As I close in on the last eight hours of my very first Kickstarter campaign, I wanted to share some of the knowledge I’ve gained through this amazing experience that might help other people who are thinking of launching a Kickstarter. It’s a daunting experience but one that can hopefully be improved by learning as much as you can before you start.
It's been a week since we launched a Kickstarter campaign for my first book, and what an interesting week it has been. As expected, I'm learning a ton about myself, about Kickstarter, about living on two hours of sleep, and about how amazing it is to have people that you don't know or have never met before support you right here and now in real time.
I've spent the last two years photographing Los Angeles from a Helicopter, in what is surely the largest project I've worked on to date. After a long, extensive and ultimately unsuccessful search for a publisher, I finally decided to scrap that idea and self-publish via Kickstarter. I'll be doing a series of weekly posts about what I've learned and just how insane this whole thing has been.
Last year at my workshop in the Bahamas, my students challenged me to photograph a hotel room in under five minutes. They then wanted to see how fast I could retouch it, and I've decided to do it again, this time capturing it on camera, to show everyone what is possible with only a few minutes on location, a bit of Photoshop knowledge, and of course a lot of practice in the art of previsualization!
Last week I asked everyone on my Facebook page to 'ask me anything' and said that I'd record and post the answers to all the questions left on the page. We had some fantastic questions, some funny answers, serious answers, and everything in between. For anyone looking for my honest opinions on all things architectural photography, check out this video and enjoy!
For a bit over a year now, I have been taking regular flights over the city of Los Angeles, photographing the city from a helicopter. I get a lot of questions about how I'm editing the images to get the look and feel that I am, and the answer is actually quite simple. Using only carefully considered exposures and Lightroom adjustments, I've come up with a consistent and somewhat unique look for the project.
In what surely must be one of the highest budget-to-film-length ratios in history, Airbus put five of its brand-new 300 million dollar A350 XWB planes together for a photoshoot. While most of the clips last only a few seconds, the amount of planning and preparation to pull something like this off is just staggering. With two chase planes, five hero planes, and the stakes as high as ever, watch how Airbus plans and pulls off this truly epic feat of filming and aviation.
Back in February of this year, I was invited on a trip that I had never expected to go on. Kinetis, a non-profit based in Israel, invited myself and five other incredible photographers to travel to Israel to document and share what we found. To be honest, Israel was never a travel destination for me. I have always been drawn to colder climates, I’m not a very religious person, and frankly I just don’t really know enough about the country for it to have ever held any power over me. It never really made great sense to me as a photographic destination either, nestled between sparring countries and set amidst a relatively barren desert.
But alas, who am I to turn down a free trip to a far-off destination?
If you've ever been interested in the field of architectural photography, now is your chance to learn about the ins-and-outs of getting clients, bidding on jobs, building a reputation and learning some post-processing tricks for FREE. I'll be speaking on Creative Live today at 1:15pm Pacific Standard Time, and will be going into detail on how I've built my business from the ground up in just a few short years.
I’m a bit of a dreamer. I’m also a huge aviation geek, and I often catch myself browsing the web at 2am looking up articles on aviation and aviation history. So when I found Anthony Toth and learned more about his life’s work, I knew that I had my next personal photography project in mind. As I'm mostly an architectural photographer, I got bored of waiting around for an airline to hire me to photograph their next ad campaign, so I decided to hire myself into my dream gig.
A little bit over a week ago, I went to Los Angeles International Airport to make a photo. It was a clear day, and I didn't want to waste it sitting inside. Being an aviation fan myself, as well as an occasional pilot and aerial photographer, watching planes, to me, is hardly the worst way to pass the time. As it turns out, making this photo would lead to one of the craziest weeks of my entire life.
I love aviation and I love photography. So the other day, inspiration struck and I ran to LAX to capture a photo that compresses eight hours of airport traffic at one of the biggest airports in the world into a single frame. Here's how I did it.
