Fstoppers Original Articles

Every photographer is always on a quest for sharper photos, but many only have a vague idea of how to actually create sharper images. The obvious is fairly well known such as high shutter speeds, closed down aperture, keeping ISO low, etc. There are also quite a few other minor techniques that can make a huge difference and are often ignored.

Focus and recompose is an extremely common method for getting around AF sensors with limited AF point spread, but it's an imperfect technique that could be causing you more issues than it's worth.

At this point in our lives, the majority of us have come to understand our capabilities and our limitations. If we were never good at sports, we have come to accept this as truth. If we are great at math, we have likely received this "gift" and possibly moved into a career field where we can maximize the ease of which numbers have come to us. As photographers, you have the "eye" for it, or you don't. Are these established beliefs, based likely on past evidence in reality, or are they limitations we have placed upon ourselves?

Allow me to be the first to ask the question. Are we really worth it? Now, don’t get me wrong. I come from an economics background. I understand price equilibrium. Pour me a large blonde roast with cream, and whisper me sweet nothings about Adam Smith all day. Leave all that behind for a second. I’m talking on a more philosophical level. Are we really worth the money we charge?

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to walk into almost any photographic situation armed with a whole vocabulary of lighting techniques and be able to quickly select exactly the type of lighting you want for the main light of your photo? By understanding six key qualities of light you can create your own vocabulary of lighting to draw upon and apply for your desired effect in fashion photos, formal, and lifestyle portraits and beyond. Angle, Size, Distance, Shape, Duration, and Color are each qualities of light that photographers can combine and manipulate these qualities in setting the look of their photograph for impact beyond just illumination.

We live in a world constantly fascinated by technology. We want the TV with the greatest definition. We want the tablet with the shiniest screen. And, as photographers, we always want the most expensive gear and the most elaborate new toys. But the more you grow as an artist, you'll quickly realize it's the man that makes the equipment, not the equipment that makes the man (or woman).

One of my goals as I started taking photography more and more seriously was to shoot a sunrise. Although it seems easy enough to just "get up early and bring a camera," I've found more often than not if you aren't prepped, you'll sleep in. Join me in a walk through three of my successful sunrise shots!

Like many photographers during the digital revolution, the idea of being able to capture high-quality video with my stills camera has always been enticing. Filmmaking is a different way to tell a story entirely, because of the addition of context. While a still photograph can certainly be moving, influential, and captivating, a motion picture allows for the beginning, middle, and end of a story to be shown in a constant visual style.

What a tangled, twisted road this has been. When I finally built up the courage to try out large-format photography a little more than half a year ago, I knew that I was in for a bit of a rough ride. But with a healthy serving of ruined film, swear words, and YouTube lessons under my belt, I've come out semi-clean on the other side. Here are the most useful lessons I've learned thus far. Hopefully I can stave off some frustration for those of you who feel like taking the plunge.

All films start with a small seed. An idea. It’s something we as filmmakers all have in common — we want to turn a thought into something tangible, a place where we can meet someone and share a thought. These ideas change with the season, but there’s always something there. It’s what makes us filmmakers.

The most important tool in any photographer’s arsenal is their ability to use and manipulate light. However all too often many photographers either shy away from, or completely rule out using hard light and it may be hindering not only their flexibility but also their creativity. What if you could shoot in direct sunlight and love it?

Who doesn’t wish they could eliminate that annoying bystander threatening the vibe of your shoot with a simple click of a button? Well, you may not be able to do it in real-time, but it is possible to eliminate that pesky drunk with a single click in Lightroom.

While I was in Dubai a couple of weeks ago at Gulf Photo Plus, I was able to play with a pre-production Panasonic GH5. I compared the GH5 to the Nikon D750 (our current video camera of choice) and the Sony a7S II.

A few weeks ago I shared some insight on using shotgun microphones for documentary style interview productions. This week, I’ve got a companion video that explores techniques for using lavalier mics, the standard go-to mic for most interview scenarios.

