fear

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.

Photographers learn to see light but creatives also find themselves trapped in the darkness of their doubt. If you’re stuck in your fear of starting a business, I’m going to help you break through some myths and mental blocks to remind you that another word for fear is excitement. At the end of the day, would you rather be someone who faced their fears or gave into them?

When I look back on 2020 in 5 or 10 years, I don't think I'll remember it as the year when a pandemic brought the photo industry to an economic standstill. I don't think I'll remember the CIPA numbers, or the R5 overheating debacle, or any of the virtual product launches. I'll remember 2020 as a year that helped us rediscovered the importance of photography.

Crap. I’m only going to get 19 years? WTF? I am standing with my fingers knitted together, resting on the top of my head. A few feet away, there is a gun pointed at my face, and I’m trying like I’ve never tried anything to not pee on myself.

It’s 2019, I’m 80 miles away from land in the Atlantic Ocean, and I just have to laugh. I just got out of the water and noticed that my camera housing is leaking. I couldn’t afford the Nauticam rental this time, so I went cheap and hoped for the best. It’s my third trip to the Silver Bank with Tom Conlin and Aquatic Adventures and once again my photographic luck was left behind on solid ground.

First things first. For me, street photography is more than just taking candid photos. Street photography can also be asking strangers permission to photograph them or photographing empty streets. Whatever it is, the common nominator is that you go on the street and take photos of the “street life.” That’s how I see it.

It’s not uncommon in any field to find yourself in a creative rut at some point. In this 10-minute video, photographer Sean Tucker discusses how he overcomes his main sticking points, and keeps creating new work week-in and week-out.

The joy of photographing on the street comes from close and engaging photos. Displaying the human nature and emotions in a way that the audience can relive these moments requires the photographer to be close and engaging as well. Unfortunately for a lot of us, it is not easy to stand out from the masses and overcome artificial social boundaries.

What's your greatest career success? What about your greatest failure? Your greatest fear? And what's the best advice you could offer to someone starting out in the world of photography? These are the questions DIY Photography recently asked 4 top creatives.

The problem of photographers being seen as "pedophiles with cameras" is widespread and is a subject we've reported on and written about many times over the years. One of the latest victims is David Updike, a Harvard-educated photographer and writer.

While sitting in Cambridge's Dana Park on September 23rd, Updike found himself suddenly surrounded by police officers and questioned about what he was taking pictures of. It turns out a woman had reported him for "taking pictures of children," and now Updike has responded to the incident by writing an open letter to that woman.

Street photography is one of the most difficult forms of photography out there. Not only do you have to rapidly compose, frame, and approach strangers, but you have to do so with the risk of “injury.” They might injure you verbally (threaten to break your camera, give you a dirty look and call you a creep, or curse at you) or they might injure you physically (try to grab your camera, hit you, shove you, etc).

Elizabeth Gilbert -- the author best known for her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love -- once wrote that fear and creativity are conjoined twins. In other words, you don't get one without the other. If you kill fear, you kill creativity.

Everyone has fears, even the most successful photographers in the business. The key to overcoming those fears is to …

The folks over at F8 Photography recently got a chance to sit down with well-known, love-him-or-hate-him street photographer Eric Kim. And whatever your opinion of the successful street shooter, the advice he offers in this short video interview about fear, book recommendations, and figuring out the 'why' behind your photography is well-worth 4 minutes of your Saturday.

"Look at me," he said. Complying, I turned in the man's direction. "Look me in the eyes!"... I tried to raise my eyes and look into his, but I couldn't. Actually, I couldn't look anyone in the eyes at that point, it felt weird and uncomfortable. That man... was my own older brother.

Most years around this time we take a road trip to visit my family in New Jersey. There are always a couple of camera bags in the back seat, as there will be tomorrow night when we saddle up and head south once again. And most years around this time I think back to something that happened on another hot summer night less than two months before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

For photographers, a lot has changed since then, but we have to remember that most of it started changing well before 9/11. When my students complain about the hassles of trying to make photographs in public places, I tell them that it’s something they’re just going to have to get used to. And then sometimes I tell them this story.

I'm not gonna lie; I was worried.

I sat in the movie theater with my box of buttered jalapeno popcorn (Jalapeno popcorn is created by tipping the container of jalapenos found in the condiment area onto your popcorn. They provide them for your nachos and hot dogs, but it is a shame not to use them on your popcorn. It is delicious and I highly recommend it. You will thank me for this.) I furrowed my brow with nervous anticipation, for this was no ordinary movie; I was awaiting the start of M. Night Shyamalan's "After Earth."

Nightmares Fear Factory in Niagara Falls, Canada, which calls itself the scariest haunted house in North America, has an automatic camera set up at one particularly horrifying point in the house. The camera takes a photograph of visitors at precisely the moment when sheer terror reaches their brain, and the resulting expressions are hilarious.

Sling Shot is a concept camera that’s designed to capture expressions of fear …