Exclusive articles and expert opinions written by Fstoppers’ talented team of creative professionals. Here we cover everything from the latest photographic techniques to advice on running a successful photography business, to first hand accounts of working in the photography industry.
The WeeklyFstop depends not only on its loyal readers and participants, it relies on light. Light determines what we see and how we see it. Our photos depend on us controlling the camera so the light coming through the lens exposes correctly. This week's list of photographers submitted some superb examples of photos featuring light.
Composition is a complicated topic. It's easy to throw out the Rule of Thirds because talking about things like balance, rhythm, and focus can get overwhelming but, if you stop at the Rule of Thirds, you could be robbing your images of complexity
If you spend any time surfing photography forums and Facebook groups, you will undoubtedly see a constant flow of questions asking for the best way to nail focus. Maybe you are one of those people that find themselves struggling. The trick is that most cameras have a setting that will help you focus like a pro. That trick is called back-button focus, and once you use it, you’ll never want to go back.
In this series, I attempt to identify the key professional virtues I have found to be the most important in building my own career, as well as identifying traits of other successful photographers and business leaders that are most key to their success. Today’s virtue: adaptability.
What we do in our free time is often connected to our innate passion. Such one random act of passion led us to launch a social documentary filmmaking brand. A lot of us, especially wedding photographers, have this bandwidth of free time where we are not shooting any weddings. In this off-season, do the things we do sum up to make a difference? This post is about how we chose to make short social documentary films and how transforming the experience was on the whole.
Isn’t Facebook time hop great?! Every day I get to see the last seven to eight years of my photography. Like almost every photographer, I sucked when I started out. My actual composition and use of the camera weren't too bad, but my post-production was horrendous. The best way to describe the post processing is “heavy-handed.”
Getting great light in an event setting whether inside or outside is a tough shoot. You have to understand exposure, people are moving sometimes erratically, ambient light is moving over your subjects randomly, and you still have to create sellable imagery. I photograph several nightclubs in Dallas, TX regularly and the imagery I’m creating is their marketing for new patrons. What I have to show is an inviting and fun environment whether it’s packed or not and where people will want to spend their weekday and weekend nights, and let’s be honest, their hard earned money. This lighting isn’t tough to do, but takes some thought to execute as you move throughout a room or outdoor area.
Antti Karppinen is a digital artist, photographer, retoucher, and instructor from Finland with a unique eye for visual storytelling through photography. His work relies on traditional photography skills combined with an active imagination and complex Photoshop editing work to create fantastical images. He spoke with me about his work, process, and the inspiration behind a couple of his most popular composites.
There are many different ways to sync social profiles, and most have some form of interaction with one another via API calls. An example would be Instagram posting to Twitter automatically, but there are sometimes issues such as when the photo gets pushed to Twitter the image is not shown, rather a link to the image is provided. Without that thumbnail, it's likely to lose 80-plus percent of possible views because people aren't going to click an image when they don't know what it is. I am now using an app called IFTTT which stands for "If This Then That" and it's essentially a mobile version of Mac's Automator app that I love so much.
Whether you think about conceptual art, impressionism, or high fashion, they are all deviations from the traditional art expressions. Is the emperor naked, or do these forms of art have nothing to do with that well-known story? Is it possible to make more profit from impressionism than from traditional photography?
For the last seven years, our video tutorials have taught the Fstoppers community how to take better pictures. Our latest tutorial, Making Real Money: The Business Of Commercial Photography, is the opposite of that. In fact, there isn't a camera or lens in the entire 14-hours of video. But, I believe it's the most valuable tutorial we've ever made.
In September I was lucky enough to have the pleasure of a couple of hours of Liam Gallagher’s time to shoot a magazine cover and 12-page spread. Here’s a detailed breakdown of my thought process, creative ideas and how the shoot was executed on the day.
Like most technology we own, our cameras will eventually stop working. Not only is this bad news for our bank balances, but if a camera were to die mid-shoot then it could potentially land us in a world of professional problems. Minimize these risks by knowing what to look out for and the kind of plan you need to have in place for when that inevitable disaster strikes.