The Fujifilm X Series Mirrorless Interchangeable Lens cameras have gained a dedicated, almost cult-like following over the last few years for their colors, ergonomics, image quality, and firmware updates. However, getting into the Fuji world, especially from a DSLR user's standpoint, can be a daunting experience. Here are a few things you can do to make sure you get the most from your Fujifilm X Series system.

As the winter months can be a slower period for portrait photographers, they present an opportunity to work more on your business, rather than in your business. One productive off-season activity for growing your pet photography business is to reach out to local retailers to create new co-marketing opportunities.

Our love story began, like many, amidst the tumultuous, coming-of-age years of high school. Me, a wide eyed, optimistic 16 year old kid with a lanky, awkward build. I stayed out of trouble… choosing books over beers, and enjoying the simplicity of a life-before-adulthood. She was different. The new girl on the scene. A wide-bottomed goddess, pear-shaped to perfection, milky-white and miraculous. The talk of the town, if there ever was one. Her name? iMac G4.

A little over a year ago I had the opportunity to do my very first celebrity photo shoot with Grammy Award-winner Fatman Scoop at my studio in New Jersey. He had posted on Instagram that he was looking for photographers and videographers to collaborate with. Thinking I had nothing to lose I submitted a brief email expressing my interest and directing him to my website to review my work and to reply back if he liked my work. To my surprise, I received a response a couple of days later asking to schedule a date to shoot!

It's 2017, which, if you haven't heard the news, means it's back to film (Yes, I admit I would have said the same for any year, but 2017 really is special in this regard. Read on to find out why). Most of us are living the digital photography lifestyle, however, and though every photographer is a gear hound to some degree, we're loath to overpay on stuff we don't need. Solution? Buy a film body for your existing lenses. In the first of a loose series, let's take a look at the first mount in the alphabet and your options for it. Here are some cool cameras for Sony's A-mount.

Action sport photography has always been something that I have been drawn to, but I just don't have the access and opportunity to shoot it very often. So when I got the chance to shoot some wakesurfing, I Instantly jumped at the opportunity. The one thing I wanted to do going into the shoot though, was come out with something different.

Being behind the camera for a boudoir session can be just as exhilarating for the photographer as it is for the client. You are capturing the confidence being displayed right before your eyes. Add in another subject and the room becomes intoxicating when you think about the final images you will be editing. However, understanding how to gain that moody light or that intensity needed for a couples boudoir shoot is just what one photographer explains to us all.

I'm a new(ish) parent who wishes they had a studio to photograph my little human. Surely you would only need a small studio for a small person, right? Preferably one you wouldn’t have to pay rent for. That’s where your living room and some creativity comes in handy.

First impressions are everything, and your website is often your first chance to make a great impression with a potential client or fan. Unfortunately, most website portfolios are pretty rough. I will try to skip the obvious and avoid telling you about having a nice design or great work, instead lets focus on some of the things that are a lot less obvious but also super important when it comes to putting your best foot forward.

Tampa, Florida: A local photographer canceled a sizable contract from a prominent car magazine after finding out the job would require using the Pen Tool in Photoshop, noting: "I'd rather nail Jell-O to a tree."

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 2017, 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.

These past few days I have caught myself shooting a lot more than usual. When I am not working, I still get the urge to go out and shoot, whether I take out the drone, my Nikon, or the little Micro 4/3 camera. Recently, I have been shooting tons of aerial photography and I finally decided to ease off a bit and shoot with my Nikon some more; I’ve realized how much fun it is to just create awesome images with any camera. I think that getting out there and shooting whatever it is you want to shoot is something that drives you as a photographer and can really help improve your eye for photography in general.

The inverse square law is one of the most important yet misunderstood concepts in photography. On the surface, it basically says that the intensity of a light source will decrease as you move the light away from your subject, but how does that apply to the highlights and shadows in a portrait? In this small excerpt from the "Illuminating the Face" tutorial, Peter Hurley breaks down both the math and the practical application of the inverse square law.

