Portrait Photography How To

Boudoir is one of the fastest growing segments of the photography industry, but it’s not exactly a new thing for some pros. “We had been doing boudoir photography for a long time before that term became popular and the photography became a big thing,” Cherie Steinberg says. “We” is Steinberg and Hedley Jones, her husband and partner in CherieFoto and The Boudoir Café. Their main business “a long time before” was weddings, and many of their boudoir shoots featured engagement photographs or were sessions with brides whose weddings they’d photographed.

Just as the celebrities he photographs have to reinvent themselves for every role, Patrick Ecclesine is constantly putting on new hats as a photographer.

“As photographers, we have to remember what got us here today may not work tomorrow, in the sense that we constantly have to reinvent ourselves,” Ecclesine astutely affirms. “As a photographer, you’re there to capture a moment. Well, moments change, life changes, things evolve, and so you have to be open to that and not rest on your laurels or get stuck in your ways.”

Unlike landscape, portrait, wildlife, or even sports photographers, the first shots taken these days by advertising photographers on the job are almost always instantly seen and judged—by the client, the client’s representative, an agency rep, or an art director. Pressure, anyone?

Swiss photographer Sebastian Magnani’s latest photo project is pure trash, which is exactly the point. Titled “Trash Heroes,” it looks at what we, as humans, decide to throw away and why.

Good photographers are said to have a good “eye” that distinguishes them from other photographers. There’s no better way to understand this than to see how several very good photographers photograph the same subject. A case in point is a new exhibition of photographs of Marilyn Monroe titled “Inoubliable Marilyn” (“Unforgettable Marilyn”) at Paris’s La Galerie de l’Instant (December 12, 2014-February 25, 2015).

Giving a more modern twist to tradition, a team of digital imaging specialists from the Smithsonian Institute created a 3D portrait of President Barack Obama using eight high-resolution sports cameras, six wide-angle cameras, and 50 custom-designed LED lights.

When you see a crowd of people snapping photos, can you spot the professional photographer?