Ultra-high-resolution photography has been around for years now but the technical difficulties associated with the creation of gigapixel images tend to limit the artistic output of this type of photography. People find it incredibly fascinating and like to explore every little detail of a scene, but they wouldn't want to put one on their wall as artwork. The aesthetic is often sacrificed in the race for resolution. That’s precisely why a group of photographers joined forces to create a collective called VAST in order to conciliate beauty and high definition.
I’ve written before about the elements of a good image for the sake of the image, and just recently about how pouring yourself into your own development will result in stronger photography. There’s one element that both of these fail to touch on. There is one element that strongly separates those who produce lasting images that their clients love and those who produce a one-off hit that gets forgotten days hence. That element is a deeper connection to the subject, a knowledge of it, an ability to express it that nobody else has. This is a connection between yourself and that subject, a mutual understanding that results in unique and beautiful images.
One month ago, in a freak soccer accident, I was flipped on my head and snapped my collar bone. Besides the excruciating pain, my mind immediately ran through the calendar of jobs I had lined up as a freelance photographer and videographer in the coming weeks that I knew I’d have to navigate with one arm. Panic quickly set in.
At this point I have lost track how many times I have been given inaccurate counsel from other well-meaning people, such as, "Make sure you copyright that so nobody can steal it," or "If you put it online then you give up your rights and it becomes public property." Such advice will only ever come from people who don't actually understand copyright laws. When it comes to copyright issues and navigating them, the only advice worth following is advice that can be backed up by law. If you receive advice that can't be backed up by legitimate copyright law then the advice is simply someone's opinion.
I hate having my pictures taken. It’s common, but still ironic, to have a photographer who dislikes being on the other side of a camera. This fall, I made a promise to my wife that we would have our family photos taken and I was able to experience the entire process of hiring and working with a photographer. It wasn’t my intention to treat this as a learning opportunity, but now that all is said and done, I can say that I have learned a lot. Experiencing the client’s perspective, watching another professional operate, and the renewed perspective gained for what a photo is worth are among many things I came away with from our session.
Facebook recently announced the launch of a new tool aimed at preventing cases of revenge porn, an act in which an ex posts intimate imagery of their former partner without permission in an attempt to humiliate or cause the person serious distress. While obviously well intentioned, the program has a major flaw and highlights a future where photos of every part of our lives will not always be a good thing.
Beyond a slick website and a professional logo, and even beyond your incredible photography, your brand is what matters to potential clients. If you’re having trouble booking clients, or even defining where your business fits within the saturated photography industry, it may be time to reevaluate if your brand is strong enough to stick out. Having a photography business doesn’t mean you also have a brand. Brand building is a very intentional process. Here are a few areas to pay attention to if you feel like your brand may need a bit of work.
Often when retouching skin we want to clone away high contrast blemishes without also cloning the texture surrounding it. Advanced techniques such as using frequency separation can be a great help to make this sort of thing easier by separating detail from broader tones. One often overlooked technique that does a great job of preserving mid-tone detail while cloning is to leverage the power of blend modes to target only bright tones or dark tones when cloning.
Whether you're shooting a high-fashion model, a mom to be, or a high school senior, the clothes always matter. I'm a sucker for over-the-top drama in my own work but am not always able to find a stylist to help me out with these shoots. Even if you don't have a need to do this yourself, give it a go from time to time. It will improve your work from behind the camera too, as photographing people is usually involving fashion in one way or another. In addition to keeping up with the latest trends, you might even start to confidently help your clients out when they ask for your opinion about what they're nervously wearing.
Are you frustrated with your photographs and wondering why you can’t seem to produce the images you see in your head? Maybe you’re shooting all the time but don’t feel like you see the kind of progress you expected, or you’re beginning to give up the hope of becoming a great photographer because it seems like there is just so much to learn. If this is you, don’t despair, you’re simply in a stage of progress on the ladder of mastery known as “conscious incompetence,” and better work is only one rung away.
