Fstoppers Original Articles

Fstoppers wouldn't exist without Ritz Camera. Patrick and I met each other working there 13 years ago. But, as many of you know, Ritz Camera went bankrupt, and we know why.

With one simple change to my everyday routine, I suddenly feel more creative, able to generate ideas more quickly, and with greater clarity. You can achieve the same thing with one simple trick that won’t cost you a penny.

Were you one of the early adopters who jumped to a Fuji X series, selling your extensive Canon camera body and lens range, to be thoroughly unimpressed with the image quality to then jump back? Or did you fork out on a PhaseONE medium format, drooling over that dreamy tonal range to then see Pentax release the rather good 645Z for a quarter of the price a year later? Enter the "Yesterday's Tech" purchasing model.

We've all heard of saving less than perfect images by turning them black and white, but when should you really do it? Here's how I decide.

Travel photography is mostly associated with exploration of wild, untouched spaces, but in my experience, most commissioned travel photography takes place in cities. This article provides five tips for getting started in urban photography.

Maybe you've had a prospective client — someone you've never heard of — ring you up to discuss your photography services... and had your brain freeze, making the conversation awkward. Even if you've been landing photography gigs for years, the excitement of an unexpected phone call can throw you off course.

So you upgraded to a DSLR to take your photography to the next level and you now feel a strong urge to step into the big bad world of professional photography. You have the kit lenses, but you know they won’t cut it. Let me introduce you to the must-have kit lens of professional photographers.

As a photographer or a videographer, do you routinely get stuck in the same cycle when working on a project, which may or may not include Imposter Syndrome, exasperation, and more? What's your unique "cycle"?

I love shooting film, it's not always the best choice, but the idea that I am forced to slow down and really be sure I like my frame before I hit the shutter overall makes me shoot more efficiently, reduce the amount of culling at the end of the shoot (which is my least favorite part of any photoshoot to be honest), and with shooting with 6x7 I can get a very specific look that is hard to replicate with smaller sensors, for better and worse.

Instagram TV has been a bit of a flop, which is a shame as the idea really excited me. However, it hasn’t stopped me from using video on Instagram.

I recently started shooting with a Nikon Z 7 and noticed something interesting when reviewing some images from a shoot. There was a feature that I didn’t pay much attention to, but I think it’s really undervalued.

Plans are good. Most of us live by plans, and we like things to go as planned. But sometimes just showing up and going with the flow can yield immense rewards for photographers. There is nothing wrong with wanting to know what to expect so you can plan appropriately, but sometimes we just need to let go. Here are a couple of examples of some amazing moments I would have missed if I had stuck to plans and took shelter in my comfort zone.

If you want to continue to grow as a photographer you need to have honest, real time feedback and yes, criticism. Sure, you can ask a friend maybe see if Mom wants to flip through your portfolio and you might get some feedback but more than likely you’ll get some “wow, that’s a cool shot” or “Honey! This picture is lovely!” but no really push back on your composition or lack of. So, go find a photo editor.

We create tons of free content on a weekly basis for our YouTube channel, but until now, we have exclusively sold our "professional" photography tutorials on the Fstoppers store. But today, thanks to a few sponsors, we've created a free 45-minute tutorial on product photography.

Wireless audio monitoring is meant to be a cardinal sin, but isn’t youth about breaking the rules?

Photography is hard. It's even harder when you forget your camera. But, as Chase Jarvis always says, the best camera you have is the one you have with you and with the rise of computational photography that is becoming more true than ever.

For almost every photographer who shoots bulk works of images, Lightroom is an essential tool. But we often make the costly and frustrating mistake of letting our Lightroom catalogs grow too large.

For many of us, marketing ourselves to potential art buyers, publications, and agencies is the stuff of nightmares. Cold calling is certainly one of the most feared.

It didn't seem like very long ago that I reviewed Luminar 3, and while I liked the editing features, I dislikes the fact that if you weren't using Luminar's "Lightroom lite" catalog feature you were stuck with it and couldn't turn it off.

Something I muttered to myself one cloudy afternoon on my garden ended up being a mantra I have had with me for over a decade.

We planned a few days at the Opal Cast in France, a wonderful seaside area with rocky coasts, large tide differences, and a lot of remains of the Second World War, that has shaped the landscape many years ago. The forecast promised fantastic weather for landscape photography, so we had high expectations for impressive sunrise and sunset shots, and perhaps even a few star trails. The reality turned out quite differently.

Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted to make huge changes to copyright legislation. The new directive could mean that Instagram will finally have to address the vast amount of freebooted content that proliferates on its platform.

What happens when the sun is setting and you want to get a balanced exposure of the setting sun in the background and your subject? The reality is you can't without the use of a strobe and high speed sync. In this article, I’ll share with you how I was able to get a perfect exposure on my subject and the background using high-speed sync.

Sony in part led the way for highly customizable cameras that are commonplace on the market today. While there are many different ways to set up a Sony, these are my top three custom settings that I share with you today.

There was a time when this question would have been laughable. Now, if you laugh it off, you're either in a a specific niche that dodges renders or computer generated imagery (CGI), or you don't understand the problem.

