Fstoppers Original Articles

Twitter has been at the top of the news cycle since Elon Musk completed his purchase of the company for $44 billion. And although the mere mention of his name stirs a variety of emotions, political opinions, and other reactions, for the sake of this piece, I want to focus not on the political ramifications of his acquisition of Twitter, but rather on how it will impact us as photographers. I am greatly interested, in fact, in some of his proposed changes to the platform and how they may affect photographers and content creators, especially if the change is positive.

Travel photography is perhaps one of the broadest genres of photography because of how it overlaps with almost every other kind. It encompasses a wide range of shooting styles and shooting scenarios to fulfill a simple goal, which is to illustrate and tell stories about a place. Because a particular place is always made up of various intersecting dimensions, there is no single approach or style that encapsulates travel photography.

Controlling light is one of the most difficult challenges a photographer must master. Even if you have years of experience under your belt, it can still be difficult to decide which light modifier to use with your strobes or if you should even be using strobes at all. In this video and article, I'm going to share with you five of my favorite light modifiers and how they can produce drastically different results.

If you are lucky, you will meet some fantastic photographers. It's a real privilege working with them, isn't it? There are common factors most good photographers have. But, above anything else, they all have one thing in common.

I've always been a fan of seascape and waterfall photography. I love these dynamic environments and don't shy away from getting myself wet while closing in on the subject matter. The only thing that could hold me back was the intense spray I had to face while getting close to a stormy sea or a thundering waterfall. But no longer. I found a solution against the limitations it imposed on my photography, and I share it with you in this article.

Photographing architecture, real estate, and interiors requires significant planning and preparation. There are some essential pieces of gear that will cover most of what you will need for most shoots, and having them can make or break the task.

There are two kinds of light sources for video: LED lights and panels. Both have advantages and drawbacks. Which is the best choice when you’re on a budget? Should you choose an LED light or an LED panel? I made my choice, but now, I have my doubts.

It’s possibly the most challenging topic to discuss in photography. As photographers, do we have a responsibility to maintain specific standards, or should we accept that if we can photograph it, we should?

As we head deeper into autumn, it’s officially soup season! I love to make and eat soups in the cold weather months, but they can be pretty challenging to style and photograph. In this post, I’m sharing my tips on how to transform a blob of beige soup into a dynamic and interesting image.

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 2022, 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.

Many of us associate DJI with their dominance in the drone market for photo and video; however, there is an entire world of enterprise solutions that you might know about. These are innovations that could even show up in the next drone you purchase.

With the latest update of both Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, the editing curve is becoming increasingly smaller for both. Here's how to take better advantage of Lightroom.

Today, I’d like to take a charitable break from discussing gear, to chat about something I’ve found to be far more important to understand about photography.

If you want to know how good your camera is, pushing its abilities as far as they will go is the way to find out. Combining speed, vibration, and low light stretches its photographic capabilities, and flying mud, rain, and thick fog help too.

A common misconception surrounding success on YouTube is that it all hinges on the best or right gear for the job. A lot of readers of Fstoppers are here to research cameras and lighting to level up the quality of their videos, and rightfully so. But without the right processes in place, no amount of professional quality gear will matter. I can guarantee you that 99% of where content creators go wrong on YouTube is in the planning stages, before they even press record. Trust me.

Are some types of landscape photography inevitably doomed to failure? If they proceed from a desire to depict what Immanuel Kant referred to as "the sublime", then this may well be the case.

The other morning I posted an unnecessarily snarky tweet about VERO and a breach of my copyright. That afternoon, I found myself on an hour-long Zoom call with founder CEO Ayman Hariri after he got in touch to discuss what VERO can do to improve.

Photographers understand that marketing is essential to attracting new clients and growing their business. However, marketing strategies are constantly evolving, so what worked in the past isn’t always going to work in the present or future. In this article, we will share three photography marketing tricks and hacks that actually work based on our 12-plus years of experience operating a successful multi-shooter studio!

What beliefs that you have about the kind of photography you like end up becoming a hindrance? What self-imposed limitations keep you from shooting more and learning further?

The issue of whether or not photographers should work for free is a polarizing one. Some of us feel we should not haul thousands of dollars worth of lighting and camera gear to a location and spend a full day shooting just to gain a reward that comes in the form of intangible exposure. Others feel doing regular collaborations with like-minded peers to produce new work is valuable in nurturing a photographer’s creative process.

If you dive into flash photography, it is said that manual flash is the only way to go. It offers full control over the amount of light. Although this is true, there are situations when TTL flash measurement is the better choice. I’m talking about on-camera flash photography.

Optical snoots are great ways to get creative images with crisp edges, but you are limited by the horrible gobo collections. Here's how I found a way to make your own for about $11.

Some of my favorite creative photography techniques to use are those that allow us to capture moments in ways we could never see using just our eyes. One technique, in particular, that I turn to for capturing unique portraits involves using long exposure, aka shutter drag. Long exposure portraits open up a number of creative possibilities and often result in “wow” moments with my clients. Putting the technique to use does require some skill and preparation, but it’s easy enough to master once you know the basics.

With autofocus achieving superhuman heights in recent years, its ability seems limitless. But when narrative filmmaking, nothing beats the human touch.

If you want to lift your retouching skills to the next level, you should familiarize yourself with frequency separation and how it can aid you in various photo editing tasks. One of those can come up in cityscape and architecture photography. Especially during blue hour and nighttime, you can get unwanted shadows in your photos. In this article, I explain how to remove those with frequency separation.

