Here’s a little piece of my mind, based on some recent inquiries from friends as well as various opinions found online. Shooting in JPEG only—especially if you've got a camera that can generate a custom look, or "recipe"—is valid. You don't need to shoot in RAW and edit every photo; for close to a century people have shot on film and developed it with hardly any manipulation. Much like using a…
In the first installment of this series, I described my workflow for selecting and categorizing images for commercial and/or editorial licensing. Here we’ll examine what kinds of licensing options you might consider offering, and what specific permissions you are granting with each.
Even when I’m not being hired to take photos, I often bring a camera to events that I’m attending, and event organizers sometimes approach me afterwards to ask if I’d be willing to share them. I usually accede to that request. However, I do set some healthy boundaries.
I used to upload stock photography to Unsplash. Some of my images got millions of views and over a hundred thousand downloads. I deleted my account.
“Dont be a sucker,” friends keep telling me. “You’re paying way too much for that toner.” And they’re not wrong. Yet each time a friend finally convinced me that this brand of toner will not spill…
I own nearly a dozen film cameras. What is it about film cameras that makes people like me want to collect them? Do I actually use all of them, or are they just decorations sitting on a shelf? What does each of these cameras bring to the table that not only makes me want to own it, but shoot with it as well?
Except for a very few dedicated souls perpetuating the art, photographers have not used 8”x10” or 4”x5” large format cameras for at least half a century. So why are the vast majority of off-the-shelf frames made for that aspect ratio?
One of the ways a photographer can earn passive income from their work is to offer images for licensing. However, there is something that every photographer should do before considering licensing any of their images.
When I first started photography as a serious hobby after buying a Nikon DSLR, I shot almost exclusively in manual mode. All that changed when I got into Fujifilm mirrorless cameras. But having to pay more attention to exposure settings when shooting with the Lux Jr. has done something special: it has rekindled my love for shooting in full manual mode.
Anyone who roams the streets with a camera must inevitably deal with certain issues, especially when there are other people around.
If you’re into film photography like me, you most likely have at least one vintage camera that either doesn’t have a built-in light meter, or it has one that doesn’t work properly. Here I review the TTArtisan light meter as an alternative to the Sunny 16 rule or handheld light meters.
Two decades after Canon released its last professional film camera, film photography is anything but dead; in fact, it’s experiencing a renaissance. The used market in vintage cameras and lenses is vibrant, and although a few beloved film emulsions are now sadly extinct, many other favorites are still in production. So what is driving this revival of what many consider an inferior and obsolete…
Few things are more ambiguous or hotly contested than the definition of street photography. Do all pictures have to be taken on a street? Do they have to have people in them? Do they have to be candid? Should you ask people's permission to take their picture before you take it, after you take it, or not at all? Should you shoot stealthily from a distance or get right in people's faces?
The 35mm focal length is supposed to be the sweet spot for street photography. Fujifilm has a compact 23mm f/2 (35mm full-frame equivalent) prime lens that gets rave reviews, has almost instant autofocus, and is weather resistant to boot. But what if you don’t need autofocus, or you don’t have $450 burning a hole in your pocket? Third-party manual focus primes can be a great low-cost alternative,…