Articles from Lee Morris

I ran across the incredibly imaginative portfolio of John Flury a few weeks ago. When I viewed his image "Provincial Uprising" where a womans dress was made of human hands I couldn't figure out how it was made.  When I first saw this picture I assumed that the hands had been shot separately and then copied over and over again in Photoshop.

Over the past  years Fstoppers.com has grown into something much more massive than I ever could have imagined. Patrick and I built this website from absolutely nothing and all of our success can be attributied to trial and error. We decided over a year ago that the new website would block NSFW content and today I will explain to you why we made that decision.  

Today I stumbled upon the incredible body painting work of Emma Hack and I started surfing the web for body painting projects. I ended up finding 13 totally unique body painting projects that I believe are worth sharing.  

http://vimeo.com/91487639

https://vimeo.com/50856238

Back in 2004 I was given the Nikon D100 digital camera for Christmas and I started making money with the camera within a few months. I fell into wedding photography and within 2 years I was making almost 100% of my income shooting them. In the last 10 years I never learned how to process a RAW file (effectively) or use Lightroom until last week.  

Update: We are sold out. 

We have been working for months on producing the next batch of Fstoppers Flash Discs. I thought we were completely sold out of the original batch of 1000 units but I was just going through one of our closets and I found 12 unopened original Flash Discs.  

It's hard to look at our photography with objective eyes. We know how much planning went into the shoot. We know how complicated the shoot was. We know how many hours in Photoshop we spent. The sad truth is, none of that matters. Your image should speak for itself. Let me help you rate your photography fairly. 

Update: We have received hundreds of applications and we need time to go through them. We do not need any more writers at this time but stay tuned, we will probably hire more in a few months.  

I've had some pretty amazing experiences in my life. Fstoppers.com has given me incredible opportunities like meeting Bon Jovi, or riding in the first Lamborghini Aventador in America. Our international workshop last week took a year of planning and insane amounts of stress. On top of it all, I had the flu during the entire week.

On May 28th - June 1st Fstoppers is hosting our first ever photography workshop in the Bahamas at Atlantis Resort. We signed a contract with the resort which guaranteed our attendees the cheapest possible hotel rates. After fees, the cheapest room at the resort is usually over $450. The attendees of our workshop pay less than $200/room and they can be shared at no extra cost.

A couple days ago we took a DJI Phantom 2 and flew it straight up into the air over Charleston, SC to test its "range". The video, although interesting, was not fully thought out and we decided to pull the video.

My senior year of college I made the decision to change my career goal of being a graphic designer to a professional photographer.  In 2005 the internet wasn't yet a great resource for learning about photography so I bought photography books.

If you are anything like me, you're extremely active during the summer and once winter rolls around you become a hermit and the pounds pack on. For those of you attending our Bahamas photography workshop, you may be interested in our photographers weight loss challenge. 

We've teamed up with royalty free music leader Premiumbeat.com, to give away everything you need to capture beautiful video shots on-the-go. Enter to win this prize pack DAILY through February 20, 2014 to increase your chances of winning. Additionally, receive 2 more entries for every participant you refer! 

Last summer we flew Mike Kelley, one of my favorite architecture photographers, to Charleston for 3 weeks to film the 8 hour tutorial How To Photograph Real Estate, Architecture and Interiors . Mike's technique of light painting and compositing is so polished and time consuming that I assumed no Realtor would actually want to pay for it. I was wrong. 

As you have probably heard, Fstoppers is hosting a 5 day photography workshop in the Bahamas from May 28 - June 1. Mark Wallace is one of our top instructors this year and he is going to be focusing mostly on the technical aspects of photography. Recently Mark released more information about each of his 4 classes.  

On February 1st we are choosing 1 person who has paid for their classes at the Fstoppers Workshop in the Bahamas from May 28th - June 1st, and giving them a full refund. If you are planning to come to the workshop, you will need to pay within the next 4 days to take advantage of this contest, and now it only requires a 20% deposit. 

