Recently I worked on an image of the sand dunes of the Namib. I had woke while it was still dark and made my way to the desert, each foot sinking into the sand as I battled the dunes. Morning had just broken by the time I got my camera out and the sun was so low that it really gave body and form to the landscape.
In a recent episode of the podcast we host, The Secret Life of Weddings, we chatted about a major hot topic among wedding photographers these days. We got a little heated and felt it was important enough to write out our thoughts as well.
Here's my favorite quote from Jay Maisel, one of the legends in the world of photography: "If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person." As photographers, we often get bored in the place we live and we want to travel as much as possible to get different and more interesting pictures.
I recently discussed how Fujifilm's decision to go into the medium format industry might have been a mistake. But considering some of the recent announcements, have my points been completely negated?
It’s not often camera news puts dread in my heart, but Panasonic’s full frame announcement felt like watching CNN at its most doom-laden. The future, suddenly, does not seem so bright for us Micro Four Thirds (M43) shooters.
It’s standard practice for commercial photography clients to ask photographers for their ‘day rate’. Most estimates that photographers provide start with a day rate before going on to production costs and expenses.
Of all the current camera manufacturers, if you were to call me a fanboy of any of them, Fujifilm would be the most accurate. There’s good reason too: it produces some of the best cameras on the market and its commitment to offering meaningful updates, after the fact, is uniquely wonderful.
I'm going to start from the beginning. I didn’t have a bad upbringing. My parents worked hard for our family and always provided for me and my sister. They taught us right from wrong, how to be kind, loving and caring. We weren't rich, but we never ever went without.
What if you had the same camera, lighting and subject matter as everyone else. A groundhog day for a photographer so to speak. If we all have the same gear what would make you different?
My name is Pye Jirsa, and I'm a wedding photographer and the co-founder of SLR Lounge. Before I get started, let me say that I feel like the most unlucky person when it comes to electronics and major purchases. But, even with my bad luck, perhaps you will find this experience odd and worth sharing.
I was interviewed by street photographer Eric Kim back in 2016, and it was a huge deal for me! I remember when I first started shooting street, his blog was one of the first that I came by.
In the last couple of years (has it really been that long?) we've been hearing revelations of the trials of female photojournalists. Nothing, unfortunately, too unexpected. Every time around someone writes another version of the standard essay on this topic covering much the same appalling ground every time. See, for instance, this recent iteration.
It’s September, which means another generation of Apple iPhones. This year, the iPhone XS (pronounced “ten ess”) adds a slightly larger sensor plus significantly more computing power via the A12 Bionic Chip to enhance the phone’s image signal processing.
Whelp! The Internet reminded me a few days back that I’ve officially been shooting photography for over 10 years now. I’ll be honest, I thought my progress would have been further. I assume the end of my life will be something like what I am currently experiencing, which is “Wow, that went fast.” It seems I’m just barely starting to grasp the wise words of my elders when they told me “Time goes quicker than you think.”
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.
“Meet my friend Saurabh. He’s an amazing photographer from India and his work has been published in various reputed newspapers and journals worldwide like Nat Geo, The Guardian, Lonely Planet, etc. Astonishingly, he’s a self-taught photographer and very passionate about his work.”
When it comes to architecture and interior photography, it's generally best practice to shoot using a tripod. There are several obvious reasons why, mostly due to being able to shoot effectively with slower shutter speeds and to compose your images more precisely.
I think there is this weird idea floating around that creativity is a young person’s game, particularly certain genres of creativity (photography and music for sure). That somehow you are at your peak creatively in your twenties and thirties, and then it’s downhill from then on. I think that’s insane.
I won’t muddy the waters by going into my personal politics but, needless to say, there are things I support and things I oppose. People fall on various sides of the issues I feel strongly about. When it comes to my videography business, though, things might be getting tricky. Am I a-political? Do I have a duty as a media producer? When I heard from an agency looking to film political ads in my city I had to start thinking about all that.
We all know the importance of photography, whether it's journalism's role in changing the world to a wonderful moment captured of someone’s special day. As photographers, we value our craft and the importance it has in our lives. But the market is valuing it less and less. Why is that? What is happening?
How literally should you interpret a histogram? Where do the lines intersect between artistic expression and photographic technicalities? It’s important to first recognize that a histogram is nothing more than a mathematical representation.
I hated every single one of my photos. My personal hero, Jimmy Chin, would have too if he could have seen them at the time.
With the release of Nikon’s new mirrorless camera and the impending release of Canon’s competitor, we are seeing the future of photography as we know it. However, in the response of some we are also seeing the demise of the community as a whole.
Last week, I went out on a limb and pre-ordered the 24-megapixel Nikon Z6, which should ship on November 30. It is a bit of a flyer, but assuming my instincts are correct, the camera will replace my second body, my D750.
Nikon announced their new Z6 and Z7 cameras this week, and for the most part I’m kind of disappointed with the offerings. I personally don’t think they are bad cameras, though -- I just think that considering the competition and the state of interchangeable lens cameras in 2018, Nikon is lagging far behind the competition.
Over the last few years, we've seen how Sony has made some pretty huge gains in the photography industry. This is especially true for the mirrorless market and plenty of photographers have switched from DSLR cameras to Sony mirrorless cameras. Even still, I predict that once Canon releases its mirrorless cameras, it will eventually dominate that industry too.
