Articles from Kenn Tam

The crew for Travel Channel’s television show, "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain have started posting BTSVs on their Road Bite TV, YouTube Channel. This is an interesting and entertaining look at what the crew, from producers to cameramen, have to go through while traveling the world. Check out the first four videos and decide if life on the road is for you.

The guys over at Omstudios wanted to show off the capabilities of the their OMCOPTER drone, housing a RED Epic. The video clearly shows the drone's ability to move in, out, around and over the action. Sadly we are cheated out of all the awesome clashes of steel and slashing of viscus as there is no sound to this video. But I'm sure, if you ask nice enough, our very own Patrick Hall will beat box out all the sound effects for you over the phone. Check out the video and a couple of BTS of the OMCOPTER drone, in the full post.

The Limbach-Oderfrohna Zoo in Eastern Germany was holding a big media event to introduce three-week-old Til. Til was (that's right, I said "was") a rare earless mutant rabbit, that met a tragic end when a photographer took a backward step into the animal’s pen crushing him. Until that moment (ironically) Til was living in a private enclosure for his protection even though there had been requests to put him on show to the public.

Hello Fstoppers' Fans. We just wanted to give Peter Hurley a well deserved pat on the back for just being featured in the Gadgetwise section of the New York Times and to toot our own horn over the success of our first full length tutorial DVD. If you're still in the dark and don't know what all the hype is about then check out the published article where Peter shares a small part of the DVD with, "Six Tips for Better Portraits". Or you can skip all that and jump right into grabbing, "The Art Behind The Headshot" DVD. The most comprehensive DVD on how to get the ideal headshots for your clients.

I'm starting this one with a disclaimer: this post is oriented towards the trending, creative use of LEDs. Like the L.E.D. Surfer post or the Invisible Car post. So, watch this video if you have an open mind and a creative urge, cause it's not photo/video specific.

Now that I got that out of the way... We are seeing more artists taking advantage of the LED tech as it becomes less expensive to work with. Light painters being early adopters of LED use, have opened our minds to the seemly unlimited and magical potential they have to offer in the creative arena.

Haristobald's photostream has some interesting shots in it but what is more interesting is how he produced them. Using an old school, overhead projector, A4 sized transparencies, a strobe and a bit of mechanical know how, Haristobald can now transform his environment and his models. See behind the scenes of his latest Superman shoot and jump into the full post to see a video on how he modified an archaic device into a useful photography tool.

Benjamin Von Wong just hit me up, from his facebook account, to let me know his latest BTSV is out. His 9th, here on Fstoppers, if I counted correctly. And this time no one had to be set on fire but they did have to bend over backwards. Enter contorsion artist, Myriam Deraiche.

See what happens when professional photographer, Mark Chung, hands his camera over to professional model, Callie Roberts. Given just a couple hours to instruct one another, each are then asked to do one another's job.

A heads up for all our model readers: this video does seem to focus more on the photographer's role and less on the model's. Which, despite the inference, I know to be quite difficult.

While drinking my morning coffee, happstr (a curious little site that helps you find your happy place) asked me, "What makes you happy?" My wonderfully supportive and beautiful wife? A photo career that nurtures my soul? Having the freedom to live anywhere and do anything I want? And then it hit me. It's the 9th and exactly one week from today, Apple's "the new iPad" will be on the shelves. You know you're a gadget fanatic when...

In an earlier post, Prime vs Prime and Other Lessons in Stop Motion Animation I tried to show you where homegrown stop motion animation is in it's evolution and offered a couple links to get you motivated. But compared to this video, for Gotye's "Easy Way out", directed by Darcy Prendergast, those other videos with their hours and hours of painstaking meticulous work will seem down right simple.

In this post you will see two awesome examples of homegrown stop motion animation by Patrick Boivin. Patrick has done some amazing work such as, "AT-AT Day Afternoon", which we featured awhile back. For the first video, you get to shape the outcome of a battle between the first generation Optimus Prime and the latest generation Optimus. I hold this up as a fun example of what patients and creativity can yield with todays, easily accessible technology.

I'm not sure if I'm over reacting but this kind of thing get's my blood boiling. What kind of thing? Picture being on an over pass, late one night, shooting a time lapse video (maybe to win the next big Fstoppers contest) when you are approached by a police officer. The officer questions what you are doing and why and then demands your ID. You know that you are observing all the laws and regulation, have commited no crime and are not obligated to justify yourself. What happens next? Well,Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania-based photographer Jason Macchioni can tell you. Better yet, he can show with this video.

The music video for Josh Ritter's "Love Is Making Its Way Back Home" was created with over 12,000 pieces of laser cut, construction paper. Directed by Erez Horovitz and conceptualized by Sam Cohen and Erez Horovitz, this video didn't utilized any effects in post production. Everything you see in the final video is purely a physical set of frame by frame photographs, of the paper cut outs, with no effects added.

