It's always good humor when someone makes a career path diagram outlining possible jobs within a particular field. If you aren't sure about whether your skills are best utilized as a Director, Studio Head, Screenwriter, Producer, or Film Critic then this is a great starting point. Hopefully someone makes one of these based on art buying and photography publishing. Without cheating, which path do you naturally fall into?
If you are like me, then you might have jumped straight into studio lighting without paying much attention to manipulating natural light. If that is the case, now is a great time to play around with reflectors outside especially since the sun is lower on the horizon this time of year. Jay P Morgan heads to the ultimate graveyard with the lovely Liz Hernandez to show just how effective reflectors can be in place of strobes. Jay is using a few of the Photoflex 5 in 1 Reflectors in various sizes to manipulate not only the size of the reflected light but also the color. Unlike when using strobes, when using a reflector you really need to pay attention to where the sun is shining so you can maximize the amount of fill light bouncing back into your subject (backlighting your subject is a good starting point). The other major selling point of using a reflector over a strobe not mentioned in this video is your ability to shoot wide open at 1.4 or 2.8 for shallow depth of field. Unless you are using something like the Pocket Wizard Flex System, strobing outside is usually going to force you into the > f8 category which destroys the wide open aperture look. Hope this helps those who haven't used reflectors as much and good luck shooting!
With just under three weeks left until the deadline of our 2011 Behind The Scenes Contest, our readers are really hitting it into high gear by turning in some awesome videos! Some of the ideas you guys come up with are really clever and a refreshing alternative to the boring "glamorized music videos" we receive daily. Wedding photographer Jaroslav Repta (based out of Bratislave, Slovakia) recently filmed an entire wedding from the perspective of his camera by mounting a GoPro Hero on his DSLR. Having started off as a wedding photographer myself, I found it really interesting to watch some of the conditions Jaroslav had to work in, and how his creative eye made the most of every situation. Weddings are tough with harsh sunlight one second and low light action the next, but Jaroslav shows how he (and tons of other fstoppers) work quick to find an interesting image. Love or hate weddings, I think everyone will get a kick out of seeing the hustle and bustle required at every wedding.
These days it's not surprising to find out that most of what you see in a movie or commercial is completely green screened or created with CGI. So I was pleasantly shocked when I saw the behind the scenes video for the outdoor clothing company Quechua's latest advertisement. The slow motion footage of wild animals interacting with hikers and campers is nothing sort of amazing. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video as much as I did. Click the full post to watch the final video. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
For some people, Halloween can be a stressful time as you panic to come up with that perfect costume that will impress all your friends and help you score big with the opposite sex. Photographer Tyler Card decide to one up everyone by creating his own lifesize working Nikon D3 which can capture all of his trick or treating fun. Check out the demo below and then head to the full post to see how Tyler made it in his BTS video.
For many shutterbugs, the dream of making money with photography doesn't extend past being able to pay for new equipment. Photography might just be a hobby if you already have a fulfilling career. But if you are looking to make a business out of being creative the first question that will cross your mind is "how much should I charge?" Knowing how to price your product (and from a tax perspective everything you do IS a product, not a service) does not come without consequence. Pricing yourself too low might gain you a ton of business but will also rob you of any free time. Pricing yourself too high, especially early on, will decrease your workload but might also send you filing an application at Starbucks...again! Mark Wallace has tackled the issue of how much to charge in his latest video, and he gives a lot of great pointers. Lee and I are currently working on a detailed video series on wedding photography where we will outline our ideas on pricing so stay tuned for that as well. Leave any questions or experiences you have in the comments below.
We've all seen huge gigapixel images and their boring sidebars that allow us to navigate through them. But what if you could scroll through a photograph Minority Report style? The good people over at the University of Lincoln in the UK have put together an exhibit that combines huge gigapixel images with gestures based on the Xbox Kinect gaming console. The next step seems obvious: combine this technology with Photoshop! If you are near the univeristy, check out the Gigalinc page for future shows of this interesting concept. And if you know how to hack the Kinect, someone please hook this up to CS5!
