Fstoppers Original Articles

V-flats are traditionally not portable by any means. For those that have a little DIY in them, I made my own portable v-flats that I can take with me anywhere I need. Here’s how to make them.

The holiday season is upon us and dreams of new camera gear are dancing in our heads. Our email boxes are full of offers for deals on lenses, flashes, tripods and of course those new mirrorless cameras. If only we could have it all, our photographs would be so much better.

I do not adhere to a certain style and that gives me a lot of freedom.

Next year, we are planning on creating more video content than ever and the vast majority of it will be available for free on the Fstoppers YouTube channel. We want to cater our videos around the aspects of photography and video that you want to learn. Will you help us with some feedback?

If you’ve run a photography business for any amount of time, I can almost guarantee that you’ve come across clients who make requests you don’t want to fill.

One of the greatest challenges that we have as photographers is to try to show a three-dimensional world in only two dimensions. That missing dimension, depth, can only be implied. There are many ways to create a feeling of depth. Lighting and composition are two, but my favorite is using what I call dimensional framing.

If a picture tells a thousand words, these photographs of Baja 1000 race vehicles created after the race tell tales of blood, sweat, tears, and the epic battles that ensue every year as racers battle it out in Mexico.

In Part One of this series, we began writing our business plan by focusing on the nuts and bolts of our business. In this section, we will start to expand on those roots and add to the "what" by knowing our "why".

Olympus has produced a beautiful series of videos on YouTube whereby its ambassadors visit some stunning locations, exploring Lapland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Namibia. What’s noticeable is that all of the Olympus Xplorers are men.

In an effort to please everyone, setting expectations and educating your clients is something that creatives often shy away from. But why not create a shiny little brochure to educate your wedding clients?

In this article, go behind the scenes of a recent shoot and see how I shot, lit, and edited this 1920s inspired shoot.

How do you replace a golden goose? Ever since the cinema essayists at "Every Frame a Painting" (EFaP) stopped posting, I’ve been asking myself the same question over and over. I’ve tossed my net far and wide, and this is what I’ve caught.

Slides contain a lot of memories from events past: anniversaries, weddings, birthdays, family vacations and more. If you want to preserve those images for generations to come, you need to think about digitizing them. Here's a rundown of the options available and the results you can expect from each.

You take out your camera, shoot a photo and like it. After a little post-processing you print two copies and send one to a friend. In a Mission Impossible Machiavellian twist, the photo self-destructs once they open it and, at the same time, so does yours.

Photographer Ole Martin Halvorsen recently did a photoshoot that was was part of a larger social media and advertorial campaign for H&M Norway, in collaboration with Spray for their magazine Portia.

Boudoir shoots are inherently more quiet and less flamboyant by their very nature, but that doesn't mean that they have to be any less creative and unique than any other style of shoot. One of the ways that I have found to change things up with my boudoir work is to set up the shoots in random Airbnb properties instead of in studios.

Lifestyle photographer Denise Crew was approached by the producers of Netflix’s Queer Eye about a book they were producing that had a very quick turn-around. It typically takes 18 months to publish a book from start to finish and they needed to do this book in 6 months.

A lot of writers and experts in the photography world have been joining the chorus of “photographers should add video to their skill basket.” But, as far as business models are concerned, photography and video can be as different as sushi and gelato. So, before you jump head-on into video, consider my words of caution.

All books on economy may tell you that you desperately need to raise your prices, but the specialists and formulas may be wrong.

Art is a huge form of self expression. We use it to push through a traumatic experience, to pull us out of sadness, or even to express the intense happiness we feel when we are overwhelmed with the beauty that surrounds us. Sometimes, we can also have this same effect on others maybe without even trying .

What causes blur? It seems a simple enough question, but in pursuing the answer to this, I've ended up becoming a firm believer in quantum efficiency. So where did this journey begin?

It's 2018 and I have no idea where I'm supposed to share photos anymore. There was a time though, when Google+ and its booming photography community was the clear answer.

There are things professional photographers do that are almost certain to get them placed on Santa’s “bad guy” list. Are you guilty of committing any of these photography "sins"?

