Patrick Hall

If you've ever wondered how you can begin transitioning from part time photographer to completely supporting yourself in your business, then you have probably considered shooting senior portraits. Sal Cincotta is an excellent photographer, and he is an even better businessman. This weekend Sal is sharing his knowledge behind building a successful Senior Portrait business on creativeLIVE (July 6-8). As always, the live broadcast is free to stream as it happens live.

Over the last few months Fstoppers and the guys over at creativeLIVE have built a fun relationship. We love sharing inspiring photo shoots, behind the scenes videos, and gear talk, and they broadcast free workshops from some of the industry's best creative professionals. So we thought it would be fun to ask Who would you like to see on creativeLIVE? I know a short list of photographers I'd love to see on CL (some are our own readers) but we want to hear from you. Complete the Questionnaire

I've always been fascinated by technical photographs showing every single part of complex machines. And shockingly enough, most of those images are created with a lot less Photoshop than one would imagine. "Explode" photographer Adam Voorhees shows us a quick timelapse of his latest Kawasaki Moto photograph shot for ESPN. Click the full post to view the final image.

Update: Live Now! As a wedding photographer myself, I think the most important thing any photographer can do for their business is adding video to their services. I met Rob and Vanessa earlier this year and was excited to hear they are teaching this new "Fusion" video/photo hybrid to other photographers. On June 29 - July 1, creativeLIVE is airing their 3 day workshop for free! Learn how you can easily incorporate video into your photography business from two of the industry's leaders.

If you are a regular reader of Fstoppers then you know how many times I've said this, "Peter Hurley has changed the way I photograph people more than anyone else". During his Google+ Conference Keynote Presentation, Peter explains why it is the photographer's job to make every person look amazing while they are in front of their camera. Photographers cannot rely on a model's good looks, perfectly crafted lighting, their own technical prowess, or old fashioned luck

This Thursday, June 14, Jared Platt is doing a 3 day workshop on how to speed up your Lightroom 4 workflow. As always with creativeLIVE events, the online workshop is free to watch live (so sign up for that now) and then the video recordings of that workshop cost $150 to download after the event ends. Click the full post for more details on how you can watch this intensive tutorial for free this coming weekend.

A few weeks ago Scott Kelby hosted the Google + conference in San Francisco. In this lecture from the event, Scott tries to shed light on to how photographers should really work their scenes to find the best composition. We've all been taught the tried and true methods like rule of thirds, leading lines, tight crop, repeating patterns, framing, and multi level depth. Shouldn't there be a better way to teach

The threat of a major security attack becomes increasingly imminent the more popular a website becomes. As a few of you know, Fstoppers.com has been sending malware warnings to a select number of visitors using AVG, Kaspersky, and Sucuri anti virus programs. The GREAT NEWS is these warnings were false positives and only affected antivirus programs that were either outdated or running an incorrect virus definition. For more information about this, read the full post below:

GoPro has become one of those companies like Redbull where everything they put out there is pretty cool. It has been fun seeing such a small startup become the industry leaders in tiny HD video cameras. With their new Wifi BacPac, GoPro gives users the ability to control their cameras through tablets like the iPad and smart phones.

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.

Many photographers start off their careers focusing on wedding photography. I started my career as a wedding photographer in Charleston, and I still enjoy shooting a handful each year. Over the next few months, I hope to share some of my thoughts on wedding photography and how event photographers can improve their photos. Today I was reminded how important "In Camera Cropping" is for emotionally charged photographs. Read the full post to see two examples of how cropping can make or break an image.

Tom Lowe's Timescapes documentary has been in the works now for over two years, and it is finally complete! Timescapes is the first movie to be sold to the public in full 4K resolution. Shot on the Red Epic and with Canon Lenses, Tom's outdoor documentary features some of the most amazing scenes I've ever seen from Yosemite, the Joshua Tree, and other parts of Western America.

Everyone knows Peter Hurley uses fairly expensive Kino Flo lights to give his clients nice soft beauty lighting. Fstoppers reader Tristan Penner decided to build a portable and inexpensive alternative to Peter's setup using standard Fluorescent lights. The setup might not improve too much on the portability but the quality of light does look really nice. What's really cool is Tristan is able to travel to people's homes with this setup bypassing the

On Sunday, San Francisco celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge with one massive fireworks display. For all of us who weren't able to attend, no worries; the guys over at The Seventh Movement captured the entire event with several Canon 5Ds (MKII and IIIs) and a Red Scarlet (at 48 fps).

