Fstoppers Original Articles

Recently, I took a trip to Wichita, Kansas to see my sister get married. I packed up my camera, a few flashes, and my tripod for this trip with hopes of doing some photoshoots while in town. My two kids came out with me for this journey, and we ventured around the city.

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!

Shooting weddings can get to the best of us. Maybe it's when we were waiting for all of the family members to come together to take a big family photo in the middle of a wedding reception. Perhaps it was one of those moments when your bride turned against you. Or maybe, the lifestyle of a wedding photographer just became too much. Whatever it is, I think all wedding photographers have had frustrating times in their career.

Saying that you're "just a photographer" can be one of the most self-deprecating things that you can say as a professional. Those three simple words can destroy your credibility even if you're just trying to be humble about chasing your passion.

When I first started photography at 15 years old, I didn’t know anything about organizing a team. I would bribe my younger sister into being my model for the afternoon, pulling clothing from her wardrobe and doing the makeup (really badly) myself. I was worlds away from the average fashion photography set, which typically involves a team of agency represented models, a professional make up artist, hair stylist, set designer, wardrobe stylist, and assistants. This is how I conducted my photoshoots for years, and after a while I realized that I needed to expand.

There was a time when file limits were considered near impossible to reach ceilings. Each was designed many years ago for photos made by cameras with single-digit resolution. Times have changed, and unfortunately the formats have not. We now are faced with file size limits that are becoming more and more restrictive as cameras collect bigger and bigger chunks of data with every photo.

Often, I get asked how a shot was done underwater due to the objects that are with the client. Recently, I started using GoPros to obtain behind the scenes footage to help better explain positioning and lighting on various sessions. "The Archer" was one image that caused most people to ask: "Did she really shoot the arrow at you?"

Earlier today, DxOMark released their evaluation of the Canon 5D Mark IV, concluding that it has made notable strides in sensor performance. Anecdotally speaking, I can corroborate their results based on my time with Canon's latest generation of bodies. For years, many have bemoaned the company's sensors as lacking in dynamic range and being generations behind those of Nikon and Sony, but it seems now that they have essentially caught up to their rivals. However, for the everyday work of photographers, the story is a bit more complicated.

Earlier this year Fstoppers teamed up with Miami-based swimwear photographer Joey Wright to produce a full blown tutorial on all things related to swimwear photography. All in all, Joey's tutorial Swimwear Photography - Lighting, Posing, and Retouching is 8 hours of on-location photography and 12 hours of Joey's full postproduction workflow. Today we are releasing a short 50 minute excerpt from the tutorial as well as the included raw file so you can follow along at home.

Inspiration time. These guys are the cream of the crop on 500px at the moment. Note that this selection of landscape photographers doesn’t necessarily reflect my own judgment. It’s based on an average of 8 past articles on 500px ISO titled: “This Week in Popular: Top 25 Photos on 500px This Week.” Of this initial group, I have selected only landscape photographers, and here are their most recent works. Let’s go!

I'm guilty in being the one telling myself that if I had the gear I wanted, I would go out and shoot the projects I wanted to shoot. So nothing happens until I actually buy the gear. What you and I know is that it's not the gear, it's the person, the patience and the will to do great work that makes your photography a force to be reckoned with. And I've realized that the photographs I look at most, of my own and photographers I admire, are the candid images of models in the greenroom before they go out on the catwalk, or the model I'm shooting for a test, where the moment between shots appear and capture her walking to my instructed area.

Where Art Meets Architecture 2 Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 2. In this episode we photograph a $15 million home in Venice Beach.

If like me, you’re tired of those overprocessed portraits shot during golden hour or at sunset that crowd your online portfolios or your Instagram feed, then perhaps you should consider rising early for your portrait session.

For the last 10 days, I have been on easy street. Floating on a cloud. My photography life expertly hacked. Thanks to a Facebook video, my single biggest frustration with my Nikon D750s has been alleviated.

When touting the many virtues of film, people frequently mention the power of negatives in the highlights. But what does that mean, exactly, and how does its strength compare to its digital brethren? To find out the differences, I shot a demanding subject with both digital and black and white film, severely over and underexposing. How did they stack up against each other? Read on to find out!

Some things are too good to be true. But every now and again, the world offers you an opportunity to feel like you got the lucky ticket for two on an all-expenses paid vacation to Disneyland. This isn’t quite that good, but I don’t know many people who would say, “No,” to a free iPhone, let alone one that can make you money. Here’s how you can have cash left over after upgrading to an iPhone 7…

The iPhone 7 has been announced and the rumors were true; they've removed the headphone jack. Now you'll need an adapter to use your standard headphones. This is probably fine for the majority of iPhone users but it's impractical for me.

For photographers Frank Diaz and Deb Young, success is manifesting in many ways; features in industry publications, awards, and gallery representation. By setting their egos aside and collectively using their talents to create an ever growing body of work, the duo’s International Collaboration Project (ICP) continues to gain steam. But the project’s weight cannot be measured by the amount of print sales or awards it has already collected. The nature of the project defines their career and makes the rest of us question our solitary nature as photographers.