A few weeks ago Pat, Lee, Lauren and myself went to the Bahamas to get ready for the upcoming Fstoppers Workshop. While we were there, we wanted to film some kind of architectural photography tutorial video, and we're happy to share that it's finally ready. The Atlantis Resort is giving us an all-access pass to photograph anything at the resort for the workshop, and
In today's post, I'm going to walk you through how I build an architectural photograph from square one. We'll discuss composition, lighting, staging, styling, and posing models in an architectural interior in order to create the image that the client has in mind. Despite appearing as a rather simple image, this shot took over an hour to finish on location with multiple steps and a lot of pre-visualization.
I recently visited the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas with Lee and Patrick to scout out locations for my upcoming architectural photography workshop and we were pretty much given unfettered access by the Atlantis marketing department to shoot whatever we wanted. First on the list? The $15,000 per night penthouse suite. I only brought a minimal amount of gear
In under five years, Andy Frame went from being a photography nobody to running one of the most successful photography operations that I'm aware of. I had a chance to catch up with him and hear all of his absolutely inspirational story so that I can share it with our readers, and so that I can motivate my own self to do better on a regular basis.
A few years ago, the cruise ship Balmoral was extended by shipbuilding company Blohm + Voss, and the company hired a crew to create a timelapse video of the entire process. What may seem like a rather mundane project to many has been beautifully captured by a company called MK Timelapse - I found myself
NYC Photographer Richard Renaldi recently embarked upon one of the most original photo projects I've ever seen. In the series Touching Strangers, Renaldi finds two strangers, whether on the street, in a restaurant, at work - and tells them to get together and pose as if they have known each other for years.
When it comes to architectural photography, there is one that stands above all: Julius Shulman. Not only was he responsible for creating the world's most iconic images of architecture, but he was on the forefront of pushing the boundaries of the art form into what it is today.
National Geographic contributor and wildlife photographer Steve Winter just created what might be one of the most striking photos I can remember seeing in recent memory: A 125 pound mountain lion, staring straight into the camera, with the background illuminated by the lights of downtown Los Angeles.
Devin Graham, better known by his internet alias Devin Supertramp, recently created this video (and BTS piece) that utilized over 50 GoPro cameras to capture dogs jumping and playing as if they were Neo dodging bullets in the blockbuster film The Matrix. If this doesn't make you crack at least a tiny smile, I'm pretty sure you may be Scrooge himself. For a behind-the-scenes look at how this was made, check out the video after the jump.
It's always fascinating to get a glimpse behind the scenes of high-budget productions, and Andrew Kramer of Video Copilot provides us with an absolutely wonderful look into the creation of the title design and introduction scenes for Star Trek Into Darkness. The best part? The plugin used to create many of the effects only costs $150.
Disclaimer: This post isn't riddled with eye candy, nor will it be the next viral hit of the month. What it does contain, however, may be far more valuable to any working or aspiring commercial photographer than any viral video or cutesy photo series. Norman Maslov is a well-known artist's and photographer's agent who recently performed a great interview with PhotoPolitic, a website specializing in promoting photographers
Last week I posted a gorgeous video from Wolfe Air - their promo reel for aviation cinematography, and explained a bit of the process behind it. This week, I've found and put together a few videos which detail how they equip their planes and helicopters with some of the most advanced camera technologies available, and it's pretty mindblowing. In these videos, Wolfe Air loads up a Learjet with
Wolfe Air is a company that specializes in creating air to air footage for airlines, big-budget movie productions, the military, and private commercial clients, and they recently released their updated reel, which is absolutely mindblowing. Not many people think about what might go into these shots, so as the Fstoppers designated aviation photography dork, I've decided to write up a reader's digest version of how they're made.
Dave Dugdale of LearningDSLRVideo.com just published this great demonstration of the differences between recording video in raw and H.264 formats using Canon DSLRs and free Magic Lantern firmware. The difference is pretty astounding to me, as someone who has only ever shot video in H.264.