"Oh no, it’s the same location, yet again!" That’s a statement you’ll hear frequently from wedding photographers when they are assigned to shoot in a location they’ve visited frequently. I agree that shooting at the same location over and over can be testing. It might look like reinventing the wheel with very little space to innovate. This post is about how you can win over such a tricky situation of a repeated location on cards for your next outdoor shoot.
The iPhone X is finally here. It's a pretty amazing smartphone, but today, I only care about one thing: how well can it shoot video and can it be used as a professional tool.
Most of us will have had that feeling of dread creeping up on us at some point in our lives; the racing heart, nausea, sweaty palms, and sense of impending doom. For some of us, this is just the start. And it’s not occasional. Working as a photographer with anxiety can feel very isolating and often impossible.
Are you a photographer or videographer who loves to write? It's that time again! Fstoppers is looking to hire several creative professionals to write for us. If you enjoy reading Fstoppers and think you may have something to offer, we want to hear from you!
If you live in the United States (and aren’t fortunate enough to reside in Arizona), you probably set all of your clocks back an hour on Sunday to switch out of daylight saving time. I’ll put aside, for now, the arguments about why the daylight saving time system is outdated and annoying, and just ask you this: did you remember to change the clock on your cameras?
I recently got myself the Fujifilm X-T20 for traveling. The next trip was to Vietnam with my family and I knew it was going to be a showcase of people, culture, and life that I am unfamiliar with, and therefore something I wanted to document. The reason I chose the X-T20 was that it’s small, light, packs a punch with colors, and its ease of use, very reminiscent of the film cameras back in the days. What I didn’t get was a Fuji X-mount lens to go with it, but I got a Fotasy adapter to fit my old Nikkor 50mm f/1.4, my Vivitar 28mm f/2.5, and Tamron 80mm-210mm f/3.8-4 to the X-T20.
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.
Finding ways to earn passive income as a photographer is invaluable. In this field of work, our businesses often require a large amount of direct hands-on time. Selling stock photography, especially when you have the ability to simply upload images you have already taken in a minimal out of time, can add a great deal of value. The online tools that are available today allow you to turn photos that would otherwise have been worthless, or stored hidden on your hard drive, into pieces of art that have real monetary value.
They say the best camera is the one that is with you, but what if that particular camera is lacking in megapixels? Here's how to take advantage of the camera you already own and make some giant image files and extra large photo prints.
The new season of Photographing the World 3 behind the scenes is now in full swing! In this week's episode, the gang heads down the Amalfi Coast and settles into the small town of Atrani. Here Elia Locardi teaches something I didn't think was possible: capturing star trails in a light polluted town. Of course, our food adventures continue but we also share some of our photography tips for getting great time-lapses straight out of camera. Oh, and yes Donald Trump takes his oath of office.
Adobe Lightroom was a pretty slick piece of software to begin with, but over the past several updates it has become an incredibly powerful tool for photographers. Of all the different controls and tools available within the software, the Detail panel has become one of my favorites. If you use Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Photoshop, you can find the same set of controls that we're talking about today which of course is within Lightroom. Adobe has been streamlining their systems for a long enough time now that handling raw files, although from a cataloging perspective is quite different, is almost identical between Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop.
Ten years from now, will you be the equivalent to what I refer to as film hipsters, fighting for an obsolete technology, or will you be a part of something that may be inevitable? Something that we all seem to refuse to talk about?
What is it about landscape photography that draws us back into nature? Is it waiting for the perfect light to hit the mountains overlooking a vast, green valley? Is it sitting on a rocky shore, listening to and witnessing the sheer power of Mother Nature's waves crash against the rocky shore? Is it the calmness of a misty pine forest at dawn, waiting for the sunrise and hearing the gentle crack of the trees, as a gentle breeze sweeps through the branches? Or is it the thrill of chasing a storm, down a highway in the countryside, while being pelted with hail the size of golf balls?
Wedding and bridal expos are a great place to find potential clients for your boudoir business. Brides typically come in with their mothers, girlfriends, and sometimes part of the wedding party giving you the opportunity to speak with many leads at one time. One photographer has had over 50 percent of her clients just from bridal booths alone.
