Fstoppers Original Articles

You may have already read about Steven Holleran in a recent Fstoppers article. If not, let me briefly fill you in: Holleran is an extremely talented and accomplished visionary behind the lens. He's been commissioned by companies such as Google and Nike, and was the daring cinematographer for the popular Netflix series Fire Chasers and the award-winning Sundance film "A Boy. A Girl. A Dream." Plus, he's a badass.

I recently made a trip to the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona to photograph college graduation portraits. It was my first time on the ASU campus and my first time shooting college graduation photos. Here’s what I learned.

In general, we always discuss how our industry is changing and how we should do things differently to prosper. This is not only limited to our industry of photography: take the industry of education for example. Not all that long ago, college was considered the thing to do to be respected and move forward in your chosen profession.

Stock photography is an industry that enables many photographers to make a good living. Though some photographers focus their entire career around creating stock imagery, almost every photographer has the ability to supplement their income with images they've already taken.

When creating imagery of any night landscape, you are taking your camera and the other equipment you own and pushing them to their limits. With that in mind, should photographers be upset when their favorite imagery is put together in post?

While it is tempting to constantly compare ourselves to other photographers, it’s important to remind ourselves of what we already know: the quality of art cannot be measured in numbers.

Fstoppers is bringing you our first ever tutorial that deals with video rather than photos: "Intro to Premiere: A Video Editing Tutorial."

Making a short film is quite expensive, they say. However, if you know what to do, you can achieve your goal with very little tools and on a small budget. But let me warn you: it's not a simple task.

The cost was 107 billion dollars for a giant leap for mankind but a trashy subject and framing for the first picture taken on the surface of the moon.

If you are like me, you probably get numerous emails and Facebook messages from people in India wanting you to use their services for your image editing. While these individuals may give outsourcing to India a bad reputation, I’m here to show you what it’s really like at the reputable post-production service provider that is located in Mumbai, India: Pro Image Editors.

Have you ever felt like your photos were missing something? In this quick Photoshop tutorial, learn how to make your photos pop with this simple sharpening technique to bring your photos to life in minutes.

There're so many stories about big brands and companies approaching photographers in the hope of getting free images to use in exchange for the popular currency that is exposure, but what happens when they exclude the photographer from the equation completely and instead head straight to your client asking for free images?

You might have heard people talk about using leading lines to really improve your composition, but how exactly do you use them, and how do you find them? Let me show you five different examples here so you'll know what to look for next time you're shooting.

Allan Hinton, also know by his Instagram alias Chaiwalla, just returned from a trip to Southeast Asian nation Myanmar. For the journey, he swapped his Sony a7R II for a Nikon D5600. Here’s how he found the experience.

This week, our readers were challenged to find shots containing circles. Using a shape opens up the possibilities and the results are wonderful. Be sure to share with your photography circles if you enjoy.

At this point in time, I have lost track how many photographers I have run into who view other photographers around them as mortal enemies. Don't be that person; instead, realize that your camera-laden peers can be incredible sources of friendship and reciprocity.

The most significant hurdle when running a photography business is booking more clients. If you feel like you’re in a “booking rut,” here are a few ways to help spread your brand awareness and book more photo clients.

Choosing the ideal images for your portfolio can often seem as hard or harder than actually taking the photos in the first place. Most photographers tend to treat their portfolio as a dumping ground for as much work as possible with the intention that quantity is the key to building their credibility. More often than not, the opposite is true.

An image is eye catching when it's extraordinary. So why is it that the ordinary and banal can appear extraordinary? And if that really is the case, how can we go about achieving that?

Most of my food photography is lit with only one light source and after a few years of taking a special interest in shooting food and drink, I know exactly where I want the light to be and why.

Three-dimensional models are now widely used in the gaming and movie industries and one of the most common methods for creating them uses computational photography. This, the first of two articles, explains how it works.

Sometimes the best lessons in photography can come from sources far from the art world. Last week I saw an image that helped to remind me of one of the best lessons for a successful business and a successful life.

Working day in and day out as a creative professional, I don't put a lot of stock in inspiration as a source of drive and creativity. Some days, you just have to do your job whether you're inspired or not. For me, staying motivated is far more important!

As Spring gathers steam and hits its stride, wedding photographers all over gear up for sleepless nights in front of a monitor, intoxicated Macarena dance moves, and most importantly, activity in their bank accounts once more. Feeling left out of all that fun? Here are some pointers for joining in on the fun.

In an industry that seems to grow exponentially every day, how can existing and new photographers find an outlet for their work - one that is going to pay the bills and fuel their passions? Lifestyle, sports, and adventure photographer Scott Martin may have the answers you've been looking for.

For years photographers and YouTube commenters have been telling us that in order to get the most out of our Profoto B1 and D1 lights, we need to add the Profoto Frosted Glass Dome to our strobes. Today I test this add-on to see if it makes a difference at all, and the results are surprising.