Adobe has finally let iPad 2 users in on Photoshop Touch (Android tablet users have had this for some time now). Having impulse buy issues I just dropped the $9.99 that it costs for the app but being so excited to share the news, I've yet to review it. Some of the highlights Adobe is boasting are: being able to work with core Photoshop tools designed for tablets, using your tablet camera to fill area on layers, select parts of an image to extract by scribbling, and being able to sync files to Adobe Creative Cloud and open in Photoshop.

The rumor is that March 2 will be the date for the 5D Mark II replacement. And Canon Rumors believes these to be the specs :22mp, 61pt AF, 100% VF, 3.2″ LCD ,Dual CF/SD Card Slots, $3500 USD. Far from being written in stone but the photos that turned up on their forums seems quite legit. For me, I hope to see something a little more impressive than what I'm seeing here or I may have to bite the bullet and step up to the 1D-X.

Well it looks like they are at it again. Who are they you ask? The parasites that produce knockoff gear and sell them as the real McCoy, of course. Our very own Lee Morris brought you the news about knockoff battery grips and now 1Kind Photography has brought counterfeit filters to our attention.

Ironically, DigitalRev's Kai Man Wong hits the streets of Hong Kong with well known analog street shooter Eric Kim. Kai and Eric end up kicking it old school with film cameras, Leica M6 & M2, and even try to get into the spirit of their camera's time periods by dressing up. As always Kai's video is humorous, entertaining and litered with nuggets of good to know info.

Photographer Benjamin Von Wong is at it again! I'm starting to think he hates his models as he can't seem to resist setting them on fire. All in the name of art, right? Well I guess we should be thankful, cause as usual the results are nothing short of freaking awesome. This isn't photoshop work guys. Do I have you fired up yet? Then check out Benjamin's latest BTS video.

At the age of 13, Moscow born photographer Oleg Dou was already playing with Photoshop but it wasn't until 2005 that he bought his first professional camera. Looking at his work, it's not hard to see how learning in this order greatly influenced his style.

Japanese manufacturer Nissin Digital have announced a newly designed speedlight, the MG8000 Extreme, and claims it's capable of 1,000 consecutive flashes without overheating due to it's ceramic insulation, a quartz-based flash tube (more like those found in studio lights), a glass screen to protect the lens from heat and it's use of air vents.

Another humorous video from Kai over at DigitalRev has him training a complete newbie to try and pass him off as a pro photographer in under a week of not so intense training. Then they face him off against a real pro in a final challenge with Hasselblad Master Eric Wong as the judge. Will the judge know the difference? Can Kai's fake pull it off?

Fashion photographer and filmmaker Jacob Sutton teams up with Artec pro snowboarder William Hughes and designer John Spatcher, to make this stunning short that features a very unique light source, an LED suit. Just picture it, a lone surfer illuminating his way down the slopes of Tignes in the Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France, captured on a Red Epic camera. Can't?

If you don't get sarcasm then this video, from photographer and YouTube poster MyAngryGirlfriend, is not for you. She's been "pissing people off since 1983" and her latest video maybe aimed straight at you. It's a sarcastic take on the DO's and DON'Ts of shooting.

This simple trick to get up close and personal with primates at the Los Angeles Zoo may not be rocket science but it did take a rocket scientist to come up with it. Mark B. Rober is an engineer with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and he seems to have a propensity for coming up with clever ideas. See a couple of Mark's videos below.

If you had 4 months in Mongolia, would you make the best of it? Well French photographer Remi Chapeaublanc sure as hell did.

I know, I know. The Cinch camera strap isn't as exciting as the Nikon D4 or Nikon D800 release but having a strap that easily tightens and releases with one hand sure would come in.... handy.

Designer Jean-michel Bonnemoy believes that a traditional camera's design is dictated by the need to hold a roll of film in the back. But with the advent of digital tech there is no longer a need to maintain a form factor that is inherently contrary to smarter ergonomics. Enter the D-CAN. What are your thoughts on this new camera design? Should we shake off the shackles of design's past?

Check out this clip from, "Bigger Faster Stronger", where photographer Rich Schaff explains how some companies hire him to take before and after photos on the same day, for misleading supplement advertisements. Is this why some photographers get into photography? Is this even legal? I mean, how far are you willing to go to make a buck? Don't get me wrong.

Do you have have a lot of photographer friends? Well if you do then you will know what I'm talking about when I say that, we spend a lot of time arguing about techniques, lighting, gear and each other's individual style/aesthetic. It's all in the name of good fun and education.

See Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes as he runs us through some of PS6's new advanced features in their Content-Aware technology. Is it just me or did Photoshop make it sickeningly easy to recompose shots, doing away with the need for any of those pesky composition and distracting element considerations, while shooting.