Articles from Michael Brown

Foster Visuals, known for the nationally-awarded "Legacy Project," recently teamed up with DJI to tell the story of Heraldo Riel, a gaucho in Patagonia, Chile. Like his father before him, Riel became a Gaucho at the age of nine. To be a Gaucho means to be kind and caring for all living things. Using a combination of equipment, including the DJI Osmo, Ronin, and Inspire 1, Brent Foster and his team tell Riel's story and captures the intense beauty and solitude of the remote section of Patagonia in which Riel lives.

Chances are, if you are at all interested in cinematography, you have heard of Brain Farm. Brain Farm is the entertainment and production company that brought you films like The Art of Flight, Jackass 3D, and View From a Blue Moon as well as tons of other film, TV, commercial, and digital content. With credentials like this as well as commercial clients ranging from Nike to Mercedes-Benz, I think it is safe to say these guys know what they are doing. For years, Brain Farm has been pushing the limits of Cinematography. That's why it comes as no surprise to hear that they recently paired a Phantom Flex4K with an Aerigon UAV to shoot the world's first Ultra High Definition, 4K aerial drone footage.

If you have ever tried to create an album from an event that you have photographed, you know the difficulties that can come along with the creation process. If you have experience using Adobe InDesign, you are off to a good start and most definitely have full control of your album. However, InDesign is a complex program that takes time to learn and even more time to become timely and proficient with. A ways back while listening to a podcast I heard about Fundy Designer. Fundy is an all-in-one design suite that can be used to design, sell, proof, and print with ease. The application goes beyond album design and covers many aspects of your photo business, helping you focus on providing your clients with beautiful, timeless prints, along with a variety of other options to help your brand grow.

Have you ever had trouble with too much noise in one of your images? Maybe the shooting conditions forced you to shoot at an ISO that pushed the limits of your camera a little too much. One way to limit this problem is to shoot multiple exposures with the same settings, and then, use post-production to combine the images and reduce the noise. In this tutorial, Travel Photographer Jimmy Mclnyre shows you how to do just that.

If you have ever used LED panels for photo of video work, you know how awesome and helpful they can be. You also probably know that for a good LED, you are most likely looking at spending a good sized about of money. This is not always practical for the average photographer. However, in this 19 minute DIY video from DIY Perks, you can learn how to make flexible LED panel for around $60.

Have you ever felt like you were trapped inside of your mind, consumed by a constant flow of anxiety, worry, and fear? Or maybe you have felt this way at a time in your life and realize the power and control you have over your mind. Either way, you need to check out "The Irrational Fear of Nothing," a short film directed by Paul Trillo, that follows a paranoid, neurotic man named Terry as he walks the streets of Manhattan.

Do you have trouble keeping clients? Maybe you've had a few customers you thought would be repeat customers, but somewhere along line, they just weren't satisfied with their experience to come back. Even if you shoot the best photos of your life, simple communication mistakes, a lack of business knowledge, and poor planning can ruin a shoot or client interaction, just as easily as bad photos. In this eight minute video, Jay P. Morgan goes over seven ways you can loose clients, and discusses how to react properly to these common issues photographers face.

In this tutorial, Aaron Nace from Phlearn takes a beautiful nighttime cityscape and shows you how you can create a custom brush to add your own stars to an image in Photoshop. Nace begins the tutorial by showing you how to make a custom brush in a new document. He continues to show you how to save the brush as a preset, use it on your image, and make adjustments that will change the amount and size of the stars you paint in. He goes further, showing how to add a nice glow to the stars and create a slight motion blur to make them look more realistic.

When Steven Erra was in art school, he found out that he had an eye disease that would cause him to go completely blind within 20 years. While for many people, this news would be devastating, for Erra, it motivated him to create the best art of his life. Check out this inspirational video showing insight into Erra's story.

A few years back, I rented the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II and absolutely fell in love. The focus speed, stabilization, and sharpness of this lens are top-notch and make it a truly versatile, high-quality telephoto lens. For a while now, I have been drooling over Nikon's 200mm f/2G ED VR II prime, the type of lens dreams are made of. In this video, Matt Granger does a side-by-side comparison of the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 200mm f/2. So, if you're a Nikon user thinking about getting your hands on either one of these, or just want to learn about a couple of great lenses, check out this video.

Have you ever wondered what a 100-megapixel raw file looks like? In this video, Pratik Naik gives you a glance at raw files from the 100-megapixel Phase One IQ3 digital back. Naik goes through several images and talks about resolution, color depth, dynamic range, detail, file sizes, comparison between cameras, and computer needed to work with these files. If you are a medium format shooter, thinking about upgrading, or just want to learn a thing or two about really big files, check out this video.

