It seems that every time I close my eyes, Godox releases a new product. Their array of hot-shoe flashes, portable strobes, modifiers, and other flash gear seems to have no end. The great thing about a company like this with a fast product cycle is that technology develops very quickly.
With the advent of digital cameras, drones, the Internet, and social media, video has become much more a part of every facet of advertising and our general content consumption. Even Fstoppers began by sharing behind-the-scenes videos of photographers at work to inspire and educate people all around the world. Everywhere you look, now, video is always present.
As I head into the new year of photography, I’ve taken the opportunity to think a lot about composition and how it relates to my photography and to photography as a whole. It is true that every picture has a composition, whether the creator intended it or not. Some spend much of their time thinking on how to compose, others do it instinctively, and others pay very little heed to it.
Earlier this week, Fstoppers creators Patrick Hall and Lee Morris posted a tongue-in-cheek video that mocked photographers’ very real lust for the perfect bag. I hope you all got a great laugh out of that just like I did. We’ve all been in Hall's position, watching a seemingly endless pile of gear come out of someone else’s bag.
As photographers, a common rhetoric we hear is about finding our style. We are to consider so many technical aspects like lighting, lenses, color grading, and choice of palette. On some platforms, these aspects have become more important than the content of the images themselves.
Food photography is ever present in our society. From billboard advertising to culinary magazines and, let's not forget, Instagram. Of course, the photography found in these mediums varies in style and quality depending on its intended audience but, in general, the goal is to make food look pleasing to the viewer.
Today, I’d like to take a look at the X1T trigger from Godox specifically as it pertains to their Fujifilm version. The unit is also offered with compatibility for Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Olympus cameras. I have experience with the Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm versions of this and will give my experience with it on Fujifilm cameras today.
Over the past few years, Zhongyi Optics have introduced several lenses in their Mitakon “Speedmaster” series of reasonably-priced, well-constructed, super-fast manual focus lenses. The 35mm f/0.95 Mark II lens falls straight into that category. We’ll be looking at the Fujifilm mount version, but this lens is also available for EOS-M and Sony E cameras.
We have a lot to be thankful of as photographers. We make our livings doing the things we love. Clients hire us to create images because they love what we do. They entrust their most precious moments to us, and believe that we will deliver.
As a newcomer to drones and drone photography, it can be a little overwhelming in the beginning. Learning all there is to know about maneuvering your new toy through the air is enough to give you a few grey hairs before you even get it off the ground. Once you’re up there, you better believe there’s some extra tension in your muscles the first few times you fly.
Import and culling have always been two of the most time consuming and, frankly, annoying parts of Adobe Lightroom. Despite all of its improvements over the years, the process of getting files into Lightroom has remained a huge bottleneck in an otherwise swift workflow application.
I’ve written before about the elements of a good image for the sake of the image, and just recently about how pouring yourself into your own development will result in stronger photography. There’s one element that both of these fail to touch on.
Reproducible photography started with forms that would produce a monochromatic image. For a large portion of the history of the medium, this was all we had. Color photography brought about a choice as to which you would like to use, and over time it became the dominant choice of consumers and professionals alike.
A near-ubiquitous access to digital photography and a connection to the rest of the world has given this generation of humans unprecedented ability to share a heavily curated lifestyle with the world and vicariously live the lives of others. Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms offer a way to share only what you want with the world.
Photography, as with any creative pursuit, requires the creator to have their hand in the process for the results to shine. Countless Facebook ads, online workshops, and even our camera companies would have you believe that they if you just buy that next magic bullet, everything will change for you.
The concept of a portrait lens has always baffled me. When I first started out in photography, reading the Internet and listening to other photographers would have led me to believe that I needed something around the 85mm or 135mm focal lengths if I wanted to photograph a person. Anything else wouldn’t work. Well, that simply isn’t true, is it? Any lens can be used as a portrait lens.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about using the Fujifilm GFX 50S as a travel camera. As part of that article, I touched briefly on using it for portraiture. I also touched briefly on using the GF 110mm f/2 lens and a few autofocus issues that I had. Today, I would like to dive a little deeper into using this camera for portraiture and my experience with it.