If you’re like me and live in a town of 1,300, marketing is the most difficult aspect of business you’ll encounter. Marketing with conventional methods is often extremely difficult or even impossible. In this article I will outline some conventional and non-conventional ways of marketing yourself in a small town.

I'm a portrait photographer. I think that is pretty obvious by my portfolio being completely full of people photos. The nature of the portraits I shoot varies from time to time, but ultimately I make images of humans almost exclusively. Being specialized is great, and even critical, according to many, in regards to creating a photography career. There really isn't any doubt it in that. However, don't let that specialization bar you from ever trying out other types of photography.

Self-portraits, unlike selfies, are not always easy to make. They are not a cry for attention or a showcase of your physical beauty. Self-portraits are a learning curve and experimental field for the photographer who is willing to bare his soul in front of his own lens, like Van Gogh and Rembrandt did before for their paintings.

It all started last year when Patrick and I flew around the world twice to create Photographing The World with Elia Locardi. We documented our entire three months of travel and edited it all down into 16 behind the scenes episodes. Earlier this year we created a behind the scenes series with Joey Wright covering our Swimwear Photography tutorial. These series have been so popular that we've decided to continue them.

Developing an idea for a memorable photoshoot is not an easy task. It involves concentration, creativity, discipline, managing skills, and much more depending on the type of photoshoot. Often, we start with a barely visible image in our head. But having a strong sense what we want, will help us develop it into a final, achievable visual. An inspiration is a crucial part of this algorithm. Everything can serve as an inspiration: from a dress to a hair color you saw on someone; from music to a movie you watched last night; from a color at the shop counter to a tree in your backyard. When you have something realistic to build your theme upon, things get easy. But what do you do when you have no idea where to shoot it? Your mobile phone can be your savior here.

If you're using a color checker to only correct white balance, then you're not getting the most out of it. A color checker is the only way to replicate true to life skin tones accurately.

As photographers and people in the visual media industry, we need to make our work accessible across the platforms we and the people who like photographs (everyone) browse and use on a daily basis. We need to be marketing-orientated to take our careers and what we do to the next level, whether the next level is to shoot more weddings, booking more fashion gigs, or being the go-to person for professional portraits.

Last week I had the pleasure and honor to be interviewed by Clarke Scott whose podcast, Hack The Creative, is a weekly series that dives into the habits, fears, inner-battles, and keys to success from his guests who are creatives from all over the industry. We discussed a wide array of topics including my backstory and career path; practices I use today to sustain and grow my career, as well as what my aspirations as a creative are going forward. I go completely unfiltered and bare all for all of you to listen to as Scott "hacked" me.

Four years ago we filmed Where Art Meets Architecture: How To Photograph Real Estate, Architecture and Interiors Tutorial, and it has been the most successful tutorial Fstoppers has ever produced. We've teamed up with Mike Kelley again to produce Where Art Meets Architecture 2: How To Photograph Luxury Homes and Advanced Photoshop Techniques, and it's available now.

Photoshop is a fantastic tool, but it is not always the fastest software on earth. Large files such as PSD, TIFF, and PSB that contain numerous layers can require a few seconds, if not minutes, to load. When all you want to do is quickly check that all the files in a folder are the final versions, it can be tedious! However, there is a neat trick to open your big files much faster. Here is how.

If you're just getting into shooting film, one of the first decisions you'll have to make is what format you'll be shooting. If you ask around, you'll get many varied responses as to the advantages and disadvantages of shooting 35mm, medium format, or large format, but I wanted to make an article that shows some basic advantages and disadvantages of each medium as well as a photo test to give you some concrete comparisons of the same subject.

I recently funded the printing of my first book via Kickstarter. It was the wonderful culmination of a year of hard work on the project itself and almost six months of preparation and promotion for the funding campaign. In the end, it was funded well beyond my goal. The whole process of creating, funding, and then realizing the project was quite surreal. I am still pinching myself from time to time as I pack the books ready for shipping to my backers and the recipients of the project. I wrote a while back about changing your mindset, knuckling down, and just doing things. Today, I'd like to talk a little about another thing that makes work happen: the word "yes."

Has your lack of followers affected you when trying to get a model for some project work? I have not experienced this situation. Maybe I was told another reason as to way they weren’t interested, but this hasn’t been one of the reasons I received. Recently, I was in a chat group with fellow photographers, and this topic was brought up. One of the photographers asked a model about doing a TF project, and the response was he didn’t have enough followers to work with. This isn’t the first instance where I have heard of. This had me thinking for a bit: why would this be the determining factor?

Boudoir photographers tend to the fears and concerns of their clients on a daily basis. In a boudoir session, the client is not only stripping down layers of clothing, but also layers of built-up emotional mindsets on body issues.