Hurricane Irene down here in Charleston, SC was pretty unmemorable. However, up in NYC it seems most everyone pretty much followed the precautions and got the $@*# out of dodge. So what did the city that never sleeps look like when hit overnight by a historic storm? Check out this interesting black and white video shot by some daring videographers as they visit the subways and streets. Also be sure to head over to the Buffalo Picture House for some other great films and documentaries. Let's hope they still have working gear after all that rain!
A while back we featured a story on a new camera body cap that was designed to protect your DSLR while traveling through the most extreme of circumstances. The LockCircle created a lot of controversy from our readers over both the price and also the size of the cap itself. Well we now have a reason why this body cap is so expensive and know exactly how it works with this amazingly well crafted behind the scenes video. You may scoff at the overall idea of this product but you will no doubt be impressed with the manufacturing process. I usually leave lenses on my cameras even when traveling but I can see the advantage of something like this for extreme condition photographers who shoot in sandy, snowy, or dusty environments where a loose body cap could cause serious problems during a photo session.
It's summer time which means you probably are looking to get out of the house and find some adventure. For photographer Jerry Monkman that often means taking his DSLR cameras out with him on the water. In this short video, Jerry gives some great tips on how you can keep your camera safe from water while still keeping it within reach. Using the camera system made by Cotton Carrier, Jerry is able to keep his camera snug against him and out of the way. If you prefer to get a little more wet and wild, you can always opt for our personal favorite underwater housing by Iwa-Marine. I'm not going to give away the ending of this video but I'm sure you will find it as scary as I did watching Jerry casually rowing along during this video. Any of you guys doing nature photography that requires this sort of thing?
Do we have any readers from Chicago? Would you be interested in helping Lee and I out on the next Fstoppers Original video? We will be shooting all day on Thursday June 2nd all over the streets of Chicago for a really exciting BTS video I can't talk about publicly yet and we could use some help. If you feel comfortable shooting video and have a Canon 7D or 60D we would love to have you help us as we run around the city. We only need one assistant so send us an email and let us know how you can help. Not able to help out? No worries; we'd love to grab a beer with any readers wanting to hang out for a bit over the weekend. If you are a Chicago native and know a good watering hole, leave your suggestion in the comments and we can set something up for Friday or Saturday night. The New York meet ups have been a blast so we are excited to see what the Windy City has to offer!
J. R. R. Tolkien's books are some of the most cherished stories in modern literature. You would have to have been living under a rock to miss the movie adaptation of The Lord of The Rings which have grossed more than 2.9 Billion dollars in revenue . Director Peter Jackson helped propel the trilogy to a whole new audience after creating three of the most successful movies of all time, and now he is busy at work with the classic Tolkien story The Hobbit. This behind the scenes videos features Peter showing you a lot of the preproduction for the film including many of the props, sets, actors, and costumes.
Apple has been hard at work completely redesigning their flagship video editing software Final Cut Pro X which is set to ship in June 2011. At the recent Nab 2011 keynote in Las Vegas, FCP architect Peter Steinauer unveiled some of the new features as well as previewed the new user interface in a working version of the software. As a Premiere CS5 user, I have to admit I'm a little envious of some of these new features found in the competitor's software. Check the highlights in the video below, and click on the full post for the complete keynote presentation from Vegas. You are going to want to become familiar with this software if you are looking to start editing behind the scenes videos or promotional videos for your business.
This video might be on the fringe of what most photographers and videographers are faced with in their own field but I found it really interesting. The whole idea of modeling a modern Mickey Mouse with the classic animations we have grown up watching reminded me of how important it is to really study the details of your predecessors in order to copy or move past what they have already created. Sometimes I feel like a lot of photographers simply follow the lighting they see on a particular blog and expect to have the same results of well known photographers in their own projects. More often than not, what you wind up finding is your final image is no where near as good as the one you've tried to emulate. You really have to take the time to study your craft to make compelling art, and that's exactly what the animators for the new Mickey video game did. Enjoy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KecvgXzSWOI<
Novak Djokovic is currently ranked alongside the top tennis pros in the world. Only a crazy person would put his life and talent in jeopardy...but that is exactly what Head Tennis Racquets have done for their Untek IG Speed MP racquet commercial. The full commercial is really awesome with mysterious briefcases, seductive women, vintage prop planes, and music straight out of a Tarantino film. As far as I can tell there are no special effects here just lots of conjones by Novak and his tennis trainer.
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