There's something that isn't really talked about among the freelance photographers that I know, or at least not something that I hear about often. It's a small truth that nags at us all the time until we really, really get to where we want to be in our career, and sometimes even after that. And sometimes it involves bread.
I've spent some time in the tropics, and I've seen the effects that the climate can have on things. Shoes that don't dry for weeks start growing things you've never heard of. Fungi spores creep into the tiniest cracks and crevices of things you didn't even know had cracks or crevices. Things take a beating down there.
One of my favorite things to do, when I'm able to, is to do pro bono work for local charities that need the help.
I'll admit that I'm not the biggest sports fan. And while that may be a huge understatement, when I do watch sports, I usually notice that the photographers on the sidelines tend to have a Y chromosome. The women shooters are few and far between.
Crossover tech-heads will rejoice when they hear about this one. In addition to their BMW coffee maker, their 80-inch Corvette LED TV, and their Mercedes-Benz umbrella, they can now add a Porsche laptop computer to their collection. Really.
As a photographer, I take and see a lot of photographs. As a photographer who does a fair amount of work for an art museum, I see a lot of art. So, I don't really know how to feel about this new concept I just found out about (via a user-submitted story idea! Go ahead and submit things!) that involves using a mobile device to view a photography exhibit...
I've been shooting corporate jobs since about 2010. At first, it was a little rocky. I didn't really know what I was doing, I hadn't shot enough with other photographers to learn the ropes, and I was just a self-taught photographer trying to make ends meet. Fast forward to 2017, and I'm shooting high-profile executives at Fortune 500 companies, and am expected to do it quickly.
A while back, while on a shoot for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art here in Northwest Arkansas, I was asked to get a shot of the museum’s executive chef and the Director of Culinary for their members magazine. Time was short, the kitchen was starting to prep for dinner service, and every second I was there I was inconveniencing someone.
I'll be the first to admit that even though I've used them, I've never owned a professional-grade Tamron lens. I've stuck with Nikon through the years based on a probably-unfounded feeling that Nikon cameras would work better with Nikon lenses, and also because I really like the five-year warranty that comes with them.
In the days when film reigned, most people thought that once you took a photo, the image was completed. They thought that clicking the shutter was the end of the process (They obviously didn’t know much about darkroom manipulation). But, as photographers know, that “click” is only a small part of the photographic process.
This past weekend, I spent numerous hours with my partner looking through garden seed catalogs selecting and ordering what we wanted to grow this season. I wanted anything with "dragon" in the name. She wanted some unique looking poppies. We both wanted some cool looking "Black Tomatoes." But when I later Googled "black tomatoes," I found something else.
If you're not a professional photographer, chances are that you may be under the impression that they do little more than take pictures all day, every day.
On today’s winter solstice, for some reason, I thought back to that time a couple of years ago when the Ice Bucket Challenge was floating around the internet. Remember that?
I've met photographers who sold almost everything they had to travel the country in an RV, doing portrait sessions along the way. I've known people who have given up everything they know about their way of life in order to have the ability to adopt a new sense of adventure. But this guy. This guy!
If you've been practicing photography professionally for any amount of time or even if you're an advanced amateur, you've been asked by friends, family, or strangers if you could teach them how to use their camera.
It's been a tumultuous year for GoPro. The company, whose name is still as synonymous with "pocket-size- action-HD-video-camera" as Band-Aid's name is with "adhesive bandage," has had a rocky time recently. From its drones falling from the sky to its stock losing half its value just this year, things have been rough for the once market-driving manufacturer.
When I was considering whether or not I should write this article, I went back and forth between not feeling qualified to write it and knowing that it is an important topic. It’s an article involving sexual assault, and I haven’t been sexually assaulted.
If you've ever booked an out-of-town photography gig and needed to catch a flight to get there, you might have run into this problem: you get on the plane, lift up your roller bag to put it into the overhead bin, and it just doesn't fit. You push, you squeeze, you try taking out the laptop, but nothing works.
A couple of years ago I was tasked with getting a shot of grape stomping for a local food magazine, Edible Ozarkansas, who were doing a story on the history of local wine production in Arkansas. Right away, images of Lucy and Ethel of "I Love Lucy" stomping grapes in the giant barrel came scrolling through my mind. Challenge accepted.
Like many photographers, I decided to stop shooting weddings as soon as I was able to. They were sometimes fun, and they could pay well, but they just weren’t for me. In 2013, I finally booked my last one: a destination wedding in early 2014 in Bolivia. Going out with style, for sure.
