On the Fourth of July, legions of photography enthusiasts like you will head out with their tripods to make images of firework displays. To minimize your failures on location, here is a quick primer to insure that you are in the ballpark to make successful images when the explosions begin.
The Look3 Festival of the Photograph was just held in Charlottesville, Virginia June 13-15 but the nice folks at Livestream have archived some of the best content from the weekend and you can stream it now for free for a limited time. In case you weren't able to attend, you can stream complete artist talks by National Geographic photographers Michael "Nick" Nichols and Tim Laman, Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas and art photographers Carrie Mae Weems, Gregory Crewdson, Martha Rosler and Richard Misrach.
The greatest 20th Century photographer you've never heard of is about to become a household name. Vivian Maier, the reclusive, very private Chicago nanny whose 150,000-image archive proves her to be one of the most talented street photographers of the past century, is about to be immortalized in two separate films.
Photographer Carlton Ward Jr. doesn't want to save the world with his imagery but he definitely wants to try and save Florida. Specifically, a wildlands passageway that connects the Everglades of southern Florida to the Okefenokee swamp in Southern Georgia. For 100 days in 2012, he, along with a filmmaker, bear biologist and conservationist, crossed the entire state in a continuous path using kayaks, paddleboards, bicycles, horses and their own feet. The visual chronicle was recently published as a book and broadcast as a PBS special.
Print is not dead and celebrity portrait photographer Sam Jones has created offCamera magazine — part print magazine, website, web television series and podcast — to showcase and profile actors, musicians and artists working at the highest level of their professions. Jones, whose work frequently appears in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Men's Journal, intends for offCamera to be an artistic vehicle for further exploration of the casual chats that often occur on set during his editorial photo shoots.
Photojournalists prepping images for competitions often walk a fine line between the enhancement of a photograph and outright alteration. Swedish photojournalist Paul Hansen, winner of the 2012 World Press Photo Award, has denied that his winning image of two dead Palestinian children in a funeral procession, is a forgery. A forensic image analyst named Neal Krawetz came forward on Monday with an allegation that the image is a composite, an egregious manipulation that may invalidate the award. Yesterday, World Press Photo issued a statement verifying the authenticity of the image.
Jim Colton of the National Press Photographer's Association is publishing a three-part primer on the Perfect Portfolio on the NPPA web site this week. While the series is tailored to emerging photojournalists, all photographers could take a few tips away from the series. With advice from award-winning photographers as well as photo editors, art buyers and curators, the primer explores the fundamentals of editing, sequencing and presenting your strongest work.
You submit your assignment images each year as a staff photojournalist at a major newspaper and never place in the prestigious Picture of the Year International competition. Then, years later as a freelance photographer, you win first place for a body of work that was undertaken solely as a personal venture. This is the story of Bob Croslin's self-assigned "Grounded," a portrait project of injured birds undergoing rehabilitation at a sanctuary in western Florida.
Being in the right place at the right time is often critical for making iconic imagery. Astronaut Chris Hadfield is always in the right place for creating powerful landscapes of planet earth. In a video released yesterday by the Canadian Space Agency, Hadfield demystifies his photographic process for capturing stunning landscapes of the planet from the International Space Station.
Couples getting married often purchase wedding insurance to guard against any unexpected accidents or issues involving vendors. A recent report by Travelers insurance found that 58 percent of all vendor issues involved photographers. Vendor-related issues led the survey as the leading cause of wedding-related problems with photographers leading the field by a wide margin.
Licensing music for a video or multimedia project can often make or break a final edit. With tight deadlines and the multitasking so common to being a professional photographer, you need to use your time effectively. Enter the Music Bed app, an iOS mobile resource providing access to Music Bed’s library of available music for your next project.
Not that your standard cable release is obsolete but Trigger Happy is an innovative cross platform mobile app that allows for easy camera control with phone, tablet or iPad. Born out of a Kickstarter campaign last year, the app, when combined with a three foot audio cable that is included with purchase, can fire most Nikon, Canon, Sony and Olympus DSLRs. It is now available and fulfilled by Amazon.
When Google purchased Nik software in September, photographers were left wondering how the tech giant would assimilate Nik into its fold. It was clear that the company was lured by Nik’s mobile editing software Snapseed. Yesterday, Google, which had been mute on the subject since the purchase, unrolled a retooled suite of Nik software tools at a heavily discounted rate — $149 as compared to $499.
Where are the top Fortune 500 companies sourcing new talent for their advertising campaigns? Direct mail promos, e-promos, portfolio meetings? Try Instagram. Even after the Terms of Service backlash in December 2012, the photo-sharing site surges on and photographers, many just hobbyists with big followings, are being sourced by major companies for campaign work.
After spending last weekend at the 50th Annual Society for Photographic Education’s National Conference in Chicago, a sold out symposium attended by more than 1,000 photo educators and students, I decided to examine the question: What is the value of a photo degree? Here are the pros and cons.
An assignment to capture images of trophy canines at the Westminster Dog Show yielded a striking New Yorker magazine portfolio by photographer Landon Nordeman. An award-winning imagemaker who frequently shoots for Saveur, ESPN The Magazine, and The New Yorker, Nordeman is no stranger to visual storytelling at the greatest dog show on earth.
Chris Odom is a Florida-based commercial photographer and videographer specializing in the marine industry. He has long been an adopter of new technology and began integrating videography into his portfolio long before the DSLR became a tool for motion.
