I guess this has become Speedo Week on Fstoppers! I recently discovered the photography of Michael Muller and must have spent a good hour on his website checking out all sorts of amazing photography! He has recently been working with Speedo for their summer catalog, and the production that goes into these shoots is insane. Click the post for a second video showcasing some BTS material from this shoot and be sure to check out Michael's website for all sorts of inspiring photography. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhy6g8Ewpac<
If you haven't checked out Mark Wallace's Adorama TV channel over at youtube you really should. He does a great job creating informative and useful videos on all sorts of digital photography and videography topics. In his most recent video, Mark shows a lot of different types of hot lights that can be used for lighting both your behind the scenes videos as well as your photoshoots themselves. He also talks a bit about how to light different subjects including how to light for a two person interview. Here at Fstopppers, we are using the Photoflex Starlights for our video productions. We really enjoy the versatility they give us but of course you can use anything that fits your budget. I know photographers sometimes stray away from constant lighting in favor of strobes so if you have any questions or thoughts about how to use these to the fullest, leave a comment below.
Claude Kongs is an overseas director and his latest trailer for the movie Luxembourg Air Rescue is pretty amazing. What do you do when you are disappointed by the "unsexiness of your location"? Click the full post to watch a lengthy behind the scenes video on how this trailer was filmed.
Portfolio: Luxembourg Air Rescue Promo Movie from Claude Kongs on Vimeo.
Celebrity photographer Brian Smith has a great video online that describes his workflow when shooting burlesque dancers in Las Vegas. The video is an advertisement piece for X-Rite Color Checker calibration tool but Brian gives some really good advice on how he took his career from working at a newspaper to now shooting celebrity portraits. In this video, Brian is mainly shooting with just a Profoto Ringflash and a Sony A900, and the results look great. Anyone know how in the world he is using pocket wizards on top of the Sony? I thought Sony DSLRs used to have some funky hotshoe jack? //--> //--> //--> //-->
These days, creating a portrait that grabs the average pedestrian's attention isn't an easy task. So what did local New York City comedian Colin Kane do to spice it up a little? He added a raging mob of crazy people behind him in this awesome portrait by photographer Monte Isom. It looks like Monte used a large 7' Octabank to light the crowd and then a beauty dish with a little fill from a smaller softbox to give Colin a harsh key light look without losing the shadows. I love the overall idea and I've personally always wanted to work with a big group of people like in this video. If you are in NYC, check out Colin's stand up act and definitely head over to Monte's site to see some mind blowing advertising images as well as the largest group photo ever! Click the full post to see the high res final image.
Comedian Colin Kane angry mob photo shoot with Photographer Monte Isom from monte isom on Vimeo.
Dom Daher is an extreme sport photographer. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to have to shoot commercial photos while avoiding crashing waves and aggressive surfers then this video should wet your appetite. <
If you were a film student and your professor gave you an assignment requiring you to show a series of different lighting setups, what would you do? John Note and his fellow classmates created a pretty funny video tutorial that shows 10 different lighting setups that you could use in both your films and your still images. If you are a photographer you might not be completely familiar with the power references but you can probably imagine the different ratios if you had to convert them to strobes or speedlights. I have often found in my own photography that simply changing the lighting setup to one which I might normally overlook can really change the story telling element of your photos. Has anyone else tried to reproduce morning light or midnight lighting before?
If you haven't spent any time on Phlearn.com then you are missing out on some amazing post production tutorials. Phlearn founder Aaron Nace has teamed up with Fstoppers for our first ever Fstoppers Workshops! During May 28 - June 1st, Aaron will be teaching a 2 day workshop in the Bahamas where you and 7 other students will plan and execute your "dream photoshoot".
You would have to be from Mars not to know who Peter Hurley is at this point. He was one of the first photographers to let Fstoppers into his studio, and together we produced the wildly popular The Art Behind The Headshot tutorial where he shares all of his secrets. Today Peter is publicly sharing perhaps his most important tip for making people look good in front of your camera, and it is appropriately named "squinching."
Over the weekend I asked our community members if they would like Lee and I to give critiques of some of their work. The response was huge, so we have picked 20 random images to look over and give our honest opinions and suggestions. I never thought being this brutally honest would actually be quite fun and productive.
Join Patrick and Lee of Fstoppers on Spreecast TONIGHT at 8:30 EST as they talk with a few of the top photographers teaching at the 2015 Fstoppers Workshops. We will be talking about our upcoming event in the Bahamas while our guests will be answering questions from our audience. Any topic is fair game so if you want to ask questions about business, retouching, lighting, marketing, or gaining commercial clients the floor will be yours.
Have you ever wondered what Donald Trump would look like if you combined 50 random photos of him and averaged them together? That's exactly what Reddit user Dwainosaur did with his latest photo/data mashup. Using commonly found images on Google, these composites of celebrities like Barack Obama, Kayne West, Bill Murray, and Brad Pitt almost look like pencil drawings. The results are pretty eerie and give a pretty good idea what each of these well known people would look like as a ghost.
Last month Fstoppers teamed up with SLR Lounge and BH Photo for an exciting camera giveaway. If you missed the entry post, basically we were giving one lucky winner their choice between the Nikon D810, Sony A7RII, and the Canon 5DsR high megapixel cameras. Yesterday we released our own review of all three of these cameras and today we are excited to announce the winner of a brand new camera!
Many photography and film students fail to dream big enough during their undergraduate studies. The work they produce seems more like an exercise than a passionate project for their own portfolios. For German film students Daniel Titz & Dorian Lebherz this was definitely not the case. In what might be the most moving commercial of 2015, Daniel and Dorian crafted a touching mock ad for Johnnie Walker that shows just how effective you can make your personal projects if you take them seriously.
Earlier this year Fstoppers teamed up with Miami-based swimwear photographer Joey Wright to produce a full blown tutorial on all things related to swimwear photography. All in all, Joey's tutorial Swimwear Photography - Lighting, Posing, and Retouching is 8 hours of on-location photography and 12 hours of Joey's full postproduction workflow. Today we are releasing a short 50 minute excerpt from the tutorial as well as the included raw file so you can follow along at home.
