journey

For anyone who isn’t interested in this wonderful art form we call photography, it might seem pretty straightforward: using a camera to capture an image. However, as many of us know, photography is so much more, once you go beyond the surface level.

"Landscape photography has actually been maxed out for years." That's what the former equipment manager of our local photo club told me around 1990. He was a lover of the infamous Cokin "tobacco gradient filter."

The year was 2019, I had just gotten accepted into the USA Olympic Weightlifting program and had accepted a personal training position at a gym. As a former athlete, it felt as if all my dreams were finally falling into place. Little did I know that my euphoria would be short-lived and just one short month later I would wake up restrained to a hospital bed.

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 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!

The winter sky was dark and vengeful. The frigid wind was skin-seeping cold and it lashed us without mercy. Although, it carried a fragrance with it. It was spirit refreshing to smell the mulchy mix of the forest’s perfume. Four guys stood at the foot of the angel-white mountain.

Almost four years ago I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Finding this diagnosis for me was a huge change (a positive one), and that led me to start a journey that continues to this day, where the mental stability that I have is maintained. I lived through many things and something curious is how the disorder began to show before I gave it a name, through my photos.

This trip has been waiting in the wings ever since I made my first successful daguerreotype in the redwoods two years ago. I actually planned on going as early as August this year, but one project after another kept getting in the way, and for months I kept pushing it back by a couple of weeks.

Recently, the more I study my photographs, the more I feel that bokeh is cheating me out of a more substantial image. I really like photographs with a lot of visual complexity -- well presented, not chaotic, but a clear arrangement of multiple elements.

This photo is Untitled (1977) by photographer Jerry Uelsmann -- it was my key inspiration. It took one curvy shaded line to make the rock alive and sexy. This was on the wall in my living room when I was 14 and I looked at it for countless hours.

The photographer's "journey" is, generally speaking, a pretty predictable thing. We all go through certain "phases" as we pick up and learn this craft—some more gracefully than others—and so, in the spirit of lighthearted candor, photographer and YouTuber Evan Ranft has decided to share his take on the 8 major phases of being a photographer.

I originally moved from the UK to New Zealand in search of a place that allows me to spread my artistic wings and really obtain that deeper level of natural landscape beauty. I ended up in Wellington, the national and artistic capital of NZ, where everything and anything goes.

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.

The image above was shot in one of the old town lanes around Pom Prap in Bangkok in October 2019 using a Nikon F3 analog SLR camera loaded with Kodak Ektar 100 expired film roll.

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.

In the summer of 2017, I received an invitation from my CEO at Barclays India, Uma Krishnan, who was interested in collecting some of my award-winning photography work. In order to avoid giving away my photographs for free, I asked her to contribute some amount towards her favorite social cause, and this is how the idea for Create4Cause was born.

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.

Three years ago, I attempted a 365 Project. About 90 days in, I had to accept the fact that I wasn’t going to make it to 365 days, so I turned it into a 100 Day Project. I know that a 365 Project sounds pretty simple -- take and post one photograph each day. My standards for the images I post on my social media are very high, but in the end, I had to accept the reality that I wasn’t going to strike gold each day. I really did try though.

Yemen isn't exactly a popular destination among photographers these days. The US government has issued a "Do Not Travel" advisory for the country, warning that there's a risk of terrorism, civil unrest, health risks, kidnapping, and armed conflict. But photographer Marsel van Oosten recently traveled to the Yemeni island of Socotra, the "jewel of the Arabian Sea," to photograph the dragon blood tree.

Have you ever wondered why the images you created a few years ago look very different from the pictures you are taking now? Chances are you became a better photographer. You trained your eye and you got better at post-processing. But I am not talking about the craft. I am talking about the art behind photography. The art that feeds off your emotions.

In December 2014, I decided that I wanted to practice shooting the night sky in order to expand my photography skills. Of course, I made every possible mistake. My compositions were completely off, I severely underexposed or blew out the sky and the images were not sharp.

I was a 45-year-old photographer living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when my world flipped upside down. In November 2014, I was diagnosed with brain cancer.