Fstoppers Original Articles

As a kid, photographer Ilya Nodia absolutely loved the Russian TV show “Titans Wrestling.” It was a local TV channel that bought records of American wrestling and translated it. He fell in love while watching characters such as Hulk Hogan, Bill Goldberg, Sting, Kevin Nash, Diamond Dallas Paige and made his parents crazy while he collected merchandise and themed wrestling toys.

As creative professionals, the ability to pivot, both in business and creatively, can be a life-changing experience. I might be at that stage now and I've no clue as to where this will will lead to.

If your images are too large, you worry they will be stolen. If your images are too small, they lose their impact. Here is what I believe to be the best balance for this problem.

With the digital age stacking techniques make it possible to shoot a star trail in the middle of a city. But when I got my hands on a great medium format camera, I also ran into a problem: the star trail had strange patterns in the stacked image. Fortunately I found out why this is, and how to avoid it.

Have you ever wondered what went into photographing a comedian? In this article, I take you behind the scenes of a recent client shoot I did using a fun aesthetic and mood to match my subjects' larger-than-life personality.

What part of the photographic process are you operating at a world class level? This article is about owning what you’re great at and outsourcing the remainder of the process to specialists.

It’s been about eight months since Canon launched their full frame mirrorless system. In that time, they’ve created or announced 10 lenses to be delivered by the end of 2019, as well as a second body. Despite the fast progress on building out the kit, Canon is missing a critical item.

A nice portrait is made up of four elements: composition, lighting, post-processing, and subject. The first three are easy to learn about and improve on your own, but after annoying your friends and family and getting sick of Facebook and Instagram, how do you improve?

Getting started as a professional photographer is a daunting task. Psychologically, it is a huge leap from taking photographs for fun to getting paid for a photograph (or photographs).

For my latest photoshoot I decided to use harsh light to photograph my buddy Bart in two different ways. If you've wanted to learn how to get that vintage movie style look, you'll enjoy this full tutorial.

Technique, skill, creativity, and yes, gear can all affect the quality of your photographs. But there's one thing many photographers overlook when out in the field that will quickly improve your photography without costing you a dime or requiring any practice or specialized skills.

I write a lot of articles about photographers not price cutting you, so I am going to try and approach this from the opposite direction. Here is how photographers are price cutting you.

The venerable East Coast photography exhibition makes it first trip to the West Coast.

Buying new gear can be one of the major expenses for any photographer, so taking any opportunity to save is important. There are a number of ways to save on any gear purchase, without compromising on the quality, warranty, or buying experience.

Explore the national park or national forest for a week or more, maybe get paid? There are tons of artists-in-residence opportunities scattered across the United States. Take a chance, see a new part of the country and create new work inspired by unique landscapes.

When I first started out using speedlights for flash photography, there weren’t many options aside from Canon and Nikon. As a result, I’ve amassed a large collection of Speedlights (and Speedlites), but now that I also shoot mirrorless bodies, are my SB-700s and 600EX-RTs any good?

Even though people love to knock presets, if you look under the hood, you might learn some things about how many different ways you can manipulate your photos in Lightroom.

There are an infinite amount of photography-related items you can spend your hard-earned cash on. Sometimes, it's the small and insignificant purchases that can really save the day.

Hasselblad was one of the first that used super resolution techniques. Today it can be found in many cameras, producing resolutions that are up to four times higher than the pixel count of the sensor. You can also do this with your camera. This is how it works.

Maha's new Powerex MH-C980 8 Cell Charger/Analyzer is out and it's a full-featured, professional charging beast. Check out the nitty gritty on one of the most advanced AA/AAA battery chargers on the market.

When striving for success, the reality of what you want and what you pictured beforehand seemingly don't always align. In fact, they can appear wholly different and strange. This is one such peculiarity.

Are you in need of a powerful, versatile, and compact RGB LED light that won't break the bank? I was and this might now be my favorite hot light for shooting on location.

Viewers are complaining that they couldn’t actually see parts of the latest episode. Is this due to cheap televisions or by design? This article contains spoilers.

Apple Aperture began with a bang in 2005 and promptly became a favorite of many professional photographers. But what began with a bang ends in a whimper, as Apple quietly issued a support document with some bad news for those few photographers who were still using it.

Every so often, among the broad and amorphous photographic community, you will find a rather puzzling paradox: Gear doesn’t matter, and yet if you don’t have expensive gear, you’re not a proper photographer. How ridiculous.