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?

ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2019 has a tool called Light EQ™, and it's superb for making many changes quickly and easily.

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 2018, 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.

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

Adobe recently released the new version of Photoshop, and it is relatively faster and smoother than the previous versions. However, it might still crash.

One of the most expensive mistakes you can make as a photographer is to change brands after being fully invested in another brand. This article explores pros and cons of each brand offering a full frame option.

Styled photo sessions can be a powerful tool for any wedding photographer’s portfolio. However, if utilized incorrectly, styled photos can arguably hurt the wedding photography industry. Here’s how to properly use styled photo sessions for your portfolio.

That's right, you all know the type, the tourist that really gets under your skin and makes you wonder how it would feel to just accidentally push them off the cliff. You can't escape them, no matter which part of the world you happen to be in, so why not just join their ranks?

The mall, removed. The cheesy decor, gone. The long lines, nope. Santa Sessions have become all-the-rage and photographers are making these shoots more of a high end experience. I witnessed a shoot first hand and to be honest, $10k seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Here’s what I learned.

It’s a gray flat sky day, and you need to get something interesting, but the sky isn’t helping. It's time to think of something different. Of course, time to go blue.

Since the introduction of digital photography our cameras are provided with a nice LCD screen to see the photo we’ve just taken, or to see the photo that we’re about to take. But be careful with these screens, they can be misguiding in some situations.

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.

Today begins a three part series on building a successful business plan as a photographer. The topic deserves its own full book, but hopefully these essays will give those of you just starting out a primer on things you need to consider when turning your hobby into a profession.

For years, whenever I’ve traveled, I’ve gone through the trouble of dragging a MacBook Pro, charger, and cables along with me. I tried something different on my most recent trip, and I don’t think I can go back.

Probably the first advice you received as a new landscape photographer was to purchase a polarizing filter. But once you’ve mastered the polarizing filter on a few landscape photography trips, my recommendation is: take the polarizing filter off.

In my photographic world, it’s sometimes nice to remind myself that I’m often little more than a monkey pushing buttons on a very expensive box.

After a lot of thought and contemplation, I switched from Canon to Nikon five years ago. Each camera system has a lot of pros and cons, but the real question is do I regret the switch?

Have you ever wondered what would happen to your business if you were unable to work? I talked to one such photographer about his experience with a near catastrophic injury, and the fallout surrounding it in regards to his business.

What happens when a location becomes overrun with photographers? You have to wake up at 3 am to stake out your spot.

Don't have thousands to spend on lighting gear? One of the most valuable lighting methods you could find out there also happens to be the cheapest: a window. The best part about it, is that it is free!

Capture One Pro is a behemoth of a raw converter. Its ability not only to bring out amazing detail in raw files but also to efficiently organize photos before, during, and after a shoot is truly impressive. If you haven't used Capture One before, or if you're just getting started, here are some suggestions for how to get the most out of the software's approach to organization.

Fujifilm has just released its brand new flagship X-T3 mirrorless camera. With its older brother, the X-T2, the vertical grip unlocked the extra ounce of juice required to get the full performance from the camera. However, with the X-T3’s new processor, the vertical grip is no longer needed for this reason. So, what are the benefits of getting it and do you still need to spend the extra money?

The holidays months can bring extra leisure time, and there's nothing more rewarding than spending that free time on a challenging photography project. During last year's fall holidays I decided to turn my available energy into something creative and fun: a pet calendar for 2018.

I bet that you think that you are pretty good at composing your photos. You’ve been shooting for years, won some awards, nice client list. You got that part figured out. Guess what? Not only are you not “all that” but you really need to work on it. How am I so sure? Check this out.

It doesn't matter how long you have been a photographer, I guarantee that some of your images will suck. Question is, do you really know why they do?

Recently, Squarespace announced a new partnership with Unsplash via their company blog. Before we dive into why this story is worth discussing, it’d help to explain who Squarespace and Unsplash are and what they do.

How does a photographer have names such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Powder Magazine and The New York Times on his client list? And how might you be able to do the same?