If you are like me, you probably update to new versions of Photoshop only to not take advantage of any of the new features. Learning new techniques on your own time is always time consuming. This week(end) only, our friends at CreativeLIVE are offering a free download of Lesa Snider's CS6 course (normally $79) which is Live now! Lesa covers all of the new features like Puppet Warp, Liquify, Lighting Effects, Video, and Content Aware as well as some basic tools you might already know about. Details are in the full post

If you work out of a studio, you know how annoying paper seamless backdrops can be...they always wrinkle and warp. We recently changed over to the Savage Vinyl backdrops and they seem to last a lot longer. The guys over at OKstrobist have an even cheaper alternative for those looking for a DIY approach and it's pretty clever. Even though this can still cost as much as $170, you aren't stuck

Right now some of the biggest names in the photography world are gathered in San Francisco for the Google+ Photographer's Conference. Scott Kelby is the brain child of this event and you can keep up with a lot of the free video content here on the Google+ Page. Photographers like Trey Ratcliff, Peter Hurley, Jeremy Cowart, Alex Koloskov, and Lindsay Adler are giving advice about marketing, social media, growing your business, and creating "shabanging" images.

Last year we told the story of how Noam Galai's self portrait image had been stolen and reprinted hundreds of times around the world without his permission. What people were shocked to find out was Noam did not threaten or take legal action of any kind (instead he used the momentum to propel his career). Duane Lester of All American Blogger decided to go a different route and film his confrontation with the paper who plagiarized his work.

Update: Mark's is going LIVE tomorrow. Sign up for an email notification in the full post: Photography educator Mark Wallace has been featured on Fstoppers probably more than any other photographer. His easy to understand approach to lighting and tech talk has made Mark one of the top teachers in the field. On May 18-20th, Mark is hosting a FREE Speedlights 101 Workshop on CreativeLIVE. If you aren't familiar with CreativeLIVE, they stream full photography workshops for free but also allow you to download full copies for future reference. Enroll for the free online workshop in the full post

Trey Ratcliff is perhaps one of the most well known and adored HDR photographers today. The High Dynamic Range images he creates are not subtle by any means and he takes no apologies when it comes to creating images he personally enjoys. In this video, Trey talks about his gear (mainly Nikkor 12-24 and Really Right Stuff Tripods) and how he thinks through his compositions as he visits the beautiful Gorda in the Virgin Islands. Watch the 2nd video in the full post

You often hear film makers say, "Your video is only as good as your audio". Obviously video production goes a long way too but poor audio can completely ruin an otherwise great video. Until recently, DSLR cameras have been anything but great at recording audio. The on board microphones are noisy and prone to record camera noise. Plugging an external microphone into the line-in has also left a lot to be desired. So how should someone

Photographing birds out in the wild seems pretty tough. Oregon photographer Jon Myers wanted to make the challenge even tougher by bringing the birds into his studio. Using large softboxes to create a space for the birds to fly, Jon was able to photograph eagles, ospreys, and hawks perfectly while in flight. The shots are spectacular, and if you click the full post you can see them shot against grey as well.

It's not everyday that you get to see a rare 1970s Nikkor 6mm Fisheye lens. It's even more unlikely that you get to see one mounted to the rare Nikon D800 DSLR body! The guys at Grays of Westinster mounted the two elusive beasts to show how insane it is to have a 220º angle of view. If you have $160,000 saved up, and need to see behind you as you shoot, it might be worth picking up one of these rare lenses. Now where are those full res D800 files so everyone can complain about purple fringing?

It's 3pm. Outside it is humid, blazing hot, the ambient light is reading f32, and your bride wants portraits taken now....all you have on you are your speedlights. If you are a wedding photographer, you probably have found yourself in a familiar situation. Even if you have enough power to balance your shots with 1 or 2 speedlights, your flash's refresh rate becomes a major kink in getting photos taken quickly. Having one of these power packs might just save your day.

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

Jeremy Cowart is a photographer after my own heart. He started out in one of my favorite cities Nashville, TN, befriend a bunch of rockstars, shot their album covers, moved into celebrity portraiture, and continues to give back with projects like Help Portrait. Our good friend Pye Jirsa with SLR Lounge recently sat down with the nomadic photographer and picked his brain a little about creativity, post production, a new LifeFinder Tour, and a new iPhone App. If you get worn out listening

A few weeks ago Fstoppers teamed up with SLR Lounge for a contest giveaway. The contest wasn't just any contest though; we wanted to give one of our lucky readers either a brand new Canon 5D Mark III or Nikon D800 camera of their choosing. All the entries were in by April 30th, and yesterday we picked our lucky winner. Cross your fingers and say a little prayer before you hit the full post...

