Patrick Hall Photography Tutorials

About Patrick Hall

Patrick Hall is a founder of Fstoppers.com and a photographer based out of Charleston, South Carolina.

Popular Articles from Patrick Hall
Behind The Scenes:  How To Photograph The Olympics With Reuters

Earlier in the year, Fstoppers showed you how Sports Illustrated photographers photograph a superbowl. Just as the 2012 Olympics in London have come to a close, Reuters has released a behind the scenes video on how their photographers take images during the world's most celebrated sporting event. It's pretty interesting to hear from some of the industry's best photographers and editors as they race against the clock to send images to the wire.

It Is That Time Again, Sandisk 64GB CF and SD Cards One Day Only Sale

Yep, BH Photo currently has Sandisk memory card instant rebates today only! Now that your wallet is burning a hole in your pants from all those weddings you've been shooting, what better time to reinvest back into your business with some larger cards. Once that D800 finally arrives, you are going to wish you had larger cards. Check out the full post below to see what all is on sale.

[Contest] This Fstoppers Reader Just Won Three New Pocketwizard Plus IIIs

About three weeks ago we announced an easy Twitter contest where a random follower would win three of the unreleased Pocket Wizard Plus III radio triggers and a free copy of Peter Hurley's The Art Behind The Headshot. One lucky follower has been randomly chosen and we are ready to announce the big winner. Keep your fingers crossed as you read on

[BTS Video] Kevin Kozicki Uses Pointsettias For High End Beauty Photos

One of the biggest rewards of our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest is we finally get to meet our readers and see what they enjoy shooting. Meet Kevin Kozicki; he is a great fashion photographer based out of sunny Los Angeles. In his contest entry, Kevin wanted to use poinsettia leaves in some sort of beauty themed image while not going in the typical Christmas/Holiday route. The images Kevin produced are outstanding and his lighting is perfect for this type of project. I do wish Kevin would have explained his lighting a bit more but it's also nice to hear photographers talk about the overall production ideas because they are equally as important and often overlooked. If you have any questions for Kevin, leave them in the comments below and click the full post to see a few of the final images.
Fstoppers Original:  The Wakeboard Studio Shoot

One of my favorite things about Charleston, SC is being close to the ocean. I love being in and around the water, and although I'm not very good at it, I do enjoy wakeboarding. Charleston has become a pretty big hub for sports like kiteboarding and wakeboarding over the last few years, and this city is not short on talented athletes. I took an interest in wakeboard photography a couple years ago, and I always enjoyed shooting images from extreme angles. Although I've gotten some cool images, I never felt like I really had much control over my images with just daylight. I've tried to bring strobes outside to create something "different" but even those shots have been done a million times. I decided I wanted a way to shoot a rider flying through the air with interesting, studio quality lighting and this is what I came up with....click the full post for the full story. https://vimeo.com/19633416

Fstoppers Original: The Studio Wakeboard Shoot from FStoppers on Vimeo.

[Inspiration] ReDefine Talks Celebrity Portraits With Brian Smith

A few weeks ago, Fstoppers caught up with celebrity photographer Brian Smith. If you didn't take the time to read the article, don't worry because ReDefine just published a video interview with Brian from Tamara Lackey's recent interview out in Vegas. What I love about people like Brian is he's quick to point out the real defining element of his work: his relationship to his subject. Male photographers often get caught up in

UK Photographer James Karinejad Makes A Pretty Mess

James Karinejad is a commercial product photographer out of Edgware, North London and his work is probably best described as clean yet imaginative. Some of the clients he has worked with have included Dolce & Gabbana, Pizza Hut, Clarins, and Addison Lee. It's also interesting to note that James made the transition to stills by first working in video.

I have always enjoyed watching these product shoots because the lighting required to make a product look desirable is often very different than the lighting needed to make a face or figure look good. In this video James...

[Sports] Sports Illustrated Director Of Photography Steve Fine Talks Photo Editing

If you are a sports fan, you are going to love this interview. Grover over at Photoshelter recently interviewed Sports Illustrated Director of Photography Steve Fine. Steve's job is to pick out the absolute best "super selects" from a handful of sports photographers and publish those photos in record time (sometimes within hours). I recently met Steve and what I found interesting about his job is not only the insane amount of work that goes into finding the absolute cream of the crop photos but also how important Steve's eye has to be to tell the story of each game in only a handful of frames. With SI, their photo team winds up with dozens if not hundreds of great images but only a very select few can be published to represent the final theme of the game. The following interview is pretty long but definitely worth checking out, especially if you are interested in knowing how sports photography or wired images are used to create the magazines we see on newsstands daily. Enjoy!
[BTS Video] The Never Ending Fashion Photoshoot

