Fstoppers Original Articles

Over my years as a fashion photographer and retoucher I’ve made contact and had conversations with countless other photographers. I’ve watched some of them flourish and some of them flounder. Those that rise above the competition and make their mark in the industry seem to embody a certain set of traits or characteristics that help in their success.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got hard drives full of footage from personal or other non-commercial projects, that don’t serve much use once the project they were shot for is completed. I’ve considered trying to license it as stock footage, but never really taken the time to do it. After checking out the site Nimia and interviewing one of their staff however, I decided to give it a try.

Last week, we featured an interview with the awesomely talented retoucher and photographer Marina Dean-Francis. This week, she's shared a video with Fstoppers showing her retouching on a hair and beauty image. Although the video has been sped up tremendously, it's not hard to see that there aren't many quick tricks in play here. It's no secret that maybe the greatest skill in retouching is patience.

Pay close enough attention, and there are some very useful tips in this video - my personal favorite comes in around the 2:30 mark and is a great way to add highlights on...

New York portrait and event photographer Kristina Hill never planned for one of her images to be stolen and used without her permission. Unfortunately, copyright infringement is a concern photographers often need to be more mindful of. Many of us have had our images used inappropriately or even edited without our permission, but having a client’s loving engagement photo twisted and manipulated into a bigoted political attack ad is something altogether different.

Tonight will be the first of three "supermoons" that will occur this summer. Supermoons are full moons that appear bigger and brighter than the other full moons throughout the year. As you probably suspect, this means that some of the best moon photographic opportunities await for those who come prepared. Here’s a helpful guide that will have you shootin’ for the [super]moon in no time.

New Orleans, Louisiana. If you’ve been following along, you may remember me mentioning at some point that starting around the beginning of July, my girlfriend Holly, our dog Olive, and I, will be giving up our apartment, putting almost everything we own into storage, and hitting the open road for at least two to six months.

Regret is the worst feeling in the world but as humans, we feel it. There are times we all look back at, kicking ourselves thinking "if only I had known… I would've done it differently." I remember telling myself if I was ever given the opportunity to be heard, I'd collect a list of tips to share with others so they don't have to feel the frustration that often comes along with regret.

As some of you may have already known, we were off to somewhat of a rocky start when we launched this new website. For a recap: we ran into a few load issues right before our switchover deadline, so we decided to postpone the launch for nearly 22 hours before launching it again. We have been monitoring the servers very closely and working nonstop to squish all the bugs ever since. Now that the dust has settled, I'd like to talk to you guys about how we set up our servers on Amazon Web Services - the cloud.

Big things are happening in the world of video editing and post-production. If you ever thought you’d like to develop (or improve) your video editing and post production skill set (and get a chance to do so for free) read on.

This week we are filming 5 days of fashion, beauty, test, and portrait looks with Michael Woloszynowicz from Vibrant Shot Photography. Michael is a Toronto based photographer and high end retoucher creating an in-depth Pro Tutorial with PRO EDU that will be available on sale in the Fstoppers store this summer.

With the brand new Fstoppers website, everyone can now upload a portfolio to a profile for the world to comment and rate your photos. After just a couple of days from launch Jaime Ibarra's photos exploded onto the front page, with a whole series of popular photos and with good reason. His photos are a beautiful combination of emotion, concept and color that you cant help but be stunned.

All this week at the PRO EDU studio in St. Louis, Michael Woloszynowicz has been hard at work showing off his techniques for an upcoming tutorial series on creating fashion and editorial photography. Today at 11am CST, myself along with the rest of the video crew will be streaming his model test look demonstrations live from the studio.

It's hard to imagine someone not describing what Sergeant Larry Reid Jr. does as a dream job. Once you see what he does, the images he captures and the joy on his face as he explains his process, part of you (no matter who you are) kind of wishes you were him. With two cameras strapped around his neck firing shots off while his pilot banks at seven G's, Sergeant Reid is living the dream.

Doug Gordon is a prevailing photographer and educator in the photography community. Whether you recognize his name or not, you've probably seen him on stages for just about every photo expo in the last five years. Through his industry connections, Doug has found a lot of success in his career, but what many don't know, is that he has stirred up a lot of controversy through plagiarism and deceitfulness.

I’m always one to preach the importance of prevention and preparation before walking into a photo shoot, but there are some things you just can’t prepare for. The more you shoot the more you come to find that gear will tend to fall apart after a excessive number of uses... and abuses.

One of the most versatile and powerful secrets of Photoshop is the luminance mask. Similar to a channel mask that allows you to select very precise parts of your image based on color, the luminance mask allows you to select parts of your image based on tonal range. Using Photoshop to select those tonal ranges for you, you can quickly and effortlessly make very specific color and contrast adjustments to color grade like a pro.

