Fstoppers Original Articles

Watching this magical time-lapse video - of the Annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta shot by Knate Myers - I couldn't wipe the silly smile off my face. The stunning colors and compositions captivate. If you ask me, Knate completely succeeded in providing the best seats in the house for anyone who didn’t get to attend this magnificent event. I am certainly adding it to my bucket-list of things to do and see.

Inspiration is something we all wrestle with as creatives. Where do our ideas come from? Why can’t we simply come up with them on the fly? Why do we wake up at three o’clock in the morning with the perfect shoot planned out? How can we get more of these kinds of ideas? Let’s look at a few things that I do to keep myself inspired and ready to create.

After finding myself in yet another strange new world last week, I began to reflect on the future of photography and steps necessary to protect the profession we love.

For years, I have heard good things about Davinci Resolve as a powerful industry-standard video editing software. Despite all the positive things I have heard, I was reluctant to make the shift from Adobe Premiere Pro, fearing the entire process of relearning new software from scratch. However, motivated by the frustration of frequent crashes, I have finally made the call for the long-needed switchover.

As a landscape photographer and videographer, here is a detailed look at my gear list, my preferences, and the reasons behind my acquisitions.

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

Some people say that you shouldn't work for free because it devalues your work, while others say that you have to do some in order prove your worth in a world saturated with photographers. I know, I know: doing free work has been talked about ad-nauseam on every site and forum across the web. But I know better than everyone else, so prepare to get more nauseous. Grab a bucket and strap yourself in, folks.

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 absolutely love seeing the photos I have taken hanging up in my client's house. However, I dread the time it takes to get together and try to sell large prints or canvases as I know I could be using the time for other things. Finally, I've found a solution that I am super excited about that will make the experience for both my clients and I enjoyable, quick and easy. The end result is a win-win for both of us. Swift Galleries is about to change everything!

Returning to the same location repeatedly can yield some very different outcomes. Here I go through three years of photos from the same perspective.

Professional photography is a business, and like any business there are patterns and traits that exist when looking at what works and what doesn’t work. Here are a few traits every successful photography business shares that you can incorporate into your business.

While beautiful, classic family portraits will never go out of fashion, sometimes clients desire something that shows the fun, frivolous nature of their relationships with each other, as well as the lifestyles they love. A fun, outrageous portrait that shows the special family dynamic may be just what your clients are looking for.

Do you feel like you are living in a parallel world where time both seemingly stops but also goes at a rate faster than before? Have the constant restrictions paralyzed you and left you unable to foresee picking up your camera anytime soon?

This is a look at how this affordable home security cam can be used for increasing security of your gear while traveling on assignment. Even though it was never designed for this purpose, unlike a lot of other options on the market the Wyze Cam has just the right features to make it possible.

Technicality and equipment aren't all there is to becoming a meaningful photographer. In my own work it's actually the least important part. My favorite words to hear clients say are “wow, you captured the real me.” The following are tips to get these reactions out of your subjects. They have nothing to do with your gear, but will guide you to capturing your subjects the way they are when they're completely comfortable, instead of the nervous and self-conscious forms of themselves.

Color balance underwater is not always an easy task. In a fresh water spring, you have the ability to capture the red spectrum a bit more than in a pool, but still not nearly as much as on land. The approach to color correcting your underwater images is not as daunting as it may seem the moment you open them up on your computer and see just blue hues. A few tips will bring back what you envisioned the moment you submerged your camera.

The Desert Island albums question is a favorite for many podcasts, with the premise altered slightly for the industry in question. So let's see what the answer is for our readers.

I remember the thrill of owning my first camera: the Panasonic FZ20. I was so excited; I didn't need an alarm to get me up for sunrise. How things have changed! These days, if no one is commissioning the shoot I struggle to be motivated. This article tracks how this happened and offers four suggestions on how to keep enjoying photography.

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?

You book a commercial job and the client wants a beautiful face to grace their next ad. The client relies on you, the photographer to help with the process of hiring the model. The crew you hire rely on you to select the right candidate for their needs. That's great, right? Get the most radiant face, possibly the one with the highest social media numbers for that extra bump and you're set! Is that how it works?

If you want to elevate it to a higher level, then there is an essential approach to your photography that you should embrace. Known for thousands of years, but nonetheless elusive, here's an approach to photography you can adopt, used by masters in all fields.

GuruShots, host of "The World’s Greatest Photo Game,” has released yet another fantastic challenge. Participants were invited to submit their best photos of "Incredible Architecture." The challenge received thousands of entries and millions of votes. Check out the three winners of the challenge as well as hundreds of top rated images below.

If you're a Lightroom user, then one of the first tasks you might perform after import is culling your images. So, how do you hide images you've rejected from the library grid view? Like me, you might have been left scratching your head.

In the last few weeks, Instagram introduced a new feature that has largely gone unnoticed by many. However, if it's used effectively, it could really have a positive impact on your posts, your engagement with your followers, and promoting yourself.

