Fstoppers Original Articles

Photography is a very secretive industry at times, but a few years ago I decided to share everything and answer any questions via instagram.

When you've decided to print your work and you're looking for the right paper, your options are near endless. If you know that you're wanting strong contrast and rich color representation, then take a look at this paper from Hahnemühle.

Photography competitions are a fantastic way for a photographer to gain exposure, build prestige, acquire credentials, or see how they compare to their peers. Tyler Lanz of Laminart Industries has 10 steps to help improve your chances during your next submission.

A successful travel photographer recently announced that he would willingly give his photos to Starbucks to use on Instagram for free, as long as they weren’t marketing a product. I was so shocked that I almost spat out my coffee.

Yep you read that right! After Pye Jirsa completely destroyed Lee Morris in our last Puerto Rican Photo Challenge, Lee is back for revenge. We need your help deciding the winner so please vote in the full article.

Being a financially successful photographer is just as much about business sense as it is about photographic skill. One of the best ways to ensure pleasant outcomes with your clients is to learn how to manage their expectations before you even click the shutter.

In the nausea-inducing argument of "gear doesn't matter," one of the lines often peddled by one side or another is that the camera, no matter how sophisticated, is just a tool. It's the equivalent of a hammer. Its job is to collect light and any romanticizing over these "light boxes" is just an exercise in GAS. I agreed with that sentiment for a long time, but now I'm not so sure. Here are my reasons why the camera is more important than its obvious job as a way to catch an image.

Looking at other photographers’ work for inspiration can be overwhelming. With an almost unlimited amount of photography to look through, I can feel lost. I often turn to other mediums to look for inspiration.

Photography is a hobby/profession that can take a serious toll on your wallet. The cost of a lot of precision, technologically advanced equipment can lead you to be very protective of your gear (and rightfully so). Is it worth risking it to get the shot?

You use Lightroom to process batches of images because you know how important efficiency is. But if you're not fully utilizing Lightroom's available rating (and sorting) options, you're not running as tight a ship as you could.

White balance is drilled into our head as a particularly technical thing to adjust in our photography and not really something we can use creatively beyond "Warmer or cooler" but there are so many creative possibilities out there.

As I continue to add content to my YouTube channel, I thought it would be fun to try something new and screen-record myself while doing an edit. During this process I remembered the importance of trying edits like this to familiarize myself with the programs I use on a day to day basis.

The photography world is chock full of products meant to make photographers think they will instantly improve their work and take dazzling shots. Some are obviously better than others. Here are the best and worst pieces of photography gear I've purchased.

Whenever I discover something important or valuable to me, I inevitably wish I'd started it earlier. Areas of photography are no exception. So what do you wish you had started sooner?

Update - Congratulations to Mack Bartlett on being selected as the winner of the Fujifilm X-T3 with a 18-55mm lens. His entry to sign up for the Fstoppers and Fujifilm newsletter won him the giveaway. We will be in touch with you to claim your prize.

YouTube influencers can have a huge impact on shaping the buying public’s perception of a certain camera. Content marketing on social media is an opaque and murky world, and just because an influencer says that their content is not sponsored doesn’t mean that they’re not getting paid — especially if the gear they're promoting was given to them for free.

Some photographers obsess over color, spending thousands on calibration equipment and high end monitors. A recent popular news story showed why this might not be worth it.

For most of us, wanderlust is all about the new: new adventures, new experiences, and new perspectives through the viewfinder.

Continuing our A to Z foray into the world of photography, we move on to C and the iconic Central Park. What possible reason could Central Park have for inclusion in this brief A to Z and didn't Lewis Carroll write books? Find out as we move on to alphabetical Cs.

Modern cameras are mightily advanced technological instruments, full of a bevy of features and capabilities, some more important than others. This is the feature that's most important to me.

You might not be considering dropping the cash for this thing, but the target customer might.

Photographers can be both nostalgic and habitual, finding a piece of gear they really love and sticking with it for a long time. Most of us have some piece of gear we love and won't ever part with. This one is mine.

No matter how technically proficient you are with your camera, an inability to direct becomes painfully obvious when you don't have experienced subjects handling the posing side of the shoot.

The fast pace of changing technology is not slowing down. Add to the mix new mirrorless systems, VR, 8K it’s starting to make more and more sense to rent camera bodies, or does it?

It was about five years ago that I first tried this out, and it’s crazy to me how camera manufacturers will omit such a great feature.

