When a listener asked Chris, Jordan, and Jaron to share how their careers (all the highs and lows) have gone over the years, the team decided it was worthy of a main story segment to itself.
Legendary photographer Sebastião Salgado has announced his retirement from shooting in the field.
While photographers hone their skills, brand their services, and optimize their marketing to be more successful, another factor can have as much of an impact as all of the above: their home base. A photographer’s location can also dictate the kind of clients and jobs a photographer can access.
For some reason wedding photography isn’t a well-respected genre in the photography industry. I have no idea why that is when it’s so physically, creatively, and technically demanding. But I do have a lot of ideas about why wedding photography should garner more respect.
It looks like a glamorous job, taking photos in beautiful places and a dance party every night. Or maybe it looks like the worst job ever, dealing with high expectations and family drama. Wherever you stand on the subject, listen up because I’m going to share the best and worst parts of the job to help you decide if you should be a wedding photographer.
You’ve been taking your camera everywhere, shooting photos of your experiences, and you love the way photography makes you see the world. Gradually, you’ve started to wonder what it would be like to turn your passion into a career. This guide will walk you through the process of how to become a photographer.
The average family may shoot four thousand photos in a year. If you have been taking pictures since the iPhone 3G came out in 2008, it means that now, after 14 years of a trigger-happy existence, you are inundated with over 50,000 photos. And you probably cannot find a perfect shot from a vacation you took just three years ago.
Photography -- is it a lucrative and glamorous job filled with travel, a hobby with an eye-watering amount spent on unnecessary gear, or something in between? Photographer Niels de Kemp pokes fun at the different misconceptions people have about what photography is all about in this humorous 2.5-minute tongue-in-cheek sketch.
If you're a wedding photographer who has had a change of heart about your chosen path in this industry as lockdown restrictions and subsequent client cancellations continue, you are not the only one. It's never too late to make a career change!
My name is Mike Keesling, and I have what I think is an interesting perspective on image creation and I wanted to share it with you.
Renowned photographer Steve McCurry recently sat down with journalist Kate Snow for a drink and to chat about his life and career. This 15-minute segment by NBC Nightly News offers a peek into the mind of the celebrated (and recently controversial) photographer of Afghan Girl fame.
I’ve been taking pictures since I was 10 or 11 years old. A friend of the family noticed the bored expression on my face at the wedding of an extended family member. He was the photographer and he walked over to me, placed a large camera in my hands with a full roll of film, and asked me to help him out. I didn’t know the first thing about cameras, let alone this one. About as much as I could say for it was that it was “nice.”
Julian David Stone refers to himself as an "outlaw rock and roll photographer." His impressive archive contains over 10,000 concert photos of some of the biggest names in the history of rock-and-roll, but he shot all of them by sneaking his camera into shows.
Keith Carter is a Texas-based photographer whose ethereal style and beautiful depiction of “truth and beauty” have often led him to be referred to as a “poet with a camera”. In this moving 15-minute interview with The Art of Photography, Carter discusses his career, how his projects come together, illness, and his legacy.
Landscape photographer Thomas Heaton has set aside his gear for a moment to lay down some words of wisdom in this 11-minute video. In it he presents 5 great tips on how to further your landscape photography career.
What makes a pro photographer a pro? How do you do it? Do you just wake up one day and the photo gods anoint you a pro? Do you have to pass the pro photography exam and get some sort of certificate?
I’m Alastair Philip Wiper, a British photographer based in Copenhagen and working worldwide. From the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, to giant shipyards in South Korea and radio observatories in Peru, I work with the weird and wonderful subjects of industry, science, architecture. Finding a niche has been very important for my career, so I’m going to share a bit about how I went about it.
Photographer Benjamin Von Wong gave this inspiring 20-minute talk at the e.g. conference this year about his personal journey from being a mining engineer, to a well-known photographer behind several viral hits, to a "wannabe environmentalist."
Five years ago I was somewhere in the wilds of central Vietnam, about to click upload on my first ever video project. If you had told me then that, in just a handful of years, I would be contributing to one of the entertainment world’s most prestigious and popular wildlife documentaries — BBC’s Planet Earth II — I think I’d have had trouble keeping a straight face. But that was before I witnessed firsthand the power of the Internet and a good idea.
I've been doing this long enough that I honestly can't remember why or how I started. I mean, I remember my origin story... but as an adult I also know that is probably a distillation and summary of what exactly went on. There are no easy lessons now.
South African photographer Ursula Tocik started her career shooting weddings. In October 2012, Tocik's life and career took an unexpected turn when she suffered two massive strokes that paralyzed the left side of her body.
"Follow your passion" is a piece of life advice that's commonly thrown around. It's heard in the photography industry, and especially in graduation commencement speeches. But here's a 5-minute video in which well-known TV host Mike Rowe argues for the opposite: why you (maybe) shouldn't follow your passion.
Here's an 8-minute video in which photographer Alexi Lubomirski shares the story of how he became a professional photographer.
Photographer Kyle Froman has had a rather unique career journey. Before becoming an acclaimed dance photographer, Froman was himself a dancer the prestigious New York City Ballet.