For me, photography is an escape. It offers a creative release which isn't generally available in everyday life. Those creative escapes can often be far more satisfying than just enjoying a few beers or binging Netflix.
The mirrorless camera industry is about to blow up and we have Sony mirrorless to thank for this. This is how they achieved their massive success.
Saw an ad for a “Styled (Wedding) Shoots Conference.” For those of you unfamiliar with the styled shoots, it’s where models play fake brides who fake marry models playing fake grooms at a fake wedding filled with fake guests and then cut a wedding cake at a fake styled reception while photographers who have paid to photograph the fake-ness happily snap away at the event and then post all the styled fakery in their portfolio as samples of “their work.”
A few days ago, I awoke to a text message from a friend who lives halfway around the world telling me that he had unexpectedly seen one of my images on a FOX News story. The image was from a photoshoot that I had done of Richard “Old Man” Harrison from the television show Pawn Stars, which airs on the History Channel. However, after looking it up and seeing what photo he was talking about, I was surprised. The photo I was met with wasn’t even one I remembered taking.
On July 20th, my username got stolen from me on Instagram. Since then, I exchanged a number of emails with Facebook Advertiser Support, talking to a real person, but that has lead nowhere so far.
The Wellcome Trust is the world’s second largest charitable trust with an endowment of approximately £23.2 billion (~$30 billion). For the past 20 years, it has produced a photo contest called the Wellcome Image Awards, and this year, it rebranded the contest as the Wellcome Photography Prize.
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.
Inevitably a time will come around when a budding photographer decides to start "taking this seriously," "discouraging image theft," and (my personal favorite), "gaining exposure." And they do this, of course, with a watermark.
It's 7:30 in the morning in Winnipeg and my wife awakens me to share the news that she has just gotten the job she has always wanted in Toronto. It has been six months since we had first planned our move to Toronto. All of the sudden, we were moving across the country in 3 weeks. This just got real.
Imagine, you’re partaking in Pedestrian Sunday at Kensington Market on a sunny summer afternoon in Toronto, Canada, walking around with your Fuji X100F in hand looking for that Cartier-Bresson “decisive moment.” Suddenly you see a child leaning against a dilapidated, graffiti-splashed wall the likes of which would make Banksy nod in approval.
For the past several years my photography website called Squarespace home. Among online, fully-contained, content management systems, it is hard to go wrong with Squarespace. Offering domain registration and hosting, plus well-crafted templates, Squarespace makes it easy to create a professional looking website.
Here's a warning to all the photographers out there: caffeine and complicated camera repairs do not mix well. I found out the hard way and killed my $2,400 Sony RX1 full frame compact camera.
It has been bugging me for a while now: there is just something that is missing from photography. From my personal work to the majority of photographers out there. I’m talking about the photos on your feeds, be it personal to commercial. It has been bugging me and I finally found out what it is: what is missing from photography is stories.
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.
As a photographer and YouTuber, I review equipment and photography related gear on my channel. There are occasions when certain items receive less than positive reviews and, in most circumstances, the company in question operates in a very professional manner. Unfortunately, this isn’t true in every case and after I reviewed the Hasselblad H6D 100c, Hasselblad weren’t too happy with me.
One of my least favorite shots from Sani lodge now serves as a constant reminder of poor practice to me. This subject was one of many subjects collected by Tropical Herping working on a photographic field manual of Herps in Ecuador. This parrot snake (Leptophis ahaetulla) was played with.
The current boom of female-first initiatives is transforming the creative industry, providing opportunities for women to find mentorship, addressing discrepancies in pay, and helping women rally together to drive new policies and practices.
I recently received an email from National Geographic Fine Art Galleries (NGFA) for a request to include one of my photos in their galleries. It was a photo from 2012 of the Village of Gasadalur, which was published in the Dec. 2012/Jan. 2013 issue of Nat Geo Traveler. However, after I received additional information, any initial excitement turned into disappointment.
When Getty Images set up its contributor agreement with Flickr in 2008 to allow Flickr users to sell their photos, I enabled the feature. While not a professional photographer, I had been approached a couple of times in the past about licensing some of my shots and thought the opportunity to sell through Getty Images could formalize this process.
Last week, it was reported that 3 Canadian YouTube vloggers had died while swimming at the top of Shannon Falls in Squamish, British Columbia. The trio were part of content creation channel High On Life, which has a current following of 560,000 subscribers, and a further 1.1 million followers on Instagram. As the tragic news broke, so did the influx of comments across news sites and social media.
Jeff Mermelstein’s photographic practice of making presumably private text conversations public by photographing people’s phones while they are texting and then posting the results on Instagram has made a splash recently. Of course the highlight that ran in Business Insider was framed as a question in a PetaPixel article: is Mermelstein’s practice ethically sound?
Photography is an ever-evolving, ever-changing hobby, career and art-form. Over the years the cameras have evolved from primitive wooden boxes powered by chemicals, into technologically-advanced power-packed gizmos that enable pretty much anyone to take a good photograph in pretty much any environment.
With this article, I don’t want to ruin someone’s life and business or stop them from pursuing their passion, dreams, or whatever they’re after. But I do want to speak about this subject, as my frustrations with unprofessional wedding insiders have been slowly building up in the last few months.
This week Business Insider ran a story that covered images taken by a street photographer of people’s private phone messages. That photographer was the highly respected Jeff Mermelstein, someone who has a long list of celebrated work.