About two months ago, I posted a highly controversial post called The Nikon Df Represents Everything Wrong With Photography. Even though I completely stand behind my original article, I began to wonder if I had not given Nikon's newest DSLR offering a fair chance.

Yes this is a photography website, and no this video doesn't really have anything to do with photography. But being that I own this website and I'm excited to go snowboarding in a few weeks I thought I'd share this incredible video of all of the best snowboard tricks from the last year.  

Last week Jaron Schneider posted an inside look at the decline in Facebook engagement. For those of us with Photography pages to promote, this means that now you will have to pay each time you want your posts to reach an acceptable amount of your followers. Youtuber Veritasium created an informative video that explains the situation in even more detail. 

This year for Christmas I wanted to surprise my father with his dream car, an original Chevrolet Camaro convertible in hugger orange with white rally stripes. Being that I'm a photographer I decided to photograph the car and give my father a framed print of the car before I revealed that I am actually giving him the car.  

UPDATE: WE'RE SOLD OUT - 6 years ago I built a collapsible softbox that could easily fit in my pocket while I was shooting weddings. I built this product for myself and never dreamed that it would become a real product one day. 2 years ago Patrick and I set out to have the "Flash Disc" mass produced and patented. We just received our patent and first batch.

Cyber Monday is winding down as midnight draws closer but you still have a few hours to save 20% on what we believe is the best Lightroom Workshop collection on the internet. This download includes 23 hours of tutorials as well as some of the best Lightroom presets on the market today. Use the code "BF2014" to save 20% now. 

2 planes carrying 9 skydivers accidentally collide in mid air. Many of the skydivers have GoPro Cameras rolling and they capture the collision, the explosion, and the aftermath from multiple angles at the same time. Shockingly everyone survived, even the pilots. 

This has to be one of the most intense videos I've ever seen.

Each year Patrick and I work on one extremely large project. Two years ago we created The Art Behind The Headshot with Peter Hurley. Last year we finished our 14 hour tutorial on how to become a wedding photographer. In 2013 we teamed up with Mike Kelley to produce what I believe is the best resource available on How To Photograph Real Estate, Architecture, and Interiors.  

On Friday our writer Dave Geffin featured Jean Claude Van Damme's newest commercial for Volvo, hailing it as the most successful commercial of 2013. The post was an instant success but then Jean Claude himself saw the post and decided to share it to millions of his followers. For 3 days Fstoppers received thousands of clicks per second.

Anyone who happened to see me speak at Photo Plus this year knows that I am obsessed with both photography and business. I love learning from those who have been big successes in any field because the idea of building something in general is so exciting to me. This 60 minutes interview with Nick Woodman, the creator of the GoPro Camera is the most inspiring video I've seen in years. 

Last year Patrick and I were invited out to Dubai to attend Gulf Photo Plus, a photography workshop unlike anything else on the planet. At the time the only thing I knew about GPP was that they did a shootout with 3 big name photographers. I never expected that attending this event would become one of the most memorable experiences of my life.  

Tonight Nikon will announce announced the "revolutionary" Nikon DF Camera. By "revolutionary" I mean that they have taken a full frame sensor from a current digital DSLR and put it into a non-ergonomic retro body and removed many features, including video.

The rumored Nikon DF camera with its retro outside and full frame 35mm guts is finally starting to leak. Nikon Rumors posted a few images just minutes ago and then their website went down (possibly due to traffic?). We will be updating this post with camera info as it is received but at this point we only have pictures.

If you've seen our 14 hour tutorial on how to become a wedding photographer, you know that I am a huge fan of Pye Jirsa of Lin and Jirsa Weddings and the owner of SLRLounge.com.

Most of the multiday workshops are $150 or less on creativeLIVE which is a really great deal as it is but for the next 3 days, everything is on sale. Many of the workshops are as much as 50% off. Head there now to check out this incredible opportunity.  

On Saturday we threw another incredible party with Peter Hurley during Photo Plus. As always we had an abundance of pizza and alcohol but more importantly we had an incredible photobooth. In fact, it was probably the most expensive photobooth ever created.