Articles from Ryan Cooper

The Zenitar 85mm f/1.4 is designed to be a more modern lens with a hint of Zenit's vintage bokeh style. 

The Zenitar 50mm f/1.2 S is a hodgepodge of vintage lens design brought into the modern world in order to marry the delight of swirly bokeh with the convenience of a modern lens mount. 

Choosing the ideal images for your portfolio can often seem as hard or harder than actually taking the photos in the first place. Most photographers tend to treat their portfolio as a dumping ground for as much work as possible with the intention that quantity is the key to building their credibility. More often than not, the opposite is true.

The pursuit of perfection in any creative craft can often inspire the feeling that one is forever climbing a mighty mountain yet never even rising beyond base camp. Photography is no different, any photographer worth their salt will have trudged through great difficulty to reach mastery in their craft.

Color Cone boldly positions itself as a powerful but easy to use tool to augment any color grading workflow. Is Color Cone the next great addition to your post-processing ritual or just another app that you will purchase and never use again? 

Photographers always find themselves obsessed with exciting toys like camera bodies and lenses but it is often the overlooked items that can make the biggest impact on a shoot. When packing your camera bag always try to find space for a few invaluable tools to common challenges during any shoot.

The biggest hurdle faced by many budding portrait photographers is the need to find amazing subjects to collaborate with. Reaching out to and communicating with models can be intimidating, but it really shouldn't be, as it can very easily lead to a very rewarding collaborative shoot for both parties.  

Manfred Baumann is a highly regarded portrait photographer specializing in working with the biggest names in Hollywood. Baumann has spent years developing a timeless style to his work that continues to be in high demand. Fstoppers chats with Baumann to get the low down on what drives both his creative process and how he built a strong business in a very tight niche.

In 2017, ACDSee started their Photographer Spotlight program to give back to their users by providing new opportunities to talented rising stars in the photography world.

In a mobile world filled with an endless selection of preset filters, there are surprisingly few options to employ more creative color grading that is driven by specific choice rather than by simply perusing a gallery of presets.

One of the most toxic poisons to continued inspiration is the sudden belief that your own work is hated by your audience. Online criticism can be a harsh weight on motivation that all photographers must face at one point or another and is something that should almost always be completely ignored. 

The WiMiUS L1 4K action cam is a competitively priced budget alternative to a market that has quickly become saturated with tiny cameras from a huge variety of companies looking to stake their claim in the action sports market.

In a market saturated with mobile editing apps, ACD System's combo of ACDSee Pro and Mobile Sync for iOS stands out as one of the best options for editing your photos on the go with features ranging from quirky filters to advanced editing functionality that can provide professional results.

We are in the heart of one of the most severe winters that has come along for years. Many are spending as much time bundled up as possible waiting for spring to show up in a month or two. Photographers, however, are a different breed. Crazy conditions are an opportunity to create interesting images so we often find ourselves meandering out into the unexpected after that perfect shot.

Another year has come and gone, and as such the time has come to reflect on the road ahead. With the New Year just a few days away, now is the best time to do some soul searching and adopt some resolutions that will help improve your photography going forward. This road is often a challenging one, based on the forever hunt for ever greater photographs.

Procrastination is often the name of the game when it comes to aspects of maintaining our photography. Finding time and motivation to do fun shoots should be pretty easy throughout the year, but maintenance tends to be pushed to the back burner.

World-renowned photographer Clay Cook decided to bring Christmas a bit early by hosting a livestream on the topic of marketing for photographers. Cook is an editorial and advertising photographer who works very heavily in the commercial space shooting editorial portraiture.

Sometimes when shooting a portrait the drama created by a silhouette can reveal a more powerful sense of character than a more traditional portrait. One major downside of a true silhouette, however, is that it fully blacks out the subject sacrificing any opportunity for expression or detail within said subject.

