Opinion

Do you want to switch from Canon to Sony? From Sony to Nikon? From Nikon to Panasonic? From Panasonic to Fujifilm? Well, I’m going to ask you to stop, take a deep breath, and consider doing the most boring thing: absolutely nothing. Instead of switching camera brands, you should probably stick with what you have.

Color is complex. Achieving great color can be cumbersome, both in analog and digital workflows, and developing and researching it has been as hard as rocket science.

What a strange year this has been, right? Yet, curiously, this has also been a year in which I have probably taken the greatest leaps in my photography for some time. Because when you are doing something new, or have been pushed into a new way of life, you can either freeze and panic... or you can use it as an opportunity to try new things. To innovate.

On the 14th of October, Nikon is set to announce its latest cameras. These are due to be updates to the Z 7 and Z 6 mirrorless cameras. There are a lot of expectations, but the biggest expected update for these cameras is... the second card slot.

Social media is always an uproar, there's no way around it. Photography social media is much the same, and mostly it's mostly harmless fun. I want to draw attention to two recent episodes that were not harmless fun, and which I worry point toward a larger trend.

Over the last few years, several companies have been actively producing accessories for smartphones. The majority of these accessories have been for iPhones and for the most part the accessories haven’t been overly significant devices. What I mean is that the accessories most manufacturers produced have been small LED flashes or add-on lenses. This seems to be changing with what Profoto has done and I wonder if this is the right direction for the market.

What’s happened has happened. But I just kind of want to rant so that maybe, if some future brides/grooms see this, they'll understand the perspective of a photographer who may also be their friend.

Last week, in the span of slightly over 19 hours, news broke that the Whitney Museum had 1) acquired images from a charity print sale by Black photographers to mount a show entitled Collective Actions: Artist Interventions in a Time of Change, 2) offered the photographers a lifetime pass to the museum for their unsanctioned participation, and 3) canceled the show following a tweetstorm of outrage over the exploitative move.

While teaching a recent workshop, I joked that street photography was the only genre where people would buy $3,000 worth of cameras and lenses and then deliberately use them to make out of focus, grainy, imperfect images. This led to a pretty interesting discussion about the merits to imperfection.

A new op-ed published by the Deputy Editor of the Nikkei Asian Review in Japan is making waves in the industry today. The article strikes an ominous tone, foreshadowing difficult times ahead for the camera giants and blaming "excessive competition" for their financial woes.

The Leica SL2 replaces the SL typ 601 and represents the very best performance and image quality that Leica can produce. It’s the flagship. While maintaining iconic colours and shooting experience, this camera is one of the best pieces of equipment I have ever had the pleasure of using.

When a few days past, the news circulated that Kodak Alaris had sold its paper division to Hong Kong-based Chinese company Sino Promise, reactions were mixed and ranged from disinterest over protectionist outrage to the fear that analog photography would finally meet its demise.

Why do I do landscape photography? I've been trying to conceptualize an answer to this question as I delve deeper into my self-expression through creating imagery.

Okay, I know the title of this article sounds a bit clickbaity -- and to be honest, it is. Proclaiming anything to “be dead” always sounds alarmist. But really, I don’t see a bright future for the medium I love.

For those who are anywhere near the microstock photography industry, you may have noticed that there is a lot of shouting going on at the moment about the latest release from Shutterstock.

Any event photographer gets tons of requests from people asking for specific photos from an event. Sometimes they will acquiesce, but often not. Don't nag them if they don't get back to you or say no. Here's why.

I look at hundreds of photographs everyday and I’ve noticed that how people take photos is in direct correlation to how they live their day to day lives. This may not sound like a startlingly profound fact but, put simply: your personality can create the biggest barrier to achieving interesting and unique photographs.

One of the most hotly debated questions for landscape photographers is how to answer the age-old question, “Where did you shoot that?” While the question is simple enough, whether to answer (and how to answer) is an internal question many shooters contend with in the age of Instagram.

Should your photograph have a name? If not, why not? If so, then why? And does anyone really care? I’m of the opinion that it should always have a name, an identity, a personality. Well, all of mine at least. What you do with yours is entirely up to you. And as it should be.