As photographers, we have but one raw material to work with: light. You will hear this time and time again, you need to learn to see that light and learn how your camera sees it. Knowing what to look for is just the beginning. Figuring out how to use light, or more importantly how you will use it, is the larger part of your photographic journey.
Over the past few years, we’ve seen digital medium-format photography go from something of a hulking utilitarian beast into something a little more elegant in terms of usability. The Phase One and Hasselblad flagships, although coveted by many, were only attainable by a select few and really only intended for methodical work.
Today, I’d like to talk about three key elements that I feel make up each and every photograph we take. Of course they are not the only elements, but I feel that they are the most important. Specific shoots, like fashion or automotive commercials, require all sorts of preparation and specific skills. However, at the photographic level, three key elements still apply.
David DuChemin has become very well known for his so called “sermons” on vision. He has written books about it, including the beautifully crafted "VisionMongers." He is a champion of exploring art over exploring gear, and even his YouTube show uses his motto in its title, “Vision is Better.” In Episode 61, he goes into a common misconception about vision and style.
Packing for a shoot in your town can be a pain, but packing for an extended shoot in another country brings a whole new set of complications into consideration. Recently, I’ve been doing a lot of extended trips for my personal project “Tattoos of Asia.” Over the few trips that I’ve done, I’ve managed to pare down my kit to what I absolutely need.
For all the stranded Mac users out there who’ve bought into the future that’s not quite here yet, there has been no shortage of products hitting the shelves to take you right back to the port-filled glory you once lived with. With all those ports taken from you, there is now an extra box on your desk just so you can reconnect the devices you use on a daily basis.
One of the big concerns for many moving over to the Fujifilm X and GFX systems has been options for flash support. In all honesty, most of these issues were non-issues for the majority of users.
One of the most commonly heard pieces of advice within creative circles certainly seems to be the need to find your “style” and market that. What is your style? How to find it? These questions we’ve been told should plague us and drive us get inside our heads if we let them and begin to dictate what we do and how we do it.
With every new lens release we get bombarded with wild claims of “sharpest lens ever” and “bokeh so soft you’ll want to lie down in it.” A barrage of MTF charts and comparisons flood the web and debates rage in forums about which lens is better than which. Opinions fly and the knowledgeable and no so knowledgeable lock horns.
For quite some time now, there have been plenty of flash options available for the Fujifilm X system. Fuji themselves have released several flashes, Nissin and Metz have also had some good offerings. However, many have been waiting for the big names like Profoto and Elinchrom to offer full Fujifilm X support and bring some serious power to the system.
For anyone who has been to India, you will know that it is the very definition of chaos. The streets dazzle your senses. The smells, sights, and sounds are unforgettable. You cannot move too quickly or you will miss things, but cannot stop too long for the same reason. Life is raw, and comes in all shapes and sizes.
Inspiration is something we all wrestle with as creatives. Where do our ideas come from? Why can’t we simply come up with them on the fly? Why do we wake up at three o’clock in the morning with the perfect shoot planned out? How can we get more of these kinds of ideas? Let’s look at a few things that I do to keep myself inspired and ready to create.
Chase Jarvis has been getting real with a lot of topics on his show The Daily Creative. He's been answering questions from callers all over the world and doing it in an honest, straightforward way. If you haven't been following this, I recommend you start below and then head over to watch a whole lot more direct advice from one of the photography industry greats.
Back in the day (not all that long ago, in fact), the only memory cards you would find in a “pro”-level camera were Compact Flash. That all changed as SD cards started to get faster and faster. Speeds up to 95 MB/s were great for emptying out the buffer on machine-gun mode and writing 1080p footage, which meant that space in the bodies could be used for other things. These cards were great.
The weather. Of the many things I wish I could control, this is certainly one of them. Recently, my home of Seoul has had some of the clearest skies and nicest puffy clouds that I’ve seen in my 11 years of living here, but typically this is not so.
This year’s Travel Photographer Society (TPS) competition culminated in a beautiful exhibition of interesting and unique work from travel photographers all over the world in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Surrounding the exhibition, TPS also held a series of talks by prominent travel photographers.
