Between 2008 and late 2016, I took tens of thousands of pictures and proudly vomited the vast majority of them online. While I’d toyed around with things like depth of field and long exposures, I didn’t understand anything about photography, so my camera rarely left ‘auto’. I’d checked out an online tutorial or two, but as far as I was concerned, ‘exposure compensation’ was something victims got after winning a public indecency lawsuit.
There are times as a photographer when you can feel like you’re running out of ideas. You’ve tried a variety of things but now you’re experiencing some kind of creative block and you feel frustrated.
Hey, photographers: don’t be discouraged if you can’t afford the latest and greatest gear out there. You may be surprised by what you can do with modest gear.
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.
Photography is a competitive industry in which professional photographers are competing against anyone with an iPhone, which means pretty much everyone. How do you convince a client to pay you for your work when they can get something that’s ‘good enough’ from someone else for free?
Are you an artist who struggles with releasing your work to the world because it's not yet perfect? It's a common problem many creatives grapple with, but learning to let go of your idea of perfection can actually allow you to move closer toward it.
I have one overarching tip for you today and it’s a big one. The only wrong way to learn photography is to stop learning. Whether you’re classically trained or self-taught, the key is to always be learning and growing.
As a photographer, there are many things that we feel may be holding us back. For some, it’s gear. For many, it might be limited free time. For others, there might be a lack of interesting locations to shoot.
The funk sucks. No matter who you are and no matter how long you've been at your art, everybody experiences the funk. Maybe you've even named your funk, mine is named Jeff. No real reason. Just feels a little bit more manageable whenever I've applied a name to it.
Have you heard this one? “I don’t pick up a camera unless I’m getting paid.” Maybe you haven’t just heard it, maybe you’ve said it. At a certain time in my career, that’s exactly how I felt.
I think we have all been there. After the culling, editing, and sweating over every detail we post our latest masterpiece only to be greeted by three likes. One is from our mother, the other two from our friends that know nothing about photography. It is demoralizing.
Failing to succeed doesn't mean failing to progress. I think for many of us the last few pandemic years have spotlighted this sentiment, especially as when it comes to photography “success” is already such a broad and nebulous concept.
You know we’ve all got a confident side and a not-so-confident side of our personalities. Let’s develop and strengthen the confident side. Here are 10 points on how you can gain confidence to know you’re ready to make money in photography. Follow these 10 points. You’ll gain a lot of confidence. Don’t listen to that other side of your personality.
I’ve recently been speaking with a variety of photographers about the struggles they are having, and motivation is often at the top of the list. I share a lot of these struggles, and I think a big part of any creative practice is learning to fight through them as best you can.
A simple local documentary project can help you return back to enjoying your personal photography, even after a long break.
I am a technical professional who wanted to become an artist in his middle years. I confess that I had no previous art training except for making papier-mâché boxes in high school!
I was reading an interview with William Eggleston and he recalled a time when he met Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was his idol, at a party in Lyon. Eggleston described that he was sat with Cartier-Bresson and a few other guests and his idol leaned across to him and said ‘William, color is bulls**t’.
I am a technical professional who wanted to become an artist in his middle years. I confess that I had no previous art training except for making papier-mâché boxes in high school!
I took up photography before the birth of my son in 2005 and moved to Marblehead, Massachusetts from Washington, D.C. in 2008. In D.C., I had no limits on famous landmarks to photograph. When I moved to this town of 4.4 square miles, I wasn't sure how to continue my photography.
The Internet gives the illusion that everybody can be “somebody”. It surely has opened the door for some, but the hard truth is that most of us aspiring artists (including us photographers) remain largely unnoticed for our entire lifetimes, even with the mighty power of the Internet and social media.
Photographer Taylor Jackson made this 7-minute short film titled "Bad Photographer" that may resonate with you if you find yourself often struggling with self-doubt and negative thoughts about your work.
I originally wrote this post in response to a challenge about growth in a Facebook photographer help group. Members of the group were challenged to post an old photograph versus a current photograph. The photograph above is what I shared in response to the challenge.
