Pro Techniques

As I look over my favorite photographs taken through the years, a common theme intertwines many of them together: serendipity has played a major role in creating those images. Given this, I decided I wanted to be lucky more often (as luck has it, this is actually possible). Recently I read an article about the science behind luck and how luck is not random, but rather something we...

The personal project always finds you. It's never the other way around. We can't remember a pro shooter ever saying anything along the lines of, "I went looking for a labor of love." Maybe it's a subject you've been doing for years and suddenly realize how much you enjoy doing it. Or maybe you decide it's time to bring it to a wider...

As photo businesses go, David Alan Wolters (www.DavidAlanWolters.com) started out as many of our readers--a 12-year-old kid with a camera trying to find a place for himself in the world. Again, like many of us, Wolters went on to work on the high school yearbook as a photographer. Raised in the small town of Spring...

Paul Aresu
I had worked before with some of the other Explorers. I had even employed and trained one of them. But I had never before experienced the likes of Paul Aresu, a New York-based commercial photographer. His clients are like a who's who of dream customers. Aresu is a freestyler. He shoots just like all the commercial photographers you see in...

"With the alternative processes, you can see someone's hand at work. It's a very personal way of creating a photograph."

Most of us are finding more of everything thanks to digital imaging technology, but for some photographers, the essentials are getting scarce. Jill Enfield, for example, for whom it's not a question of cameras--she uses...

The difference is not always skill. Success as a pro shooter takes talent, but, as Rosanne Pennella says, "there are many excellent photographers who cannot make a name for themselves because they cannot figure out how to market themselves and project mastery of their careers."

Eleven years ago Rosanne was an attorney whose first love was not the law.

It starts with the website, which is a key element in wedding photographer John Solano's business. John's goal is to be pre-sold before the client even meets him. "The ideal is that I don't have to show them a picture," John says. "I do that, of course, but the work kind of sells itself, and if they've seen it already, the selling is...