Our industries rely heavily on color, which most of us know as a wavelength of light that our eyes and brains perceive as ..well color. But we don’t always think about how or why this is happening. You can go a long way just knowing what looks nice, but if you want to optimize the potential of your finished product, knowing the physics involved is very beneficial.
I can think of at least five times where a client has pulled me aside in the past year to ask how they can use their camera better, outside of the automatic setting - I've drawn out countless exposure triangles on napkins, newspapers, even an iPad drawing app, and despite my best efforts I can sometimes tell they're still confused from my brief lesson. For now on, no more triangles, I've found a great website that anyone can learn from.
There's nothing more inspirational for me than someone taking a medium and using it outside of it's usual purpose. This creative collaboration between film team "Oh Yeah Wow" and musical group "The Paper Kites" shows how photography can become a killer music video.
Back in March, Fstoppers writer Zach Sutton featured Fabian Oefner's "Black Hole" series, high shutter speed images of paint being spun and flung quickly to produce some amazing art pieces. In this TEDxWarwick 2013 presentation, Fabian shows his passion for bringing art and science together to create his surreal and colorful work, and explains the process behind it all.
Ever worry that the way you hold your strap makes you look like a tourist? Well, worry no more. Portland based photographer, Jimmy Hickey joins us with his slightly tongue-in-cheek video to teach all photographers how to take great photos and look like a pro while doing it.
When first learning Photoshop, most of us are introduced to the pen tool, brush tool, or maybe even the eraser tool to remove sections of a layer. However, these methods can be both time consuming and mediocre in creating a clean final image. In this tutorial I'll be walking you through the steps that I use to isolate subjects shot in studio (against plain backgrounds) for the creation of a composite image.
In wildlife photography, and being in the wilderness in general, there's always a risk that you'll meet one of the many wild and territorial creatures that calls it home. In this video, a photographer meets a (seemingly wild) pack of wolves that fight amongst themselves, yet remain gentle and affectionate towards him.
Lately I've been scouting locations for a calendar project I'm working on, and it got me thinking how little content I've come across online on how to go about it. Location scouting isn't really a science, there are a lot of ways to go about it, but there are a few simple tricks and tools to maximizing productivity in your efforts.
Recently we saw a great post from Rich Meade listing off 34 ways to stay creative, well now I have my own to add as well, as a challenge to our readers - change it up!
Routine, in many ways is a good thing. It keeps you organized, makes sure everything is completed on time, and is usually a source of comfort/sanity for people with busy schedules, but it has its draw backs as well.
A big part of the appeal for composite photography for me has always been one's ability to imagine a scene, then use different components of the world around them to make it a reality. In this behind the scenes video from Erik Johansson, we're given a breakdown of one photo from the beginning sketches, to the different components and method, post production, and the final product.
So you know your business inside and out and your image quality is top notch, but there's always room for improvement. A factor that many people overlook is the experience that a client has when they work with them, being on one side of the operations gives you a very different perspective and because of this you could be overlooking little important details that make the world of difference. I've been working as a full time commercial photographer for a year now, and in that time I've learned a lot from not only my own client interactions, but the other businesses I've worked with as well.
Recently, fellow Fstoppers writer/astounding editor Pratik Naik posted a status on Facebook asking what people's editing routines were, you can read the discussion that followed here. With his permission I've decided to spin this off into a post, and offer some suggestions for our readers facing hours of repetitive retouching in their future. I'm writing from the perspective of a photographer, but I'm sure many if not all of these will carry over into the video world as well. Note that these aren't in any particular order.
As photographers and videographers we often obsess over our cameras, lenses, stands, lights, etc. But often times, the most important tool in your bag is from the hardware store, something that allows you to temporarily fix an unexpected situation, whether it's a gear failure, or the need to fix something in an awkward space. Here are 10 items (in no particular order) that I recommend.
Ever spend hours editing photos, only to review them later and wonder what you were thinking? The environment and mindset we're in will greatly effect the final results of our work, and can lead to countless hours of re-editing simple mistakes. Here are a few steps I've put together that help me ensure that my final product is always the best representation of what I'm capable of, simply by recognizing the conditions that my mind and eyes need to work properly, and incorporating it into my work strategy.
DigitalRev's Pro Tog challenges are back, this time with a DIY theme. In this video see Pro Photographer Mark Chung create a continuos ring light using some basic hardware store materials, then use them in a fashion shoot.
Night photography is a very broad category, open to many different approaches and techniques to create a unique image of the world, or universe around us. The team at Walley Films has done a great job in this video, documenting the night/light painting photo workshop led by Scott Martin and Lance Keimig in Texas. While you won't get the full hands-on workshop experience, hopefully you can pick up some tips or inspiration for your own work.
Many of us travel, sometimes for work and sometimes as a tourist, but one thing I'm sure most of our readers have in common is that no matter where you travel, a camera is coming with you. This video serves as a sobering reminder that at any given time as a photographer in public you have hundreds if not thousands of dollars of equipment by your side, and as you can see this proves to be very temping for thieves with some skill in deception.
Editing takes time, quite often it takes a lot of time and many of the steps can be quite repetitive and boring. The best thing I've ever done for myself to speed up this process is memorizing keyboard shortcuts, so I've put together this list of five resources (in no particular order) that I've found to practice familiarity with these shortcuts and become more comfortable with the programs themselves. In order to cater to the largest audience I will be focusing on Adobe-tailored tools, however some may crossover into other programs.
In this interview, Port Magazine sits down with Swiss photojournalist René Burri, to discuss the unbelievable stories behind six iconic photographs from his career including a very casual portrait Pablo Picasso in Cannes, and the reopening of the Suez Canal.
It wasn't long ago that the art of photojournalism was handed another pink slip when the Chicago Sun-Times decided to lay off all but 2 of their photo staff in favor of iPhone wielding freelancers. In this video, Jared Polin of Fro Knows Photo interviews Al Podgorski who was one of the last staff photographers at the paper to talk about his last days at the paper, highlights of his career, and the future of the photojournalism industry.
