (or craft your supporting elements like lighting, composition, etc.). But what I’ve come to realize is that size does matter– because impressing a client on set is just as important as impressing them with the final product.

I love color. Black and white photography holds a special place in my heart, but 90 percent of the time I gravitate toward color imagery in my own work. When I started shooting film again, I decided that I would most definitely learn to develop my own black and white film. From choosing your film stock to mixing super-secret developer cocktails guaranteed to make your images sing, there are tons of resources out there for the aspiring hobbyist. When it comes to color, however, I had always heard that the machines needed were expensive, the process complicated, and the chemicals harmful. Not so!

The debate surrounding the relevancy of film cameras is an ongoing one; the opinions about which vary from photographer to photographer. The resurgence of digital camera technology in recent years has meant DSLRs are now widely used by the masses, pulling the future of film photography into question somewhat. Is it now just a novelty? I chatted with Howard, one of the owners of a North England-based camera shop that shunned digital cameras in favour of film... and found that business is very much booming.

As someone who has spent a life in mathematics, I see a lot of attempts to ascribe mathematical concepts to real-world ideas in an overly simplistic way. The media misinterpreting a single medical study and reporting that a glass of red wine is equivalent to an hour at the gym does not mean you should forget the treadmill and buy more Malbec. Weathermen in Kansas do not expect the flapping of butterfly wings to cause tornadoes. But in photography, there's one incessantly perpetuated myth that drives me crazy.

Learning is a process that takes time. Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule applies to the so-called mastery of anything. By working hard on our craft, we are able to become proficient in the tools and techniques required to make the end product we desire. We go through stages of understanding and breaking our understanding. These are natural parts of our learning cycle, and the end goal should be to learn not how to do things, but how to ask the right questions to get where we want to go.

I'm not sure how many more times I can read the repugnant merging of two disparate words without writing a furious letter to someone, but I'll do my best to soldier on through. For any sentient being, the last few days have been filled with the word "Brexit," more so if you live on this little angry island I inhabit. The reach of the impact of this momentous event is both wide and largely unknown. That said, there's a very real chance it will affect many of us camera folk.

On April 29 we launched our first ever weekend hashtag project over on the @officialfstoppers Instagram. The theme for the inaugural shooting event was black and white photography. Many photographers contributed wonderful photos and here I’m sharing a selection of images that I enjoyed. We welcome you to join in on the second weekend hashtag project that was just launched and you too can have your photo published on Fstoppers. This weekend’s theme is "pattern" and I have all the details for you at the end of this article.

Several months ago, Fstoppers and ViewBug teamed up to host a landscape photo contest with Elia Locardi as the judge. Thousands of images were submitted with some heavy competition but the best have surfaced to the top. Check out the winning images below and get a little inspiration from the Grand Jury Winner below.

Overshooting may sound like it's a dumb thing to do, but over my time doing photography, I’ve learned how important it really is. Here, I will go over a few reasons why you should shoot more than you need to. They apply to almost any sort of shooting situation.

In 1987, Canon made a widely criticized move and introduced the EF mount. This was mostly to create a mount that was easier to build auto focus and stabilization mechanisms into. The EF lenses are among some of the best in the world, so there's no complaint now. Back in the 80s, however, there was a massive outcry against Canon's decision to abandon an entire system and force their shooters into new cameras and lenses with no backwards compatibility. As time passed, no one really cared. Canon's legacy is often forgotten, but Canon left behind a solid system of lenses. Those lenses are the Canon FD series.

There was a time I used to live on a paradise island called Mauritius and the summer lasted almost the whole year round. The sun was not an issue back then, as the sun protection was a ritual. The times have changed and I relocated back to my motherland Armenia, which has very severe cold winters and really hot summers. As the summer lasts only limited time we usually forget to protect ourselves from sun when it suddenly starts burning like hell.

Partnership success stories are everywhere. From business innovators like Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google or Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak of Apple, to less formal partnerships like authors JRR Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. There is a trend in the creative world to tout either big collaborative teams or solo introverted lone-wolf style work. I’m here today to tell you that the magic number is actually two, and why having a business partner is the best choice I ever made.

Mental images, dynamic range, luminosity masking... This week's article in this series is chock-full of terms that will send your head spinning. But when we want to communicate through landscape photography, it is best to speak the language first. I'll show you a big part of my processing workflow, introduce you to a great alternative to HDR photography, and tell you why Ansel Adams' invention is still applicable in digital photography.

