As a child during the 1980s, I grew up with a weekly diet of Time magazine and the evening news. The famine in Ethiopia during the decade generated an endless stream of news filled with images of Black bodies, so much so that my entire conception of the continent was built off the tragedy of a single nation. To me, Africa was a desert wasteland of starving people – a thought conceived through photos.
Creating a do-it-yourself lighting setup for dappled natural light backgrounds isn’t as tricky or as involved to achieve as some setups and techniques, but it is a nice little idea to play with if the occasion arises.
Producing photographs, writing, and ideas to share with others is such a wonderful way to direct creative energy, and for many, this approach involves setting themselves up as a photography business practice in some way, whether that’s offering the work as a product or as a service.
Colonial history overflows with commodities. From the early 1800s, wool generated extraordinary wealth for squatters and pastoralists and substantial investment in the Australian colonies. In the 1850s, gold motivated tens of thousands of people to work the earth or service the diggings. Coal, copper, tin, wheat, barley, and cotton all assumed importance at different times.
Think you know the inverse-square law? How much of a "law" is it actually in the practice of photography? We are taught that the inverse-square law is the holy grail of understanding the laws of light. Some condense all the wonderful knowledge about light concepts to the inverse square law only. In this article, I want to invite you to take a step back and see how the inverse square law is wrong. Sometimes.