Amy Lynn must really want to win some of the $20,000 in photo gear we are giving away in our Behind the Scenes Contest because the photoshoot idea she came up with is one of the most original ideas we've seen yet! Amy wanted to create a fashion image with a twist. Her plan was to take a bunch of photos of her friends in a circle and stitch them together in a way that would allow the viewer to pan around the scene in full 360 degrees. I wasn't quite sure how the image would turn out when I first started watching her video but the final product is pretty impressive. I've embedded the final image HERE so make sure you check out the full post to see how awesome this turned out. If you have any questions for Amy about how she created this awesome fashion image, leave her a comment below. We wish Amy and everyone else who has entered this contest so far the best of luck!
[Video] The New ARRI L7 LED Fresnel Lights Are Pretty Awesome

Most of the readers here at Fstoppers are photographers but we also have a lot of videographers as well. Most of us photographers are completely out of the loop when it comes to the tools videographers use day in and day out, and some of them are pretty cool. Mitch Gross demonstrates some of the features found in the new ARRI L7 LED Fresnel Lights and they look pretty awesome. Having WB control over your light color is pretty awesome and could come in handy for a lot of photography applications. These Fresnel lights are pretty expensive at $2700 but hopefully this technology will show up in other less expensive lights too. How cool would it be if our future speedlights had both strobe light and controlable LED lights for video (hint hint Nikon!)
[Contest Submission] Dramatic Portraits Of The University Of Indiana's Track And Field Team

There are just less than 7 weeks left to submit your behind the scenes contest video. Submissions are starting to come in and it's amazing what our readers are doing through their photography. As the video submissions come in we are going to feature the standouts here on the front of Fstoppers. In Zach Hetrick's behind the scenes video, he shows how he created commercial sports portraits of The Hoosiers's track and field team. Zach takes some time at the beginning to talk a bit about the lighting setup he used and shows how you can give your group shots a punch with some nice light thanks to a few Alien Bee monoblocks. Leave your comments below if you have any questions about this shoot or simply want to give some friendly support to Zach. You can check out all the entries on the BTS Contest Forum Thread, and remember to get your submissions in early so we can share your work on the front of the site.
Behind The Scenes Of ESPN's TV Ratings

Now this isn't your normal behind the scenes video. The guys over at Jess3, a creative agency, were asked by ESPN to create a video that explains how the Nielsen television rating system works. I know it sounds a bit boring but it's actually pretty interesting to see how it works especially if you've ever wondered how in the hell Two and A Half Men is rated as the top tv sitcom on the air for the last several years. Check out the behind the scenes video below on how director Mark Kulakoff created this 70s concept and employed his "2.5D" vision into the final production. Click the full post to watch the final ESPN mini show.
The Longest Route To Avoiding Photoshop

Part of the appeal of doing something the long way is exactly that: proving you have the guts to reinvent the wheel. When Stephen Doyle was asked to help with the New York Times story What If The Secret To Success Is Failure? he decided to try something that would have been rather easy to produce in post production. Instead of relying on Photoshop, Stephen used forced perspective to physically write out words within different scenes. The final images appear to have words written on top of the images but infact they are embedded into each photograph directly. Click the full post to check out a second video and see a few examples of the final published images.
An Almost Magical Way To Light Your Green Screen Background

A green screen, also known as a chromakey, can make life really easy if you are doing a lot of video work and want a simple solution for dropping in different backgrounds. David Dugdale created a great tutorial for green screen which shows how to effectively light a chromakey background and key it out in Premiere. ReflecMedia has created a different solution for chromakeying with their Chroma Background Kit. It uses a green LED ringlight that illuminates their special background made up of glass beads. Even with the lovely Olivia Tech explaining how it works, I'm still a bit shocked that such a small ringlight can illuminate the background without affecting the subject. This system isn't cheap but I can see the advantage of not having to carry extra lights just to evenly light a huge background especially out on location.
How To Light An Interview On A Budget

If you are planning a behind the scenes video for our 2011 photo contest, you probably also need to setup an interesting interview segment to explain the details of your photoshoot. Most photographers spend a lot of money on their flash equipment but often don't have much in the way of constant lights. The guys over at SLRlounge have come up with a great BTS video on how you can create an interesting interview set on a budget. In this video, Pye Jirsa used basic work lights mixed with natural ambient light. In our contest video we either shot completely natural light or mixed in some of these inexpensive LED lights to make it a little more interesting. Taking a little bit of time to make your interview footage look good always goes a long way and is often just as fun designing as the actual photoshoot itself.