Documentary Photography

Why would you choose to photograph something that's mundane instead of naturally picturesque locations or scenarios? The short answer is because it's hard and it will test you. 

Brian Raymond, a lifelong fisherman turned shark dive operator and photographer, recently shared some powerful and disturbing images he captured of bycatch in the waters off of southern New England. Bycatch refers to unintended species that are caught while fishing for another species and is a regular occurrence in commercial fishing.  

There is a ton of information and so many great resources on how to raise money for a project with crowdfunding these days. So I’m going to skip the tips and show you proven strategies to fund your projects no matter what they are.  

Got the Monday blues? How about a little photography pick-me-up each Monday? Yeah? Well then, I have just the thing for you. 

A recent video taken in the Dominican Republic highlights the global crisis surrounding single-use plastics and the power of imagery.  

"In The Starlight" begins with Mathieu Lelay showing the beauty and values of the film as we experience the sights of the cosmos through the travels and photography of Paul Zizka.

New York City is more than a city; it’s a symbol worldwide, a place where everything seems possible but everything has already been done by someone else. As part of a personal project, Philippe Echaroux went there and tried to make something unique, unlike anything else that had been done in the Big Apple. 

Videos are the next big thing, and it is happening already. With the advent of social media, the power of a video to touch minds and influence decisions is huge. We recently did a fundraising video for a children’s choir and were amazed by the response. This post is a quick recap of what we learned in the process. 

Photographer Sam Nzima, the journalist who took the iconic photograph of a person carrying the body of Hector Pieterson, has died. It was this image that in 1976 was shared with the world and brought international uprise against the apartheid regime in South Africa. This video is a tribute to his work, and how it changed the world.  

If you think that photographing Total 24 Hours Spa has anything to do with cucumber slices and a hot stone massage, then you are very wrong indeed. I will say, however, that when you finish photographing one of these endurance races you might need 24 hours in a spa. Have look at this fascinating short documentary to find out more. 

You may have already read about Steven Holleran in a recent Fstoppers article. If not, let me briefly fill you in: Holleran is an extremely talented and accomplished visionary behind the lens. He's been commissioned by companies such as Google and Nike, and was the daring cinematographer for the popular Netflix series Fire Chasers and the award-winning Sundance film "A Boy.

I think we can all agree that in order to be successful, a photograph needs to connect with its viewers on an emotional level. That emotion could be awe, desire, sadness, longing, or any number of the plethora of human emotions, but there needs to be an emotion.  

When Jon Mozo, an acclaimed surf photographer based on O’ahu’s North Shore, died in 2005 at the age of 33, he was doing what he loved best: photographing Backdoor Pipeline, which is considered to be one of the world’s deadliest waves.

With the rise of #MarchForOurLives in response to the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, students Emma González, and David Hogg have been the two survivors that have been the most visible and outspoken critics of the status quo when it comes to gun control.

Women Photograph, an initiative launched in 2017 aimed at giving greater voice to the female photojournalism community has teamed with Nikon and Getty Images to offer $35,000 worth of grants to up-and-coming and established photographers around the world. 

A Soviet woman spent nearly 40 years photographing the world around her, but it wasn't until after her death that her photos — and her significant talent — were unearthed. As her daughter began to develop some of the thousands of negatives that she found tucked away in the family attic, she discovered a skilled genius who sadly never felt herself worthy of recognition. 

We have seen various projects appear that celebrate and normalize humanity's oldest and most natural action: breastfeeding. However, while some photographers try to focus on how the public perceives a woman who breastfeeds in public, Emma Shardlow Hudson from Hudson & Rose Photography does something quite unique. 

Piracy is a major issue among all types of creatives. Regardless of if you make handbags, design websites, create beautiful paintings, produce movies, or craft amazing photographs, at some point or another, someone is going to steal and rip off your work.

Twenty four photographs from the early 20th century by sociologist Lewis Hine sold at auction recently, giving us a reminder of the impact of his work on life in America. 

While some photographers are on the hunt for the most outrageous image, others become increasingly sensitive to what they shoot. We are confronted with a never ending stream of images that blurs our ability for ethical judgement. I asked Joey Lawrence and Graham Macindoe about their opinion. 

We've never been fortunate to fund our expensive gear with money from a generous Nigerian prince. When filmmaker Adam Grumbo met such a scammer online he decided to pay and hire him as a photographer and a videographer, and the results are quite interesting. 

British photographer Jimmy Nelson traveled to 35 communities across the world in the first part of his project to document portraits of tribal and indigenous peoples. Today, in the second part of his project, Nelson is continuing to travel and document lives and cultures that are often unseen. 

Photographing behind the scenes at any large power producing area can be difficult not only to obtain entry but also to capture the massive scale to do the area justice. The areas are normally bustling with workers, smoke from the machines, and dust from the ground.

Yes, you read that title correctly. In this episode of the behind the scenes of “Photographing the World 3,” we face the most disastrous day of filming yet! While Lee was recovering our crashed DJI Mavic in the mountains of Matera, someone on the hiking trail stole our brand new Nikon D500 DSLR and Tamron 18-270mm lens. 

One Annapolis native decided to venture to Tangier Island to take a few photos. What he didn’t anticipate was getting stuck on the island — just 1.2-square miles in size — due to icy weather, finding himself in the middle of a National Guard supply drop.

Producer, director, writer, editor, actor, and researcher, Sarah Burton has to wear many hats while working for BuzzFeed Video, but can she answer the question, "Who Invented the Selfie?" Spoiler alert, she can't but as the adage goes, it's the journey not the destination.

Using a thin, round, six frame, glass plate, "spy camera", a nineteen year old Carl Størmer (1874 – 1957) captured candid images on the main streets of Oslo, Norway. These atypical images are a rare glimpse into everyday life at a time when most photos taken were of well prepared, composed and stoic subjects.

If you have just under an hour to kill then Benjamin Jaworskyj has your back with an epic travel and landscape photography video that's worth the watch. Take a visual tour to the beaches, mountains, and castles that lie tucked away in the German countryside with some landscape photography tips to boot.

In this beautiful short video, photographer and filmmaker Ian Wong discusses the work of legendary photographer Wing Shya and how making mistakes can give you creative freedom and innovation. 

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.

Chinese Photographer Ying Yin’s was inspired to travel and see snow. While visiting Japan’s northernmost region during the peak of winter, her photo series “Wind of Okhotsk” looks like the end of the earth, with buildings isolated by the intense weather. 

On virtually every front, 2017 was a year of change, turmoil, and upheaval. A year comprised of moments that affected our every day lives in ways that societal and political movements haven’t in recent years past.

This photo series from Paris-based Photographer Stefan Draschan documents the funny moments that gallery visitors accidentally co-ordinate with the very works they are stopping to admire. 

You've heard the name. Listed among the accolades as one of the greats, Herb Ritts' ability to seamlessly blend together both environment and model set him apart from his peers. A mastery over lines, shapes, and all things pertaining to light that trademarked his work as timeless. He had an eye for capturing a moment and creative intuition for creating one.

Pripyat, once a town of 40,000 people and now a short distance from the world's single most deadly object, stands inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. As I waited to get a coffee at the tiny shop alongside the Zone's checkpoint, I cringed slightly at the array of glow-in-the-dark knickknacks on sale.

Whilst many of us are getting excited over what new camera gear we’ll be acquiring over the Christmas period, it’s easy to forget that elsewhere in the world, poverty is rife and many live in warzones. One artist exposes war life in Yemen by contrasting images of our Christmas with their reality.

At the age of seven, Melissa Spitz first visited her mother in an institution. It was the first of many trips that inspired her project documenting her mother’s mental illness — a project that has now won her TIME Magazine’s Instagram Photographer of the Year 2017. 

Wildlife Photographer Michel d’Oultremont knows what it’s like to wait. Sometimes he spends a week and a half just waiting for the perfect light and the animals he photographs to show up. The resulting images are well worth the effort. 

As someone who shoots 90 percent of my professional work with wide lenses, it seems like a daunting tasking to go reaching for a 70-200mm or longer when looking to capture a landscape. Long lenses require a lot more thought in how the compression is going to affect the way the viewer sees the image and its a focal length that the human eye can’t really grasp until you look through the

Netflix’s new eight-part documentary “Shot in the Dark” casts focus on three rival Los Angeles-based video journalists as they chase down the “story of the night,” all with the aim to sell their footage to the news outlets for the morning news.

Adobe just released a delightful mini-documentary showcasing the work of award-winning Photojournalist Danny Wilcox Frazier. Frazier’s work is centralized on struggling rural communities and the families and stories within. He’s able to capture both the struggles of day-to-day life of underprivileged families while still documenting the successes of perseverance. 

I created a photobook with captions, for my sister, featuring her two daughters. I had never created an album or photobook before, so I wasn’t sure how to organize the shots. Added to that, the photos were taken over a four week period. So, how did I combine all these to make a cohesive narrative? I wrote a bedtime story. 

Filmmakers Justin Pelletier and Adam Maruniak of Brick Films have been hard at work over the last three months to produce this “volcano epic,” and it does not disappoint. 

New footage has emerged of a starving polar bear surrounded by dry land. The heartbreaking video, picked up by National Geographic, sees the malnourished animal struggling to walk as it searches for food. 

Filmmaker Matt Mangham has been working on an ongoing series entitled “Analog: Stories of Film Photography,” and I’m very excited to share episode four with the Fstoppers community. In this episode, Mangham explores creativity through the eyes of San Diego native, Matthew Lawless. 

Over 56 million acres of land in the United States is owned and controlled by approximately 500 Native American tribes that received federal recognition and sovereign land from the U.S. government. Living on this land, although a blessing, has made us invisible to the public eye.

Largely based in London, the photo series by photographer Ritzo ten Cate aims to capture the faces of people he almost literally bumps into on the street, as they look up from their phones, often rather disorientated.

If you don’t know him by name, you’ll likely have laid eyes on his work. Getty photographer Chris Jackson is the man behind many of the official images of the British royal family and has now spoken of Prince Harry and Megan Markle’s engagement photos.

At first look, this image can evoke a sense of fear of some post-apocalyptic chaos. However, if you are are a documentary photographer it might remind you of the long held traditions that symbolize the start and end of religious customs.

Over twenty years ago Chuck O'Rear took a photo that soon became part billions of peoples everyday lives. He captured Bliss on his way to see his girlfriend, he pulled over when he spotted the perfect scene in Sonoma County California.