I recently outlined seven reasons why I was excited to go to Sony Kando 3.0, but now that I’ve been, there was so much more to it than I initially thought.

Would you work on a project where you as a photographer who creates the final images will take about 10 percent of the production cost? That's a tricky question.

Are you on the go for your photography or video shoots? If so, think outside the box and consider a Chromebook as your travel accessory.

Architecture is an art form that reflects human creativity and engineering ingenuity and is not simply about buildings and structures, and one of the most fascinating ways, for me anyway, to capture the beauty of architecture is through multiple-exposure photography.

There are a few behind the scenes videos out there that show photographers working with ice climbers, but often the climbs are right next to the road, making it convenient to bring tons of gear, power, and spend all day getting coverage. So what does it take to create those images when you're miles deep into the woods, and can only take what you can carry on your back? In this behind the scenes video, I'll show you the challenges of such a shoot.

If you’re just new to photography and just bought your first camera, here are some important things to know about taking care of it.

Being a professional photographer these days is not easy. Everyone with a camera is out to make money, and the industry is saturated. However, despite this, there are some serious — and sometimes serendipitous — perks to the job.

Being able to reach people easily with your marketing message is one of the most important aspects of marketing any type of business. In this article, I will share with you 3 tips to reach your followers and customers.

Nikon has led the way in designing exotic glass for its mirrorless Z mount, but is this just a precursor to offering a medium format camera?

There's something absolutely wonderful about holding a piece of film fresh out of processing. The feeling of accomplishment, that indescribable rush of holding something you created in your fingers makes the difficulty of dealing with the medium worthwhile. However, once you're done processing the film, the next phase begins. Scanning can be, to put it lightly, a royal pain. From dust-spotting to tweaking color and levels, there are challenges that must be addressed. This is how I do it!

Don't get stuck with the standard wallpapers on your smartphone. Make your own in Photoshop CC using these simple steps and use your very own images to stand out from the crowd.

Cheap, soft, and lightweight, with woefully slow autofocus and shoddy build quality; however terrible they might be, plastic lenses are great value. Quite why people get so agitated about this topic is a bit of a mystery because cheap glass can be amazing. Here’s why.

There are a lot of good time-lapse videos out there, but here is a personal selection of the finest ones that racked up millions of views and dozens of awards.

Creating promotional video content for industrial and corporate clients is an often overlooked, yet very large, part of the market when it comes to the amount of work they can generate for production companies. A few years ago my business was hired to produce such a video, and I (finally) have the behind-the-scenes video completed to show how we put everything together.

If you want to pack light everyday and still be able to get a lot of work done, a tablet can definitely step up for some of the post-production work that you do. With the help of these tools, you’ll be able to fully utilize the capabilities of your tablet computer.

Some of you might not consider what you do as art, but as a photographer, you're an artist. A lot of small pieces and parts come together to make your images what they are, and that process of deciding everything from the model, to the clothing, the lens choice, to the lighting, is an artistic one. Many genres of photography are heavily dependent on other artists; portrait photographers need models and more than likely a makeup artist and stylist to bring their vision to life. Networking is key to our work in order to meet people that we trust to help us craft our images.

A year ago today, I decided to start a photography YouTube channel offering advice from a commercial photographer's perspective who makes the vast majority of his income from ad campaigns. Here is what I learned.

Wildlife photography has always been a passion for me. It's not something that pays the bills, but it's something that I love, and it is great for my own mental health. Recently, I was informed of a family of Little Owls in England, and the young Owlets had just begun fledging from the nest. I took the near three-hour drive down to the location and watched these beautiful creatures.

In the share economy, more and more people are finding their side hustle in the form of renting out extra rooms or vacation homes through services like VRBO and Airbnb. Earlier this month, I did a quick and easy property shoot for one such hopeful side hustler. Using a minimal photo kit and about an hour of editing, I created a nice set of images, sure to help them get bookings. Here’s how I did it.

Using your personal interests and hobbies can be a great way to create a stock photography niche that is both creatively and financially rewarding.

A few days ago, China landed a rover on the far side of the moon and captured the first ground image of this hemisphere. But the Soviet Union already photographed the dark side 59 years ago with a little help from Kodak and a top secret U.S Air Force program.

If you constantly struggle to come up with new ideas for your photography work, then your career could be in serious trouble. Try one of these seven strategies to help you get that next big idea and keep those creative juices flowing.

Earlier this week, Instagram published a blog detailing information on how its algorithms work and why transparency is important when it comes to building trust. With that in mind, when will Instagram tell us how much money it makes from allowing the millions of possible copyright infringements that happen every single day?

Adobe is taking all the hard work out of 3D compositing, by marrying stock models with their 3D scene creation and rendering app.

You've heard that a portrait lens is the one with a focal length of 50mm or above and that wide angle lenses create a distorted image when used for portraits. This article will try to help you understand and overcome that prejudice.