There are a zillion photographers out there, but there aren’t a zillion clients. How do you make your work stand out? Success comes when a client will book you because it's you and not because you are just another good photographer. In the process, having a recognizable style might also make you a happier photographer. But how can you get there?
When I was younger, my dad took a class on photography at a local community college. To this day, he says that the biggest thing he learned from the class was that to take interesting pictures, you have to go to interesting places. I suppose that if you are a travel, landscape, or nature photographer, that is true. What a lot of people don’t realize is that interesting places are all around us. Having grown up in Ohio, I always thought that I was stuck in a dreary, featureless landscape of corn and soybeans.
While some photographers stay close to home, others travel quite regularly. I’ve been traveling my entire life for one reason or another. And whether it was for a newspaper job I was essentially commuting to (living four days in Southern California and three days in Northern California every week) or a short trip on a personal photographic exploration, I quickly learned that it’s great to have some creature comforts to keep you company along the ride once whatever glamour of traveling that’s left these days fades away.
Stanislas Giroux gets it. All of his videos have a common thread of featuring fantastic soundtracks. This video, "Curves of Iran," celebrates modern Iran's rich visual textures and — you guessed it — curves. Fitted to great music, fun (but fitting) sound effects to every cut, and a great overall tempo, this video makes use of hyperlapse-like cuts, but spares your brain from the monotony of yet another time-lapse by letting the actual shots play in real time once you've "arrived" at your new destination. Truly imaginative. And at the Giroux's request, I'll remind you to listen with headphones.
AIG's recent move to begin insuring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) marked the beginning of the first large, national insurance company to get ahead of (or catch up with) the "drone movement." Like this season's migration of Canadian geese, everyone seems to be flocking in droves, clearly intent on getting to the online shopping outlets and local electronics stores that sell the latest drones. But few actually know about how to use their newly affordable crafts safely and without risking their entire life's savings. A quick phone call with the Hill & Usher insurance agency led us to a few clues about where to start.
So you want to travel with a model? I've been shooting portraits for around four years now, and have started to (finally!) add more traveling to my life. Unintentionally, it turns out that my travel partner, my friend Victoria, also happens to be a model. In a relatively short span of time, Victoria and I have shot together in multiple countries and states, including Florida, North Carolina, New York City, Ireland, Italy, and France. In my career up until this point, I had worked with a variety of models, choosing them based on how they fit a location or look. Here are some of the pros and cons of the experience.
A sense of adventure has always been a common trait among photographers especially those who photograph landscapes. This sense of adventure often takes us to some interesting and remote locations. Well now there is an app that allows you turn those remote destinations into a scavenger hunt for other adventurous souls to find. TapTag allows you to leave a photo "postcard" of the location you visit for others to find.
The ME20F-SH is Canon's latest, crazy-high ISO camera, able to record clean video at over ISO 4 million (not a typo). Early footage was lackluster in content, and early media stated the natural security-field uses for such a camera. But the latest video suggests the ME20F-SH could be used to shoot incredibly beautiful footage of our world that wouldn't have been able to be captured the same way in the past.
YouTuber Michael Delaney found a pit full of rattlesnakes and, despite anyone's best suggestions, didn't turn back. Instead, armed with a GoPro on the end of a stick, Delaney recorded the scene, most of during which the only audible audio was the collective rattling of the bunch. Eventually, repeated strikes from multiple snakes knock the GoPro off of its mount and into the middle of the pit (good luck getting that one back). Put it some headphones, put the video on full screen... I dare you not to flinch at the first good strike...
Cinema5D founder Sebastian Wöber's latest three-part tutorial on drone shooting starts off with quite the introduction in Part I. Wöber could honestly be saying anything to accompany his to-die-for footage, but what makes it so fantastic is how great the information in this video is. From safety to beginner tips on getting started and how to get that cinematic shot you have in your head (don't worry, Wöber has plenty examples if you don't), Part I has you covered. And there's more to come...very soon.
