Articles from Patrick Hall

Last year, Fstoppers interviewed wedding photographer Joe Buissink who has shot weddings for Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Simpson & Nick Lachey, Christina Aguliera, and many other A List celebrities. Starting Thursday, August 9th, Joe is sharing all his wedding secrets in a FREE online workshop on creativeLIVE.

The Canon G12 camera is one of our favorite "point and shoots" because it has all the features a photographer would want: manual settings, shoots RAW, and has a hot shoe. Until they run out of inventory, BH Photo is giving a $400 rebate when you purchase the Canon G12 with Canon's Flagship PixmaPRO 9000 MKII Printer.

Last week we showed you David Bergman's Gigapan image of North Greenwich Arena (home of the Olympic gymnastics meets). That image was roughly 1.7 billion pixels! Two days ago, David released his newest Gigapan image of Horse Guards Parade that contains 200 stitched images totaling an incredible 3.1 billion pixels.

Everyone knows that having a returning client is great for your business. Family photographer Sandy Puc' has found a smart way to maintain returning clients by photographing toddlers all the way through their teenage years. In her free creativeLIVE workshop Bellies & Babies, Sandy teaches how you can gain family clients during a child's early years.

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.

Guns N Roses was one of my favorite bands growing up. I recently read Slash's biography and realized that his friend Robert John had not only shot all of those iconic album images, but he also documented the band's entire road to stardom. Of course I had order Robert's book Guns N Roses, The Photographic History.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.