We live in a world of excessive options, often leading to crippling cases of “analysis paralysis.” This reality is particularly prevalent in the world of online learning. I can’t even count the number of YouTube videos I have to search when I want to learn a particular skill, before I finally find a half decent one or give up and teach myself. So when the folks over at Skillshare reached out to see if I was interested in checking out their library of classes, the answer was obviously yes. Spoiler Alert: Skillshare is offering our readers two free months of Premium classes. Read the review below then check out Skillshare for yourself.

We at Fstoppers have always been big fans of the incredible photographers and retouchers who form Retouching Academy. The talent and educational knowledge of Julia Kuzmenko McKim has been shown in our 2015 Fstoppers workshop, through many posts on Fstoppers and Retouching Academy, and is condensed in her Studio Beauty photography tutorial. Now, another instructor at Retouching Academy is stepping up to bring more invaluable information to the community. Michael Woloszynowicz presents the newest tutorials from RA with an in depth look at the process of Dodge and Burn as well as Color Grading.

Life is busy… I get it. Between weddings, engagements, meetings, phone calls, and the seemingly never ending hours of toil spent in the Lightroom develop module it can be very easy to let things go. It starts small at first. You forget to send that album to print, or you forget to listen to that voicemail from yesterday morning. Slowly, it seeps further into your workflow, until you suddenly realize you haven’t cleared out your inbox in three days.

Have you ever captured a really amazing picture of a car or motorcycle only to realize that you forgot to turn the headlights on while you were on location? Don't you worry about a thing because Photoshop makes it a breeze to flip on those high beams in just a few easy steps.

By narrowing your focus and promoting your specific skill set, you can grow your business and stand out in even the most overly saturated market.

So you’ve decided to transfer your skills as a photographer to shoot video and have quickly found that some skills, such as composition, transfer well to motion pictures; but some do not, such as color grading. The main issue is that photographers get used to the amount of data in the raw format that can be saved and manipulated in post. In video, the data rates of almost all consumer DSLRs give you limited room to grade video without the image falling apart. Using the tool set of FilmConvert is an incredibly easy and efficient way to get to a cinematic look with almost any DSLR video file.

Tokyo is one of my favorite cities and I lived there for many years. While the crazy volume of traffic and crowds can be overwhelming at times, it's always an inspiring and surprising place to explore with a camera. So, where should you go if you only have a few days or less to shoot this incredible city? Here are a few of my favorite locations to visit with a camera, and the stories of some of the photos I have taken there.

Today was a day of much needed motivation, so I decided to grab one of my speedlights and shoot a portrait with an element of motion. In this case, water.

If you've been a photographer for any length of time, chances are you've experienced the dreaded slump; Your muse has run off with someone else, inspiration goes down the toilet, everything you create looks like crap, and even the desire to pick up your camera deserts you. If you are struggling through this season right now, there's hope. The slump can become the catalyst for your biggest season of artistic growth. Here are five steps I've found not only to make it through the slump, but to make it work for you.

Ever since I got my drone, I basically keep it in my car at all times in case I happen upon some cool spot while driving. It turns out that all these random excursions have become something very useful to me: profitable stock photography.

There was a time early in my photography career that I bought into the idea of becoming a natural-light photographer. In secret this idea manifested because using off-camera lighting to help shape my images meant learning about all of this crazy lighting technology. I’d rather just stick to what I was comfortable with forever and just not use it. Sound familiar?

I am not an early bird but living in Sydney, Australia on the east coast leaves me no choice but to get up early once in a while for a dawn to sunrise shoot. The coffee and breakfast at a beach cafe make it worth getting up at the sparrow's fart (Australian slang for very early). I've been shooting seascapes for over 10 years and I have always found it to be one of the most rewarding and challenging of photographic subjects. No two seascapes are the same and once you add variable weather and sea conditions to the mix there are endless opportunities for photographers willing to get their feet wet, so to speak! I am still learning everyday how to stay dry and not get washed away.

