Fstoppers Original Articles

Landscape photography is not my thing. I use it to exercise the fundamentals and have something to do when I need a break from the family on camping trips, but that's the extent of it for me personally. But I feel for landscape photographers. It's a crowded field in an already crowded profession. It's hard to make your images not look like everyone else's, especially when everyone has access to the same subject matter you do.

Lighting can make or break a fitness portrait. Our goal is to highlight the form and definition of your subject as well as the movement if the intended photo involves action. In this tutorial, I'm going to walk through a few basic fitness photography lighting techniques.

Want to improve your images? Here are seven rarely talked-about approaches, not involving the camera settings or composition, that may help you take your photography to the next level.

One of the Holy Grail quests for astrophotographers is the search for dark skies. Few of us are fortunate enough to live in ideal dark skies, but most of us are mobile enough to get to somewhere better than the center of an urban area.

Street photography is one of the most popular genres of photography, both for professional and amateur photographers. Done well, it can produce art that not only tells a story about a particular moment in time but also provides us with a window onto the human condition. Questions have been asked, however, about the ethics of street photography, and whether photographers ought to be doing it at all.

A photographer has built his own DIY ultra-large format digital camera from scratch. The rig uses a 600mm f/9 lens and has a projection area of one meter, making for some crazy images.

Fujifilm — the clue is in the name, except it isn't. Fuji was a behemoth in the film world, with Kodak its only rival. And then film went bust, and Kodak rapidly followed suit. Meanwhile, Fuji evaluated its business position and refocused principally around the healthcare sector and document management divisions. The architect of this remarkable turnaround was Chairman and CEO Shigetaka Komori. His retirement in March 2021 has precipitated changes that could have repercussions for its Imaging Solutions division.

If there is one type of news story that is a recurring theme in journalism it is the protest. Think "Tank Man", "The Burning Monk", or "Taking a Stand in Baton Rouge" (with Ieshia Evans). They stick in the memory, their iconographic status forming a peg from which we hang related memories. So why then are we more interested in riots as opposed to protests?

The huge forest on my doorstep is stunning, so why were we six months into the global pandemic before I started photographing it? For someone who never liked landscape photography, I certainly take a lot of landscape photos.

There's a lot of time-wasting traps you'll encounter when editing images in Lightroom, things that'll send you down a rabbit hole for hours on end. Find out how to avoid them and what to do instead.

Just a hop, skip, and a jump from the Space Needle in Seattle, Washington, sits one of America’s most majestic spots — and every photographer’s dream. Often called the American Alps, North Cascades National Park features endless opportunities to capture America in all its striking glory. But before you point and shoot, you need to know where to look.

Known for combining functionality with aesthetics, Olympus is also synonymous with innovation. Their unique features, great design, and ergonomics result in an increasing flow of photographers, both young and old, from other brands to their stable.

This week, I got a chance to connect with Blackmagic Design to discuss some best practices when approaching color grading video footage through DaVinci Resolve Studio.

The Great British Photography Challenge ended with a twist: Rankin picked joint winners. Although each and every participant of the series will have a chance to take advantage of the doors that only someone like Rankin can open for them, Tyrone Williams and Jackson Moyles were named co-winners of the inaugural season. I had the chance to speak with Tyrone and Jackson to find out what their participation in BBC's series was like.

Profoto sent us a couple of newly released softboxes. Let's test them out.

Having a photographic style is something you discover through creating a lot of work. It’s retrospective! To be honest, I’m still figuring out my own personal style, even though I’ve been shooting for over a decade now. There are some small tricks to nudge the process along though, but photographing kittens is not one of them.

If you are new to the studio or want to practice your lighting techniques plus save time when in the studio, you should check out this 3D software by Ellixxier.

There’s so much more to black and white than the simple removal of color. We must understand both color and tone, plus their relationship with the world of monochrome. Here are 10 tips to help you become a better black and white photographer.

Photographers often write to me to share their portfolios and websites. I am not often impressed. Today's photography is repetitive and derivative in a way that I find immensely underwhelming. Yet, every so often, I am surprised. Susanne Otterberg is one such surprise.

What ultra-wide angle prime lens makes a compelling case to you? Here are six worth looking at.

SmugMug, a household name when it comes to online image hosting, has developed a new service called Source. Already known for their incredible functions in online display and sales of images, SmugMug is taking the next leap towards providing photographers with new, never-seen-before cloud storage and management service for next to nothing.

Notwithstanding problems with ramping back up production to pre-COVID levels, manufacturers have been generally optimistic about the emerging camera market as consumers start spending money that has been hoarded over periods of lockdown. Canon looks set to be the big beneficiary, but what about the other manufacturers?

The histogram is that graph that accompanies your image. It tells you a lot about not only about the exposure, but also the contrast of your photograph. Knowing how it works can help you improve your photography, and it’s not a difficult thing to learn.

