Patrick Hall

Getting accurate Autofocus must be one of the most frustrating things an event or wedding photographer deals with on a daily basis.

This story happens much more often than any of us would like to believe. A beautiful model receives a text from a highly respected photographer asking if she would be interested in doing a swimwear shoot at the beach. The model has heard great things about the photographer or maybe has even worked with the photographer before and jumps at the opportunity to shoot with him.

For the next 10 days, the entire Fstoppers staff is down in Curacao filming our next full length tutorial with swimwear photographer Joey Wright. Recently Facebook just added a new live streaming feature called Livestream which means we can live stream while we film this tutorial.

For the majority of people, the day after Christmas is usually filled with farewells to extended family members, house cleaning, writing thank you cards, and crashing on the couch to watch the final games of the football season.

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.

The Fstoppers Flash Disc has been out of stock both through Amazon and BH Photo for the last 2 months, but luckily we have received our next large shipment of inventory for the holidays. It's been pretty amazing to see and hear how many photographers are enjoying our portable, pocket sized soft box for off camera flash.

The best shopping day of the year is upon us! Unlike the highly stigmatized Black Friday day of chaos, Cyber Monday allows us all to casually browse the best sales from the comfort of our homes. In this post I have gathered some of the best and most useful sales for photographers and videographers as well as some non photography tools that can be a lifesaver.

Everyone wants to look their best when they are in front of the camera. Most people practice in front of a mirror to get their perfect "photo face" nailed down but did you know that your shoulder and arm positioning can actually make you look thin in one photo and fat in another?

Back in October I posted a portrait of myself that quickly became the most popular photo on my entire Facebook feed for 2015. The image was never meant to be anything other than a test shot for a few lenses we were reviewing but people kept asking how I created it.

Today we are launching a great deal on our Flash Disc light modifiers for those of you living in the European Union.  If you add 3 Flash Discs to your Amazon Cart, you will get a special sale price for only 2 (basically buy 2 get 1 free).  The Fstoppers Flash Disc is basically a small softbox that folds up and fits into your pocket.

A couple weeks ago, we asked the Fstoppers Community to submit their swimwear images for a special episode of "Critique the Community" with Dixie Dixon. Patrick met up with Dixie and went through 20 images of the submissions to give their thoughts on the quality of each image according to the Fstoppers rating system and how the images could be improved.

Last month we had the three highest megapixel cameras by Nikon, Sony, and Canon in our office, and we filmed a pretty polarizing review pitting them against each other. Many viewers pointed out an unfair bias in our studio test so we redid the test again using the same lens on all three cameras.

A few weeks ago we offered to critique a handful of headshot photographs from the Fstoppers Community. I was able to sit down with professional headshot photographer Peter Hurley for his advice on how you guys can help improve your own headshot photos.

Today marks the end of a full week at Photo Plus Expo in New York City. In the mayhem that comes with such a large expo, one of the stand out presentations for me was hearing Gregory Heisler speak at the Canon booth on Saturday.

Dixie Dixon has been a good friend of Fstoppers over the years, and she even came down to the Bahamas with us for the first Fstoppers Workshop. Lee and I have been preaching since the start of FS that photographers need to film behind the scenes videos their own photoshoots.

How many times have you seen that popular meme that inaccurately says today is the "Back to the Future" day?

Many photographers rely on their 50mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.4 lenses to give that dreamy, narrow depth of field look to their portraits. These two lenses have become a staple for portrait, headshot, wedding, and boudoir photographers who enjoy the soft look that comes with a narrow depth of field and natural lighting.

UPDATE:  Results from our reader's poll can be found here! Last week we released our head to head competition review between the Sony A7RII, the Nikon D810, and the Canon 5DsR ultra high megapixel cameras.

Lately it seems that DJI has been releasing innovative video tools every single month. Known primarily for their ultra popular Phantom and Inspire 1 drone systems, DJI just announced today that they are releasing their own handheld 4K camera and gimbal called the Osmo.

This is some rather sad news I have to bring everyone. At the moment there are only 500 FlashDisc units left in our Amazon UK store and we will not be replenishing them once they are sold out.