When you think of great photos, National Geographic often comes to mind. That's why it comes as no surprise that for their 2015 photo contest, they received over 13,000 entries. Amateur and professional photographers from around the globe were invited to submit photos in three categories: people, places, and nature, with the hope of having their image selected as one of the winners. Check out this video to hear from the judges and get a look at some of what goes into the selection process.

If you enjoyed learning How to Create That Urban High Contrast Desaturated Look in Lightroom, then chances are you will like learning how to create dramatic black and white photos with Lightroom presets. In this tutorial, Serge Ramelli again teaches us some methods for editing in Lightroom. Whether you are an enthusiast of the program or just getting started and want to add a dramatic touch to your black and white photos, check out this video.

The more time I spend shooting portraits and beauty work, the more I love retouching. There is something about spending hours in front of a computer and paying meticulous attention, all while jamming out to great music that I find super meditative and enjoyable. When it comes to retouching, there really aren’t many shortcuts. Most of the time, it just take good old fashioned attention to detail and time to get near-perfect results. For a look at what goes into the process, check out this time-lapse from Pratik Naik of Solstice Retouch to see 1.5 hours of retouching a photo by Jonas Jensen in seven minutes.

Along with the new year comes an opportunity for a fresh start, the time of year when seemingly everyone looks at their life and what they can change. While it is certainly cliché to come up with goals for the new year, it is a great time to refocus your energy. By focusing on certain aspects of your photography, I believe that you can not only become a better photographer, but find better, bigger clients, grow your business, and follow your dreams. Check out the following simple facets of photography and how you can look at them differently, gain inspiration, and get after it in the new year.

For the seasoned photographer, assistant, or grip, knowing how to use a C-Stand may seem like common sense. However, if you have never used or seen one before, there are a few things you should know about these multi-functional stands. The C-stand or Century stand can be used to hold lighting, cameras, and all sorts of other equipment, all of which are probably very expensive. If you make a mistake setting up one of these stands, it can result in injury to you, your crew, or worst of all your equipment, which may not actually be yours. I can pretty much guarantee that if you break a Photographer's equipment, because you didn't set up a C-Stand correctly, he or she is probably going to be very upset with you. To avoid any common mistakes, check out this video from the guys over at Rocketjump Film School showing you how to properly set up a C-stand.

Have you ever tried to photograph a black and white portrait, but had trouble getting the results that you were looking for out of camera? Maybe you have played around in Lightroom, or used a simple adjustment layer in Photoshop to convert your image to black and white and adjusted the color channels, but the results were just not dramatic enough for the look that you wanted to achieve. In this tutorial, Andrei Oprinca shows you how to create a dramatic, faded, vintage-looking black and white portrait using Photoshop.

Have you ever had trouble finding a model, make up artist, or stylist to work with? Maybe the traditional methods of networking aren't working for you, or you are new to the area. Pro Photo Shoot is a new IOS app designed to help photographers find other industry professionals to collaborate with.

Have you ever wondered how to create dramatic cross or Rembrandt lighting using only one light source? In this short, concise, three minute video, photographer and retoucher Glyn Dewis explains exactly how to create this look using one light. Whether you are using a giant octabox or a simple speedlight with a flash bender, Dewis shows you how to achieve this look with enough light to slightly spill onto the other side of the subjects face as well as how to check your lighting before even firing a shot. 

If you have ever learned anything about the history of photography, chances are you have at least heard the name Ansel Adams. Adams was a landscape photographer who worked with the U.S. Department of Interior to capture images of the national parks. He is most well-known for his work with large format monochrome landscape imagery. Recently, the Department of Interior has posted a job opening that would allow someone to follow in Adams' footsteps. 

Whether you are an avid skier, filmmaker, or just love the outdoors, you need to check out the latest project from skier Candide Thovex. In this two minute video, Thovex absolutely shreds the slopes of Megève, France. He flies through open fields, tight tree lines, through tunnels, and absolutely sends it off a cliff over a road gap, the only catch is there is no snow. 

It's not uncommon for couples to request that their wedding portraits be taken during golden hour, the time when the setting sun is low in the sky, casting a beautiful orange, golden glow across the land. However, wedding days are unpredictable, the day doesn't always go according to the planned schedule and can often run behind. So what do you do when its time to shoot the wedding portraits but the sun has already moved past its magical position in the sky? Check out this video from photographer Pye Jirsa of Lin & Jirsa Photography, where he explains how to recreate Golden hour without the sun and using a powerful flash.

On March 16, University of Missouri student and freelance photojournalist Tim Tai is set to be awarded the First Amendment Defender Award by the Radio Television Digital News Foundation. The foundation is an educational group that supports journalists' first amendment rights and the public's rights to free media. While the foundation recognizes outstanding journalism annually, this is the first time that the award wil actually be presented.

