I recently had the pleasure of meeting Dane Sanders at WPPI while we were in Las Vegas. If you don't already know Dane, he's a wedding photographer who web chats with some of the industry's up and coming photographers. Trey Ratcliff of Stuck In Customs fame sat down with Dane to talk about creating unique and artistically strong content for the web. [read full post]
Meet Joey Lawrence. He is one of the most highly sought after commercial photographers in the world. And he has all of us beat by a good 15 years! Click below to find out why. The Real Joey Lawrence from Canamedia Inc. on Vimeo.
Have you ever wondered just how many photographs are taken each day? Maybe you've wondered where the most photos are taken throughout the world. Well the GPS data tracking company Triposo has released a timelapse video that shows exactly where most of the world's photographs are taken. With the help from sites like Flickr, Dmoz, TouristEye, Open Street Maps, and dozens others, Triposo was able to plot popular areas for photography using GPS data embedded into the photographs themselves. Not only did they capture the location of the photos but also the day it was taken. Click the full post to see still shots of the most popular days people are using their cameras.
With only about 2 weeks left in our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest, entries are starting to pour in. It's great to put some faces with the names of our readers and see the different types of projects everyone is working on. William Walker came up with a pretty simple but clever idea for his contest video. Using just a camera and a Vello ShutterBoss intervalometer, William was able to capture photos of his buddy restoring a badly damaged 2011 Audi Q5. The whole project took over 40 working hours (several days of footage) and presented William with a few challenges. The concept is pretty straightforward and mad props to William for going out and pushing himself to try something new. The BTS video is below but click the full post to watch the final timelapse video. If you are planning to submit your own BTS video to our contest, you have just over 15 days to get it up online. Don't wait until the final day or you will probably not make the deadline!
Gry Garness is a makeup artist turned retoucher/photoshop consultant from Norway. I wasn't familiar with her photoshop tutorials until I came across this video the other day, and I must say I'm pretty impressed with her articulate approach to complicated techniques. In this video, Gry teaches some interesting liquify techniques on an image by Derek Cooper. Instead of simply using the lossy liquify tool, Gry shows you how you can use warp and puppet warp selections which give you the ability to go back and change any transforms down the road. The results are pretty amazing and it's always good to know a few different ways to accomplish the same overall outcome.
We are heading into the holiday season which usually means manufacturers and retailers are looking to hook up buyers with some pretty sweet deals. Right now through BHvideo.com you can get some great discounts on Sandisk high speed flash memory cards which are great as newer cameras offer more megapixels and greater video capability. Pocket Wizard is also offering a rebate on their flagship Flex and Mini radio triggers. Check out our Nikon Pocket Wizard Flex and Mini Review to see how far the new line of triggers have come over the industry standard Plus IIs. Act fast because these units rarely go on sale and hold their value really well if you ever need to sell them down the road.
Well the title pretty much says it all and you only have 3 day left to enter! Fstoppers is excited to announce a new twitter contest where you can win one of the brand new Apple Macbook Air 11.6" Notebooks. Click Here for details on how you can enter the Fstoppers twitter contest and win this macbook. Also make sure you enter before the end of October 12th since we are announcing the winner the following day.
Taking your creativity to the next level can make all the difference between typical photographs and artistic photographs. Orb Outerwear just released their new Fall 2011 fashion designs and they included a fun behind the scenes video to go along with it. So many photographers already have a pretty solid understanding of lighting to produce great photos. What they lack is artistic vision to do something different and unique. Everyone who reads this blog can easily create a small team of set designers, hair stylists, makeup artists, and clothing stylists to produce studio quality catalog profiles. Try putting something like this together for your entry into the Behind The Scenes Contest we are running. Unfortunately I could not find out who the photographer was so if you know the talent responsible for these please reply in the comments. Click the full post to see a stop motion video of some of the final images (the snow shoot doesn't appear to have been published yet).
When I tell people that I grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, everyone always asks me what it's like to see the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). I always try to explain how it looks by relating it to a laser show or smoke streams but I've never found a way to describe it to someone who hasn't seen it for themselves. Two days ago Terje Sorgjerd created the best visual representation of the Aurora Borealis I have ever seen from Pas National Park near the Russian border. Using a timelapse dolly from Dynamic Perceptions, a Canon 5D Mark II, and a few wide angle lenses, Terje was able to take long exposure iamges and size them down to create an 4K video masterpiece. Check out the Geophysical Institute if you live near the North Pole and want to monitor the activity of the Aurora.
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?
If you went to see a movie over the weekend, chances are you went to see the new Michael Bay movie Transformers: Dark of the Moon. You may not be a big fan of Michael Bay and his over use of (and often reused) CGI effects, but you have to admit the creative artists responsible for carrying out Mr. Bay's vision are pretty remarkable. SoundWorks has profiled the incredible work sound designers Ethan Van der Ryn and Erik Aadahl went through to create the soundtrack required to make the visual effects on the screen believable. For the photographer or videographer just getting into video, you will soon realize how important the audio element is in maintaining a high production value in your films. If you enjoyed our post on The Sound of Inception then you are sure to enjoy this one as well.
When I first saw this video I was completely blown away. Michael Levin is an outstanding black and white landscape photographer. Recently Michael teamed up with Brad Kremer to produce the most artistic behind the scenes video I've ever seen showing a day in the life of a photographer. I really really wish there was more technical information to this video but unfortunately like most landscape photographers their secrets are hard to pull from them. Brad shot this whole video on a Canon 5D Mark II and the highly praised Dynamic Perception Dolly. Michael is primarily shooting on a Hasselblad body but that shouldn't come as any surprise. Make sure you check out Michael's portfolio -- much of his work features spectacular locations around Japan.
Our email has been flooded the last couple of days with this neat little flash program. At some point in your photographic journey, you've probably wondered how different shutter speeds and focal lengths affect your images. The guys over at Camera Sim have built an interactive flash simulator that lets you choose your ISO, Shutter Speed, Aperture, Focal Length, and even the lighting to expose for the perfect shot. I have to admit, I spent a good 5 minutes playing with all the settings and seeing how everything would turn out. I'm a little suspicious of the image created at 1 foot away @ 18mm but it's probably not an exact science. Imagine how much easier it would have been to learn what all these function do to your images if you had this back in the archaic era film era!
This video has been sweeping across the blogs and I thought you guys might enjoy it if you haven't already seen it. It's a bit obnoxious but definitely should put a smile on your face. I think it also makes you appreciate all the gear you have when you see someone this excited about her first camera. There are a lot of great one liners in this video :)
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