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Stephen Ironside
Fayetteville, AR
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Articles written by Stephen Ironside

Would You Pay Someone to Capture Your Vacation With a Drone?
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This past weekend, I spent numerous hours with my partner looking through garden seed catalogs selecting and ordering what we wanted to grow this season. I wanted anything with "dragon" in the name. She wanted some unique looking poppies. We both wanted some cool looking "Black Tomatoes." But when I later Googled "black tomatoes," I found something else. I found that you can now pay someone to go on vacation with you and follow you around with a drone to document the trip. What?

BTS: Combining Strobe and Continuous Lighting for a Dancer Studio Portrait
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If you're not a professional photographer, chances are that you may be under the impression that they do little more than take pictures all day, every day. While we definitely know that's not the case — I'm probably only actually shooting for around 20 percent of my work week, and running a business for the other 80 percent — that's not what I wanted to portray when I got asked to be "job shadowed" by an eighth grade girl a while back. I decided to make the day at least a little more interesting.

Trendy Throwback BTS: The Ice Bucket Challenge
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On today’s winter solstice, for some reason, I thought back to that time a couple of years ago when the Ice Bucket Challenge was floating around the internet. Remember that? The “either donate to ALS research or record yourself having a bucket of ice water dumped on your head” craze that filled up your Facebook feed in mid-2014 with terrible vertical cell phone videos of water going everywhere? Sure you do.

He Left Everything Behind and Became National Geographic's Nature Photographer of the Year
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I've met photographers who sold almost everything they had to travel the country in an RV, doing portrait sessions along the way. I've known people who have given up everything they know about their way of life in order to have the ability to adopt a new sense of adventure. But this guy. This guy! He left everything, started diving around the world, and became National Geographic's "Nature Photographer of the Year."

New Interactive Tool Leads Auto Mode Users out of Photographic Darkness
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If you've been practicing photography professionally for any amount of time or even if you're an advanced amateur, you've been asked by friends, family, or strangers if you could teach them how to use their camera. Often, this results in the conversation devolving into bits and pieces about apertures, exposure triangles, and using manual mode, ending with a deer-in-headlights look from the unsuspecting inquisitor. Well, here's a new tool to help teach them how to use that "nice camera" to "take nice pictures" without breaking the bank. And if you're one of the people needing help to switch off Auto mode, this is the tool for you.

GoPro Aims at Restructuring In Hopes of Turnaround
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It's been a tumultuous year for GoPro. The company, whose name is still as synonymous with "pocket-size- action-HD-video-camera" as Band-Aid's name is with "adhesive bandage," has had a rocky time recently. From its drones falling from the sky to its stock losing half its value just this year, things have been rough for the once market-driving manufacturer. Today, steps were taken in an attempt to right the ship.

Using Photography as a Way to Heal From Sexual Violence
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When I was considering whether or not I should write this article, I went back and forth between not feeling qualified to write it and knowing that it is an important topic. It’s an article involving sexual assault, and I haven’t been sexually assaulted. But, I know many people who have been, and I know that if there’s any way to help survivors of any type of sexual violence overcome the trauma that comes packaged with that terrible ordeal, it should be made available to them, and it should be talked about. I didn’t ever expect photography to step in to help, yet here we are.

Think Tank Announces New Rolling Camera Bag Geared Towards Smaller Planes
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If you've ever booked an out-of-town photography gig and needed to catch a flight to get there, you might have run into this problem: you get on the plane, lift up your roller bag to put it into the overhead bin, and it just doesn't fit. You push, you squeeze, you try taking out the laptop, but nothing works. You hang your head in shame and walk back up to the front, and ask the flight attendant for help. As always, Think Tank Photo is here to help.

BTS: Thinking Outside the Barrel to Photograph for a Magazine
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A couple of years ago I was tasked with getting a shot of grape stomping for a local food magazine, Edible Ozarkansas, who were doing a story on the history of local wine production in Arkansas. Right away, images of Lucy and Ethel of "I Love Lucy" stomping grapes in the giant barrel came scrolling through my mind. Challenge accepted.

Travel Throwback: Exploring Bolivia with the Nikon D800 and No Reservations
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Like many photographers, I decided to stop shooting weddings as soon as I was able to. They were sometimes fun, and they could pay well, but they just weren’t for me. In 2013, I finally booked my last one: a destination wedding in early 2014 in Bolivia. Going out with style, for sure.