Photographer Jessica Kobeissi made this 5-minute video that has hit a nerve with many of her 1.3+ million followers on YouTube. She shares thoughts on why it's difficult for photographers to get paid fairly for work these days, arguing that by undercutting each other and working for little or no money, some photographers are lowering the bar for everyone else in the industry.
A group of boys in Baraboo, WI assembled for a junior prom photo and posed with a Nazi salute. One of the boys posted the image to Twitter with the caption “We even got the black kid to throw it up.” In the midst of public outrage, it was revealed that a professional photographer not only took the image but directed them to “wave goodbye.”
What is the most important thing for a photographer? The simple and easy answer is the camera, or something closely related to it (like tripods or lights). And for many photographers that might be true… but not for a nature or landscape photographer. What we prize most, what we need most is uncompromising vistas of land, views unobstructed by the hand of man.
The night sky offers an unlimited source of markers (e.g. stars, constellations, Milky Way, etc.) that never lie about the time of year and location in the world you shot a night sky picture from. You don’t even need to be a professional astronomer or to double-check RAW files to prove it.
We all have them, some more than others, but one thing we all have in common is a desire to eliminate them. What I’m referring to are bad habits. I don’t want to speak for anyone else, but in this video and article, I discuss the 9 worst habits that have negatively impacted my landscape photography over the years.
I love Instagram. But I worry that it’s driving my fellow photographers crazy. I've seen so many photographers do so many wacky things in search of Instafame that I've given the madness a name. I call it… Instagram Derangement Syndrome.
As with any genre of photography, there is no "one size fits all" solution for exposure in any given situation. There are as many different means of achieving a "look" as there are photographers practicing those methods, and any can be adapted to fit into the kind of photography you want to be doing.
It’s an ongoing joke with my friends and I that I am really not a fan on the current marketing messaging that the “universe has my back” and that the success of my business is down to my “mindset”.
Dear writer of the Forbes Magazine article, “Your Top 10 Objects Your Kids Don’t Want”...
I should start off by saying that I am not a big contributor to stock photography agencies. I did take the plunge into agencies like Shutterstock and Getty Images when I was moving into digital 10 or so years ago, but I found my niche elsewhere.
It is always sad to read stories of how others lose or damage their camera gear, and I guess all of us would say, "That would never happen to me because I am cautious and won't risk my expensive equipment."
I took some of the best photos of my life on 35mm film. It will always have a special place in my heart, even though I haven't shot on film in years.
McWay Falls has been a tourist destination for longer than many of us even heard of the place, but it wasn't until 2012 that photographer Steven Christenson really "discovered" the potential of the site at night. Nestled in the rugged and gorgeous part of the California coast better known as Big Sur, McWay Falls enjoys extremely dark skies.
I mess up most of my street photography shots: too far away, background cluttered, subjects not well aligned, subject matter not interesting enough, or simply technically flawed. The Murphy’s Law of street photography: “If you can mess up a street shot, chances are you will.”
A very common piece of advice for photographers looking to take their work to the “next level” is that they must invest time in themselves in the process of developing a “style.” A photographic style can mean many things; a theme within the subject matter, a specific color palette, a certain compositional approach, and anything else that leaves the artist's work with a distinct "fingerprint."
My name is Brian Carey, and I'm a photographer in St John's Newfoundland Canada. I'm like a lot of photographers in that I like to complement my professional work with something personal, something I can connect with.
I have gone through the gear of almost every major brand during my early photography journey, buying my way through cameras and lenses until I arrived at my current setup, which has remained more or less the same for my entire professional career. Despite settling on a brand known for its high price point, I have been comfortable with all of my camera and lens choices except one, which is what I’ll be discussing here.
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, and I want to talk about 4 things I truly hate about portrait photography in 2019.
I’ve read The Onion headlines and McSweeney’s pieces that have knocked me off my chair. I can still remember staying up late during high school to watch Saturday Night Live sketches like “Change Bank,” or Dave Chapelle’s Killing Me Softly on HBO. I’m a person who can appreciate good humor and satire.
While most commercial photographers know about copyright laws and the use of a model for their images, it seems the answer isn’t so clear when it comes to travel photography. If you’re traveling the world with your camera, what laws apply for you and for your subject?
There is an observation about stand up comedians that once they reach a certain level of fame their material becomes less about "grounded" observations and criticisms and instead becoming more about airplane food and hotel rooms.
From Wiktionary: Noun pixel peeper (plural pixel peepers) (idiomatic, photography) "A person who carefully scrutinizes a magnified digital photograph in order to evaluate resolution and image quality."
At least once a day I see a social media rant about other photographers, also referred to as “the competition”, and how they are “devaluing” photography. I see it across the board from wedding and newborn photography to commercial work and fashion photography.
In the good old days of analog photography, print aspect ratio was ultimately determined by the paper size. In other words, if you printed an 8x10-inch, you had to crop your negative to a 4:5 aspect ratio. For slide film, the image aspect ratio was determined by the film format, for instance, 3:2 for 35mm film.
With the recent polemics surrounding a certain image that won a photography competition this week, I feel like we need to talk about travel photography. About people photography, in our case. And to set up boundaries as to what’s acceptable in both cases. Honestly, in my opinion, it’s a matter of common sense – but it seems that’s not enough. We still witness some shocking scenes in the world of travel photography these days.