A few weeks ago, I shared the second episode of the video series "Off the Beaten Track," where photographer Chris Schmid visited the land of the Maasai people, photographing their culture and the wild animals of the National Reserve in Kenya. Chris recently released the third episode where he explores a much cooler climate. Svalbard is one of the most remote places in the Northern Hemisphere. This episode is beautifully shot with the DJI Inspire 1 and DJI Zenmuse X5, giving you a new look into the quickly melting ice and the polar bears who live there.
The Pakpod is Kickstarter's latest small-camera tripod to hit the market. It's not made of carbon fiber or even metal. It won't stand much higher than a couple feet. And it looks a little funny - let's be honest. But it does one thing better than any other tripod I've ever seen: it attaches to anything (even under water).
It seems that a lot of photographers tend to avoid direct sunlight and for a long time, I did too. Occasionally, I would backlight subjects, but I would never dare light them directly with the sun. I decided one day that it was time to embrace the sun. In this article, I break down my methods for achieving a good photograph in direct sunlight, discussing what has helped me and what you should avoid.
As a self-taught photographer, I’m an advocate of learning through doing. I didn’t study it, but I can imagine that reading all the Photography 101 books that are available still wouldn't prepare you for actually being on a set, with a model standing in front of you, and a team awaiting your creative direction. In my journey, experience has meant everything. Here are some of the things I’ve learned over the years that may help when shooting your own portraits.
Have you ever had aspirations to shoot for the movie industry? To travel to some of the most notable cities in the world? To rock the streets of New York City, Shanghai, Detroit, LA, London, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Paris? Well I hate to burst your bubble (actually I kind of get off on it) but chances are you're going to end up in my new hood, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Fan of the TV show “Doctor Who” and the Beatles? Well then, last week was your week indeed. The cast and crew decided to recreate the legendary 1969 “Abbey Road” album cover along with two prop Dalek cyborg aliens (always thought they were robots, but upon further fact-checking, they are in fact cyborg aliens). The actual road itself is in a busy portion of London, so you will feel completely under the gun if you attempt to do any shoot there while completely blocking it, which is why they took less than a minute to do it. Read below to see the lightning fast behind-the-scenes video.
John Free, for those that don't know, is considered one of the great street photographers of our time. His ability to capture the human spirit in a split second is uncanny. Here is a 10 minute video of a private lesson that was given to Ted Forbes of The Art Of Photography. It is full of helpful advice and inspirational lines for photographers of any genre.
Photography as an art form is all about creating something unique and original. Photographers will travel around the world and trek mile after mile to capture that secluded hidden waterfall or that secret cliff that overlooks a valley. Then they post their amazing image to the internet and now every other photographer wants to shoot that location. One by one, photographers seek out these locations in an effort to put their own artistic spin on the area. Eventually thousands of images are captured of a single location, some of them good and some of them bad, but at what point is the location no longer worth shooting?
Night photography is something that every budding photographer will play around with at some point in their learning process. It’s a great way to get star-filled nighttime landscapes or to capture the light-painting shots in which you write in the air with sparklers. Most people don’t associate night photography with wedding photography, though, which is a shame, because it can be a good way to capture some non-traditional wedding images. These nonyraditional wedding images can help you stand out in the sea of wedding photographers and can help you book more weddings.
Whether it’s high noon, sunset or the magic hour it’s hard to beat photographs taken under the natural light of the sun. But how do you contend with the myriad of conditions it produces? Easy. You watch this video by RocketJump Film School as director of photography Jon Salmon walks you through most of the lighting scenarios you might encounter outside. There are even some helpful DIY tips on modifiers thrown in.
Every year Crankworx holds a Mountain bike event in Whistler, Canada that is a combination of downhill, slope-style and enduro competitions. They also host the Deep Summer Photo Challenge, where they put six photographers head to head, with the challenge to build a slide show that showcases mountain bike culture within Whistler. Watch this behind the scenes from Laurence Crossman Emms, as he explains the thought process behind his slide show that later becomes the viewers’ favorite.