One of the biggest confusions that you might notice as you venture into astrophotography is that photographers and astronomers measure their equipment differently. Photographers tend to refer to their lenses in terms of their focal length, while astronomers refer to their telescopes by the diameter of their opening. Thus, a 75mm f/6 telescope has a focal length of 450mm. Meanwhile, a 75mm camera lens at f/6 has an aperture of 12.5mm. If a photographer is told that someone is shooting a 155mm lens hand-held, it would not raise an eyebrow, but an astronomer told the same thing would be incredulous! I can only barely lift my 155mm telescope onto its mount!

At the alarming rate of destruction and wanton littering and waste that is happening globally, is it time for us as photographers to stop publicly announcing the location of our shoots?

I make a habit of spilling as much ink as possible in this column towards extolling the virtues of making your gear purchases based on business needs rather than emotion. In today’s article, I will do the opposite.

It is incredibly important for stories to be told by people who have a lived experience of the situation. Mayeul Akpovi does just this with his incredible time-lapse videos of African cities.

The ideal situation is to take a photo that requires no editing whatsoever. But those shots are few and far between. In most cases, it's important to edit photos in order to develop them properly, but how long is too long when it comes to image editing? I'll be taking a look using Lightroom.

Last week, the head of Instagram declared that the platform is no longer an app for sharing photos. Photographers are now turning to Twitter in their droves. Why is Instagram abandoning its roots and what makes Twitter the best alternative?

For the past several years, the film community has seen a surprisingly strong revival that has brought with it some new film stocks, the return of old favorites, and unsustainable high prices.

Most photographers try their absolute best to avoid ISO noise in their photos and some spend an age trying to rid their images of it in image editing software. But it's not as much of a problem as you think and here's why.

There's plenty of dumb stuff that people say when they get into photography. So, let's dispel some of the common myths that are floating around.

I love using reflections for my landscape photography. A nice sunrise or sunset with a reflection of the colored sky in a pond or lake is very rewarding. But you can find reflections everywhere. I tell you about it in this article.

Datacolor has released a brilliant new bundle to help you manage your colors and deliver better results. The new SpyderX Create Kit includes the world's fastest display calibrator the SpyderX Pro along with several accessories including the ColorReader EZ.

Every time a piece of software catches attention, a question many photographers ask is how useful it is in a professional workflow. This is exactly what this article is aimed to answer about Zoner Photo Studio X. I used it in a professional photography workflow and saw how it could be integrated.

A photography workshop is a fantastic way to fast-track your learning, but going into it completely blind might cost you time and money, so it's essential you do these eight things before attending.

Nikon's new Z fc has been widely praised for its return to retro styling and — indeed — taking the design cues of the much loved FE/FM series. It's one thing to make a retro camera, but it's quite another thing to sell it. So, who is it targeted at?

Shooting with the rear LCD screen on your camera may be convenient, but you're also peering through a filter of colors and shades that you may not have been aware are altering the way you perceive your shots.

Just over a week ago, I posted a general knowledge quiz to rattle your brains. Here are the answers and the background behind some of them. Even if you didn't do the quiz, I hope you find some of this information interesting and the links useful.

We live in a world where most of our images are intended for an audience. In this article, I’ll share some ways to circumvent that way of thinking to create simply to create.

Printing professional-quality images can be an intimidating task if you are new to it. However, it doesn't need to be overly complicated. By following a few simple steps you can easily create high-end prints ready for your walls or print sales.

Many street photographers might claim that the Leica M series is the best street photography camera. While they are not wrong, necessarily, I think the Ricoh GR Digital IV offers more flexibility and value.

Non-Linear Editing software is rather simple. Footage clips are dragged into a timeline, and the editor can cut clips to shorten them and arrange them in an order that makes up the visual part of the video.

Original, innovative photography is hard to find. However, Ethan Beckler has excelled. He leads the way in macro photography, pushing camera and lens technology beyond normal limits and creating astounding art at the same time. With great generosity, he shares his techniques with us.

Doing photography professionally will change the way you shoot and operate. If you are planning to go professional or have recently done so, these might be of help.

Fstoppers is celebrating July 4th with our biggest sale this year. Buy any tutorial and you'll automatically save 20%. Bundle them together and you'll get up to 50% off everything in our store. This sale will expire next week, so be sure to act fast.

The easiest way to decide on which digital camera is right for you is to consider budget, size, features, and a few more things. Follow this guide on what to look out for and help make a decision for your first digital camera purchase.

A modern trend that is taking over every freelancer is hustling. The mantra is repeated by some of the most popular productivity “gurus.” The more hours you put in, the more outcome you will get. However, following this hours = improvement idea is dangerous for your health, creativity, and ultimately, photography.

Today, a short story about how forcing yourself to look at art from a different perspective can sometimes help you see the whole picture.

Have you ever wondered what photography is? Often, we are all busy with figuring out the practicalities of it, and we never stop to ask ourselves what the heck it even is. In this article, I will define photography in the simplest way possible.