I don't normally rant, but this has been bothering me for quite some time. I try not to worry about what gets written on the Internet because I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions and it's healthy to have many different opinions for others to pick and choose what works for them. Let's face it, there is no hard and fast rule that photographers must abide by.

A few months ago, I was hired as an on-court, fixed broadcast camera operator for an Association of Tennis Professionals event as an independent contractor. While we were not broadcast live on a network, we were broadcasting throughout the stadium and event village as well as being taped for the network.

In many parts of the U.S. the reality of social distancing policies have only been in place for about a month. Yet during that time and the few weeks that preceded it, photographers have already churned through a number of phases to document and depict the outbreak.

One of the byproducts of the new-wave approach to street photography, which champions anonymity, mystery, and a cinematic aesthetic, is that there is an absolute abundance of images featuring silhouetted figures and shadow play. These are the kind of images I started off creating, and there are some fantastic artists who have utilized this style over the years, my favorite of these being Fan Ho, one of the classic progenitors of this style.

The past few years have made it abundantly clear that platforms hold disproportionate power in the online sphere – from Uber to Grubhub to Amazon. Online success is predicated on building both utility as well as a critical mass of users, and for that, platforms should be congratulated.

I’m a wildlife photojournalist, my work and my personal project focus on stories related to wildlife conservation. I’ve seen first-hand the destruction left behind by the horrific illegal wildlife trade.

If you haven’t heard about this following situation, then you might just lose your temper now.

Since mid-March, various policies have been implemented at the state and federal level in the U.S. to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus and the disease it causes, COVID-19.

I have sometimes been critical when landscape photographers combine two or more photos not taken at the same time to make one great photo -- adding northern lights or beautiful skies to a photo that did not have them, for example -- and then making people believe it was something that really happened.

I don’t remember the first time I became aware of my family photo album, but from a very young age I always found looking at those photos a time absorbing, and totally enthralling pastime. I would sit for long periods of time staring at those familiar faces, all those captured moments of times gone by, and lose myself in a world of wonder.

As with a majority of newbies to photography, the obsession with gear and chasing the newest toys proved to be irresistible to me. I spent far more time reading reviews, comparing charts, watching youtube videos, and looking for deals than actually going out and shooting.

Let’s not waste any time. What is the most important element in someone’s photography style? The quick answer is repetition.

You’re pretty new to hiring professional photographers, so perhaps you feel you need to provide them with a wedding photo list in advance of your wedding. Here are 5 important reasons why you probably shouldn’t.

The particularity of the photo industry is its death wish. At its core, everything and everyone in this industry seems hell-bent into destroying itself and, along with it, the whole industry.

Late Winter and early Spring bring another cycle of photo contest season – that time of year when many major prizes are announced (especially in the photojournalism realm). And with each year brings another round of punditry regarding the value of photo contests and an almost inevitable controversy regarding the winners.

This is a question that I struggle with, because I truly believe that the best camera is the camera you already have. I want to believe that you can give me any camera and I will still make great photographs. But the truth is, camera gear does matter... kind of.

Sometimes you know about two things in completely different parts of your brain, and then one day, for no reason, you put them together and your head explodes — a cascade of understandings like the last scene in “Usual Suspects”. After 40 years of taking pictures, that happened to me. One idea changed me overnight. And if you have a camera it will change you, too.

I just did an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session on Instagram Stories, and someone asked the question: ‘Do You Photoshop Your Pictures?’

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, author Jared Diamond describes two systems of invention transmission: 1) idea diffusion: imitation of an idea, and 2) blueprint copying: literal copying of an idea.

The battle is on. The forces of truth against forces of deception. With visual AI making it easier to fake visual content, its credibility is at stake. And with it, the income of thousands upon thousands of people worldwide who depend on the credibility of visuals to thrive: newspapers, magazines, photographers, newswires, webcasters, television news, videographers, journalists, and photo agencies, among many others.

I did my first advertising assignment in the year 2000. I still remember how excited I was when I, a few months later, walked out of a bookstore on Chestnut Street in San Francisco with several magazines with my pictures in them.