Portraiture has never been a genre that resonated with me as a creator, which is odd because there are many examples of portraiture that I enjoy, and I’d absolutely love to be able to create meaningful portraits of people in the same way that I feel I’m able to create meaningful images in other genres.
Eye-rolls, shrugs, and barbs greeted the $120,000 Grand Prize winner of Dubai’s HIPA Photography Prize. Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong’s photo of a partially blind Vietnamese woman carrying her baby was derided for representing yet another “poverty porn” contest winner before it was suggested that the image was staged by photographer Ab Rashid.
When I look back at my journey as a wildlife photographer especially as I scroll through my images on my editing screen a few things become apparent. Firstly, most of my pictures were either action or close up portrait, and secondly, the editing was awful.
I use Fat Llama to loan out some of my photography gear when not in use, and I’ve been very happy with the extra beer money. Well... up until last week, that is, as my camera kit was stolen!
Photography is a broad church. It is an art form, it is a tool of the press, it is a form of recreation, it is a business. It is a social record. It is a medium for pornography and it also records family history, sometimes at one and the same time.
One of the major shortcomings of sharing work online, especially on social media, is that it is often a highlight reel of incredible work. That's not a bad thing if your only goal is to enjoy work, but for people looking to learn, it can offer some unrealistic expectations.
Changing camera systems is not something to be taken lightly. As a die-hard Nikon fan since I first got into photography, I didn’t think I would ever consider switching away from them. And yet, here I am, sitting with no Nikon kit in sight having just shot my first wedding entirely on Sony kit and no regrets.
I recently shot this image while teaching a street photography workshop in London. I had been talking to my students about noticing things that were “odd” or out of place which normally makes for an engaging subject.
It seems like having dual cameras on your phone has become almost the norm nowadays, but many people don’t even know that they are there, let alone why. However, I believe that Portrait Mode is an incredible tool for the modern photographer to promote themselves -- particularly on Instagram.
While still cameras use histograms to show tonal distribution and clipping, many video cameras use waveforms for the same purpose. Here's an educational 8-minute video in which DPReview's Chris Nichols argues why waveforms are better than histograms and why still cameras should adopt them too.
A year ago, I wrote an article over at 35mmc in which I discussed some of the jobs I had worked on using 35mm film and the way I handle a film workflow for assigned work. Since writing that piece I have taken on many more commissions for film-based work, and I thought it would be useful to take a more detailed look at some of the implications of shooting film as part of these projects.
Over the last few years, I’ve noticed a growing trend of photographers in the UK using workshops and styled shoots to boost their wedding portfolio. It wasn’t as prevalent when I started shooting weddings 6 years ago (following many years of documenting my own life with a camera), and I’m glad because if I’d not been as savvy as I was today, I might have been fooled into thinking those images were from real weddings. And from someone who’s only had a camera 6 months? Wow!
Filmmaker and journalist Johnny Harris made this inspiring 7-minute video about the picturesque Austrian town of Hallstatt, which sits nestled between a lake and a mountain in the Alps. Harris looks at the idea of photography clichés and breaking out of them to find unique photos and experiences.
Back in the day, a compelling photograph could be taken in a fraction of a second and considered for years, even decades. The small world of street photography was dominated by photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, who said, “Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
Once upon a time, the biggest problem with camera phones was the camera itself. One of the world's first camera phones, the J-SH04, was released in 2000. Boy have we come a long way, right? It could shoot tiny 0.11-megapixels images. It went up from there.
I received a letter from Costco that the location I frequent for my 8 pounds of ground beef and jumbo bottle of vodka is closing their photo department. Why? Because in spite of more pictures being taken now than in any time in the history of photography, people are simply not printing their snapshots and, because of this rapid decline in printing volume, it makes no financial sense to keep the photo department open.
I’ve been feeling for a while now that something has been lacking from my street photography. I seem to have settled into a “style” or “way of seeing” that features themes of solitude and isolation, monotone color palettes, and generally bland scenes – in line with my descriptions of “New-Wave Street Photography”.
The idea of this article came from a recent photo series I saw on BoredPanda about viral photos people thought were real but were fake. It reminded me of some of my photos people always call fake.
Everywhere you turn in the photographic press you see the same kinds of articles over and over.
As a street photographer, I accept that I have a bias towards the kind of work and criticisms I prefer to seek out as an audience to the work of others - although there are examples of landscape or portraiture that I do enjoy it is street photography and photojournalism that take up the majority of my interest.
100 years from now, no one is going to care who I am. I know this. I don’t mean that in a bad way and I don’t say it in the hopes someone will contradict me and shower me with praise; this is not said as compliment bait.
I very often have this strong negative reaction when a newsletter arrives in my inbox or I see an online article where the heading reads: “5 rules to follow when composing an image” — or something to that effect.
In a world where everyone gets a trophy just for participating, I feel the need to point something out. You probably already know this, but l’m gonna say it anyway: You will fail.
A little more than 10 years ago, I had a realization that would one day change my life forever. During an evening stroll in the local woods with my camera in hand, I became aware of just how much I love photography and what it means to me; it was at that moment I knew it would be a part of me for a long time to come.
Prior to Canon releasing its first full-frame mirrorless camera, I wrote an article discussing how Canon will dominate the mirrorless industry. Many of you made fun of the title, which was fair enough; the comments did make me chuckle.