For my inaugural post on Fstoppers, I want to run down of a few of the apps that my studio manager and I use almost daily to help manage the studio and keep things running smoothly. Many of these you’ve probably heard of, others may be new to you. The list is actually endless, but I’ve narrowed it down to these nine to get us started:

With Facebook’s reach going down hill, we’re all looking for something that will allow us to get in touch with as many people as possible and Instagram is that link. If you need persuading, follow up this article with Dave Geffin’s post about how to fully harness the app. Once you’re convinced, here are some things you can do to make sure your followers are getting the most bang for their buck and you're showing off your best work.

David Jay, founder of Shoot And Share a platform for photographers to share high resolution images with their clients, made a rather interesting comment on social media the other day. He proposes you ditch the rights to your work in celebration of freedom and claims it will make you a happier photographer and the world a better place!

After spending a fair amount of time looking through the best images that the Fstoppers community has to offer, it's pretty easy to see what sets them apart. Not only are the shots themselves exceptional, but the post processing is world class (Julia Kuzmenko McKim and Michael Woloszynowicz, Photoshop extraordinaires, hold a few of our top spots). Photographers often take on their own post work either because of budget or wanting to maintain their full creative vision. Sometimes, even great photographers call on the retouching gods to lace their images with a bit of perfection. Marina Dean-Francis is one such retoucher (and photographer) with that incredible power.

You don’t need another image of the bride’s shoes, the groom’s bow tie, or some other “detail” photo to repost all over your Pinterest album. Really, you don’t. That’s not the photo that will make you the hero of the wedding day, or even keep you in the conversation for the rest of the evening.

Auxiliary Magazine is all about the alternative. They go against the mainstream to bring you the beauty of sub-culture which they have been proudly doing for 5 years and through 32 issues. I sat down with the Editor In Chief for Auxiliary Magazine, Jennifer Link, to discuss what it takes to run a popular independent magazine as well as their recent Kickstarter campaign to help the magazine go to print.

If you’re like me, you believe that within every photo there are a multitude of layers that exist. Whether it’s the eyes of our model, the body language of the engaged couple, or the overwhelming joy and love we see expressed in the smile of a groom seeing his bride for the first time, each photo we take, each photo we see,

It's hard to look at our photography with objective eyes. We know how much planning went into the shoot. We know how complicated the shoot was. We know how many hours in Photoshop we spent. The sad truth is, none of that matters. Your image should speak for itself. Let me help you rate your photography fairly.

Buying expensive gear and mastering lighting and technique play an important role in photography but ultimately, these things are secondary in achieving a solid portrait when facial expressions are factored in. No matter the genre of photography, whether it's fashion, weddings or family portraits, connecting to the subject is far more important than any other detail in shooting portraits. When portraying a personality or specific mood, there is a necessity to connect and extract emotions and moods.

Whether you’re traveling around or venturing out beyond your own backyard, cities offer an endless supply of interesting locations and moments for photographers. To take advantage of their potential you’ll have to not only identify the best compositions but also execute them well. Here are some tips that will help to take your city and cityscape photography to the next level.

A month ago I flew to North Carolina and was the Director of a 5 person crew for a week-long video shoot at a multi-million dollar corporate facility. Then just last week, I spent 4 days in Albuquerque as a Production Assistant, shooting behind the scenes images and getting lunch for the crew. My ego almost stopped me from taking that gig, but I’m glad it didn't. Here’s why.

Have you ever considered creating an accurate and detailed 3D model from 2D photos? Probably not, it's incredibly difficult. Now, if you try to do it on a truly massive scale and have a huge castle as your subject, it makes it almost impossible to do by hand. The guys at Pix4D took it as a challenge to their software and not only modeled the outside, but also the inside of the castle, all in one interactive 3D model. To prove that it can be done by anyone, they decided to use only consumer cameras (GoPro, DSLR and a Mirrorless).

It has been a long time coming but the newly redesigned Fstoppers.com has finally become a reality! The biggest change coming to the website is an active community run by YOU - our readers. Today marks the first public release of the new site design and hopefully you are as excited to become a part of this community as we are!

I’m a huge fan of Annie Leibovitz and the imagery she has captured over the past few decades. Being a self-taught photographer, I looked to her work time and time again for inspiration and motivation. Over the course of a year, I scoured the internet for information on her lighting setups, equipment and methodology. But, the more I dove in, the less concerned I became about equipment and the more I felt the need to simplify my style.

Stijn Verlinde is boarding a flight home to Belgium from a shoot in Las Vegas. “The one piece of advice I would give to anyone starting out is 'be dedicated'.” Stijn, who started out a few years ago with some basic gear has lived by that advice. He is constantly working and is revolutionizing dance music festival videos across the globe. His success is not elusive or down to luck – it’s the result of three very clear factors we can all apply.

We all have a half-dozen or so USB thumb drives laying around. You know, the ones you bought to replace the ones you thought you lost, but then found a week later? Maybe they were free at a trade show? I had my fair share and decided to do something about it: I created my new favorite and totally portable live-work "SSD." Considering I just needed one, $16 accessory, it all seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Photographer Karen Glaser is best described as a photographer of water. Declining to be “pigeonholed,” Glaser pulls from the genres of landscape, underwater, fine art, street, and documentary photography in her approach to capturing the complicated, beautiful, and diverse aquatic landscapes of Florida.

