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.
I’m going to start you off with a little honest story. Once upon a time I, maybe like you, only walked around in hiking pants and jeans for days on end during my travels (except if I was shooting for our photography project @followmeaway or traveling somewhere hot like Italy).
Yesterday morning, I woke up and deleted all my social media. My Instagram, Twitter, and personal Facebook accounts (I deleted my Facebook business page a year earlier), all gone. I ghosted from the party. As a small business, it’s a bold move (if not insane) to walk away from such successful pages (I had over 60,000 followers between the three platforms). But I had had enough, and here’s why.
For a while now I have been working on establishing myself as a street photography educator by leading lessons and workshops throughout London, focusing on documenting human behavior and emotion rather than more new-wave techniques involving light-architecture and intricate technical compositions.
I see a lot of articles across the Internet claiming to know the "rules to follow" or the "things to avoid" in street photography, easily one of the most hotly debated genres. What they tend to misunderstand is just how little the genre cares for photographic rules, and what the defining elements of street photography really are that go beyond any of the purely photographic elements.
In recent years I’ve been privileged to be on the jury for a whole range of photography competitions. These include single image competitions such as WPS International Excellence Awards, Masters of Wedding Photography, and the Irish wedding photography awards (In association with Learning to Fly).
It was January 2009 and I was preparing to shoot the newest campaign for the television show, Deadliest Catch. Truth be told, I had made very little the year prior because the world was experiencing a market recession, and the first budgets that many companies cut were in advertising. But then came the phone call saying that I had been awarded the photo shoot. I immediately called the camera store, for I actually didn’t own a camera at the time, having sold my Nikon D3 in the preceding weeks.
As perceptions of bias have led to devastating levels of mistrust in the media, the role of political photography has remained relatively uncontroversial. While writers might deftly tweak facts to fit a narrative, photographers covering politics have less of a scope to inject their personal opinion into their work. The camera, as they say, doesn’t lie.
It was mid-2011, and I was looking for a way to capitalize on my newfound love of photographing snowflakes. I had thrown the idea to numerous magazine, agencies, and business to see if they would bite. One publication responded favorably, asking me to write an article on spec. If they liked it, they’d consider publishing it. There was immediate excitement and immediate pressure. This could be a huge break for me in the industry.
I’m at a Starbucks in Hanoi. Typically it’s a peaceful location where I can write and think, but today it’s overrun with young people smoking cigarettes, occasionally smiling and laughing, but mostly consumed with their phones browsing Instagram and taking selfies to reload their feed with an annoyed older man in their background typing away.
I made the uncommon decision to post my rates for on-location corporate headshots on my website. Some fear it will scare away clients before the photographer gets to explain the value in their work. Valid concern. Some want to gouge bigger clients who can pay more. That’s not the way I want to run my business.
A few years ago, I read an article online about an artist who was aiming to receive 100 rejections in a year. I understand his philosophy behind the article. Based on the number of rejections, there will be a number of accepted as well. So the higher the rejection number, the higher the accepted will be too.
Long-term projects can be one of the most frustrating creative pursuits for a number of reasons. There is a large investment of time, obviously, but there can also be the uncertainty of where a story goes as you watch it unfold over years, while constantly adjusting and readjusting the scope of the issues you want to deal with in your stories.
"Where should we go?" Melissa, my girlfriend, was trying to narrow down what seemed like a mountain of possibilities-places that were worthy of exploration. After a month of repeating that same question a million times, we finally settled on India.
It began with an email one morning. The link in it led to the work of one hundred fifty photographers. I had 1,500 images to judge for Focus Photo, a s**t ton of looking to get it right. It wasn’t going to be easy to hold it all in my mind, to remember why I was making the decisions I was making.
To shoot medium format had been a longtime dream of mine, but I have to admit I didn’t know it would be such a mindblowing experience. The 51.4-megapixel Pentax 645Z arrived on the market in 2014 and was the first camera to ever exceed 100 points in the DxOMark sensor test. For some unknown reason, the score and review weren't published until 2017.
After many years of doing photography as an amateur, I came to a few simple and rather trivial realizations.
I can’t help but notice all those articles proclaiming mistakes we should try to avoid in order to become a better photographer. Admittedly, I have issues with such an approach. First of all: I hate the word “should”. Basically we “should” nothing. Secondly, there is not much learning in avoiding mistakes — we learn best from our mistakes and the more bittersweet they are the more carved into our memory they become.
Walking past booth after booth at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York, I often heard camera company presenters explaining to their uncomfortably-seated, yet nonetheless-enraptured, audiences how they shot the “perfect” photo.
Almost every year, GoPro releases a new action camera, and for the last few years, they’ve been pretty disappointing. Also, every year I seem to fall for their marketing and buy one of their action cameras only to lament that decision. I understand it’s my fault, I should know better. Clearly, I’m operating with heaps of wishful thinking.
In covering the terrorist attack on a Nairobi hotel that killed at least 21 people by Shahab extremists, The New York Times decided to publish an image of a bullet-riddled body taken by Khalil Senosi. Photo Twitter was outraged, and Poynter wrote about the “hard choice” the NYT made regarding the selection.
6 months ago, my girlfriend and I finally did what we had always dreamed of doing: quitting our jobs and traveling the world. This is a relatively normal narrative for western couples in their 20s, but the difference here is I am a passionate wildlife photographer.
Back in May of last year, I finally made the move and got myself an a7 III. I had wanted a Sony body for quite some time but was hesitant to switch. Before getting into my long-term review, I’ll first explain what made me make the switch.
Can photography move you to tears? It seems like human emotions are difficult to unlock as a photographer, especially in our oversaturated world of Instagram; as of 2018, a staggering 95 million photos and videos are uploaded onto Instagram every single day. It’s more difficult than ever for a photograph to have an impact -- we’ve all debated it before, and we’ve probably seen still photography as a dying profession.
We are approaching the peak capacity for film photography labs. The machines are old, the parts are scarce, the demand is high. The measly Kodak Pakon Scanner, terrible it may be, fetches absurdly high prices.
One of my photography New Year's resolutions was to start to push my work to galleries and public photography showcases. In my mind, having my work in-print and in-public are some of the most significant steps in advancing my career as a fine art street photographer.