Over the years as a boudoir photographer, I have noticed a theme when it comes to new shooters about the "restrictions" they come across. Countless times I hear or read, "I wish I could upgrade my gear," "I just do not have a commercial space," or my favorite, "I just cannot afford to have all those set ups." Well quite frankly, that is a load of bull.

3D printers have recently become cheaper, more reliable, and more capable at the consumer level. On the same token, photographers constantly need all sorts of miscellaneous parts: adapters, clamps, rings, etc. It seems like now is the time for at-home 3D printing to take hold.

Any time there is a case of nepotism in photography — like with Burberry and the oldest spawn of the Beckhams earlier this year — there is a colossal backlash and insatiable rage. In a time prior to refreshing social media four times an hour, although I could see the motivation for nepotism in fashion photography, it was tantamount to indefensible in my books. Now, however, I have a harder time working out why companies wouldn't favor their elite friendship circles for recruiting photographers.

South African Photographer, Filmmaker, and Influencer Gareth Pon has recently been named the top African Instagrammer for the third consecutive year, and looking at his ridiculously eye-catching Instagram feed, it's easy to see why. I caught up with Gareth recently while he was speaking at a conference in Dublin alongside other content-creating heavyweights, such as Dan Rubin and Philip Bloom.

It’s a common belief to think that creativity is a skill that you either have or don’t. While in reality, all creativity truly is a process through which you perceive things and situations differently than others around you. Coming up with an alternative way of seeing requires hard work but it becomes easier with time. Sometimes, we get lost in our thoughts or simply don’t know how to find any new ideas. So in this article, I have laid out for you a straightforward process to come up with unique concepts for your shoots and turn them into great pictures.

In the past few months, there have been a few articles circulating around the photography community emphasizing whether or not you should commit to making this your career. Regardless of your position, I feel it’s my moral obligation to express five things most aspiring photographers don’t realize before they make that commitment.

We shoot and share our photographs. We want our images seen by other people, as a way of expressing ourselves. Entering photography contests leads to a great way of showing our images to more people with a chance of being approved by a selected jury, but what if some contests are just scams?

A few days ago, a friend of mine brought a DJI Osmo to film alongside his usual DSLR set up. The client questioned them: “Why are you filming on your phone?”

The media has done a great job of scaring the public of personal drones. Everyone believes that these flying toys are either spying on them while they shower or falling from the sky onto children's heads. Certainly remote control drones, like anything, have some level of danger, but things seem to be getting out of hand.

I think it’s probably a fair assumption to make, that at some point during your photographic journey, you’re going to purchase a piece of photographic equipment. With today's World Wide Web, that can be as easy as a few clicks and a wistful look at your decreasing bank account, but I’m here to make the case for your local, “brick and mortar,” camera store. Well maybe not all of them.

I have known Suren Manvelyan for more than 10 years. When I first met him, I was a graphic designer who was fascinated by photography and he was a physics teacher at school who was looking for opportunities to grow as a photographer. We used to gather with our small Armenian photographer’s community each Friday to share experiences, discuss photography, and develop our skills. Years passed, a lot of the enthusiasts gave up and only a few stayed faithful to their art. Suren, on his behalf, not only grew to a professional photographer, but also didn’t give up on his other interests.

I've always heard that Adobe Photoshop will not allow you to import pictures of U.S. currency because you could potentially be using the software to "copy money." Today I ran across a video that also claims that all current copy machines will not copy currency due to a hidden pattern on the bills. I decided to put this to the test.

Without composition there is just visual chaos with no beginning or end, no direction or cycle, no shape or difference between dark and light. This series is the go-to resource for compelling visual storytelling in landscape photography as it provides a condensed overview of all the elements that make up a stunning image. This week: Advanced tools that will nick the attention of the viewer and guide them carefully through your photograph.

When starting out in photography, one of the first things we hear about is the rule of thirds. We then venture out into the world, lining up our subjects onto imaginary intersecting lines. When we get home, we open our images into Lightroom and find that the crop tool is already set up to help us maintain this rule. But as we advance in our photography careers, we start to find that there are a lot more ways to compose an image. Luckily for us, there is a somewhat hidden option to change the overlay of the crop tool within Lightroom.