Jeremy Cowart has an inspiring life story that he wants to share with …
Photographer Peter Lik can be described as something of a photo tycoon. There's the unverified claim of one of his photos selling for a record-shattering $6.5 million. He has also reportedly sold over 100,000 prints for a total of over $440 million.
If you're wondering about how Lik's career came about, check out this 12-minute documentary short film that the photographer himself just published.
Tsuneko Sasamoto is a renowned Japanese photographer who is considered to be her country's first female photojournalist, documenting pre- and post-war Japan since becoming a professional shooter at the age of 25.
Sasamoto also has the distinction of being one of the oldest photographers on Earth: she just turned 101 years old in September, and she's still making photos.
As a junior in high school in 1997, when I was deciding which path I wanted to go down, fine arts or photography, things were pretty simple. Did I want to express myself with a camera or a pencil? Inspired by masters like Annie Leibovitz and David LaChapelle, I opted for the camera.
All I wanted to do was create beautiful images for a living. By signing up for a degree in fine art photography, little did I know what lay ahead for me.
The two "Final Four" basketball games of the 2015 men's NCAA basketball tournament were held yesterday. One of the photographers sitting on the sideline was 82-year-old Rich Clarkson, a man who has been photographing the tournament for 60 straight years. The video above is a 5-minute segment CBS recently aired that looks into Clarkson's life and work as he "hangs up his camera" after this year's tournament.
I was a month and a half into the photography program at the Art Institute of Colorado in Denver when I decided to skip school for a day for a concert. I had a ticket to see Mumford & Sons playing in Laramie, Wyoming, before they hit Red Rocks in Colorado.
At the time, I was already contemplating dropping out of school, due to feeling that I would never be good enough to make it in the photography world, and would just be wasting time and money.
When you’ve captured as many photographs as renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz has, it’s not exactly a simple task to pick and choose your best work. Shooting for over four decades for the likes of Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, her collection of work is as vast as it is rich.
And so, when it came time to create her latest book, rather than selecting just a few dozen of her photographs, she decided to step it up... a lot. Her latest book is a $2,500, 476-page visual journey through every single step of Leibovitz career.
Stanley Kubrick’s legacy will forever be sealed in images. Mostly known for his motion picture work, it wasn’t until after his time as a still photographer that he took on the world of movies. Kubrick began his career as a photographer, at 16-years-old, after a single image seemingly catapulted his way to success.
Update: Mr. Hamilton has gotten in touch with us to tell his side of the story, filling in some of the missing pieces that help explain his actions. Read the full update at the bottom.
Think before you post. This should be the message greeting all of us when we open up our social network of choice. Before we get a chance to do anything else, a big bold ALL CAPS message reminding us that our social media comments have consequences should appear front and center.
Maybe if they had, Australian photographer Mark Hamilton wouldn't be embarrassed, apologizing for a Facebook tirade in which he threatened to release racy photos of a model because she had 'liked' a post that insulted him.
What is your perfect day? And when was the last time you had your perfect day? If you're like most photographers the answer to the first question may come out pretty easily (or not...), but the answer to the second...
That was the question that wedding photographer Jerry Ghionis once asked a fellow photographer, and when she heard the second part, it left her in tears. She couldn't remember her last perfect day, because she was so busy working and working and working at her career that she had forgotten to live the lifestyle she was hoping photography would offer.
Being so close to the release of the 2013 Arizona State University Football campaign, I wanted to take an opportunity on to talk about an image that I created many years ago while still a student at ASU. When many people ask me where I believe I crossed the line from hobbyist to professional, I tell them of this campaign, and actually place the beginning on a single image. The fact that the image still lives on my website is a testament to how much I enjoy it and how much it means to me. It is the photo that opened many doors in my career, yet very few people know the background behind its creation.
Back in 2010, we shared some statistics from CareerCast's annual list of the best and worst jobs, and things weren't looking good for the photography profession. At the time, "Photographer" ranked 126th of 200 on that list, with "Photojournalist" coming in near the very bottom at 189th. Sadly, in the intervening years since we last shared the info, things haven't exactly gotten better.
The Onion has published a humorous tongue-in-cheek piece that many non-professional photography enthusiasts …
As I sat trapped in a coach seat on an aged and tattered American Airlines airplane I had time to think about the whole spectrum of art photography. I wanted to have a clearer window into the different ways in which people who aren't using their cameras to make a living in a traditional, commercial application of photography approach their subjects and their understanding of style. How much is generated internally and how much is a reflexive reaction to a world inundated in images?
I spoke with a person in the film industry on Friday. We were talking about HMI lighting and he made a remark concerning still photographers. I give him credence since his background originally included a successful career in photography. His remark, in regards to the real lack of lighting acumen among most shooters was this: "There's no such thing as a good photographer under 40."
We are in the midst of sea change -- a tidal wave might be more accurate -- within the medium of photography. While the lens is still firmly fixed to the camera body, the body itself appears to have imploded. The inner workings -- that is, the guts of the camera from Talbot’s days (when cameras were called “mousetraps” by his wife who was always tripping over them) -- have changed faster than anyone expected.
Here's a thought-provoking video making the rounds online -- one that you might want to watch if you love photography and have been thinking hard about your career path. It's based on a lecture given decades ago by philosopher Alan Watts, who poses the question, "What would you like to do if money were no object?"