Articles written by Patrick Hall

Hurricane Irene is battering the East Coast of the US right now which has left many stuck in their homes browsing the internet for storm updates. One particular story that has filled my facebook news feed and was tweeted by CNN involves a shark swimming in the streets of Puerto Rico. Apparently the shark was swept up by Hurricane Irene and trapped inland on flooded streets of the Caribbean island. But something about the photo seems very suspecious. A few weeks ago Fstoppers correspondent Reese Moore interviewed photographer Thomas Peschak and one of his most famous images features the same shark making headlines today. Coincidence or is this shark just hungry for more media attention? Click the full post to see the two photos and you be the judge.

If you are a fan of iphone photo apps, huge CGI production movies, and sexy girls fighting with mystical powers then you will probably love this behind the scenes video. The Demon Cam is an iphone app that allows you to turn your face into a demon zombie. In order to promote the release of the Demon Cam, the guys over at Video Copilot created an unbelievably complex promo video that showcases how the application works. The behind the scenes video has a lot of CGI and chromakey trickery but it also has a bunch of clever ideas any photographer could use in their own productions. After reading the reviews of this app and seeing the amount of work that went into the opening video, I'm kind of curious to see what a Patrick Hall demon would look like. Click the full post to see how everything came together in the final video and head over to the app store to pick up the $.99 iphone cam.

If you have followed Fstoppers for any amount of time, you know we are big advocates of photographers having great looking websites. Most photographers love the look of a flash site but more and more companies are starting to offer both flash and HTML versions of their sites. Creative Motion Design has been hard at work creating flashy looking websites that are coded in HTML so your potential clients can check out your work while browsing on their mobile devices and tablet computers. This week CMD released their first fully customizable HTML websites Rosie and Ethan with more designs coming out throughout the rest of 2011. I love the look of Ethan, and the prices on these sites are reasonable especially since CMD's customer service is leagues above many other website design companies. As soon as Lee and I have some free time, we are planning on converting our sites so they load up easier for potential clients.

A few weeks ago Reese Moore interviewed Jimmy Chin for her column the Fstoppers Spotlight. Her Fstoppers interview revealed a lot about what makes Mr. Chin put himself in harms way as he climbs, rappels, and base jumps from assignment to assignment. In this behind the scenes video, Jimmy talks about the changing culture taking place within the sport of extreme rock climbing. He and his fellow climbers explore Yosemite National Park as he captures images for National Geographic. I dabble in climbing and think base jumping would be a huge thrill but I'm not sure I would ever have the guts to even hang with Jimmy for one day if this is his typical photoshoot. Check out 2:40 for some interesting off camera lighting while climbing!

On Assignment from Camp 4 Collective on Vimeo.

One of the unfortunate problems with running a website is you are inevitably going to send traffic to a misdirected URL or even worse a page that flat out doesn't exist. You are probably used to seeing pages that look something like this. Well the guys over at Nosh.me came up with a funny little way to track down their own 404 pages and fix the issue or flat out take them down. Check out the final video below and hit the full post to see some BTS on how the guys conceptualized the scenes. If you really enjoy this sort of thing then you will find some really helpful tips about color grading, after effects, and detailed production notes over at the 404 process page. Who knew it was so violent behind each of our websites?

Nosh: 404 from Firespotter Labs on Vimeo.

This week over on the Fstoppers Forum there has been some pretty interesting posts. One that grabbed my attention was made by user Evolize Photog who showed how he photographs luxury cars in motion. In this video Evolize shows how he photoshopped his suction cupped boom arm out of a Lamborghini Gallardo hero shot. This should be great inspiration for our behind the scenes contest we are running the rest of this year. I'm sure a lot of you are like me and have questions about mounting a boom arm, triggering the camera, and positioning the camera for the best angle. These are some of the topics you should consider when making your own BTS video in the future. Do we have any other automotive photographers here on Fstoppers?

Working and operating a Steadicam is tough work. The most ridiculously awesome steadicam shot ever probably proved that without a shadow of a doubt, but we have even more proof! The following video follows steadicam superhero Niclas Närwall as he captures shot after shot on the set of Let's Dance. If you've ever been on a set with one of these guys you know how much stress goes into their whole bodies over the course of a full day (buying them beers afterwards is a given). At least Karsten Jacobsen had a Segway to help give his legs a break! Some of these shots are pretty remarkable and some might go a bit overboard with the floating camera effect. What do you guys think; what is your favorite shot?

There is no doubt that the RED's Epic video camera produces some of the most crisp and surreal footage you are likely to see at a reasonably "budget" price point. Up until now, the only lenses you could use with the Epic had to have the PL lens mount found on cine lenses. Recently, photographer turned videographer Vincent Laforet was able to demo the new Canon lens adapter which allows the RED cameras to use most of the EOS mountable lenses. In the video below, Vincent shows what the RED/Canon combo can do out in the field. One particularly interesting combo is the Canon 600mm f/4 L lens mounted with the 2x Canon Teleconverter. Some estimates give this combo a 35mm equivalent of 3400mm with the crop factor but I think it's actually a bit less than that (the RED should have around a 1.2x crop factor depending on the file output). Either way, the footage is pretty amazing and super exciting if you dream of using RED gear down the road with your existing Canon lenses. Any idea how he shot the video in low light? Looks like the lens would be at least at f8 which is almost unusable in anything but bright light.

One Degree from Vincent Laforet on Vimeo.

Within 24 hours of announcing the Fstoppers 2011 Behind The Scenes Video Contest, we were shocked to already have our first submission. Marc Kuyer from Holland had an idea to have small model cars battling each other like they were straight out of Rock and Roll Racing (super cult classic). Marc does a good job outlining his plans and showing you all the photoshopping that went into this final image. Of course we'd love to see everyone on camera but sometimes with language barriers you may have to stick with subtitles and text. So I guess it's safe to say right now Marc has taken the lead in our contest. If no one else steps up to the plate he will be moving on from small speed lights to a full studio worth of equipment!