Once again, a small personal moment has caused me to reflect on a larger picture.

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.

Spring is finally just around the corner (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). This is the perfect time for me to wrap up my detailed review of the tips booklet I used to provide to my couples for their engagement sessions.

I would hazard a guess that most working photographers will tell you that talent has very little to do with a successful photograph. Somewhere along the way, you've probably heard the words “Genius is one per cent talent and ninety-nine per cent hard work.” It's that hard work that brings about good photography. Let's explore the roles that effort and perseverance play in our photography today.

All photographers can agree that you won't stay in business long if you do not charge for your work. But what if I told you that the best way to gain exposure to high-paying commercial clients was to give away your images for free? Today, we sit down with commercial and composite photographer Josh Rossi and explore the concept of free.

It’s the height of tax season, and an odd thing just happened to me. I was at my accountant’s office filing my business taxes for 2018 last week, and she said to me, “Wow. I have a lot of photographers as clients, but most of them aren’t making a living. What are you doing differently?”

Do you ever get the opportunity that you just can't let slip away? In this quick behind the scenes breakdown, see how I shot a portrait of inspirational speaker and renowned musical prodigy, Sparsh Shah.

The internet can be a tough place to share your art. Some people love to judge. While it may make sense turn off your ears completely but in doing so you might miss opportunities to improve your photography.

Air travel is a fact of life for jobbing amateur and professional photographers alike. At some point you need to stuff your gear in a bag and get on a plane. Here are my top 5 rules for air travel.

I enjoy taking headshots for people, and I shy away from the commercial, copy-paste, white background styles where the deliverable image is straight out of the camera. However, last month, I combined my preferred style of headshot with the number of subjects you'd typically see with a large corporate, straight-out-of-the-camera shoot. Here's what I learned.

It turns out that an avant-garde camera technique from the 1960s has found its way back into the hearts of today's Instagram generation of photographers. Lens capping is the act of purposely creating an extreme underexposure (EUE) by leaving the lens cap on.

We dream of huge apertures that can give us incredible subject separation and whip up the world’s creamiest bokeh. Imagine my excitement when I was invited to spend an hour playing with the world’s first f/0.35 50mm autofocus prime lens, a lens so secret that I can’t even tell you the mount, never mind who makes it. Check out the amazing images that this lens can produce.

Last month I asked readers to share their experiences of working for Kodakit. The responses have been mostly positive but with a few caveats. You can expect to shoot (and eat) a lot of food, but is it worthwhile?

Testing lighting is usually for those photographers who are a bit more on the “nerd" side of photography, but we always need to know if we have the ability to work through or overcome a lighting situation. I did a quick dive into testing two lighting brands most people either use or are familiar with, and discovered some interesting information for those looking at any of these lighting options.

When you see an incredible location in images, often our gut reaction is, that it must be Photoshopped or that you need to go to an epic location to get great shots. In this article, see how I shot these cinematic portraits on the side of a road in my area by using just one camera and one lens. No fancy lighting or Photoshop.

When was the last time you put up the amount you charge for your photography? If the answer is never then you're not alone. Many of us struggle to ask for more money and even those who try are not always successful. The problem is that if you never increase your prices you'll be out of business before you know it. Here's how and when to start charging more.

You saw that wonderful long exposure image on the internet, with a smooth water surface and moving clouds in the sky, and you thought; I want to shoot images like that. So you invested in a dark neutral density filter that makes it possible to shoot with shutter times that are 1000x longer. Now you can start making those long exposure images.

Every camera is standard set to AWB, meaning "Auto White Balance". AWB uses 18% gray as a reference, to correct any color cast in the image. But the auto white balance is a dumb algorithm that cannot interpret a scenery. Perhaps it would be best to set the white balance yourself, instead of relying on the camera.

Photographers probably spend more time behind a computer than a camera. Yet, the technological progress of this industry is becoming slow, and manufacturers hide the issue with marketing tricks. Here is what's going on.

Photoshop and I go way back. I had the first version in 1990, and it has served me well as a photo editor for both my landscape and deep sky work. Over the last couple of years, though, every time I use Photoshop or Lightroom in their Creative Cloud versions I can't help thinking something is wrong.

You have all probably heard of SEO or search engine optimization and know how important it is for any website. Did you realize that using the right hashtags on Instagram is the exact same concept?

Sony just recently released one of the biggest firmware updates I have ever seen from the company. With so many feature additions and upgraded functionality, I wanted to walk through my favorite items. Not only that, but I also want to talk through some things I feel are still missing.

If you're a Lightroom user, then one of the first tasks you might perform after import is culling your images. So, how do you hide images you've rejected from the library grid view? Like me, you might have been left scratching your head.

In a world where everyone wants to be a star photographer, there isn't nearly enough discussion about the benefits of a good photo assistant. Here are a few tips for those interested in assisting a professional photographer and a few things for photographers who may be seeking an assistant to consider.

Have you ever wanted to create a bright, sunny image, but it was rainy and overcast outside? In this article, see how I recreated the sun when I shot this edgy fashion editorial in my small home living room.