There was this thread going on on Reddit, and I just had to ask the Fstoppers community. The question had me thinking back to about ten years ago, when a group of friends and I went to "investigate" signs of paranormal activity in a derelict castle in Belgium. What is the craziest place you've been and got kicked out of for trespassing while taking (or trying to) take a photo?

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 2016, we'll be featuring a new photographer every month, whose portfolio represents both stellar photographic achievement and a high level of involvement within the Fstoppers community.

DSLR makers have developed a rather interesting propensity to focus their R&D budgets on creating the fanciest, most marketable sensors possible. A camera, however, isn't just limited to the scope of its sensor. There are so many other upgrades that could be made that have nothing to do with megapixel numbers. Below are a few straight out of my dream list that likely would be pretty difficult to make work.

Although its business practices have shifted more than once since the Facebook takeover, most of us still love Instagram for its ease of use, reach, and simplicity. But today's app update makes little sense... today. On one hand, the new pinch-to-zoom update is extremely late. The iPhone had this feature since inception (granted, cell phone photos were hardly a thing prior to 2007). On the other hand however, Instagram’s linear photo resolution of 1,200 pixels already comes rather close to the native horizontal resolution of larger phones like the iPhone 6 Plus. Zooming into these photos optimized (read: downsized) for these displays looks absolutely dreadful. What are they thinking?

When shooting catalog images of product it is very important to have consistency throughout the project. Oftentimes a single product might have several versions and each has to be shot separately. Since we want to ensure a consistent look for our clients we have to make sure the product lines up perfectly from shot to shot across all versions. Here is how I personally tackle that for tabletop images.

Sony has created a few gems when it comes to lenses in the past few years, with the 90mm Macro and 16-35mm f/4 potentially being some of the best in their class. 50mm for some reason seems to be their favorite focal length to produce, seeing as they now have seven different "normal" lenses with the release of their new 50mm Macro this morning.

A photograph that does not tell a story, is a lifeless picture – it’s a failure to capture the viewer and therefore, his heart. One single photograph can inspire a person if a photographer knows how to tell a good story. Because photographer Paul Choy wanted to find out the truth for himself behind media headlines, and because he wanted to tell the individual stories of each refugee, he set out for the refugees’ camps in Calais and Greece with his camera. The result is the ‘Faceless, Forgotten’ – a photo essay and a documentary about the struggles of refugees.

This is one of the most important questions that most photographers out there have been asking themselves. We admire the photographers who have their own styles, and sometimes we try to imitate their styles that we like most. We were all taught to try everything, until we find our own unique visual styles. But, is that really important?

This year has been rich in new exciting product releases. While most wedding photographers were probably awaiting the Canon 5D4 announcement, the action and sport photographers were looking forward to the new pro bodies, such as the Nikon D5 and Canon 1DX II. However, Nikon surprised us with the D500, their new APS-C flagship camera. Being the geeky photographer that I am, I wanted to try it out and see if it was good as a Nikon full frame body.

When photographing on location, be it a campaign for a clothing company, lifestyle images for a client, or just making portraits of someone outdoors, I always go through four steps before I actually take a photo.

One of the most common questions photographers have is about how to effectively price their work. Rates vary so widely based on location and skill level that many are left scratching their heads as to what is fair. This has led to the common mantra stating “ask for the clients budget.” Here is why I think that's a ridiculous way to price yourself and a horrible piece of advice.

When you're shooting film, especially large format film, you have a lot of time to think. When your hands are in a bag and you're loading or unloading many sheets of film, the mind tends to wander and probably the subject that crosses my mind the most is "why?" Shooting digitally would be so much faster. I could be out having a beer somewhere! I could be editing some images in Photoshop from an editorial gig that I've been putting off. Hell, I could be practicing my juggling skills (or learning to juggle). So, why am I instead up to my elbows in this bag, enduring the necessary tedium of film life? Here are some common doubts I have and the reasons I push past them!

The concept of permanence is flawed. Nothing can keep its state, unchanged indefinitely. What is young and vibrant will eventually wither and fade. I never fully grasped this simple truth until my father lay dying in the next room. While he would always be my father, I realized my dad wasn’t as permanent as I once thought. I had confused permanence with stability, and stability was exactly what I needed as my world spun out of control. Gut-punched, I reached out for the most stable thing I could find: my camera.

Don’t crop those photos when using for them for Facebook profile photos. Why would you want to if you don’t have to? It doesn’t show the full image in all its wonderful glory. That photo was picked because it’s one of your best works, or the model’s favorite photo, or the best portrait that person has, and so forth. Why not show it in its entirety? Don’t crop those photos!

This article will probably seem like a giant “duh” to a lot of you out there. Hell, even most avid selfie-shooters have figured this out. This is geared more towards the photographers who lust after huge, expensive light modifiers and overlook the amazing light source that is probably staring them in face. I suggest you start staring back!