Photography scams are something that we all need to be on guard against. These scams often come our way in the form of poorly worded emails that we instantly delete. Atlanta wedding photographers Jaimie Dee and her husband Kyle were recently targeted by a rather elaborate variation of a classic photography scam. Fortunately, they didn’t fall for the con. How might you fare if you were targeted by the scam detailed below?

One of the most consistent opportunities we have as photographers to earn money with our cameras is photographing real estate and hospitality properties, such as Airbnb rentals, and contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t take a huge investment to offer quality images for this purpose.

The definition of a “cinema camera” seems to be ever evolving. So what are some of the things that set them apart from mirrorless?

Before I created Fstoppers, I was a full-time wedding photographer. Over that time, I designed a handful of wedding albums as both show albums and as client albums. To be honest, I never really enjoyed the album-making process. Now, the tables have turned, and for my wife's first year anniversary gift, I decided to make an album with images from my own wedding. How will my wife respond, and will I enjoy the process? Let's find out!

Phone cameras have gotten increasingly better year over year, yet no matter how much they improve, they always fall short in comparison to professional cameras. This year is different.

Some months ago, I was excited enough to place a preorder upon hearing of the announcement of Sky-Watcher’s Star Adventurer GTi, the latest in their Star Adventurer series of star trackers. In September, I finally received it and have been checking it out. Let’s see if it has indeed met my expectations.

Skylum has revealed another Extension that will soon be added to the Luminar Neo editing platform for Pro plan subscribers and owners of the 2022 Extensions Pack. Five Extensions have already been revealed, and today, another has been announced for next month: Supersharp AI, a tool for sharpening details in an image.

Passion: I was raised in a generation that was spoon-fed it three square meals a day. My parents' generation, who were raised by the survivors of World War II, had a more tempered outlook. Then came my generation. We were systematically told we could be anything we wanted. The phrases, "live passionately" and "follow your passion" summoned us out of bed with ardor and launch full force into our dreams. My generation flocks by the millions to Burning Man and Tony Robins' conferences hoping to get another hit of zeal to keep going.

In today’s article, I’d like to pose a fundamental question. Has the growth of social media been a net positive or negative for the world of photography?

Cameras are constantly improving. Keeping up with the latest model and its arguably better performance can instill a need for a perpetual upgrade and a bad case of G.A.S. Well, I'm here to turn back the clocks and look at a 20-year-old compact digital camera that is a lot more capable than we might give it credit for. Read on to remember, reflect, and be surprised by this forgotten gem.

Whenever I visit a city, I try to find viewpoints from which to photograph its skyline. Those are either outside the city's bounds or on top of some of its higher buildings. Accessing those rooftop views often requires an entrance fee or good connections. In Kuala Lumpur, all that's needed is to stay in the right apartment.

Beginning your video editing journey can be painful on a slow machine. I’ll explain a few tweaks that might help smooth out the experience.

Composition in shooting cityscapes relies heavily on your choice of lens. With the right lens that matches your envisioned image, your urban landscape photos can have so much visual impact.

There hasn’t been a bad camera released in the last few years. But, still, some cameras are better than others. In this article, we will see what cameras are the best ones to pick up in 2022. Some are cheap, while others are expensive, some are made for fast shooting, and others capture stunning detail in the studio.

There is a ton of advice on what gear to buy and what gear not to buy as a photographer. It is written from a billion different standpoints, each one with a slightly different take. I didn’t feel any of those articles resonated with me, so here is one that I hope will resonate with you regardless of the genre or niche you’re going for.

Iceland is the land of fire and ice, but what happens when there's neither? Travel plans can change at the last minute due to many factors, the weather being a big one, lost luggage another. So, how do you adapt and make even a short trip memorable? Do you push your creative boundaries and try something new, or do you just step back and enjoy experiencing each new adventure?

As a commercial photographer, I have a ton of competition from other photographers. There are a lot of other people who take fashion pictures. There are even more people who claim they take fashion pictures. All in all, it seems like I’m up against the world when it comes to working. If you ever wondered how to beat your competition, here is an approach that always works. Always, without exaggeration.

Occasionally, it’s worth Googling your name to see what turns up. When I did it, it showed that a website was plagiarizing Fstoppers articles and stealing my photos too. This is what I did about it.

Artists enjoy calling their work “original.” For good reason too, as artists, we want to stand out and send an authentic message to the world. But, there are hardly any truly original ideas in the art world. Everything has been invented, reinvented, and re-reinvented over again. In this article, we will discuss how to create, reinvent, and stay away from copying.

I recently had the opportunity to be followed by Taylor Jackson on a shoot while at the Sony Kando event.

All of us have spent hours editing a shoot or if you’re like me, procrastinating editing that shoot. Spending less time editing and more time shooting is what most of us ultimately want. If only there was a way to automate editing at a low price and high standard. If this sounds like you, this may be the solution.

We spend a lot of time talking about when it’s the best time to buy new gear. But it can be harder to know when is the right time to let go of the old gear as well.

Have you found the perfect place to host your photos? I've been hunting everywhere for the best site to upload my images to and share them. After my research, what I concluded was the best for me took me completely by surprise.

You’ve been commissioned to photograph new images for a restaurant, but there’s a lot of spinning plates and moving parts. In this article, I share my essential steps for preparing for and running a photoshoot at a restaurant.

Building a website that helps potential clients choose you over others is not always an intuitive process. Here are six ways that you can upgrade your website.