Hopefully this post isn't as exciting to you because you already took advantage of the HUGE Sandisk 32GB sale we posted last week. But if you missed it or for some reason thought 32GB was overkill, Sandisk 16GB Memory Cards are on Sale today only. Even if you don't need more memory for your DSLR cameras, at these prices it's a good time to snag up a few for other devices.

Fashion photographer Melissa Rodwell has become a good friend of ours over the years. The New York based photographer lives and breathes fashion photography, and as you can see with her images it really shows. The self proclaimed "photographer who does not own a digital camera" teamed up with Kurv magazine to produce some very exotic fashion images. As with most fashion images, the retouching is pretty important with interesting

What's that? You need twice as much memory now for your crazy large Nikon D800 RAW files? But those 32GB Memory Cards are so expensive you say. Well today only 32GB SD and Compact Flash Cards are on sale at some of the lowest prices I've ever seen (and no rebate forms to deal with). This is great news after shooting my first wedding with the Nikon D4 and D800 and realizing single 32 gig cards aren't cutting it anymore. Don't say we didn't warn you if you miss out on this deal!

Earlier this month we announced a contest where we are giving away 3 Pocketwizard Plus III units and a copy of Peter Hurley's The Art Behind The Headshot ($700 value). We are entering in the final week of the contest so be sure to hit the full post to read how you can enter. We will pick a random winner May 1st and make the announcement here on Fstoppers. Good luck to everyone who enters; someone is going to be pretty excited next week!

If you are like me then you might not always get caught up in some of the super technical aspects of photography. One aspect of photography I recently investigated was the loss of sharpness caused by Diffraction. Last night while playing with the new Nikon D800 camera I examined lens diffraction and how diffraction can seriously affect the sharpness of your photography.

There is no doubt that Nikon and Canon are putting a lot of effort in creating better video features in their flagship DSLR cameras. One of the most talked about new features has been Nikon's clean, uncompressed 1080p output from the camera's HDMI connector. Both the Nikon D800 and Nikon D4 DSLR cameras allow for this feature, but we've wondered just how useful are these new uncompressed files? We decided to test the new Atomos Ninja 1080p external recorder to see if these 12x larger files gave us better image quality for our own video projects.

Casey Neistat is a great film maker that you may remember for his Peanut Butter Lid Lens Hack. Recently he was hired by Nike to create something interesting for their Nike + Fuel Band. The story goes that instead of making a traditional commercial, Casey took Nike's budget and traveled around the world until it was all spent. He filmed his 10 day escapade and produced the following video.

Most of you know Mark Wallace as the face behind Adorama TV. He's a very accomplished photographer based out of Phoenix, Arizona and we recently were able to share some drinks with him when we filmed Blair Bunting's Aventador video. Mark gave us a little glimpse about his 2012 Workshop Tour and now the details are finally able to be revealed. If you are a fan of Mark, which we hope you are, click the full post to hear about his new 7 city tour!

As photographers, we are always in search of that new unique lighting modifier to add to our bag of tricks. I recently saw this video on Strobist where Amber Gray claims her Broncolor Para FB could actually reduce the amount of post production on her models. That statement seemed a bit bold when I first heard it; usually I credit a great makeup artist for awesome skin texture rather than a specific light. I've never used a ring flash

The web is abuzz with comparison articles on which $3000 DSLR camera is the best bang for the buck. Kevin Good with CrisisLab recently did a side by side comparison of the Canon 5D Mark III and the Nikon D800 in several real world tests. His tests include Resolution, Rolling Shutter, High ISO Test, and Durability. Each test was conducted to the highest of standards and perhaps might be the most scientific review I've seen yet. Now off to Craigslist to find me some models!

We get a lot of Kickstarter projects emailed to us and sometimes they are interesting and other times they look like a desperate plea for money. We usually don't feature such projects but today I'm making an exception. Benjamin Von Wong has been featured on Fstoppers probably more than anyone else. This year he plans to goto Europe to produce inspiring photoshoots but at the same time film informative behind the scenes videos. Hopefully this post will

So many behind the scenes videos we come across are nothing more than boring, overly glamorized music videos. Skateboard photographer Michael Burnett's latest video is anything but boring. Anyone who has photographed extreme or counter culture sports know that there are certain rules to be broken...and certain rules that must be followed. Michael goes through a ton of great skateboard photographs and explains what makes some stand out while others get lost in the mix. So grab your fisheye lens, a few speedlights on stands, and put yourself in harm's way!