Should we separate the art from the artist? Are we complicit in perpetuating terrible behavior when we elevate talented creatives who also happen to be poor humans?
Fashion magazines, brand-name advertisements, and catalogs of all sorts seek out interesting locations to stage their photo shoots. Some are simply looking for controllable surroundings for privacy and security, but other productions are seeking something special to enhance their photos. Many locations, however, come with a price.
As an aspiring photographer, it eventually becomes obvious that likes on Facebook or comments such as “Beautiful work Kiddo!” from your mother aren’t exactly providing an objective evaluation of your talent. Constructive feedback from others in your field is something that everyone can benefit from at times, even as a professional. The problem is, most of us don’t take criticism very well especially when it comes to something we’ve poured our heart into and may actually love on a personal level.
There is great satisfaction in landing that amazing shoot with an A-List client, but even the perfect gig can sometimes leave us wanting more. Often the answer lies only within a project of your own conception. Adventure photographer/director Tim Kemple shares with us how he's fueled by personal projects, and why they are often more important than any paid assignment.
As photographers, we are bombarded by thousands of courses, books, and educational materials. But, what if I told you that before you learn photography you must, really must, learn something else? Well, you must know this one thing well before you even start taking pictures.
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.
In the world of professional photography, the value of our work doesn’t always line up with our client’s budgets. But as tempting as it is to take the money and run, holding firm can often be more profitable in the end.
Jim Reed is a renowned extreme weather photographer who, in 1992, started a 30-year project on climate change. His day-to-day work includes tornadoes, blizzards, floods, and droughts - not to mention 19 hurricanes, including Katrina. Here's what he's discovered.
Getting new clients is exciting, but often difficult. If you've got no mutual connection, no contact to introduce you, or no event you can bump in to them at, you're against the odds. So don't make it even harder.
Cameras just aren't good enough at processing photos — witness the inexorable rise of the smartphone which leverages adequate hardware and clever software to produce images that look as good as those from a high-flying $2,000 camera. What can manufacturers do to remain relevant in today's market?
Eventually, as we progress in our commercial photography careers, we will become a part of sizable shoots with producers attached. Your first shoot with an experienced producer will feel like flying first class for the first time; you will never want to go back.
You buy a camera as a purely functional object: you want to produce images, and it is the tool of choice. Yet, as photographers, we become brand loyal partisans, identifying with the manufacturer. So, who has the best logo?
The more time that passes in which I am a professional photographer, the more I distill the various components that have a hand in success in this industry, revealing which are vital and which are posturing as important. Here is a component that I would consider one of the most important, if not the most important.
As a photographer, I spend a lot of time taking photos, editing, blogging, and posting them on social media. However, are these photos just meant to be viewed for the 24-hour period (or less) that they're displayed on social media, only to disappear forever? Personally, I believe it’s important to create and share something tangible and special in this digital age of noise and instant gratification. That's why I've started to print my photos, and below are some reasons why you should too.
I’ve always been jealous of people who know where they’re headed. They’re like greyhounds chasing a rabbit, absolutely certain of what they were put on this earth to do, and doggedly (pun intended) pursuing their purpose. When I first picked up a camera, I took photographs of everything. Bees, power lines, babies, weddings, families, anything I could point a lens at became my subject. It didn’t take long before I had people asking me to photograph them, and soon enough I was dragging families through shrubs and fields looking for that perfect outdoor shot.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret, one that lots of people know, but for some reason, not that many people talk about. You're allowed to take bad photos; it's alright, and your world won't come crashing down.
Sometimes, the benefit of photography goes well beyond the pretty pictures.
Have you ever considered how significantly confidence can affect your photography? Creative people are often a largely unconfident group. At any given time we might be dealing with the fear of missing an important moment, anxiously thinking about an upcoming session, running the worst possible scenarios through our minds, or delivering our photos to a client and dreading that email that says how much they hate them. We are still in the process of improving, constantly comparing our work to others, and because of the number of negative thoughts we have, we often feel like frauds.
A lot can be said for the power of social media. In fact, many of today’s most successful photographers owe a lot to the beasts that we lovingly refer to as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But are these platforms that we all invest so much of our time into the final nails in the coffin of a professional photograph industry that was built less on savvy social media skill and the latest filter packs and more on actual relationships, constancy, and hard work?
This is by no means a new topic, but a recent poster in the Fstoppers Wedding Photography group lamented that they felt they were stuck in a creative rut, and it got me thinking about the problem of trying to be experimental within an industry. Chances are if you’re shooting for a client, they have a preconceived idea of what you're going to provide, even if that’s just a ballpark “these kinds of colors, this kind of emotion.” If you rocked up to a wedding with the awesome idea of only shooting macros of toes, you’re going to have a hard sell when it comes time to deliver the finished product; they’d need to be really good foot shots.
If amidst all the challenges of the changing times and around the craft itself, you’re still really passionate about photography, it probably brings you significant joy. But why?
One of the best pieces of advice I have been given in recent times was to not be a firefighter. Before you all jump on me and tell me I'm a dummy for saying something negative about people who are clearly more heroic than I am, let me explain. What I mean is to not be proactive in how I operate.
People will tell you there are no shortcuts, but that is only true if you think a shortcut is a magic "Masterpiece" mode in your camera or a special action in Photoshop.
On a recent visit to my hometown, a friend of a friend asked if I would be able to photograph some inventory for her online art business. Most of her products were small to medium sized and she had a considerable backlog that needed to go up as quickly as possible. Being away from most of the gear in my studio, I had to improvise a bit if I was going to earn the business.
Call it a personal project or way of finding the calm again in photographs, lately I've been shooting a portrait style “sad flower” collection and I love it. Check out the how and why and if it tickles your fancy you can give it a try too.