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.

The images from the September 11th tragedy are no doubt stuck in all of our minds. For most of us, the phrase "9/11" instantly reminds us of a plane hitting the World Trade Center, smoke billowing out of the two buildings, or the heroic images of rescue workers attempting to save lives after the buildings had collapsed.

Aerial photography has always been something that I have found interesting. Seeing so many of our writers like David Geffin, Mike Kelley, and Noam Galai capture exciting photos and video from the sky has inspired me to finally attempt my first doors-off helicopter excursion. In just one short one-hour ride, I've learned a lot of do's and don'ts as well as a bunch of things to experime

It could be argued that the 80's pushed the experimental envelope further than any other decade before it.  For the first time in history, consumers were able to watch movies in the privacy of their own homes, the camcorder brought home video recording to the masses, and digital technology opened the doors for tons of horrible musical and visual effects.

Oh the world of high end retouching.  This week cosmetic company Dior released a new video and ad campaign featuring their hot spokeswoman, Jennifer Lawrence.  With a not so subtle nod to Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, this new lipstick commercial isn't so bad upon first watch.

If you ask any well-known and successful photographer what the most important thing you can do to grow your business is, they will almost all point towards shooting personal projects. Before the end of every day, I try to visualize at least one creative and interesting idea that might be worth photographing. Nine times out of ten, those ideas are complete garbage. Every now and t

The Profoto B1s are the battery operated smaller brother of the Profoto D1 monoblocks.  One major advantage they have over their AC counterpart is that you can freeze super fast motion much easier than you can with the D1s.

Here I am on a Saturday night tucked away in my photography office finally listening to Dr. Dre's new album.  With just two real full length albums, Dre is one of my all time favorite artists, and I always enjoy researching the samples and references he uses in his music.

Erik Almas is one of my all time favorite photographers. His work mixes equal parts clever advertising and personal vision in a way that makes each image intriguing to study. But behind all of his brilliant images is a businessman who works diligently to get his brand in front of art buyers and advertising agencies.

I personally have never used a Wacom tablet or stylus in my life. They always seemed like the most useful post-processing tool ever, but I never bit the bullet and tested the waters. However, after filming Elia Locardi edit over 40 images for his "Photographing the World" landscape series, I am confident enough to finally give it a try myself.

Almost every photographer has found one of their images reproduced online without their permission. The first question you might ask yourself is "how much money can I get for this infringement?" However, copyright law can be extremely difficult to understand and there are many common or case law rulings that factor in on how an image can be used fairly or commercially.

Anyone who has been booked as a wedding photographer knows that this genre of photography can be extremely challenging.  Perhaps no other field of photography throws as many variables at you more than those found on a typical wedding day.

Have you ever wanted to create a dramatically lit portrait but you have felt limited by your lack of camera gear?  Pye Jirsa over at SLR Lounge has just released a very technical video showing how you can accomplish complex lighting with just a single on-camera flash.

A few months ago I featured a hot deal on the Nikon D750 DSLR camera being sold by a reputable ebay seller.  Today Canon users can get in on a similar deal.  Right now you can save $700 on a brand new flagship Canon 5Ds on Ebay.

The website WallPart (intentionally not linked to) claims to be "the world's largest online shop of posters...with over 10 billion images."  What they do not tell you is that their database is filled with stolen and copyrighted images from photographers around the world.

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.

Beth Moon is a photographer who specializes in classic black and white imagery. Over the last 14 years she has been traveling the world documenting the oldest and largest trees on the planet. To promote her new book "Ancient Trees: Portraits in Time," Moon has shared this behind-the-scenes video of her platinum printing darkroom process which is pretty interesting to watch.

The future of sharing live video through social media is definitely heating up through apps like Periscope and Meerkat.  Basically these apps turn your phone into a live streaming webcam that you can use to share whatever you want to the world.

This is a really clever marketing tool using photography.  The prototype agency Breakfast has created a super complex billboard made entirely of spools of thread (6,400 to be exact).  These bobbins are wrapped with fabric containing 36 colors and can mechanically recreate any image sent to its processor.