Fstoppers Original Articles

I had a party, but no one showed up. We made due anyway and came up with a worthy list to get us into next week.

Have you ever set out to achieve a dream or goal of yours and found yourself not accomplishing what you set out to do? In this quick article, see three things I do to make sure I'm staying on track to achieving my goals.

I know it's easy to get bogged down in all the different aspects of this industry. When is the last time that you took your camera and just shot some things with little-to-no plan just because you could?

As another summer season comes to an end, Fstoppers is offering $10 off our pocket sized light modifier: the Fstoppers Flash Disc. Both BH Photo and Amazon are offering this sale now until Sept 4th.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Photography rules are among some of the most frequently disputed ones. Of course, there is a reason for their existence. Our eyes find it more logical to look at a scene that follows the rule of thirds. Color theory dictates that red and blue are colors that contrast really well. Every tutorial on gels will prove this right.

Unfortunately for professional photographers, according to most current estimates, COVID-19 looks like it will be sticking around for quite a long time — perhaps years.

Over the last few years, something has become quite apparent: photographers are becoming reliant on social media. Some have achieved great success across the various social media platforms, but would they or you make it if social media as we know it suddenly ceased to exist?

I’ve been seeing Prism Lens FX filters everywhere and have been curious about what they're actually like to shoot with. There are so many interesting filters available that it’s hard to know which ones are worth the investment. So, here’s a comparison of the Lucid Dream FX Filter and the Moody FX Filter.

We ought to always be looking forward to our photography, but it's also important to add some ceremony to our achievements and use the past as a learning tool for the future. So, what is your favorite photograph from 2021, why, and what can you learn from 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 2023, 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.

Some of the most stunning images have the simplest color schemes, which is why Gurushots "Mostly White" challenge produced some stunning photos. Gurushots hosts "The World’s Greatest Photo Game,” with regular challenges in which they invite participants to submit and rate photos within a certain theme. In this latest challenge, thousands of entries and millions of votes were submitted. Here are the three winners of the challenge as well as the top 60 rated images.

Over the last decade, we've had lots of new wide aperture lenses hit the market. Lenses like the Nikon 58mm f/0.95 make producing images with super shallow depth of field relatively easy. Even significantly less expensive lenses like an 85mm f/1.8 can produce beautiful, shallow depth in an image, but what if you want more depth?

Stories that change the way you see American culture are rare. The Delta Hill Riders project is one of those.

Kodak made a number of surprising announcements Tuesday regarding its involvement in cryptocurrency, including the creation of its own, KodakCoin. But nothing risks its name more than the actual Bitcoin mining operation that is rather misleading to likely unwitting consumers, and all at a potential benefit to the company that’s rather uncertain.

As far as we can recall, photography is often seen as a direct representation of reality. However, the truth is far more complex as we dive deeper to examine the underlying issue. The issue isn't just about altering reality through manipulation with Photoshop or generating images with AI. Instead, I believe our societal expectations and perceptions have fundamentally altered how we view and interpret photographs.

We've been using the Falcon Eyes BL-30TD for three months now, and we are big fans. For $800, it has an amazing list of features. But, how does it compare to another light that sells for the same price?

Moving on to N, we enter the second half of the alphabet and with that a headlong rush to Z. It's been a blast getting to this point, but now we start the countdown. In this issue the A to Z of Photography we visit that most unwanted of digital acquaintances, noise, before taking a peek at the cover work (and Polaroids) of Helmut Newton.

I absolutely adore the precise placement of light, and recently, during a model test, I decided to play around with it, utilizing a new tool, ending up with my first portfolio shot of 2020.

Our first Kid’s Photo Walk actually happened, and it was a success! Over 35 people showed up to participate in a nonprofit community event for children which encouraged kids to spend time with nature and whatever camera they have access to.

Our behind-the-scenes series on the filming of "Where Art Meets Architecture 3" continues today with episode 6. In this episode, Mike Kelley flies to the Fstoppers office in Charleston to start working on the post-processing portion of this tutorial.

I’ve heard many a photographer scoff at using lighting equipment for portraits, labeling themselves a “natural light photographer.”

With the advent of digital photography, more shutterbugs than ever have taken to calling themselves photographers and many have even gone into business for themselves. Now, with those same digital camera manufacturers offering better and better video options embedded into each iteration of their flagship still cameras, more and more photographers have added the word “filmmaker” to our business cards and taken aim at everything from short films to features. But being a real filmmaker requires more than the ability to just produce stunning images.

Sooner or later, every filmmaker starts to understand the magic of manual focus. The SmallRig F60 Modular Follow Focus is a tool to help you keep things sharp.

CGI is usually associated with movies, but it has its place in photography too. In fact, you create elaborate and creative backgrounds for your shoots using CGI software.