Jason Miller works as the Global Content Marketing Leader at LinkedIn by day, but is somewhat of a rock 'n' roll photographer by night. With an extensive portfolio consisting of the likes of Marilyn Manson, Foo Fighters, and KISS, Fstoppers chatted to Miller to get his thoughts on working as a semi-pro photographer, and how he balances his day job with his passion for photography by night.

The majority of the readers of this article who shoot video probably use still lenses. You might ask yourself why you may need different lenses for video while your existing photography ones work just fine. In this article I'd like to show you certain features of the cinema glass that you probably always wanted subconsciously. Maybe after reading this you'll start saving up the money for one.

I started my journey in photography back in 2011. Since then, there are only a handful of photographers that I have really paid attention to in terms of actively keeping up with their work. One of those photographers is Commercial Photographer Dave Hill. His work has taken a more drastic turn in just a few years than any photographer that I’ve followed. That’s one of many reasons that I reached out to Hill to chat about his work and photography.

If you're trying to gain an edge in a competitive market, getting inspiration from places you might not normally look could really help. This new documentary series will expose you to some of the world's most creative minds in fields you may have never considered. As an added bonus, one of the episodes features famous photographer, Platon, and is worth a watch just for that alone.

This week I was invited to the head office of Rotolight in Pinewood Studios, London to check out one of their flagship products, the Rotolight Neo. This is an LED light that can mount to your camera or can be used off camera using boompoles or light stands. This constant light source that can run off six AA batteries claims to be industry leading in areas such as brightness and color accuracy. But at $399.99, is it a worthy investment?

Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market has been my favorite spot for many years. The subtle differences between fish mongers is what adds vibrancy to the colorful characters that make up this market. Most of them have been working here for generations. Located just a two minute walk from Tsukiji train station, it’s a great place to spend the morning taking photos, followed by a very fresh sushi lunch. This has been my routine for the last eight years. The variety of closed and open spaces — from the auction houses to the narrow lane-ways — depict an ambience unlike any other fish market in the world. The bad smell of fish is not really apparent, which confirms the freshness of the product.

Resolution, bit depth, compression, bit rate. These are just few of the countless parameters our cameras and files have. Let's talk about bit depth here. There's a lot of good talk about 10 bit and a lot of bad talk about 8 bit. The computer can tell the difference, but can you?

Since the end of the Korean war, North Korea has been a closed nation. So closed, it is often referred to as the world's most reclusive nation. It shocks and delights the world almost every day with propaganda and anti-propaganda that peppers our news reports. It's a place that heavily regulates visits and the activities during those visits. Each tourist requires special permission and a guide that sticks to them like glue to visit anywhere in the nation. On top of that, you have to pick from a list of government approved locations, you can't just go for a walk or cycle the highways. So, what possessed Slovenian-born, London-educated, Matjaž Tančič to take his already difficult 3D workflow into a place that restricts movement and photography so much?

I love shooting on location and am passionate about deep blue skies. Usually I would use CPL and ND filters to get the best skies to my taste. A detailed article about how to get dramatic skies is described in my previous article, "The Ultimate Guide to Dramatic Skies in Portrait Photography." After the shot is taken I always play with the luminosity and saturation values of the blue tones. One issue I often face while darkening the skies via luminosity is having a white outline appear around my model. Today I will take you through a short tutorial of how to get rid of that quickly and effectively, without the need to compensate on your luminosity.

Well, technically it's economics but let’s be honest, proclaiming to the world “It’s Economics!” just doesn't pack quite as big of a punch. You probably haven’t heard that competition is good for business since (if I had to guess) your high school economics class, but most of us probably weren’t paying attention anyway. No offense Mr. Holt… The whole idea that competition increases your business is a super backward concept but when you break it down, it actually makes a lot of sense. As a photographer, I am going to explain this as it pertains to the photography, but the whole idea works for any industry out there.

In this simple lighting tutorial, I discuss three different ways to create softly lit and dramatic images with a single reflective umbrella.