The biggest downside to using a gimbal is losing basic controls of the camera. Sure, you can use a monitor, but you can't actually control the camera. Could your phone fix this problem?
What does it take to shoot for some of the largest magazines in the world? Not as much as you might think.
I go way back with the Nik Tools software. I bought the set before Google snapped it up, then they let it sit virtually idle. DXO got it six years ago and have added their own deep knowledge of photo editing and, I think, fulfilled the dream of what the Nik Collection should be.
When you go out taking pictures, you grab your camera or camera bag, you might set up a tripod, and start shooting. Often, that goes without any problems, but not always. Imagine what happens when your equipment takes an unexpected fall because something fails.
Patrick and I recently were recently planning a trip to Alaska, and Patrick became obsessed with a particular excursion: a plane ride that landed on a glacier on the top of Denali Mountain.
Most people do not understand lighting, frequency separation, or color grading. Here are some things to consider to make your next image even more engaging.
One of the challenges wedding photographers encounter is how to structure pricing for their services. One common mistake is to include a free engagement session in all wedding packages. There are a few reasons why you should offer engagement sessions only as an add-on to wedding packages.
The world of macro photography can become endless once you venture down that path. There are so many new textures, creatures, and plants to discover. You can quickly lose hours by photographing the miniature world, but how do you get started?
Professional Photographer’s of America (PPA) has been the foremost association campaigning for photographers for over 150 years, but is still growing with its membership even today. With over half of photographers in the non-profit association capturing weddings as part or the majority of their income, PPA has moved forward with creating a new degree that specifically evaluates and promotes wedding photographers. With the Master of Photography degree and Master Artist degree already part and parcel to the education options in the association, does qualifying photographers with a new set of rules make better artists or lessen the value of the other degrees?
Industry icons like Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz often look to us plebs like they’ve been blessed by the photography gods with talent the rest of us can only dream about, yet their success stories often include incessant practice, unwavering determination, apprenticeships, and lucky breaks. What separates those of us at the bottom from the select few at the top? And, if you want to be front and center stage, how do you get there?
Working in a photo studio can be very scary at first, as you need to set up a lot of different equipment. Indeed, when you have flashes, modifiers, camera settings, and then some on top, you can get lost very easily. I was lost during my first shoot for these reasons. That experience would’ve been so much easier had I known these tips, though.
Photographers probably spend more time behind a computer than a camera. Yet, the technological progress of this industry is becoming slow, and manufacturers hide the issue with marketing tricks. Here is what's going on.
We all have to start somewhere. Taking on that first job can be very intimidating, so here are some tips to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible.
You might find today very interesting for Instagram. It seems like everyone on your feed is posting a hefty range of different photos telling you to "turn on notifications" on their feed. If you missed Andrew's regarding Instagram changes, check it out to find out the latest on how Instagram handles feeds. Changes will definitely be happening whether you like it or not. But is that something to worry about?
What does nostalgia for broken things say about us? Over the last year or so, we’ve undoubtedly seen an exponential increase of the intentional “glitch” used in visual arts. The glitch – defined as a short-term fault in a system – has gained tremendous popularity as a visual style. My theory is that a person’s predilection toward a preference for random events can be explained as both a desire for nostalgia and perhaps even a loss of control – and that very act of self-awareness can aid in becoming a better thinker and artist.
During our free time, we often tend to hunt for the big shots and the most impressive images. To become better photographers, we also need to develop our view for the little stories on our path.
Slot canyons can be found all around the world. These narrow canyons can be made of sandstone, ice, granite, clay, or other naturally occurring materials. Some of these canyons can be rather large in both width and depth, while other canyons can be incredibly narrow and difficult to navigate
Matthew Leifheit, Yale graduate and recent student of Gregory Crewdson, had his first solo exhibition at DELI Gallery in Brooklyn.
Firmware is the magical sauce that turns the manual operation of your camera in to a fully digital supercomputer, controlling the high precision mechanical instrumentation, making it a thing of artistry. More amazingly, this fundamental component of your camera is fully replaceable. Would you pay for an upgrade?
A small amount of nudity has made this NSFW, but it's really pretty minor and totally worth making a profile to view it, I promise. If not, you can go straight to the Vimeo video here. The last time we featured Lightfarm Brasil's work, most of you were just as stunned by it as me (and I was floored). Today they sent me their latest project and I'm just as awed by this one as the last. It is called "Harmful Nature" and again masterfully combines 3D renderings with photography to produce an oustanding final product.
My ultra-wide zoom spends more time attached to my camera than any other lens, so for me it’s fascinating to see how first Tamron with its 17-28mm f/2.8 and now Canon with its alleged 16-28 f/2 have decided to shake things up. I'm in the market for a new lens and it's coming at quite an interesting time.
Photoshop might seem tricky for starters, but once you understand the basics, you can take your editing skills from zero to hero.
How serious are you about making this crazy photography game full time? It is an amazing feeling to get to create every day, but are you forgetting to do the other eighty percent of what is needed to survive?
The millennium was yet to dawn, but 1999 saw Bill Clinton acquitted, the Columbine massacre, the world's population hit 6 billion, and "The Sopranos" debut. Lance Armstrong won his first Tour de France, the Euro came in to circulation, Napster was released along with Internet Explorer 5, and "The Phantom Menace" and "The Matrix" were first screened. But why did it also see the birth of the DSLR?
We’re living in a visual society. Every day, we see new ways of visual advertising. Some of the messages presented without the use of words can be very powerful, as if there's some subliminal code that makes us think. As photographers, we are used to delivering messages by solely providing the image. Or are we? This series is the go-to resource for compelling visual storytelling in landscape photography and closes this week with advanced communication techniques that help create spectacular images. Join me now as we dive into the deep end, far beyond compositional elements like lines and color and learn that secret code by heart.
