To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.
~ Charles Bukowski
Easier said than done, I think. Good, actionable advice on how to develop your photographic style is hard to find. Clichés, on the other hand, sprout like lawn weeds everywhere: "Style develops over time; you can’t rush it!", "Confidence creates style!", "Imitate other people’s work and put a twist on it!", "Here are 3 ways/8 ways/10 tips to creating style!"
As much information as we’re able to pull in through the Internet, there is one thing that can never be obtained through words or pictures on a screen: experience. Through time and experience, information turns to knowledge, and we begin to wrap our heads around the complicated concepts that baffled us in the beginning.
One phenomenal example of a man who has accrued more experience than most is renowned portrait photographer Gregory Heisler, and in the interview above with Maine Media Workshops + College, he shares valuable insight and advice for photographers both young and old.
“If you can’t do it right, do it big.” These are just a few of the wise words shared by renowned photographer Marc Hauser in the above mini documentary by Chris Cascarano.
He’s shot for the likes of Rolling Stones Magazine, Pepsi and Playboy (just to name a few) and the concise words of wisdom he shares in this video are worth writing down no matter where you are in your photography career.
Are you not impressed with your average Instagram selfie? Is the lighting too bland and out of place for your liking? If so, a team made up of a researcher from MIT and a few individuals from Adobe and the University of Virginia might just have a solution to your problem.
They’ve created an algorithm capable of accurately stylizing an average, otherwise insignificant selfie to look like the works of some of the best-known and well-respected portrait photographers of all time.
Ryker Wixom is the most fashionable 4-year-old you're likely to meet this side of a black AMEX, and given how fast his Instagram star is rising, you're likely to at least hear about him before long.
Together with his mom Collette Wixom, the duo have started a fashion blog/Instagram account/Facebook page called Ministylehacker, whose followers number in the tens of thousands.
The video above is only about one minute long, but in that minute The Face host, former model and …
Ryan Brenizer is back again, talking through some more useful wedding photography knowledge with B&H. Last time Brenizer shared some tips on how to capture great engagement photographs; this time, he's sharing how to really define your style as a wedding photographer.
When it comes to nailing the white-balance in a photo, it's rarely an easy task, especially with portraits. It becomes even more arduous when you're trying to stylize the image a certain way, since you might not want the same tones and color balance in your skin tones as you do in the rest of your image.
This tutorial by the folks at Phlearn shows you how to get past those challenges and achieve the results you want in every part of your photo without having to sacrifice elsewhere.
It's happened to all of us: we're browsing through someone's portfolio or even just through Flickr or 500px and we come across a photograph or series of photographs with a 'look' we absolutely love.
From there, we usually dive into our own photo archives and try to replicate that style/look, but rarely does it come out anywhere near as professional looking as the original photo. Thankfully this 2012 tutorial by London-based journalist and designer Ben Secret can help you apply just about any photo's look to another.
First, I'd like to start this article off with a little bit of a warning. This post is primarily aimed at people just starting to get into photography or people just beginning to make the jump from hobbyist to professional. That said, hopefully there's something below that can be appreciated by photographers of all levels.
Now, lets talk about style a little bit.
In all art forms; music, writing, architecture, photography, whatever; originality and innovation are the things that produce the best works from the best artists. A lot of advice on how to improve your art focusses on technical and technological aspects; often with a cursory “develop your own style” thrown in somewhere. It’s a difficult thing to explain or teach: how do you develop your vision or style? And how do you know if you’ve found it?
PechaKucha is a presentation style that gives presenters exactly 20 slides and 20 seconds per slide to get their point across. Designed by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham in Tokyo in 2003, what started as a weekly show-and-tell format at their firm has become a world-wide presentation phenomenon that recently broke into the world of photography.
Belgian photographer Filip Bunkens recently did an engagement photo shoot with a couple named Mattias and Adinda, who proposed that it be 1920s-themed. Last Sunday morning they gathered at a local jazz bar for the session.
Sean O'Hagan over at The Observer has published an interesting profile of famed NYC street photographer Joel Meyerowitz, who had some pretty harsh things to say about his fellow NYC street shooter, Bruce Gilden.
Photographer Patrick Ng has an obsession with natural materials such as wood and leather. Recently, he decided to "woodenize" his beloved Canon F-1n SLR (a professional film SLR released back in 1976). He didn't use a pre-made kit for the conversion, though... Instead, he simply ripped off the faux-leather and replaced it with faux-wood wallpaper.
Fuji already introduced retro, Leica-style design to the world of mirrorless cameras with its gorgeous X series line, and now it appears that the company wants to do the same thing for the world of point-and-shoots. New leaked photos, first published on Digicam-info, show an unknown compact camera by Fujifilm that features a slick leather wrap and an elegantly minimal UI -- a camera that definitely wouldn't embarrass fashion-forward folk.
After seeing some elegant black picture frames with brass edges in a designer magazine, Courtney of …
Argentinian photographer Alejandro Chaskielberg started as a photojournalist before turning to documentary photography and developing his trademark style of shooting under moonlight and using strobes and long exposures to illuminate his subjects. His portrait subjects are asked to remain motionless for long periods of time as he photographs them using a large format film camera. He recently applied his style to a series on residents of Northern Kenya -- a location that's typically photographed under the harsh midday sun.
Don Hong-Oai was a San Francisco-based Chinese photographer who created beautiful images that resembled traditional Chinese paintings.
The photographs of Don Hong-Oai are made in a unique style of photography, which can be considered Asian pictorialism. This method of adapting a Western art for Eastern purposes probably originated in the 1940s in Hong Kong. One of its best known practitioners was the great master Long Chin-San (who died in the 1990s at the age of 104) with whom Don Hong-Oai studied. With the delicate beauty and traditional motifs of Chinese painting (birds, boats, mountains, etc.) in mind, photographers of this school used more than one negative to create a beautiful picture, often using visual allegories. Realism was not a goal.
Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to use this technique, and was also arguably the best.
Remember the light brown leather X100 special edition announced by Fujifilm a couple of days ago? While those might come with a unique limited edition serial number, the look apparently isn't as unique. As a commenter pointed out, it appears to be a covering offered by a shop named Aki-Asahi Custom Camera Coverings. There are quite a few styles in addition to that look (which is named "Lizard Ochre"), including a couple of beautiful wood coverings crafted from walnut and cherry wood.
Magnum street photographer Bruce Gilden shoots his …
Most modern tripods are made of materials that are designed to be light-weight yet stable. If having the lightest of tripods isn't a requirement for you, then check out these hand-made wooden tripods from the German company Berlebach. Though they can weigh in at 6+ pounds, the solid ash wood legs are supposedly better at dampening vibration than steel, carbon, or aluminum. Plus, they look pretty snazzy.