As I stumbled, sleep-drunk, in to my bathroom this morning I had what I would categorize as my first photography shower thought.

Mention off-camera flash and people often think about C-stands, flash heads, large octaboxes, and V-flats. Hardly what you would call portable. So how do go about assembling one?

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 2019, 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.

Chasing clients to ensure I am properly credited for my work takes up more of my time than I care to admit. It’s frustrating to see my images used without due recognition, but none more so than this particular incident in which a relatively well-known musician’s team seemed to prefer removing the image from Instagram entirely, rather than simply adding my handle to the caption.

The rise of smartphones has left many professional photographers wondering if their services have a future. However, it’s now having an impact on the industry in ways that many might not have anticipated.

Pitching can seem like a really scary thing to start doing. But I fully believe that anyone can pitch effectively, they just need to know how to! So today, I’m going to break down how to get started.

I asked people in the industry what their unpopular photograph opinions are, and I got a lot of interesting answers. And some controversial ones.

It’s amazing what mid or entry-level hardware can deliver when you pair it with great software. The best software will be able to make up for some of the weaknesses and exploit every ounce of its strengths – ideally with relative ease. That's what we'll see here with Capture One's Luma Range tool.

Every day it seems like there’s a new unpredictable and intense weather phenomenon on the horizon — state-wide wildfires, raging storms causing massive flooding, polar vortexes, and my recent favorite: the bomb cyclone.

If you’re looking for a new location to shoot, consider checking out these destinations that might be right by you.

Sharpness: it's what we all want from our photos and it's something many of us obsess over. If your shot out of camera isn't quite as razor edge as you'd like, there are quite a few ways to get more sharpness in post-production. This method is by far my favorite.

What lengths would you go to in order to capture an amazing, unique perspective of one of the most photographed events in human history? Photographer Jon Carmichael shares with us the extraordinary story about how he captured an amazing aerial shot of 2017’s total solar eclipse.

Even veteran photojournalists grinding it out day after day still find time and energy to develop a personal project and sometimes those projects circle back and grow into more work.

Creating the perfect photograph used to be my ultimate aim. It was a pursuit that left me feeling like a failure. What follows is an argument to give up on perfection and the suggestion of a beneficial alternative.

You may have seen certain ideas or advice circulate on Internet, that makes you say "but I already know this." So, why is it important to keep recycling ideas in this industry?

Following the announcement of the winners of the World Press Photo competition last week, Spanish photography website Photolari.com compiled the metadata to examine what the leading photojournalists are using to capture their images. The results are quite interesting and demonstrate that the mighty DSLR is going nowhere. Here's why.

I once tried to color calibrate my monitor... It was a disaster.

Making the switch to Capture One from Lightroom is easier and quicker than you think. There’s this perception that given the two pieces of software are from different companies, moving your Lightroom catalogs to Capture One is some arduous and protracted process, that you’ll have to start from scratch with all your images, re-edit, re-rate, and create whole new folder structures. But that perception is not reality.

It isn't fearmongering to say that one mistake, and not even necessarily your own, can bankrupt your photography business if you're uninsured. So Fstoppers have teamed up with Insurance Canopy who have created Full Frame Photography Insurance to go over the issue and offer some insight.

Firmware is the magical sauce that turns the manual operation of your camera in to a fully digital supercomputer, controlling the high precision mechanical instrumentation, making it a thing of artistry. More amazingly, this fundamental component of your camera is fully replaceable. Would you pay for an upgrade?

I'm not talking about gear you buy. I'm talking about investing on the stock market. Many of the companies we as photographers use are public companies. For me, it's become a time to consider investing. What would you buy?

A full tank of gas, a Fujifilm GFX 50S, and a partner in crime make for a perfect day to remember what happiness is all about.

For many of us, the tragic event at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris served as a stark reminder of how fragile and delicate the remnants of our human past can be. Whether globally historic or personally sentimental, we are all connected to the past. It helps give meaning to the present, and invariably helps to shape the future. With this in mind, I feel it timely to introduce fine art photographer Lisa Folino.

It's a bizarre question that can be applied to any of the arts. Typically, creatives are seen as passionate creatures, but is it essential to a career in the industry?

With sensor prices dropping and given that mirrorless finally has some competition at the top end, it’s time for Nikon and Canon to treat its customers to something classic: a pocket-sized camera featuring a full frame sensor and a fast, fixed prime lens.