The International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers did a study a couple years ago on how photographers spend their time, and published these two charts showing the difference between what the general public thinks and what is actually the case. Here’s a larger version.
(via ISPWP via Scott Kelby)
Here’s an interesting behind-the-scenes video that shows what a workday is like for fashion photographer Peter Stigter.
It’s a hectic job, being a runway photographer. Racing through the city, meeting editors, dragging your box up and down the stairs, getting you equipment ready. And then, finally the show starts. Suddenly everything becomes quiet.
It’d be awesome if every professional photographer made a video like this to give people a glimpse into their lives. If you know of any similar videos for other photographers, link us to them in the comments!
(via ISO 1200)
Photographer Michael Freeman says that although things are getting tougher for professional photographers, the “consumption of imagery in all areas is actually increasing”. Professionals therefore need to think more about marketing themselves and specializing in a particular niche.
(via PhotoFidelity)
Ryan McGinnis is a photographer and storm chaser. You can visit his website here.
PetaPixel: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Ryan McGinnis: I am a storm chaser and photographer who lives in Nebraska; I have no formal training in photography outside of all the books I’ve read and the thousands of rolls of film I’ve blown through (and terabytes of drives I’ve filled up) over the years. I’ve had a life-long love affair with the weather; from as young as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with storms and for most of my childhood I dreamed of one day chasing tornadoes. Living in this part of the country makes storm chasing less of a chore than if I had to drive here from, say, Virginia, but storm chasing here still requires lots of driving — on average around 600 miles per chase. These days I tend to storm chase around 15,000 miles a year, mostly in May and June. In 2008 and 2009 I was fortunate enough to get to tag along with and photographically document Project Vortex 2, a $12M science mission to learn how tornadoes tick, which was probably one of the best freelance investments of time and money I’ve ever made.
When I’m not shooting storms, my favorite subjects are candids and urban panoramas.
Read more…
Stephen Shore is an American photographer known for his “deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States” and for his pioneering use of color in fine art photography. At age 14, he sold three photographs to the Museum of Modern Art, and at 24, he became the second living photographer to do a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In this video, Shore talks a little about his work and shares some of his thoughts on photography.
(via xatakafoto)
Photographer Lori Nix spends weeks and months creating extremely detailed miniature scenes — called dioramas — and then photographs them using an old fashioned 8×10 large format camera. This video offers a look at what goes on behind-the-scenes at Nix’s Brooklyn studio, and how she goes about creating her unique images. You see some of her photos in this post we published a year ago featuring her photography.
Lori Nix (via LaughingSquid)
Los Angeles-based photographer Dave Hill created this video showing all 11 photographs in his Adventure series deconstructed, giving us a glimpse of how they were put together. Hill lights and shoots different portions of his photographs separately, then combines them all into a single image using crazy Photoshop skills. Reminds me of Disney’s amazing multi-plane camera.
Adventure Series (via Strobist via PhotoWeeklyOnline)
Here’s how Urban Dictionary defines ‘photographer’:
What just about every scene kid and hipster under the age of 25 calls themselves these days. Many own Canon Rebel xtis and rely heavily on cropping and Photoshop filters to give their otherwise mundane photos an “artsy” feel. It is also not uncommon to see them wielding Lomography cameras (usually a Holga, now that they’re sold at Urban Outfitters) on any given day. Typically, these “photographers” cite Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, or, in the case of those Vice Magazine devotees, Terry Richardson, Cobrasnake, or Richard Kern, as major influences, because they couldn’t name any other photographers to save their lives.
The typical subjects of their photographs include, but are not limited to: pidgeon-toed girls in Converse that have been drawn on with ballpoint pens and/or Sharpies, flowers/weeds growing out of cracks in sidewalks, juxtapositions of objects that typically don’t go together (in one such case, a Queen of Hearts playing card on a cracked sidewalk), a girl who looks like something out of an American Apparel ad smoking a cigarette, decaying buildings, and just about anything that looks “vintage” (ie, yellowing washing machines in a laundromat).
If you actually know what you’re doing enough to make money from photography, you’re just a poser.
Thanks for the tip, Malcolm!
Image credit: Hipster Couple – Montmartre, Paris by ChrisGoldNY
The New York Times has a powerful piece about photographer Giles Duley. Duley was covering a patrol in Afghanistan back in February when he stepped on a bomb and lost an arm and both legs:
“I remember looking up and seeing bits of me and my clothes in the tree, which I knew wasn’t a good sign,” he said. “I saw my left arm. It was just obviously shredded to pieces, and smoldering. I couldn’t feel my legs, so straightaway and from what I could see in the tree, I figured they were gone.”
[...] Rather than tally what was missing, Mr. Duley counted what remained.
“I thought, ‘Right hand? Eyes?’ ” — he realized that all of these were intact — “and I thought, ‘I can work.’ ”
And work is what he plans to continue doing. Duley expects to be self-dependent within the year and to continue working as a photographer — perhaps even in Afghanistan. You can help finance Duley’s recovery and return to photography through this website.
Bomb Took 3 Limbs, but Not Photographer’s Can-Do Spirit [NYTimes]
