The current state of the world can easily be described as challenging. How can art and photography fit into this broader context of current affairs?
It’s not out of the ordinary to say that the last two years haven’t exactly been the easiest. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic comes with challenges. And that’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Frank Döring is an architectural photographer based in Kentucky, USA by way of Frankfurt, Germany. He also focuses on personal documentary projects with a focus on the Anthropocene.
As creatives, we are often focused on just that: creating works that help us relate to ourselves, others, or the world around us. Unfortunately for some, this means that creating takes precedence over some other tasks.
Vision and talent are often valued in creative circles as the means to a career in photography. Work on your craft and the jobs will come. This is true to some extent, but it is also a fair bit of rubbish.
If you hop on the internet and look for tips on how to get better at photography, you’ll be bombarded with ideas. It can get a bit overwhelming if I’m being honest. In this short video, Edward Gilbert speaks to one easily applicable tip to becoming a better photographer.
Photography is less than 200 years old but has produced some amazing artists and masters of the craft in that short time.
The likes of William Eggleston and Vivian Maier are the ultimate “who’s who” of photography. Studying these great artists can certainly help to formulate your own ideas and help you figure out who to push your own photographic practice forward.
Edward Weston began his career making soft, almost out-of-focus images that emphasized patterns and light. After a trip to Mexico in the 1920s, he decided that photography was really about details and realistic depictions of the world. He made a complete turnaround in his work and began making work that was simple and focused on tones and textures.
Alfred Stieglitz’s influence on photography is incomparable. Hailed as the "father of pictorialism," he not only helped define the movement but helped forward photography’s place in a broader art context.
Some History, Some TermsYou might be wondering what some of these words mean? And who is this Stieglitz?
In the last few years, analog photographic processes have been making a big resurgence. After many years of emulating the film look digitally with presets, such as for Lightroom, many photographers are making the full jump into film photography.
But what are some barriers to entry? In this video, Imran Nuri outlines film photography for various levels of film shooters.
What exactly is the best type of photographer? And how do you become one?
Roland Barthes was a theorist and philosopher whose literary contributions to photography are still discussed and hold relevance today. I believe he is mandatory reading for anyone who considers themselves a photographer in any capacity.
Alice Hirsch (they/them) is a portrait and music photographer based out of Toronto, Canada. They combine the best of vintage images with a new world mindset of collaboration and exhibition.
Smartphones have been around for over a decade now. In this time, although there have been great technological advances, such as longer battery life and larger screens, the most important one to photographers is better image quality.
It’s no well-kept secret that cell phone cameras have made digital photography ubiquitous. Over the last few years, film has regained popularity. In her video, Madison Beach shares a few reasons why you should be shooting film!
Australia boasts some of the best beaches in the world. If you photograph water and you haven’t visited, then you are certainly missing out!
The COVID-19 pandemic hit most of the world hard, and many businesses closed as a result. In Australia, the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) is one such business that announced closure.
Constructed photography is the art of illusion. As photographers, we cover the cracks, which compounded with social media, makes it hard to talk about underlying real issues.
Martin Palm is a commercial photographer based in Sweden. He strives to create clean minimalist images that offer a unique point of view.
The first mass-market drones were manufactured more than a decade ago. As with anything, being over 10 years late to it can create some hurdles to entry. In this article, I will share some of my experiences as a relative latecomer to drone photography.
Dario Calmese is the first black photographer to shoot the cover of Vanity Fair. In this interview, we talk a bit about that as well as his recent collaboration with Adobe to create presets better suited for diverse skin tones.
If you have spent any amount of time on photography NFT Twitter recently, you’ll notice that everyone is so positively happy and supportive of each other. As the adage goes, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. That seems to be the case here.
In the age of social media, we often only ever get to see the best version of things: the best-looking meal images, our best-looking selves in selfies, the best this, the best that. For photographers, this too can mean that we only ever get to see the best images from other photographers.
Frequency separation and dodge and burn are powerful techniques for retouching photographs. But which one is better?
Leica branded cameras have very few ‘features.’ Instead, they favor craftsmanship and quality and the Leica M6 is no exception to this.
I’m currently just casually reading about Deleuzian philosophy. Gilles Deleuze, a French philosopher, and Félix Guattari wrote about truth as coming from multiple sources.
A portfolio review is a great way to get feedback and direction for your photographic practice. It’s also a great way to connect with industry professionals. If you have been considering getting your work professionally reviewed, this article can shed some insights on what to expect and how to prepare.
Very often in photography, things go very wrong. In this video, Nicole Small shares her successes and failures in developing cyanotypes.
Photography as a job and as a hobby are two very different things. For professional photographers, this distinction means consistently working at their practice, rather than at certain points or only if inspiration strikes.
An image isn’t just about a subject, such as a model, or the clothes or hair or makeup. A huge aspect of image-making is the setting or set design.
Look at any photography discussion board or Facebook page, and you’ll quickly run into members obsessed with bokeh, or the quality of out-of-focus elements in a photograph. If you are in the bokeh-obsessed stage of photography, then large format wet plate photography is absolutely for you.
Constraints and challenges in photography aren’t disappointments. They are obstacles to be maneuvered towards and they increase creativity.
Baber Afzal is the soft-spoken talent who only found his way to photography after picking up his sister’s Sony point-and-shoot nearly over a decade ago. That twist of fate has led him to work for some very well-established clients in the UAE, including the Porsche UAE’s new Panamera campaign.
Most of us have smartphones these days, and all of us with these smartphones have used the camera function on them. Every few years, when a new phone is released, the camera is often marketed with images taken on the phone.
Having a photographic style is something you discover through creating a lot of work. It’s retrospective! To be honest, I’m still figuring out my own personal style, even though I’ve been shooting for over a decade now. There are some small tricks to nudge the process along though, but photographing kittens is not one of them.
It is incredibly important for stories to be told by people who have a lived experience of the situation. Mayeul Akpovi does just this with his incredible time-lapse videos of African cities.