You need different tripods for different situations, but you don’t need to spend big on them. I’ll show you three tripods I use that can cover you in almost any setting and won’t break the bank.

The little red toy car sat on a shelf, serving no purpose. It was inanimate, nothing more than the die-cast metal pieces of which it had been constructed. But it caught the eye of photographer Felix Alejandro Hernandez Rodriguez and an idea — a character — was born. Hernandez changed the car and brought it to life, and in turn, the car changed his life.

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.

Personal projects often take a lot of planning and persistence to pull off. They are passion driven assignments which is a big part of why they are so important to evolve as a photographer. However, sometimes opportunity and timing don't line up so you have to make the best of a poor situation. This is when experience and determination make or break an idea.

Composition is one of the hardest things we deal with as photographers. It is complex and can seem like a neverending pursuit. Today, we’ll look at five simple ways we can approach a scene and come away with an effective composition.

I don't mean hanging out of a car window untethered to get a shot of another moving car (although that sounds kind of fun). What I mean is don't be afraid to take your work in a direction previously unexplored. What's the worst that can happen?

A few months ago, I showed you how we build out our new 10Gbps network using a Synology NAS device as our central server. This setup is protecting us from a hard drive failure, but our data still isn't 100 percent safe. In this video, I'll show you one simple step to protect your files from all types of data loss.

Airport authorities officially say that film at or above ISO 800 may be damaged by X-ray scanning. But they really should tell you that ISO 800 film will be damaged and that less sensitive film still could be affected. I found this out the hard way. Here's how I learned an important lesson along with a few other tips for avoiding issues while traveling with film.

With all the hectic distractions that come with today's fast-paced lifestyles, it's nice to slow things down sometimes and focus on one thing. That is exactly what long exposure photography offers, and our readers made it hard to pick out the best photo, as there were so many great shots this week.

Every few years we go through trends in wedding photography. The latest trend seems to be stylized photo shoots. Though stylized photo shoots are gorgeous and ripe with portfolio-worthy images, could they be hurting the industry?

Have you ever felt like your photos were missing something? In just two minutes, learn to make your portraits come to life by adding a realistic burst of light in Photoshop.

The pursuit of perfection in any creative craft can often inspire the feeling that one is forever climbing a mighty mountain yet never even rising beyond base camp. Photography is no different, any photographer worth their salt will have trudged through great difficulty to reach mastery in their craft. We all commonly begrudge the struggle, but it is through that struggle that we are able to make all of our most impressive gains.

Yes, you read that correctly. A two-light setup (one key-light, one back-light) using nothing but natural light. No bounce, no reflectors, nothing. With just you, your subject, and a little knowledge, you can create stunning imagery with even more depth using your surroundings to your advantage. So are you ready? Let's go!

Sure, the photo-focused social media app is saturated. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it to drum up more business. If you’re a photographer wanting more clients, Instagram has the potential to be a powerful marketing tool.

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.

It’s easy to let life get in the way of photography sometimes. Kids happen, bills need to get paid, and plans to take that cross-country trip fall by the wayside just to keep the gears running smoothly.

Black and white conversion can be a complicated ordeal, and you can find yourself down a deep rabbit hole of theory if you're not careful. There are times where that kind of in-depth analysis is critical to a perfect image, but sometimes you just need a quick fix. That's where this tip comes in.

For many years the real king of detail, sharpness, color, and DOF has been a 16-bit medium format system, such as Phase One. The larger the film (or sensor) the better the quality has been. Naturally, with my quest for maximum quality in every way, the path led me to medium format. Along with an obsession to be like Joey L for a longer period of time than I care to admit, it only seemed like the next step was to make the switch to medium format.

Just before you decide to throw out that old laptop and upgrade to a new one you might be surprised to find how a very quick and easy hardware swap could actually change everything.

Getting ready for your next landscape photography expedition? If you want to bring back winning shots, you need a variety of great places to shoot. Points of interest are easy to find, but the easy-to-find places are prime targets for hordes of tourists.

As a wedding photographer, it's not always easy to find balance between the style of work you're genuinely passionate about and the type of work that pays the bills. So, how can you shoot personal projects to improve your professional photography work?

When we start out as photographers, it can be a little underwhelming, I mean, we all have this idea of what we're capable of and yet we start out working on small jobs (often) with low budgets. Assisting helps you keep your enthusiasm while rising up through the ranks of experience and gives you access to productions possibly decades away from your current skill set.

Slot canyons can be found all around the world. These narrow canyons can be made of sandstone, ice, granite, clay, or other naturally occurring materials. Some of these canyons can be rather large in both width and depth, while other canyons can be incredibly narrow and difficult to navigate

Are you able to do everything you need from inception of an idea to execution up until delivery with Adobe CC alone, or do you need other apps like Da Vinci Resolve and Capture One for coloring your video and photo projects? With Adobe's latest update, is it possible to do it all using only Adobe?