A lot of the work I do is exploration or commentary on the relationship between people and their environment, but this is the first time I explored the natural world disrupting a people, and not the other way around. It made me more optimistic about people and find new love for them.

recently asked a photographer how she came up with her pricing. She said, “Well… I researched my competition and found that they had similar services, so I charged what they were charging.”

Does that sound familiar? Or worse, do you know people who charge less to “undercut” the competition or “get more business?

Here’s the problem with using “me-too” pricing: You’re signaling to your potential clients that you’re the same as everyone else. Why would they choose you when they can always find someone else charging $10 less?

Now the pressure is on to make it keep happening and to stay relevant as a photographer, to keep growing and challenging myself on every new shoot and assignment. I’m really excited about keeping the passion and the fire alive.

I think one has to be comfortable with taking one step back before taking two steps forward. I was definitely nervous early on in my freelancing career, not knowing whether taking a gamble on these photographic detours was the right path. I was essentially throwing out my existing photo career to create a new one.

“It’s insane, the internet,” Richardson was saying. “Totally craziness. Like a little cancer. People can just do whatever they want, say whatever they want, be totally anonymous. It’s totally out of control.”

Lytro’s Light Field Camera and newer high-end Illum camera, for example, allow you to re-focus images after you’ve taken them. 3-D photography and the ability to edit and adjust photos after the fact isn’t exactly new, but Lytro CEO Jason Rosenthal tells us that this is just the beginning…

Lytro envisions a future where light field photography resides in every camera, not just its own — potenitially leading to more advanced smartphone cameras and virtual reality that’s even more accurate and interactive.

Rickard L. Eriksson was asked to take the Queen of Sweden’s portrait. Doing so, Rickard accidentally managed to catch the Queen off guard and got an award-winning portrait in the process.

People still often have a misunderstanding about photography — that it’s a technique, a practical skill and needs to be taught in that way. There is a lot of pressure for photography departments in universities to almost guarantee their students — you will have employable skills at the end of this, you will get a job, you will have expertise in the field.

I think it should be treated more like a literature or philosophy degree. Of people who study philosophy — one of them might become a philosopher, the others go off and do other things, but nobody questions a philosophy department and asks — how are you giving your students employability skills? It’s just respected as a field of study. It means that there are a lot of people in the world who are intelligent, engaged, informed and interested in that subject. That’s how I see it.