If you have ever shot time-lapse, you know the struggles of dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of large files. While Lightroom and other post production programs can definitely make editing your time-lapse easier, LRTimelapse is a program that can further ease the editing process and improve your workflow. LRTimelapse allows keyframing and grading of time-lapse sequences in an all RAW file-based workflow, as well as creating day to night time-lapse transitions easily and helping to get rid of annoying flicker effects in your sequence, all in the comfort of Lightroom. 

If you have been on Instagram lately, there is a good chance you have seen "urbex" photography. Urbex, short for urban exploration, is where people venture deep into cities, exploring areas such as the tops of skyscrapers and depths of subway tunnels where the public isn't allowed to go. Victor Thomas, known as his Instagram name Vic Invades, is a kid from Brooklyn with a love for urbex.

As creatives, we have to stay inspired, focused, and always be moving forward. Aside from focusing on creating beautiful, desirable work, if you want to survive doing what you love, you have to have a good business sense. For some of us, this comes naturally, for others it is a learning process. No matter what your experience with business is, you can always learn more. Between books, classes, and mentors, the options for learning are endless but between our personal lives, creating artwork, and what our budgets allow, the option aren't always as broad. Podcasts are an awesome, free way to learn about the business side of your craft. They can be informative, inspiring, and allow you to learn while you work. While there are tons of podcasts out there here are my top three favorite when it comes to the business side of photography.

Rangefinder Magazine has announced the photographers selected for their 4th annual "30 Rising Stars of Wedding Photography." The 30 photographers, who have been shooting for five years or less, were selected from more than 200 portfolios worldwide, including submissions from Croatia, France, England, New Zealand, Scotland, Tahiti, and all over the U.S. The images will be on display at the WPPI Conference in March.

If you've ever used a GoPro in the water, you know that just about as soon as you get in, the lens can start to fog up. This is because the air inside the GoPro is relatively warm and gets warmer when using the camera; thus, as soon as you combine this with a colder outside environment, such as water, the camera is cooled and water droplets begin to condense on the inside of the housing. While GoPro makes anti-fog inserts, they aren't exactly cheap at $15 per pack. In this video, Ho Stevie! shows you how to use a simple roll of paper towel to make anti fog inserts for your GoPro.

Leroy Bellet is a 16-year-old freelance surf photographer from Australia who has recently been featured in several major surf publications because of his experimentation with artificial lighting in the water. Using a flash in the water allows the subject to still be illuminated while taking advantage of times when the natural light is most unique, like early morning, sunset, and night. We recently got the chance to talk to Leroy and learn a little bit about him and his technique.

On September 12th, Matt and Heather Koehler were set to get married in Michigan. Just before they were about to walk down the aisle, they found out that the photographer that they had hired to shoot their wedding was a no-show. With nothing else to do but move forward, they went through the rest of their wedding without a professional photographer. 

Part of the allure of being a full-time freelance photographer is the ability to work for yourself and make your own schedule. That means no more nine to five and no more of the monotonous daily routine, right? Not necessarily. Your routine doesn't have to be monotonous but according to the seemingly always energetic artist, photographer, and entrepreneur Chase Jarvis, a solid morning routine can jump start your day.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to be a successful photographer? To determine what creates success, we first have to define success. While success can take many forms, in this case we are referring to it as a healthy coexistence between business life and personal life, while following a profitable career that you love.  For each individual the criteria changes, but for the past several months, after lots of reading, listening to podcasts, and through personal experiences, I have compiled a list of five words that describe a successful photographer.

As mobile photography continues to grow in popularity, so does the creativity that goes along with it. It is truly amazing to see some of the images and videos that people are creating using smartphones, GoPros, and other devices. It is no surprise that companies are creating mobile accessories designed specifically with mobile photography and videography in mind. One company, Think Eleven, has developed an interesting new LED light.

While it seems like there is a new selfie stick on the market every other day, PolarPro, an action camera accessories manufacturer, is set to begin production on a pretty cool extension pole. The PowerGrip H2O is a fully waterproof, battery-integrated extension pole that can not only mount your GoPro but charge it as well.

I love cameras: all shapes and sizes, formats, brands, and styles. No matter what kind of camera it is, I’m interested in what makes it work and what makes the image quality different than others. I enjoy experimenting with 35mm film, instant film, and all types of digital formats. I believe that using different cameras is a great way to better yourself as a photographer. Over the past several years, I’ve developed a decent collection of cameras and the more I obtain, the more I try and jam into my bag. At a certain point, I started to realize that my obsession was getting ridiculous and it just wasn’t practical to bring all of these toys with me to every shoot I had. This being said, where do you draw the line? And what goes into deciding what camera to bring with you? If you're like me and enjoy experimenting with different types of cameras, here is an inside look at some of my favorites and what goes into my decision process when choosing which one to bring with me to a photo shoot or on an adventure.