Fstoppers Original Articles

If you take a look back at Ikea's marketing catalog used to showcase their new products and looks for the season, there was a time where they decided to use images displaying only the products and Ikea-styled sets with no human intervention or interaction. At one stage these images were computer generated and rendered to make a simulated environment look as perfect and clinical as possible.

One key to longevity in filmmaking or photography is to have regular clients that you enjoy working with. What’s even better is when you have enough work coming in from those top clients, so that you can actually pick and choose the projects you take on, and even go as far as to expand your business or pass work off to qualified associates for a modest finders fee. It takes a long time to get there, but being savvy about building a client base can help tremendously.

Lightroom is full of powerful tools for all types of photography. None of them are as effective as radial filters to create dramatic results like these.

What urges you to travel, hike, and camp out for landscape photography? How do your emotions affect what you shoot and how the output turns out?

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.

Photographing sand dunes can be a very productive photographic endeavor if you find a stretch of desert remote enough that not every inch of it is covered in footprints. In this article, I show you my favorite place to photograph dunes, and I give tips on how to get the most out of this sandy subject matter.

Real estate photography, while not the sexiest of photography genres, is quite accessible and a handy way to earn some cash, especially if your starting out. Many interior design and architectural photographers cut their teeth taking photos for estate agents and holiday home companies, but much of the high volume stuff looks way too flashy. In this article I'll show you a relatively easy way to get natural looking light without blown-out windows.

Have you ever heard the argument that photography isn’t art, because everyone can do it? That’s bull. All forms of photography need artistic thinking to some extent.

Two things converged for me recently: an increase in questions sent to me regarding my commercial photography and the unexpected popularity of my bite-sized Photoshop tutorials. Both occurrences are born from the same inquiry of understanding how certain things are achieved. I used to bother people constantly with questions on how I could attain a certain look in post-processing, or how an image is so sharp, and so on. From time to time, I still do. So, I'm going to do my best to make the answers to the most common questions readily available with this mini series.

With modern HDR-blending algorithms making exposure blending so quick and easy, manual exposure blending may seem like an outdated skill for landscape photographers. However, automated software doesn't always produce the cleanest results. In this article, we'll discuss a foolproof workflow for manual exposure blending that will give you total control over your images and ensure results of the highest quality. The good news is that this workflow doesn't require any third-party panels or difficult luminosity masking!

Becoming as a commercial photographer can't be defined with a formula. Each story is different but lots of stories share similar basic principles. They can be applied not only in the areas of photography and filmmaking, but also in other businesses.

Something I muttered to myself one cloudy afternoon on my garden ended up being a mantra I have had with me for over a decade.

Canon just announced that it will launch its RF 85mm f/1.2 DS lens, where the “DS” stands for “Defocus Smoothing.” What does that mean exactly, and on a piece of gear that carries a hefty price tag, why doesn’t the fancy marketing mention that the lens lets in less light as a result of this funky new coating?

I recently challenged Mike Kelley to a photography competition. We both had two and a half hours to photograph the iconic "Dome House" in Charleston, South Carolina. Today, you will get to vote on your favorite photographs and choose a winner.

French photographer and digital artist Cal Redback has been creating images that bring new meaning to the term, "organic portraits." Sparked by a fascination with double exposures, Redback began to photograph friends along with local plant life, blending the two together to create a unique set of portraits that seem to take on a life of their own.

Have you ever struggled to get your image from the foreground to the background in focus? As photographers, especially in the genre of landscapes, the ultimate goal is to achieve sharp focus from the foreground to infinity. Have you struggled with this in the past? You can use hyperfocal distance, double the distance method, and focus stacking techniques to achieve sharp focus from foreground to infinity. While a few of these methods can be challenging, with a little knowledge, they are more accessible than one might think.

A chain is only as strong as the weakest link, so the proverb goes. We could modify that for photography and say that our processing is no faster than the slowest component. It's not necessarily about having the latest great-and-good, but rather about having matched components. And there's no better place to start than when offloading your photos from the camera.

I've been shooting professionally for just over four years now – “professional” as in starting a legitimate business where I charge money to take photographs of my clients. We could wax poetic on the distinctions between “amateur” and “professional” that don’t involve the exchange of money, but the area that I want to focus on has to do with the responsibilities and perceptions that come along with people hiring you as a business.

Are you stuck in an artistic routine or struggling to become comfortable photographing people in the street? Try this simple project that'll get you out there, shooting and gaining confidence!

With just a few simple ingredients and a couple of camera hacks, you can make these otherworldly photos at home on a budget. From the comfort of your own living room, you'll be able to capture images reminiscent of those famous iPhone wallpapers.

When it comes to flash photography, there seems to be a constantly recurring question: manual or TTL flash? So at the end of the day, which one should you really be using?

Cold and moody processing is quite trendy lately. As I’ve been watching a lot of movies and cinematography tutorials, I began mimicking that cinematic feel in spite of myself. While lighting and makeup both play a big part in the final look, the post processing is critical as well. Here’s how to achieve it using Capture One!

If like so many of us you find yourself at home with a lot of time on your hands, consider using that time to experiment with different art papers and print some of your favorite images from your hard drives.