One of my regular gigs is photographing the training events hosted in London by Parkour Generations. Winterval, a day of hard training outdoors regardless of the conditions, takes place every January and shooting it can be a daunting prospect; winter in London is often grim, with short, dark days made grimmer by drizzle or worse. This year we got lucky with glorious sunshine, albeit accompanied by a biting breeze.

There are many things in life you have a choice over, but your parents are not one of them! You are born and — to a greater or lesser extent — bred, shaping the person you are today. So have you looked at their photographs?

Each week it seems, a new camera is released. And with every new release is the lure of new features promising to make the already easy image-making process even easier. This raises the question, do the benefits of easily creating images outweigh the potential benefits we might gain from taking a more challenging approach?

Every few years, some brilliant young mind at an ad agency decides that the best way to promote the imaging capabilities of the latest and greatest upcoming smartphone is to create a series of campaign images on the phone. At this point, it’s a convention but proves the point: “This camera is so great that anyone can take great images with it. You know you want to be that person!”

It’s safe to say we’ve all heard the phrase “love what you do and you’ll never work a day in your life.” There is also the antithesis to that, where if you love what you do, you’ll work 24/7. Well, I turned my passion for photography into my career, but the ultimate question is: does it feel like work, and do I regret my decision?

Producing a promotional video is one of the tougher kinds of content to produce as a videographer. These types of videos tend not to be super long; however, the impact they're required to make is what put them in that challenging category. In a recent video, we offer up some valuable tips to help you edit your promos more effectively.

Us photographers may be going a little stir crazy without new shoots to edit, so I propose an alternative.

We are not always fortunate to have the perfect background that matches the total vision of a shoot. The same goes for having a huge budget to build the set, which leaves a few options. Spend the time with compositions or use a printed backdrop to complete the scene. To save time, at least in my case, I opted to go with a printed backdrop for the shoot since there would be multiple images.

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 2020, 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.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch Julia Hart’s recent film, I’m Your Woman, make a point to add it to your list. Bryce Fortner’s photography isn’t just eye-candy, it shows what you can do when you use style along with intention.

Imagine you can open up Lightroom and browse through the lighting setup (a graphic from top down) that shows you what you did during your shoot, where each photo has its lights, and the setup of these lights, all embedded. Would that be beneficial?

What does it take to create a body of work that provides a lasting legacy? As Thomas J. O'Halloran shows, it's about always being in the right place at the right time.

The race to conquer new frontiers of innovation is not a new event, but it is well known. What can be learnt from history about these types of competitions, however, is that it is not always to the winner go the spoils; the lightbulb and telephone are infamous examples, but the moving picture can be added to that list.

Whether you live in a football-crazed nation like America, or are beholden to the whim as another sport, nothing is more exciting than the start of a new season. As the kickoffs are underway, I think today I’ll take it from the gridiron to the studio with a few lessons I learned in the huddle.

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!

Behind the scenes videos are a fantastic way to increase the visibility of your work, and ACDSee Video Studio 3 will help you get your BTS video edited and ready to view in less than an hour.

Explore the Art of the Cyanotype. In this article, we examine the step-by-step process of cyanotype printing and its place within the realm of photography. You can decide for yourself if you agree whether this is a photographic medium or not.

J takes us back to the very foundations of digital photography with none other than the, love-it or loathe-it, JPEG file format. If that seems like old hat, then step back another century to the iconic work of William Henry Jackson who produced some of the first photos of Yellowstone National Park.

GuruShots is a photography site that hosts "The World’s Greatest Photo Game,” In their latest challenge, they invited participants to submit their best photos of "Beach Time." There was such a great variety of seascapes and ideas incorporated into the challenge set. There were thousands of entires and millions of votes but the winners of the challenge were decided. Check out the three winners as well as hundreds of top rated images below.

Golden light kissed Matt McDonald's face and fresh snow greeted him while he walked out of Iceland's Keflavík airport. McDonald recently flew to Iceland for the first time in his life to research for a book he is co-authoring with Chris Burkard. But how did a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur get to this stage in the first place?

The essence of channeling your inner muse to create amazing photo-journalistic images requires a very specific mindset. Here are a few tips I've learned on perfecting your photojournalism skills to create more powerful intentional images, and these tips can be adapted in other forms of photography to fit your purpose.

It might seem to be an easy transition for a photographer to become a filmmaker. At the core of each of these disciplines is storytelling. A photographer tells a story in a single instant captured at the decisive moment, while a filmmaker tells a story over a period of time, often incorporating elements such as editing and sound to help tell that story.

Famed celebrity stylist and creative director Jason Bolden and his team approached photographer Nathalie Gordon with an idea to shoot a campaign for their newly launched sunglasses brand JSN.

From contemporary to classic in one breath, in this installment of the A to Z of Photography I outline the current, and oh so trendy, hyper-lapse technique before showcasing the work of the classic, and brilliant, photography of Horst P. Horst, including his signature work the "Mainbocher Corset". Read on for more!