Sometimes we in the photography community take things too seriously. We are inclined to tell ourselves that our work is important, sometimes more important than it really is, when much of the time, we need to take a breath and relax, and have fun doing our jobs. I thought of this recently when I saw…
Continue reading →My social media followers may have noticed that Facebook recently removed one of my posts, saying “It looks like you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.” This post wasn’t an offensive meme or a politically or socially insensitive comment. It was a link to a photo on my…
Continue reading →If you know me at all, you know how fed up and I with the mythology surrounding photography, and at the center of my frustration is the idea that you can – an should – buy mastery. Anyone in any art knows that you have to earn mastery. A new piano won’t make you play…
Continue reading →I found a post about the topic of how to advise your younger photographer self on a photography website, and thought I might weigh in. It’s also worth noting that I am almost 61, older than most professional photographers, and their advice to five-years-ago them will be completely different than my advice to 45-years-ago me….
Continue reading →With graduations behind me, I’d like to thank my readers for welcoming me and having me at as many of these ceremonies as I was able to attend. It got me thinking about some of the rules of photography that I practice, and why these ideas stay with me. Access is everything. The title of…
Continue reading →Last week I talked a little about my 200mm vs my 180mm, both from a previous era of photography. Today I’d like to take a look at my 40-year-old Nikkor 400mm f/3.5. This lens was the envy of all of us in 1985. I saw them all the time, at press events and big games…
Continue reading →Once in a while, when I am going through my gear and trying (usually unsuccessfully) to get better organized, I pull out one of my oldest, most prized lenses, a Nikkor 200mm f/2.0, and set it aside with the notion that I am going to insert it into my workflow in some way. This lens…
Continue reading →I know I owe my readers an uplifting and helpful look at something in their photographic lives, and I also know that I may be starting to sound like a broken record when I warn about the perils of threats to the truths of our lives like “fake news” and, quite recently, AI, or Artificial…
Continue reading →The power was out at home this morning, so I opened up all the shades and curtains. The light was extraordinary, so I reached for my Fujifilm X-T10, set it to a black-and-white film simulation mode, and made some pictures. This could also be called Monochrome Challenge: Powerless.
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A couple of headlines in the photography and videography press caught my eye this week: Blackmagic Teases Groundbreaking 17K Large-Format Cinema Camera Old Movies Are Being Enhanced With AI Tools and Not Everyone is Happy Okay, the first one. “17K” refers to a newer, higher-resolution imaging sensor, in which a mind-boggling amount of videographic data…
Continue reading →As I continue my plans to see and photograph the April 8 solar eclipse, I felt like it might be useful to share of few numbers I discovered when I photographed the August 2017 Great American Eclipse. But first, a note about attitude: the coming eclipse has the potential to be a truly amazing experience,…
Continue reading →My readers might recall that I spent spring break in Arizona, hiking and exploring. One result of this was that I missed covering one of the biggest news events of the year in Ada, a huge hailstorm. Nevertheless, I had an amazing time. I visited Chiricahua National Monument, both halves of Saguaro National Park, Organ…
Continue reading →Here is a great film memory: me in my darkroom at The Ada News in about 1993. I got to looking closely at this image and my photos on the walls at the time, and I realized I know a bunch of these people. Carey Johnson, Stephanie West, that Romanian baby, Denise Kreuger, those models…
Continue reading →As I write this, I am staring at this headline: “Will AI Ruin Travel Photography?” For a few seconds, I just stared at it, like a cave man with a smart phone, slowly asking myself, “how could AI effect travel photography?” I didn’t understand that at all, since travel photography is about preserving and sharing…
Continue reading →Social media has been up to its old tricks lately; ignoring what it wants, or the truth, and being outraged by minutia. While browsing this lackluster scene this week, a video by a young photographer shuffled past my web crawling called “2024 Will Ruin Film?” Film is already dead, and here’s why: it is actually…
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