As a group, we photographers tend to like to do everything ourselves. I think it is something about depending on someone else that pushes against our most basic instincts. However, great portrait photography is always a team activity. This team can range from just you and your model all the way up to a full production, but one thing remains consistent: without a team, there is no photo.

Boudoir photography can be one of the most powerful ways to bring confidence back to an individual. Challenging their negative thoughts about themselves while repairing their body image is more rewarding to a boudoir photographer than the money itself (OK yes, the money is great but be honest — you love it when they cry those happy tears of joy seeing their images).

I was all set to write a completely different article. I think it had to do with film, maybe. Not anymore. Now I'm frustrated, so I'm going to write about that instead. I love Fujifilm. I love them until I hate them. The problem is, I never really know what sort of day it's going to be until I'm out shooting.

When you get to a new place you haven’t been to before, or, even if you have been there in the past, you often see something new. It’s what travel does, it lets you see new things in new ways you haven’t seen before. So when you’re walking down the street with phone in hand but you've left the camera at your hotel or apartment and you see something you’d like to shoot, how do you save the location so you can get back to it again?

Multimedia projectors have become so affordable in recent years that it is quite likely that you either own one or know someone who does. This is good news for filmmakers and photographers who are interested in achieving a unique range of eye-catching lighting effects in-camera.

Photographer Felix Hernandez has done it again. If the name doesn't ring a bell then you might know him by his amazing miniature photography such as "The Love Car" or his "The Crow & The Dove." These projects has been floating around on the Internet, and we have an exclusive on his new project called "The Wardrobe."

I've had a few months to play with the Phantom 4. I can say with certainty that it is better than the Phantom 3 in almost every way but it costs a good bit more and the Phantom 3 is still one of the greatest drones on the market today, especially at these incredibly low prices.

I was standing in a camera shop in the centre of Brisbane when the anxiety began to take hold. Lizzie and I have a shoot this afternoon, and from all accounts it should be awesome: rockin’ couple, engagement party, private boat, emerald green dress, and the big city lights of Brisbane as the backdrop. I have the tools, and I have the talent. So, why am I so nervous, and why do I love this feeling so much?

I love Fujifilm's X Series cameras. They're small, light, quick, and have wonderful image quality. The lens collection is at the top of the game, especially the primes. I went back and forth for quite some time in the lead-up to my recent personal work trip to Myanmar. I would be creating a book and needed to choose carefully. Which gear should I take? Should I take my DSLR system, or should it be the Fuji X system? In the end, I went for the Fuji X, as it allowed me to carry a couple of extra lenses and fit all of my flash system in the same pouch as well. But how would they perform?

I love my DJI Phantom 4. I've gotten some great shots that I could have only dreamed of before. And yet, a recent experience left me angry and surprised.

If you’re interested in drone photography and video, I’ve compiled a list of people and sites you need to go to for inspiration, tips, tutorials, and insight. Aerial photography has changed with the drone. When you put costs aside, the other advantages of flying a drone vs a helicopter are that it can get closer to the subject, it doesn't create the ripples in water as much, it doesn’t cause a wind force blowing out the leaves of trees and plants, and it can make for some great shots through mountain gorges that helicopters simply can’t fit through.

There may be no camera more eagerly anticipated than the Canon 5D Mark IV. The 5D Mark III is one of the workhorses of the industry, but it's definitely showing its age as of late, and many are clamoring for Canon to catch up. The 1D-X Mark II is certainly promising, but for many wedding and portrait photographers, the 5D series is their bread and butter. Here's everything we think we know about the forthcoming camera.

As a boudoir photographer for over seven years, I am always seeking new ways to keep the artistic appeal to my images. Sometimes we work so hard to create something so epic, that we forget about that simplicity is usually the key to greatness.

Our tutorial with Joey Wright on all things swimsuit photography and retouching is finally available, but we wanted to show you guys what goes into making a 20-hour tutorial. In this behind the scenes episode (number 6 of 7), we wrap up shooting in Curacao, and Joey travels to Charleston to start the retouching.

The question of whether or not to do free work is always pressing. The debate becomes a grey area of ambiguity with many people firmly on one side or the other, and the rest of us stuck somewhere in between questioning our self worth as artists. There are strong arguments on both sides of the arena. Over the course of my career I have wandered back and forth across the defining line only to lately land in the anti-free work position, and here is why.