As a pro photographer I get a lot of questions about my work. While many address my equipment and techniques, a lot of people want to know what I earn. There is no question more loaded than "How much do you make?" (Perhaps except...
My niece and keen amateur photographer Elizabeth Martin celebrated the coming of the new millennium on a mountainside near Katmandu, Nepal. She carried a backpack containing a Canon EOS Elan, 20 rolls of color print film, three pairs of wool socks, her...
Lindsay Silverman Marketing Manager, SLR Program Development Nikon Inc. Flexible Flyer. "Don't be married to one method of shooting. Even though the cameras I use can be customized, I...
One of the first techniques I learned in photography was to use long exposures at night to blur traffic lights. I liked it decades ago, and I still enjoy seeing artful streaks of light superimposed over an urban environment. You never know exactly what the resulting images will look like, and that’s part of the fun. When the background happens to striking, like the Walt Disney Theater in Los Angeles, California (#1), the combination of abstract lights and architecture makes a winning photograph.
When Yiming Hu was a freshman in college he rented a camera and fell in love with photography. After he moved from China to the United States he was drawn to landscape and travel photography and learned advanced photo techniques from books, magazines, the Internet, and lots of experience. Today he works as a computer engineering professor at the University of Cincinnati doing research, and as a second career he shoots landscapes and travel subjects in many locations to satisfy his photo appetite. I spoke with him recently about his work.
It's that time of year when many of us are gearing up for our summer vacations. Some folks will go to the far sides of the planet, others will stay close to home. But, no matter where we go, Shutterbug readers have one thing in common:...
Whenever I judge photo contests including a travel category, one fact quickly becomes apparent: picture-taking during vacation and other trips is not always taken seriously. The photographer who might spend hours making an exceptional landscape...
We had a theory that somewhere
in the career of many a pro photographer there's one photograph that marks
a turning point. It might be the one that brings the first recognition
or first sale; or the one with which she proves to herself that, yes...
Arthur Meyerson is an award-winning commercial, editorial, and fine art photographer celebrated for his control of composition and command of light and color. In 2012 he published The Color of Light, a collection of iconic, classic images that included this photograph.
Currently a lecturer, teacher, and writer, Sam Abell’s celebrated career includes positions as a contract and staff photographer and photographer-in-residence at National Geographic magazine. This 1959 photo of his father at the Painesville, Ohio, train station is the homepage image of his website, samabell-thephotographiclife.com.
Color can thrill, color can dazzle, but often a black and white or monochrome image is more powerful. Black and white may better convey the feeling you want to evoke for a particular image--more dramatic, more abstract. Paradoxically, even when you know that you want a final photo in black and white, you should shoot digitally in color, as you should scan a film or print...
Photographing airplanes and other flying machines is not something one routinely finds on a list of preferred occupations. It is in fact one of the more esoteric slices of the professional photographer’s pie. Not surprisingly, aviation photography is a demanding and potentially dangerous occupation. It requires a high level of arcane expertise in a very specialized subject area. Understandably, there is little room for error. Hanging out of flying machines with a camera in your hands is not a run-of-the-mill photo assignment.
Camera metering systems are great. No doubt about it. But there are times when you might want to expand your metering options, such as for flash or strobe studio and outdoor photography, for really tricky light and when you want to make a number of measurements within a scene, that a handheld meter will come in, well, handy.