I can still remember the first time I saw the effects of bounce flash. The soft natural light looked unlike anything I had seen from my little point and shoot's direct flash, and the resulting image looked so natural. Soon afterward I was introduced to off camera flash and a variety of light modifiers. The results between all of these lighting techniques were not subtle and I became obsessed with finding my favorite tools to light people. In today's video, I explain how one single flash both on and off camera, and a few light modifiers can give you the perfect light quickly and easily.
Monte Isom is a super successful commercial photographer based out of New York City. However, before he made a career of his own, he assisted some of the biggest names in the photography world. In this video he recaps his experience shooting the president of the United States of America.
As many of you know, Lee and I recently moved to Puerto Rico, and with that move, we are having to completely redesign our new studio space. In today's video, we tackle our in-home network and wireless Internet connection. Surely the limitations in Puerto Rico will prove to give us trouble... or will it?
As high quality RGB Led light panels become cheaper and more compact, more and more photographers and videographers are finding just how useful these little lights can be. In this video, I compare the new Falcon Eyes Pocketlite F7 light to my favorite RGB light panel as we explore a few unique lighting setups any photographer can create on the fly.
Controlling light is one of the most difficult challenges a photographer must master. Even if you have years of experience under your belt, it can still be difficult to decide which light modifier to use with your strobes or if you should even be using strobes at all. In this video and article, I'm going to share with you five of my favorite light modifiers and how they can produce drastically different results.
Stewart Edgington seems like a pretty rad guy if you ask me. He and his friends created what is bound to be a viral winter video. The concept: super slow motion video of his friends sledding, tubing, couching, and saran wrapping down a snowy slope. All of the shots were filmed on a Fastcam, Canon 60D, Canon 5D MK III, and a Red Epic but things could have turned tragic as a "Ski couch" nearly takes out both the Red Camera and the whole camera station. While
As most of you are aware, the lower section of Manhattan is still without power. Luckily our friends at Adorama have setup a charging station to help juice up your portable electronics. In this video Mark Wallace encourages everyone to spread the word since most of those residents won't be active online. If you own any powerpacks like the Alien Bee Vagabond, if you charge it up you can get multiple charges for your cell phones or laptops.
As a Nikon user, I remember a time when I envied everything Canon. A few years ago, Canon had the best DSLR video, their cameras were the fastest, and they were the absolute kings of high ISO. Today DxOMark has released their review of the new Nikon D600, and to everyone's surprise it has the 3rd best overall DSLR sensor in the land (beats the D4). More shocking is not a single Canon camera is in the top 10. Has Canon dropped the ball or is DxOMark unbelievably biased?
Some of the best advice I've heard from successful photographers has been to develop as many means of making money with your photography so you can sustain your income down the road. While pet photography might not be the first area you might consider, Vicki Taufer is here to tell us why it's a great area to supplement your wedding, family, and portrait businesses. This Thursday through Saturday (July 26-28), creativeLIVE will stream Vicki's online workshop for free as she shares the ins and outs of a successful pet business.
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
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!
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
I have to thank Tyler Kaufman for turning me onto this next video. Sports photographer Peter Read Miller recently shot some of the top NCAA college football players for the latest issue of Sports Illustrated. There really isn't any super informative information in this video but it's still great to see how the top photographers in the world pull off cover material for magazines like Sports Illustrated. From the video, it appears that these shots are lit with only 3 light sources: One large parabolic reflector as a key, one smaller parabolic reflector as a kicker, and a spot gridded flash head for a rear rim light. If you've ever shot in this style you know that small hard rim/kicker lights can really edge out your subject. If you click the full post and look at the super high res final image you can see how the larger side light makes the highlights broad but still harsh. It's easy to think that a barebulb speedlight to the side of your subject is sufficient for a rim light but adding that one extra modifier can really make a huge difference in your final result.
As a music lover myself, the Grammys is one of the few awards shows I sit down to watch year after year. This something interesting happened I had never seen before; a commercial featuring Willie Nelson singing Coldplay's The Scientist actually outshined the live performance from Coldplay moments before. [Read Full Article]
Patrick Hall is one of the founders and writers for fstoppers. In the summer when he is not shooting commercially, Patrick enjoys shooting weddings in Charleston. Check out this slideshow featuring his favorite images of 2009.
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