Iain Stanley
fstoppers.com
Japan
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Past articles by Iain:
The Simple Habit Artistic Geniuses Share That You Need to Start Copying Today
Hendrix used it. As did Hemingway. Slash still does, and so too does George Saunders. It's simple, relatable, and easy to implement. Best of all, it really does help take your creative work to the next level. Learn how you can use it, too. "His stories are hilarious, imaginative, thrilling on the language level, moving and absurd. To read them is to feel awed by the author’s → Read More
The Composition Killer Ruining Your Photos You Can Easily Fix Today
It doesn't matter how good your composition is if you have this one glaring error. Take a look to see what it is, if you're guilty of doing it, and how to fix it. Everything begins with composition. That's the mantra that was pathologically drilled into me when I was starting out with photography many decades ago. And it's true. Almost every great photo across a wide range of → Read More
Two Important Reasons You Should Always Consider Cropping Your Photos
The crop tool might not be as fancy as many others in your editing suite, but its importance cannot be overstated. Here are two very important reasons you should always think about starting with the crop tool when you first sit down to work on your images. Removing Distractions The first, and perhaps most important, reason for cropping your images is to remove distractions or → Read More
How to Make Yourself Look Better on Zoom Calls
If you've ever looked at your face on a Zoom call and wondered why you look so bad, you're not alone. Here, we look at how to add color corrections and pop to your face so you look so much better on Zoom, Google Hangouts, Skype, and more. When the pandemic first started and all my classes went online, I thought it was wonderful. I could stay at home, dress casually, and not → Read More
Who Else Struggles to Understand Studio Lighting? This Will Help You
As a landscape and seascape photographer who also shoots surfing, I'm not too embarrassed to say that my understanding of indoor lighting setups is not where I want it to be. This video here is extremely helpful, especially if you'd love to get those gorgeously mysterious rim light shots. I grew up on the ocean. My entire adolescence was spent playing in and around the ocean. → Read More
5 Great Tips for Flying Drones in Winter Weather
For the first time in 15 years, it recently snowed where I live. I desperately wanted to take my drone out but was petrified it might get swept away in a blustery blizzard or die of hypothermia. I wish I'd known these five tips for flying drones in wintry weather beforehand. In October of 2022, I bit the economic bullet, spat out the shrapnel, and bought a DJI Mini 3 Pro. → Read More
Forget the Foreground: Why Doing This Will Improve Your Landscape Photos
We all know what the rule of thirds is, right? And we all know that in the bottom third of the frame, we often have a foreground element of interest. Take a look here to see how going without any foreground at all can greatly improve your landscape images. Like some people quote Ansel Adams as their inspiration even though they wouldn't have a clue who he is or what he did, → Read More
Auto-Mask Everything at Once: New Tool in Photoshop Is Absolutely Incredible
Have you used this little-known tool in recent versions of Photoshop? Have you even seen it? It makes editing images so much easier. See it in use here. When I look at the developments in post-production software today and the capabilities they possess, I honestly don't know whether to cry into the basket of redundant skills I now own or scream into the heavens because of how → Read More
Successful Wedding Photographer Shares Marketing Tip That Skyrocketed His Page Views and Client Numbers
It's devilishly simple, but this marketing tip by a renowned wedding photographer absolutely exploded his numbers. I think it's applicable to many types of photography, so to learn what it is and how you can implement it, take a look. Business is a numbers game, so they say. And it's true. Let's say you have 100 followers on social media and you convert one of them into a → Read More
A Simple Composition Technique to Improve Your Wide Angle Photography
When you use a wide angle lens, you can fit so many things in the frame, it can be difficult knowing what you should include and what you shouldn't. Here, we take a look at one simple composition technique you can use to enhance your wide angle photography skills. When I first began my photography journey as a backpacking university student, I was typically using lenses in the → Read More
5 Keys to Getting Brilliant Landscape Images in Horrible Weather
Do you struggle to get high-quality landscape images when the weather is bad and the light's poor? Here, we look at five important things you can do to get amazing landscape photos in horrible weather conditions. You've marked the day on your calendar, prepared your gear, polished your lenses, and you're ready to get out into nature and capture scenes from a location you've → Read More
13 Must-Know Lightroom Cheat Codes if You Want to Improve Your Editing
Lightroom is beginning to give Photoshop a run for its money as a standalone editing tool. Here, learn 13 essential Lightroom cheat codes you must know if you want your post-production skills to improve. Today was further proof for me that Lightroom is no longer a cumbersome cousin that tags along with Photoshop in Adobe's photography bundle. I took some photos last week of my → Read More
3 Money Mistakes Every Photography Business Must Avoid
Do you run a photography business? Do you want to run a photography business? Do you make a tiny amount of money on the side from your photography interests? Do you want to? If you answered yes to any of those questions then this is for you: three big money mistakes people make when it comes to photography and the business side of things. When I first started out with → Read More
5 Purchases You Can Make to Immediately Improve Your Landscape Photography
Don't let anyone tell you gear doesn't matter. It does. It might not be the only thing that goes into getting good images, but it's certainly a big factor. But not all the gear you need has to be bodies and lenses. Here, learn about five purchases you can make to transform your landscape photography overnight. I once got up one winter's morning here in the south of Japan to go → Read More
The Sigma 60-600mm vs the Sony 200-600mm: Best Wildlife Zoom Lens Shootout
Lens makers these days are coming up with some incredible options that were unheard of just a few short years ago. That continues here, with the Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3 lens put up against the Sony 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 in a battle for the title of best wildlife lens. You could also make a case for it being an action sports lens shootout too. So, how do they perform, and which → Read More
How Do You Find the Perfect Foreground?
You've got your subject, you've got your elements, you've got your rule of thirds composition, but you're missing something in the foreground. How do you find the perfect foreground to complement your image and give it that real wow factor? When I first got into photography, I was backpacking through Eastern Europe as a rather arty student, so I was always going for that → Read More
Myth Busted: High Megapixel Cameras Do Not Produce More Noise in Low Light
There's been a long-held belief that higher-megapixel cameras produce more noise in low-light situations. Here, different models of Fuji, Canon, and Sony cameras are compared side-by-side to prove that high-megapixel cameras do not produce more noise than lower-megapixel models when lighting conditions are poor. When I began traveling in earnest around the turn of the century, → Read More
The Best Way to Use DeNoise AI as a Photoshop Plugin
Topaz Labs' DeNoise AI software does an incredible job of cleaning up images and removing unwanted noise. However, it works differently depending on whether you're using it in Lightroom, Photoshop, or as a standalone platform. Here, we take at look the best way to use it as a Photoshop plugin. Topaz Labs make some fantastic post-production software. In its suite, there's → Read More
7 Pro Landscape Photographers Edit the Same Raw Image: Which Do You Think Is Best?
For as long as I've owned Photoshop, I've steadfastly held the belief that post-production skills separate most photographers. Here, we see seven pro landscape photographers given a single raw image to work with, and the final results are not only quite amazing, but incredibly different. When I bought my first camera more than three decades ago, I instantly became fascinated → Read More
Photoshop’s Amazing AI Feature to Rescue and Enhance Poor, Low Quality Images
A new year and another Photoshop AI feature to get excited about. This time, we're going to look at how you can take poor, low quality images with tiny file sizes and plenty of ugly artifacts and turn them into images of such quality you could even consider printing them. Over the course of December last year, I played around a lot with various AI tools. As it so happened, we → Read More