In case you missed it, ‘Rocket Wars’ is a five minute film that has changed the game. It's breaking new ground and heralds in a beautiful new era in filmmaking. 150,000+ views and a Vimeo ‘Staff Pick’ are pretty amazing, but what’s ground breaking isn’t that the film is just a beautiful cacophony of visual and aural eye and ear candy. What’s fascinating is the fertile new ground it thrusts us headlong in to, and how it engages us. How did the filmmakers pull this off – and importantly – what can we learn from them to apply to our own projects?
Erik Almas, one of the best commercial composite photographers, has recently teamed up with the team at PRO EDU to create a fully comprehensive tutorial on his complete shooting and retouching process. In this video Almas takes us through an hour-long tutorial, retouching and completing the backplate for one of his tutorial images. I'm always impressed when photographers and retouchers, especially those at the top of our industry, open the doors and reveal their entire process and Almas has done no less here.
Over the course of a wedding day, you can shoot in countless locations with varying difficulties. Most of the time, the locations will be places you have never been before. If you ask around online for advice, you will probably be told to scout out your locations days or even weeks in advance. You may be advised to know which location you are going to shoot each image in and that you should build a list so you don't forget. When I first started shooting weddings, I would scout locations and build the shot lists; however, the more I would shoot, the more I would realize that this process was actually making things more difficult for me. That’s why I prefer to go into a wedding day with no idea what I’m doing.
Mary Ellen Mark, famed photographer, passed away very recently. It's only fitting that her final project center around rebirth, a term that is synonymous with city – my home – New Orleans. I found these images on CNN.com tailored beautifully with quotes that elegantly express the story that Mary Ellen Mark's images tell. Every image tells a story both literally and figuratively, there is a story included with many of the works that provides insight from those who are themselves players in the tales.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! That buzzing noise you hear overhead isn't superman either, it's a remote control drone with thousands of dollars in camera equipment strapped to the bottom. And wow do they get some cool images.
Most photographers are constantly on the hunt for great new locations. From graffiti-adorned alleyways to vast blooming meadows, the search for new backdrops is an endless challenge.
“Expect the unexpected” is great advice for anyone, especially for a photographer. Making the necessary preparations for a photoshoot is essential to success, but what about matters that are beyond your control? We will review three of the most common obstacles that can potentially derail your next session, and how to best handle them both preemptively and after the fact.
Lots of people get out and travel, and spend time in some of the most scenic places the United States has to offer during the week of Independence Day. I'm even writing this article from a cafe nestled deep in Sequoia National Forest in California! In celebration of this holiday, CanvasFactory worked closely with 50 photographers in all 50 states to take an iconic image that represented where they reside, and have presented them all in a single, interactive map.
When I was just eight years old I would flip through the pages of National Geographic and imagine being a photographer in Africa. I was captivated by the faces and places that seemed worlds apart from my typical Middle American hometown. Fast forward years later, and I'm living the dream as a travel photographer working throughout Africa and Europe. If you've ever wanted to travel the world with your camera, here's my advice to help you get started and thrive in professional travel photography.
When a large event like the MTV Music Awards plans out their production, photography is at the top of the priority list. Because when all is said and done, the only thing that remains is what is on the back of the camera. Getty Images and MTV Europe have been partners for many years. Having a long lasting relationship allows the two teams to grow as a unit.
Assisting for a photographer or videographer can be a rewarding experience filled with knowledge and new perspectives. An assistant often receives an insider's view into how a photographer runs a production, and gains networking opportunities that may not have been accessible before. However, being an effective assistant requires more than holding light stands or reflectors. Great attention to detail and a humble can-do attitude can ensure your return to set, and solidify your reputation as a reliable assistant. While every photographer varies, we will review some of my tips for proper etiquette for assistants, from a photographer's perspective.
Long before "El Cap" became the easier way to pronounce Apple's upcoming operating system, it was the affectionately shortened moniker of Yosemite's most famous and respected rock climbing peak: El Capitan. Today, Google launches a project that takes Street View vertical, as each image was taken as a climber ascended the peak.
If you're like me, photography is not just about weddings and portraits. I love getting outdoors with my camera and exploring the mountains and forests around my hometown of Seattle, Washington. Anything from a day hike to a multi-night backpacking trip is always an opportunity to photograph my adventures and share these beautiful landscapes with others.