These days, it feels like the world will come crashing down on us at any moment. It may well be so, but there is little point in wallowing in torrents of bad news. But finding something positive is becoming as difficult as digging for water in the desert. This is when your camera can prove to be an indispensable tool for diluting the bleakness of everyday life with some joy.
Whether you're a photographer, a filmmaker, a YouTuber, or a painter, this latest video by Kaiwan Shaban will probably hit home on some level. It's an honest, candid message for artists of all stripes who struggle with the fact that they are never quite satisfied with the work they are creating.
Quite often when I’m browsing my Facebook photographic communities I see posts from people who are depressed because they have lost interest in their hobby. They usually say that they can’t work up the enthusiasm to get out there and photograph anything and that they haven’t even picked up their cameras in weeks, months or even years. They have lost their ‘phojo’ and they wonder if they’ll ever get it back.
Something about the way photographers acclimatize to shooting with film has intrigued me for some time. I think it’s safe to say that film is very much tried and tested -- some of the greatest photography pioneers worked with film and were not limited in their ability to create incredible work, which remains relevant.
A few years ago I was shooting at dawn in East London for one of my books. I walked past a butcher and thought, "awesome!" Capturing people up at dawn can be really hard as they are either not around or it can be difficult to find people doing interesting things.
The label of being a “professional” at something, whether you’re a professional football player or a professional figure skater, typically means you’re the best of the best in your respective field. But when it comes to a professional photographer, the same assumption can’t be made.
The Lofoten archipelago is one of the most photographed regions in Norway. Its images have flooded social media in the last couple of years -- certainly both you and I have seen them. And at some point, both you and I have been dreaming of visiting either Lofoten or other places we have seen in the form of breathtaking imagery.
Recognizing personal progression and improvement is a wildly beneficial yet often overlooked exercise for our confidence. It’s human nature to want to be “better” at things. We don’t have to be the best right now, but we all want the affirmation that we're improving and moving in the right direction. Photography is no different and in the digital age can feel rather short-lived as the majority of images created are shared on social media and eventually with time, slide off into the digital archives rarely to be seen again.
Sometimes we put things off so many times that the act of delaying that thing becomes automatic. “I’ll get to that thing tomorrow”, and tomorrow comes, tomorrow goes, and that thing never gets taken care of. I fell into that trap, and the thing that kept being put off was taking portraits of my parents.
Right now is the best time ever to be a photographer, so why all the long faces?
Photographers can easily become distracted by the pursuit of things like popularity and success, but one thing that many photographers find beneficial is going out and creating photos just for themselves rather than for others. Here's a 5-minute spoken word performance titled "You Must Create" that encourages photographers to do just that.
Professional wedding photography is dead. Change is afoot. I see it all around me. Photographers who once charged £2,000 (~$2,700) for a wedding, now putting themselves forwards for jobs less than a grand. Award-winning photographers getting part-time jobs to supplement their income because they can no longer afford to shoot weddings full time. And it’s all a dirty little secret.
She came in for her senior session. Her hair was a mess of tangled waves, unruly and uncooperative. Her face was covered with freckles and dotted with acne. She wasn’t model proportions and the clothing she wore required careful adjustment to keep it from bunching up in places.
My daily stroll through the newly-built but already-decaying park near my apartment in Hanoi while listening to Spotify on a brisk (by Southeast Asia standards) morning has me in deep thought. We only get this type of weather for a couple months a year here and I absolutely love it.
What if your house burned down? Have you still “made it” as a photographer?
Visual artist Simon Cade of DSLRguide created this 2.5-minute video that can give some inspiration and encouragement to you if you're photographer (or any other type of artist) who's feeling defeated and unsure of whether or not to push forward in your craft.
SLR Lounge recently published this 8-minute video on 10 ways you can light and shoot the same scene. But it's the short monologue at the end, starting at 6m38s, that has received quite a bit of attention in the online photo community. Pye Jirsa talks about how every photographer can help foster a culture of supporting one another.
In this great video from DSLR Guide, Simon Cade talks about discontentment: how it can be harnessed as a fuel to keep driving forward, and as a signpost to assure that you’re on the right track.