When you're new to photography, you might feel a bit overwhelmed by all of the various technical parameters and artistic guidelines you have to keep in mind simultaneously. Well, I'm here to add another one to the list, but I promise that it will improve your shots drastically.

A wasted sunrise this past memorial day weekend was a reminder of two things to think about when trying to do any sort of travel photography: Plan ahead and adapt.

It can be a struggle to produce our best work during the busy season. Once we’ve answered all the emails, backed up yesterday’s session, edited and processed last week’s session, worked on some social media posts, and, heavens forbid, got ourselves a cup of coffee and taken a short break, it can be daunting to head out and meet a client for a session. Today we’ll talk about a few ways to make each session count.

I am now well into my 30s, having started my photography career in my early twenties, here are a few gems that you have to look forward to.

The first bit of advice I can recall getting was given to me by my parents. I was about to start school for the first time and I wanted people to like me. There advice was something that we've all been told: “just be yourself.” As professional photographer, I still want people to like me. This article covers why simply being yourself is great advice, especially when it comes to branding.

We are all photographers because, well, we like taking pictures. But just because we like taking photos doesn't always mean we should be taking them. When is it time to put the camera away?

A lot of my work has light placed in very precise spots, just over the eyes, or the lips, or just on one spot on the face. I often get asked how I do it, and instead of just saying the product, I thought I should go more in depth and talk about the ins and outs of how to get the most out of Cinefoil.

Continuing our A to Z foray into the world of photography, we move on to B. What better place to start than an iconic manufacturer in the form of Bronica and Burtynsky?

Predicting the weather is next to impossible, but you can optimize your chances of a successful shoot quite a lot. Do not be lazy about that optimization. I was lazy and it lead to one of my biggest fails in my career as a landscape photographer.

It really doesn't matter if you make excellent images that make your clients look their best, or that they're using your creative brain and technical mastery to sell their product. Clients deserve massive discounts, and, sometimes you just need to give them a load of images for free because they feel that they did you a favor that one time — conveniently forgetting all the other free and massively discounted commercial images you gave them.

We use the verb "shoot" when we take pictures. The similarities between photography and the actual shooting of guns nearly stop there. Nearly.

As photographers, it's very easy to fall into the trap of not treating your work as a business. However, even those of us who treat our work as a business can miss out on key advice companies get, thinking it may not apply to photographers.

This past week I passed the one year mark of shutting down my old Instagram when it was about to hit a new milestone, and starting from absolute scratch. Why did I do this? Was it a good idea? Let's dive in and find out.

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 2019, 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.

One of the best pieces of advice I have been given in recent times was to not be a firefighter. Before you all jump on me and tell me I'm a dummy for saying something negative about people who are clearly more heroic than I am, let me explain. What I mean is to not be proactive in how I operate.

I think film is overrated. Let me try to prove it to you.

A decade seems like a bit of a milestone to me, from my first camera to working as a commercial food photographer. There have been lot of lessons learnt along the way.

By now it’s common knowledge that when shooting film, it’s important to not underexpose to hold on to shadows, and for digital it’s key to save the highlights. I’m going to advocate, however, that with modern digital sensors, it’s prudent to shoot underexposed all the time.

Did you know that before Hasselblad became the official camera of the moon, space exploration was photographed with modified versions of simple drugstore cameras?

When's the last time that you let yourself shoot images without giving a thought to their monetary value? It's too easy to get caught up thinking about how to monetize our profession and it's so important to step back, slow down, and just shoot for the fun of it.

One of the most popular videos we have produced in the last year was with Mike Kelley and Lee Morris as they battled it out in the Amateur Vs Pro Architecture Photographer Shootout. This week Mike and Lee have set their rematch, and you our audience will be the judges!

It has been some time since Adobe last released a new control to Lightroom, and as such, I was very keen to try out their latest addition — the “Texture” slider. Since a good majority of my work is underwater, I was of course interested in what value it could add to underwater images. As I have quickly learned, this new feature is a great tool for underwater photographers — particularly those who struggle with backscatter in their images.

A rainbow is arguably the most beautiful optical light effect created by sunlight. It is formed by millions of raindrops that break the sunlight into different colors. Shooting a rainbow is fairly easy, but there are some nice things to know about.

About 1 billion people use Instagram each month, that’s 1/8th of the world population. The top four countries other than the United Sates are Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Russia. That’s a huge variety of languages, cultures and perspectives, yet the most followed people on Instagram are celebrities.

The entry point for medium format has been tragically high for so long. With Hasselblad and Phase One acting as the resolute gatekeepers of a camera type that has been alluring for decades, and a long-standing staple of professionals.