Now that I'm settled into my new 4200 sq. ft. studio, I have a ton of space. However, that wasn't always the case; in a smaller space, organization was the key to sanity. Tripping over gear and frantically searching for grip equipment is frustrating and doesn't look good in front of clients.
Ever tried to photograph a subject, only to find out that you don’t have enough depth-of-field to get the whole thing in focus? Typically our first reaction is to stop down to increase our DOF. Unfortunately that doesn’t always give us the results we expect.
RAID is often times one of the most misunderstood topics that photographers don’t take advantage of. So often I hear horror stories of photographers losing images or irreplaceable data from crashed hard drives. I’ve made a video explaining a few popular RAID options and a strategy to ensure your files never get lost.
I have learned a lot over the years regarding pricing and bidding commercial photography. I still have a lot to learn. I've made mistakes (lots of them) and had some victories (fortunately).
So you didn't get the new Sony a7 Camera you wanted for the holidays? Well there's still time to take advantage of Sony's trade-in incentives toward a new a7 camera and/or select lenses. In addition to the trade value of your working SLR or mirrorless camera, B&H is also offering 15% credit toward your purchase.
A great portion of my business is spent on architectural photography. My technique involves using a mixture of ambient light, flash, and tungsten hot lights blended and masked together in post to create well lit images that are time consuming to shoot and often frustrating to edit.
My studio receives client inquires anywhere from once per week to several times a day. Obviously not all of these inquiries turn into paid work, some are a downright waste of time. Dealing with client inquiries is not my favorite pastime, but if everything goes to plan, at least a few of them get me behind the camera and end up paying the bills.
When alpine photographer Kamil Tamiola was tapped to become the key photographer for a campaign announcing Phase One's Capture One Pro 8 software release at Photokina 2014, he had his work cut out for him. Nine weeks of planning went into this powerful concept of imagery that would be used as the subject for processing in the soon to be introduced software.
When he's not sitting in southern California traffic, San Diego editorial photographer, Rob Andrew, spends his days freelancing from one gig to another with all his gear in tow. In order to stay nimble, Rob has developed a style of shooting creative food photography with a surprisingly minimal amount of gear.
At the end of any speaking engagement I'm involved in, I usually offer a bit of advice which includes "Don't go into debt over this". If you're just starting out, trying to make a go at a career in photography, you need to focus on learning the craft, mastering your equipment, and trying to build your business to a point where you have a steady and somewhat consistent income.
This week I wanted to share a few of the tools we commercial photographers use to create our tabletop images. Particularly the items used in photographing beverages. There's a lot of trial and error when it comes to this sort of photography, often times we find ourselves using things in ways far from their originally intended purpose.
Earlier today, Fstoppers writer Adam Ottke published an article introducing Adobe's latest plugin to help Apple iPhoto and Aperture users mirgrate to Adobe Lightroom. Unfortunately, many of the folks who've tried to use it have run into complications.
Ever since I briefly introduced it in my Photographer's Grip Kit video, people have been emailing and messaging me regarding the utility cart I use to haul gear around a job site. As a result, I figured a video was in order to talk about the cart in more detail, along with the modifications we've made to better adapt it to our workflow.
I'm often asked about the best way to get started with off-camera flash. The problem is, there's no single answer for everyone. There's a lot of different ways to accomplish the same end goal of getting that flash off the camera. In this video I'll break down the three main choices when choosing your method of strobe lighting.
In a world filled with videos and tutorials featuring every yahoo with a camera telling us how-to setup, pose, light, and edit, it's hard to know what's just noise and what's worthy of our time. Fortunately, there's experienced instructors like Karl Taylor and Urs Recher who have teamed up to share their techniques in the latest How-To series from Broncolor.
Most photographers looking to advance their commercial photography careers come to the realization that in order to score the big jobs, they need to work with creative agencies. The question is, how does a photographer get those agency gigs?
Growing up in the family's studios and labs, I learned a thing or two about mounting and framing prints, and I also ruined a lot of them in the process. In this video, I'll demonstrate a version of my process so you can skip the lab and mount your own prints, fresh from your home or studio printer. We start by creating a blemish free print on our favorite inkjet paper.
I don’t do a lot of gear reviews, in fact, this is my first for Fstoppers (bear with me). But Lumu is a product I’ve been following since it’s launch on Kickstarter back in 2013.
As a commercial photographer, I specialize in product, food, and architecture. One of the products we've been shooting a lot of lately is jewelry, specifically jewelry for catalog use. In my opinion, jewelry is one of the hardest things to photograph, and many photographers don't know where to start.
You may remember back in June when Austin Rogers posted the press release about the upcoming Cambo Actus, a view camera designed to work with mirrorless cameras. Well, it's finally here and the gang over at Capture Integration have put it through it's paces.
One of the most overlooked, yet most used items in a photographer's arsenal, is the grip kit. A grip kit isn't something most photographers set out to buy, build, or assemble, it's generally born from necessity. Over the years we find ourselves on jobs needing certain things that we don't have readily available and we end up improvising to get the job done.
When it comes to diffusion panels, several companies have prefab "blades" intended for holding diffusion materials that fit nicely into grip heads and knuckles, but at nearly $100 a pop, buying several of them may not fit into everyone's budget. Earlier this week, fellow Fstopper Clay Cook put together an awesome post about building your own V-Flats.
The challenge: 30 images in 5 days for an international tool company. New York based advertising, fashion, and fine art photographer, João Carlos was the man chosen by Lisbon agency Ivity Brand Corp. to accomplish the mission.
With the announcement of Aperture's retirement, many of Apple's software users are seeking a new home for their image libraries. One of the most obvious choices is Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom. But moving those images from Aperture to Lightroom can be a little tricky. A new app has made it out of Beta and hit the app store that may provide an easier solution.
Having recently moved from a DSLR into medium format digital, I can affirm the transition isn't a cheap one. Besides shelling out tens-of-thousands of dollars for a body and digital back, you've also got to buy a new set of lenses which average around $4k each. Add tether cables, tripod mounts, additional batteries, and filters, you're in the hole for the equivelent of a home mortgage.
As your photography archive grows, so does the need to handle and protect that data. What happens if your computer doesn’t boot, or an image file won’t open? What if your home or studio gets robbed, or worse, catches fire? What if your backup drive fails, or your laptop gets stolen? These are all questions I ask myself when planning my backup strategy.
His client list reads like a who's-who in iconic businesses: Pearl Vision, American Standard, Shell Oil, Virgin Galactic, AOL, Wells Fargo, Salesforce, Red Bull, Minute Maid, Costco, and Allstate. He has even photographed celebrities like Kevin Spacey, Richard Branson, and Al Gore.
For my inaugural post on Fstoppers, I want to run down of a few of the apps that my studio manager and I use almost daily to help manage the studio and keep things running smoothly. Many of these you’ve probably heard of, others may be new to you. The list is actually endless, but I’ve narrowed it down to these nine to get us started:
