Creating something new is the most important ingredient for making art. But we can’t create something new when we just capture a scene in reality. The trick is bringing an artistic concept to your photographs.
Finding success in a single area of the photography industry is no small task. And yet, R. J. Kern has managed to find success not only as a wedding photographer but now as a fine art photographer as well. I sat down with him one afternoon to pick his brain on his top five tips for emerging fine art photographers.
A frequent refrain among photographers is that the area around their home is just too boring to photograph. Here are a couple of ideas to help you find engaging and meaningful photographic projects in locations that feel completely uninspiring.
Follow along with this tutorial to discover how to transform lifeless color photographs into black and white fine art photos in just nine simple steps with Photoshop CC.
Ask 100 photographers what started them to pursue the medium, and you will hear 100 different answers. Follow up that question with what drives each of them to keep pursuing photography, and you again will find 100 different responses.
No landscape photographer is as iconic to the genre as Ansel Adams. But can someone who worked primarily in black and white and whose heyday was over half a century ago still teach us anything today?
An important part of growing as a photographer is shooting personal projects. If you are a food photographer, it can be extremely easy to get stuck in a rut because you are shooting the same modern images over and over. An easy and important way to combat this is to shoot food as fine art.
Frank Lee blends mundane domestic visuals against the backdrop of equally repetitive sounds to create not mere actuality, but reality.
Self-portraits tend to get a somewhat bad rap, in part because of the selfie craze. But, self-portraits can be an incredibly beneficial process for photographers that can lead to great growth and skill development.
Taking something that you love to do and making it a money-making endeavor fundamentally changes your relationship to it and will require way more from you than you think. If that is something you want to do, it’s worthwhile to ask yourself: “am I really ready for that?"
Multiple exposures are a relatively straightforward and fun way to make interesting and unique photographs. While you can easily blend images during the editing process, creating successful multiple exposures in-camera can be a good challenge and a way to flex those creative skills.
Whalebone Magazine (the self-proclaimed ninth-best magazine in the world) just wrapped up their Second Annual Whalebone Photo Contest, leading up to the release of their aptly named Photo Issue. Categories included Water, Adventure, Human, Motion, Joy, and Weather — whatever those things mean to you.
Myra Holt is a fine art photographer and educator currently based in Kansas City. Her work explores a range of concepts, but they all stem from the broader idea of connection to places, people, and nature. I spent a morning chatting with her to learn more about two of her bodies of work and what advice she has for newer photographers wanting to create photographic series.
Marc Klaus is one artist who has a voice uniquely his own. He has used visuals and storytelling to create a meta-narrative; the video has no words but acts as a deeply insightful look into Klaus's process through clever camera work, in-camera collage, and performance art.
Photography struggles with truth as a concept. With other art forms, truth is generally a non-issue. We do not question whether a painting is real. We do not question whether a dance is real. We are generally able to discern fictional texts from nonfiction; furthermore, we’re generally able to sift through multiple nonfiction texts and combine them with our own experiences to arrive at a conclusion of truth. But not with photography.
Photography is a language that can be used quite powerfully. Learning how to use elements of this language to create meaning will certainly improve your images. Check out this great video to delve into the five most common elements of this beautiful tongue – photography.
The fact that the focal plane of a picture must always be parallel to the sensor plane is so obvious to most photographers that they don't even bother questioning that fact. Here's what happens when you do question it and how modern mirrorless cameras can help you do it.
The horizon element in an image can be used in a variety of ways to accentuate a scene, whether it's a dramatic sunset or a glorious sunrise. But have you ever thought of removing them to create fine art minimalist photos?
There are a lot of ways to learn photography these days outside of a traditional photography degree, but one of the things that have been lost for a lot of younger photographers is the history of photography courses that most art college students take. Examinations of the body of work and life of great photographers like Saul Leiter are a great step towards getting that part of education back in our digital age.
You probably know Jason Lee from his many roles in TV and movies but did you also know he is a talented photographer? Yes that Jason Lee The star of "My Name is Earl," Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise, and my personal favorite "Mallrats."
Minimalism is a fascinating genre of photography and one, which can deliver some incredible and powerful photos. This is the genre where “less is more” really shines. Here I share five steps you can take to create incredible minimalist photos.
What the heck is minimalist photography? How do I take minimalist photos? And what kind of gear do I need to do it? Well, read on to find out the answers to those questions and more.
Edward Hopper’s paintings are renowned for their use of light, color, and composition. As photographers, what can we take from his work?
Has it been 25 years? Amazing. I remember when Nils Kokemohr founded Nik Multimedia in 1995, which later became Nik Software in 2006. The package included plugins for color management and editing, another for enhancing or creating black and white images, sharpening tools, and later HDR software to help photographers increase the dynamic range of their images.
Architecture is one of the most complex subjects to post-process. It involves a lot of planning from shoot to edit. But there are also other ways to edit these images, so let's try to simplify it, shall we?
Black and white and Minimalism is a great style that can be applicable to any genre in photography. It is also a great discipline to practice, especially in landscape photography by maximizing the use of long exposures.
Minimalist photography is all about removing all the distractions so the eye focuses solely on the subject. But what does it take to make a minimalist photo?
It's always nice to capture a subject in its purest form, presenting it powerfully. However, shooting an abstract photo can turn an ordinarily drab subject into a work of art.
Luminar software from Skylum has had a tremendous impact with many photo editors, bringing a lot of Photoshop and Lightroom-esque features along with some one-of-a-kind capabilities like one-click sky replacement and AI-based features for landscape and portrait photographers.
Stop worrying so much about your skills, and learn to think creatively. That was my favorite piece of advice from photographer and artist Pauline Goyard.