Christmas is only a few weeks away which means that you are probably procrastinating so that you can experience the magnificent panic of last minute shopping. Perhaps this could be the year you mitigate that stress by getting your shopping done early in the month!

One of the best ways to step up your photographic game as a portrait photographer is to improve the quality of your subjects. There are a variety of ways to do this ranging from improving your ability to coach strong expression, working with better makeup artists, or improving the quality of styling.

With Black Friday only a couple days away B&H has added another sale to their already impressive list of savings by putting a wide variety of their Apple products on sale. With savings up to $1,100, there are amazing deals to be had for any fan of Apple hardware.

It seems that each year Black Friday arrives earlier and earlier, this year B&H photo is getting started almost a week early with some big savings to kickstart the holiday season. With deals on cameras, lenses, computers, printers, and more with savings up to $1,400, there is certainly something to scratch any gear itch that you may have.

When retouching we often place a strong focus on the primary subject of the photo, often demoting other aspects of the image as a fleeting second thought. Which makes sense, the primary subject of the photo is the most important aspect of a photo.

The Christmas season is nearly upon us and it is probably time to start thinking about that perfect little Christmas gift for yourself! Until the end of November 19th B&H photo is having a huge sale on a wide variety of laptops to fit almost any need. Savings range from $20 all the way to $650 with laptops aimed at virtually any budget level.

On November 9, ON1 software released the latest version of their flagship editing software. Photo RAW 2018 looks to move ON1 further forward to being a genuine alternative to Adobe suite as an all-in-one photo editing tool. Touting a variety of critical new features Photo RAW 2018 promises to be the strongest iteration of the software to date.

Fashion Photographer Alexi Lubomirski recently sat down with Kyle Hagler, president of NEXT models, for an intimate and candid chat about the modeling industry and what photographers can do to succeed. Hagler offered an array of fantastic advice that almost any photographer can draw on.

Often when retouching skin we want to clone away high contrast blemishes without also cloning the texture surrounding it. Advanced techniques such as using frequency separation can be a great help to make this sort of thing easier by separating detail from broader tones.

Every year as we panic a week before Christmas trying to find the best gifts for our most cherished loved ones we vow to start a smidgen earlier the following year so that things aren't quite so hectic in December.

One of the most common retouching catastrophes I see on a day to day basis is an overzealous attack on eyes. Like over-baked HDR, obnoxiously over-retouched eyes have become almost ubiquitous among less experienced retouchers.

The GoPro HERO6 Black is the latest flagship camera in a long line of popular action cameras from GoPro. The HERO6 comes with some pretty hefty promises which we wanted to put to the test to see if this new camera truly is deserving of all of the hype sent its way.

As a key player in the transition from SD to HD, the CineForm codec has enjoyed a long history as one of the codecs continually on the cutting edge of video compression. GoPro has decided that moving forward it will be officially open sourcing the CineForm codec in order to better allow developers access to what it feels is the codex that will usher 360-degree video into the future.

Jayden Bethea is a toddler on a mission. At an impressively young age of five, Jayden has already discovered and developed an impressive passion for fashion photography. Following in the footsteps of his mother, Selah B. Marie Bethea, Jayden is showing that creating great photography is within the reach of anyone who has a passion to create and a willingness to experiment.

Earlier this year Newsweek ran a cover featuring everyone's favorite president to hate as their cover, depicting him lazily hanging out in the oval office pounding back the calories in about the least presidential way possible. Newsweek contracted legendary conceptual photographer C.J. Burton to create this inevitably notorious cover.

There has been an increasing trend over the last few years that many newer photographers have latched onto. That trend is how important it is to tell the story "of" the photoshoot rather than just conducting the shoot itself.

Today ON1 Software announced the 2018 version of their flagship editing software, Photo RAW. With the addition of a variety of new features, Photo RAW 2018 promises to be the most compelling version yet. Among others, ON1 has added support for HDR, panoramic stitching, and more powerful masking to Photo RAW.