Awhile ago, fellow writer Peter talked a little bit about barter, and how to use it when a client has no budget, as well as a few other tricks. We always think money makes the world go round, but if you're working with an individual, stand alone businesses, there's a lot more than money to work with. I've done quite a bit of bartering in the past year, and there's a few steps to make sure it's a win, win situation for both sides.

From a retouching standpoint, there are few things more unpleasant or challenging than dealing with chunks of hair on the face, missing patches of skin texture and large folds of skin. Generally the existing tools in photoshop such as the healing brush or patch tool fail in these situations and we often end up with unnatural or unpolished results. When all else fails I often turn to a technique called texture grafting to deal with a multitude of issues.

One of the biggest frustrations I had when starting out photography was striking a good balance between all the aspects that went into creating a good image. I needed a system that helped me visualize the factors at play so that I could fully understand their impact on the work I was doing. So I developed something I call the shooting triangle to help myself understand all the facets that go into creating a good image. It is a system that works for me and maybe it can help you too.

Not everyday do you get a chance to take a photo that can make a difference in someone's life, or in my case help bring down governments. At age 21 I took a self portrait of myself screaming and posted it online and over the past few years that image has been stolen and used around the world thousands of times. We already shared the full story here on Fstoppers, but we never showed how wide-spread the photo went and how much it was used around the world. This video will show you just some of the different (unauthorized) uses.

This past week I've been sleep deprived, socially inactive, and holding a camera in my hands for more than I ever have in my entire life. You see, this past week I've been working with PRO EDU to film my first tutorial series to go on sale at the Fstoppers store this summer. Though learning a lot about my own work and process, I think I learned the most when I used a rented PhaseOne IQ250 system for one of my shoots.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a new friend via Facebook and he asked me to describe my most creative period of time and, if I could talk about what led to those circumstances. “Easy,” I said. “That moment is now - it’s right this minute.” I went on to describe how I’ve never been happier nor more focused on what I’m doing, how my work is being well-received, etc. But, later, when I thought about it, I realized that I was wrong (sort of).

David Bailey is a master of portrait photography. His four month gallery exhibition “Stardust” just closed in London. It took 3 years of planning to put it together, and looked at his 50+ years as a photographer and artist. I got to see it before it closed, but if you didn’t get a chance to go, don’t worry – here are five things that I think made Bailey the success we celebrate today, and what we can learn from him.

Many people in the editorial and commercial industry still send out promotional mailers. But the truth is, if you are just sending out a flyer with a few photos, you are flat out wasting your money. Clint Davis worked a desk job as an Art Director for multiple national magazines, which gave him a front row seat to photographers and illustrators sending in promotional mailers. He branched out, and decided to defy the odds of being thrown in the trash.

Hiking season is in full swing and in the last few years I've incorporated a lot of video and photography while on week long trips in the backcountry. When every pound of weight counts, you have to choose your gear carefully. In this post I’ll share my tricks and tips for making a useful kit without weighing you down.

I've been shooting professionally for just over four years now – “professional” as in starting a legitimate business where I charge money to take photographs of my clients. We could wax poetic on the distinctions between “amateur” and “professional” that don’t involve the exchange of money, but the area that I want to focus on has to do with the responsibilities and perceptions that come along with people hiring you as a business.

If you aren't growing you are dying. Maybe it is pessimistic view or a harsh reality for our industry. If you and your business isn't growing and adapting with the fast pace of an ever changing market and technology, you will become irrelevant. I have read dozens of negative articles online about running a photography business- this isn't one of them.

Sarah Ann Loreth is a fine art photographer who creates thought provoking, eye catching images that are reflective of her innermost feelings. She strives to develop beautiful, emotive photographs that tell a story of whomever it is capturing...

When someone tells a photographer that “their camera must be really good,” chances are the photographer will respond with an eye roll. The debate surrounding gear verses skill in the photography world is a tired albeit consistent discussion. Let’s not kid ourselves, gear does in fact matter. However, does a photographer need top of the line equipment to produce mind-blowing images? Take a look at this collection and decide for yourself.

Alien Skin Exposure 6 was announced last month and previous versions are considered some of the best plugins available according to both myself and Lee Morris. Well, yesterday Exposure 6 was released and they were kind enough to give me a beta copy to use for the last few weeks, so I wanted to share with you my top 5 favorite features from the version of the highly functional software.

There is one thing that constantly keeps cropping up in both my own work, and in the work of others I see around me. I've worked with more and more photographers and videographers lately who just shoot with a single zoom for most of what they do. So many people I see seem to be producing strong work with one decent zoom. This post asks a very simple question that keeps bouncing around in my head. "Just how many lenses do we actually need?".

Josh Newton is all too familiar with shooting under pressure as a professional wedding and musician photographer. Recently though, he had a wedding shoot that's gotten him national press for it's high stakes and unbelievably gorgeous results. Josh was able to take some time out of his busy schedule for a brief interview to talk about his now famous forest fire wedding shoot.