As an architectural and interiors photographer, I own more lights than I even want to think about. Pelican cases full - hot lights, speedlights, monolights, color balanced bulbs, and modifiers to go along with all of them. Lowel recently released the very polarizing GL-1 Hotlight to much controversy: people mocked it or loved it. And truth be told,
As most people know, over the last few months and years, a number of laws have been passed that make operating a legitimate drone and aerial photography business a nightmare. Being a huge aviation geek and photographer myself, my jaw about hit the floor when I saw this, and I knew I had to share it with Fstoppers. For those who are serious about aerial photography, this might be a solution that you never thought of.
There's been a lot of buzz these past few months about Rokinon's new 24mm tilt shift offering. Many enthusiasts are interested in tilt and shift capabilities, but are not interested in shelling out the $2,000+ for the Nikon or Canon equivalents. Rokinon's entry into the field has been widely anticipated and it was finally my chance to get my hands on this little lens for a review.
Adrift is a breathtaking timelapse film created by Simon Christen, the same guy who brought us the incredible 'The Unseen Sea' from a couple of years ago. Adrift is what Simon calls his "love letter to the fog of the San Francisco Bay" and what a love letter it is. Over the course of two years, Simon waited for perfect atmospheric conditions to capture fog rolling down the Marin Headlands and into the SF Bay. Shot entirely at sunrise, this required Simon to be on
About six months ago, I wrote a piece comparing flash techniques to HDR and ambient-only techniques when shooting for architecture and interiors clients. There was some great discussion involved and many valid points raised, and I'd like to take a few minutes to bring up another scenario that really shows the benefits of using flash whenever possible when dealing with interior or architectural situations.
After looking at all of the great submissions for our April POTD contest, it took a few weeks to narrow them all down and come up with commentary for what were some outstanding photos. Like I said in the original post, it was truly humbling to have people from all over the world send us their images to view and judge against others. It was great to see images from all over the world of various cultures and places, and I'm happy to announce that we've finally settled on our top portraits and the winner of the $100.
We received over 1000 submissions from our readers to our new POTD contest, and yes, we looked at every single one of them. There were some brilliant entries and it was incredibly tough to select the top 30 for the month of April, but they've all been chosen, and you can check out the gallery here
We've all heard of renowned portrait photographer Zack Arias - not only is he a great shooter, but he's got a reputation for making some bold claims. Make no mistake that the Fuji X100S is a great little camera. Small, compact, feature-packed and with great image quality, you've probably heard quite a bit about it lately. But just HOW good is it? Zack Arias says that it's so good, in fact, that the DSLR is dead. Check out the video and let us
Well-known wet plate artist Ian Ruhter has just released the fourth installment in his 'Silver and Light' series, which chronicles his trip to Seattle to meet with Chase Jarvis, his journey to becoming an artist, Chase Jarvis' very frank thoughts on what being an artist
Owing to the success of our April POTD Contest, where we received over 1000 awesome submissions from readers all over the world, we are happy to now announce the contest for the month of May. In order to have a shot at a gift certificate worth $100 to B&H Photo & Video, be sure to check out the full post for details about how to submit and what to submit.
Yes, that is a bold claim, but hear me out. Sometimes something so creative yet so painfully simple comes along and just blows me away. This timelapse/hyperlapse video created using Google Street View is just one of those things. My mouth was agape the entire time I was watching this. Teehan+Lax Labs created this project by recording Google Street View movements all over the world and
I have been absolutely fascinated by wetplate processes for a while now: I find the medium absolutely unlike anything else in the world of art and photography, and the one-of-a-kind results from this hand-crafted process are simply beautiful. When I learned that there was a studio in San Francisco that specialized in taking collodion (tintypes, specifically) portraits of clients, I absolutely had to have one done.
Over the past few months, I've been looking at how we can improve our POTD feature to make it more, well, awesome. For a while now, we've been taking your submissions and combing through them to find some interesting shots. But we're going to change that up a bit. We're going to turn it into a contest format for a month, and the best shot takes home $100 at B&H for doing nothing more than sending us an image.
Not only is this video hilarious, NSFW, cute, and lovable, but we also get an awesome look behind the scenes at the cameras and filmmaking techniques used to create it. Matt & Kim, you've knocked it out of the park on this one. Check out the video by clicking to the left, then check out the BTS video inside the post. Oh yeah, the song is super catchy too!