As we all know, photography is ludicrously expensive. Even entry level DSLRs are a few hundred dollars these days; some point and shoots hit close to $1,000. This can be daunting to anyone looking to get into photography, as the sticker shock may drive them away. For working professionals, the price tags get higher and higher as apertures are larger, build quality is higher, and resolution jumps to ridiculous levels. There is, however, an alternative. It’s something that people fear, swear off, and curse because they got bit by a sketchy dude on eBay: buying used gear.

It was something I’d been thinking about for a while. Casually admiring others and how they went about it so naturally. Watching from afar, admiring the differences between them and me and wondering if there every was going to be a day when I was comfortable enough to do it myself. The more I watched, the more interested I became. Soon, I began visiting websites, looking at the photos and day dreaming what it would be like when I had the nerve to do it myself.

Are you tired of seeing your peers gain more followers than you on Instagram? Does it always feel like you're behind everyone else on a technical level, or that maybe you don't get the respect you deserve? Well, I've got the perfect solution for you.

After 38 years of making a living in photography—either behind the camera or directing other photographers—I’ve come to the conclusion that, for many, it might be best to keep photography as a hobby. It’s something I’ve been thinking about of late because photography in recent years has been elevated to such a glamorous career choice. Now it seems everyone wants to be a pro photographer and turn their hobby into a career. So allow me to share a few thoughts about this.

Use two threaded circular filters at once and you run a terrible risk: they might get stuck together. It happened to me when I was using a neutral density filter and a circular polarizer. Here’s how I got them unstuck.

If you've ever thought about shooting a wedding, you have probably wondered: "How much should I charge to shoot a wedding?" In this free excerpt from the wedding photography tutorial, "How to Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer," we are going to talk about pricing your wedding photography. In addition to this free lesson, we are offering a limited time discount if you'd like to purchase the full tutorial. Simply use code WED75 at checkout before April 30th, 2017.

There has been a flurry of reports about Nikon as the second quarter results hit the press, which show the manufacturer fighting to turn around the business but struggling under the impact of COVID-19.

The image that has quickly become synonymous with the Trump administration’s controversial border policy which saw children separated from their families has, the girl’s father suggests, been used to feed a media agenda after it was confirmed the girl was not taken away from her family.

As a street photographer, how far do you go to engage with strangers? Crash Taylor, currently a UK based photographer, not only asks strangers to pose for a portrait but also asks to reveal their deepest wish. Find out how he does it!

I always say, once you have the core foundations of Photoshop down you are pretty much set. There are plenty of neat tricks to learn, but most of the time the tricks are one-offs.

I awoke Friday morning to see a heart-wrenching Facebook post from a friend of mine. She had knocked her camera into a lake.

Wider was always better when I first began photographing landscapes. As an amateur photographer and outdoor enthusiast, all I wanted to do was cut down on weight in my pack when heading off on long, adventure-filled days in the mountains. But slowly my focus shifted from going out to hike, while maybe capturing beautiful moments, to fully focusing my time and attention on capturing beautiful landscapes. Hiking became the mode of transportation while photography became the reason for heading to the mountains.

After finally taking my first flight with all my gear, Vin and I made it to where we needed to go. Having the gear and keeping your eye on it is probably the biggest concern when it comes to traveling. I want to give some fellow travelers some advice on gear and transporting it when needed.

Let’s face it. Film photography is having a bit of a moment, and the growth in popularity is exponential. The question is: is it a fad or is it going to be around for a while?

Passive income, the Holy Grail of personal finances. Who wouldn’t want to make money from all those old photos without having to lift a finger? With that in mind, I’m going to share with you my own experiences as a casual photographer selling my existing back catalog of digital photos online. It’s been an interesting experience to say the least and I even made a little money.

We are quite familiar to the rule of thirds, the golden ratio, and perhaps the Fibonacci spiral. We know how to use it in photography, more or less, and we all have heard about breaking these composition rules. But perhaps you should use composition theory instead.

How many bags do you travel with for landscape photography? Two or three depending on the trip duration? How about one carry-on sized backpack for a year of travel?

Analyzing data from thousands of film photographs, this scientific analysis sought to assess the characteristics of film photographs that are associated with success on social media.

Coloring outside the lines is a good metaphor for when a photographer decides to take a leap outside the norm in a photographic genre.

Panasonic’s latest and greatest cameras will have a much better chance of success.

Having spent years photographing the night sky from the Milky Way to exploding meteors to man-made space junk disintegrating in the atmosphere, I thought I had seen it all. Then I drove as far north into Canada as you can possibly go, and everything changed.

Want to get more leads in a specific area of your business? Have you heard of PhotogRefers.com? The next big social media platform for photographers is upon us. In fact, it is the only social media platform specifically designed for photographers and our creative community.

Have you been feeling the heat this summer? Taking photos out in the sunshine can be a challenge. However, it can be made a lot easier with the right preparation. Here are five of my photography hot weather essentials.

Shooting with major artists is something most photographers dream of. Did Christian Tierney get lucky, or was his get-up-and-go attitude the key to his success in the music business?

A snow-covered landscape can be truly breathtaking, exuding a pristine beauty and offering a unique canvas for photography. In this article, I will delve into the considerations one must keep in mind when capturing the allure of such a wondrous white world.

Optimize and save a ton of space, speed up your computer, and make it easy to find your files.

While I was initially slow to adopt the notion of being literally tied to an external machine while I went full throttle through my photo shoots, I’ve found the process not only beneficial, but absolutely essential.