This week's theme called for "music" and the results were great as usual. There is a lot of diversity on all of our WeeklyFstop lists and this one is no exception. One featured photographer almost had to be disqualified after turning in multiple entries. Luckily they both rocked and the show went on!
There are two ways to photography: registration and creation. Let me be clear that, before we get into a short essay about self-acceptance in art, neither is better than the other. While I’d like to teach you today about conscious creation, registration is the inherent nature of photography. But the way we modify and modulate light before it hits the sensor, as well as the entire process after it, is all up to us and not the camera manufacturer.
Remember the old adage, “If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all”? Yeah, that’s not really a thing on the Internet. As photographers we need to understand that criticism is rampant, it's unavoidable, and it's also not always a bad thing. Here’s how to embrace it.
It's far too easy for people working in a creative field to somehow get the sense that basic attributes of professionalism don't apply because we're working in a non-traditional job setting. This is something to watch out for as that belief couldn't be further from the truth or worse for your business. Being labelled as an artist does not excuse poor professional habits or practices and if you're serious about having a lasting impact and a long career these common-sense business practices should be very high on your priority list.
One of the most common retouching catastrophes I see on a day to day basis is an overzealous attack on eyes. Like over-baked HDR, obnoxiously over-retouched eyes have become almost ubiquitous among less experienced retouchers. Awareness is the first step to recovery, so in the spirit of painting a big obvious flag in front of all of you eye ruiners out there, take note. Your models will love you if you learn how to make their eyes look amazing without making them look like they belong in an episode of "Stranger Things."
As Halloween comes to a close and we reflect on all the creative costumes roaming the streets, I think it’s a good time we take a moment to talk about cultural appropriation. We are blessed as photographers to be able to view images from any culture in the world through the Internet. It’s pretty cool that we have access to unlimited inspiration from just about everywhere, something the founding fathers of photography had nothing close to. It's important for photographers to have a vast basic knowledge of cultures, subcultures, and social classes so that we can always use culture with respect and honor in our images.
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro has two f/1.6 cameras, so it’s no slouch in dark scenes. How far can it’s stellar AI chip push the image though?
“Never say never.” That’s what they always say. But, as hard as I try to adhere to that message, there are a few things I swore I would never do again. Yet last week I found myself doing just one of those things. Even worse, it was my idea. And to my surprise, it was a good one.
This is a simple yet very personal and special project you can do at home for your clients, family, or your own walls. Traditional online canvas sales proceeding a photo session can be bland and impersonal. So if you have some time to spare for this project, it creates a connection like no other with your clients. I think of projects like this as the cherry on top of a photoshoot. It's one of the few ways to carry your artistic ability all the way through to the hard copy. This technique is usually used in the fine arts and street art world, so adding this to digital photography is a cool way to merge the two worlds. Essentially, with this you will separate your photo's ink from the paper to leave it floating in clear acrylic medium.
One of the best things about window light is that you can find it almost anywhere. As winter approaches and chilly weather threatens to keep photo sessions indoors, photographers will face the choice of how to light their portraits. Strobes and flashes are a great option, but not all photographers own them. Almost everyone has access to a window though, and a window has plenty to offer any photographer who knows how to use it.
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 2017, we're featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.
For many photographers, particularly hobbyists, making an image black and white is almost arbitrary. I remember in the early days of my photography, I was the same. I would mutter: "I wonder if this would look good in black and white," and then, I'd try it. Sometimes, it would look better, but usually, it would not. I presumed it was all just down to taste, but that's not true. After years of reading around the subject and experimenting, I began to understand why it worked when it did and conversely, why it often didn't. Here are some key elements that ought to be present in black and white images, and why.
San Francisco-based photographer Jeff Colhoun spent the last three summers in Mongolia documenting the activity of various environmental protection projects. The Genghis Khan nation is a huge country with a thin population of three million inhabitants spread out across a vast territory. The remoteness of the place is what made this assignment both appealing and challenging. Here is the story of this photographic journey.
