photography
I believe that trying to be original for the sake of it is counterproductive, and ultimately impossible. Instead of worrying about what others have or haven’t done, we should focus on being true to ourselves and photographing subjects that resonate with us. If that’s an iconic location, so be it. If it’s something no one else has photographed before, that’s great. Perhaps it's a combination of both.
Outdoor photography gets romanticized often, but the reality can be very harsh for most of us. A dream job is still a job, after all.
In this video, I talk about why I took the step of quitting my job and becoming a full-time photographer, how to make money with photography, and some practical tips.
With TikTok facing a potential ban and Instagram ruining profile grids, many creators are questioning if building a presence on social media is worth the effort, given the uncertainty of the medium.
I’ve always advocated for personal websites and blogs: a platform you can truly own, free from the whims of tech billionaires. At the same time, though, I don’t shy away from sharing my work on social media.
These days, a website feels like opening a studio in a quiet, rundown part of town, while everyone is hanging out at the mall. It is flashy, lively, and all the cool kids are there. They even offer us a little corner for free, so we can speak our truths to the whole world.
That’s until the mall starts charging a fee and diverting visitors to the business placing the highest bids. Over time, you also realize that even though you got to interact with a lot of visitors, most of those interactions were fleeting. You’ve never seen those people ever again.
Yet, among the noise, meaningful connections still happen every now and then at the mall. While I’ve connected with fellow photographers through my or their websites, most of my relationships with people in this field have come through social media.
This has never been a case of the website or social media, but about embracing both the website and social media. The most beautiful, personal website is useless if no one ever visits; and your social media presence relies on whatever happens to please the owner that day of the week.
There’s no ideal solution to the problem of reaching an audience in this noisy, loud world. I believe that embracing both worlds is the best we can do.
This is an excerpt from my eBook Creative B&W Editing in Lightroom:
"If you follow me on social media, you may have noticed that I add white borders to the images I share there. The idea behind these borders is to maintain a consistent perception of the images across various platforms and viewing conditions.
I have very little control over how my images are displayed on platforms I don’t own. With the relatively recent introduction of a dark mode (night mode) on mobile devices and apps, the same photograph can now be presented against a white background during the day and a dark one at night, effectively altering the perceived tonality of the image.
By adding borders to my photographs, I can have at least some control over how the viewers will perceive the tonality, regardless of how the platform decides to present my work.
On the platforms I fully control —and that is, my website—, I publish my images without borders while still ensuring a consistent experience."
--
Sadly, Instagram is rolling out a change to the way it displays profile grids, so I might have to tweak my approach a little. But this change further proves the importance of controlling how your imagery is presented.
I believe these little details matter a lot, as they can significantly change how a photograph is perceived.
I had heard nothing but praise about Dan Winters’ Road to Seeing. So I was very excited when the only copy at my local library became available.
It’s a beautifully crafted book--thick, heavy, gorgeous print, with of incredible photography, including Winters’ own work but also other renowned photographers. Anyone who bought it for the retail price of $50 when it came out definitely got their money’s worth. The book is no longer in print, and secondhand copies can sell for hundreds of dollars.
But what about that road to seeing?
I appreciate when a photographer shares their influences because it helps contextualize their work and their way of thinking. However, I feel like this takes too much space in the book, especially because it features work by well-known photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, W. Eugene Smith, or Robert Frank, hardly new to anyone with some knowledge of photography. The same applies to the section about the history of the medium.
The rest of the book is great, though. At times, the book reads like an autobiography, where Winters shares parts of his life at first seemingly unrelated to photography, but always connecting everything back to his growth as an artist. In my opinion, this explains much more about the photographer than a dull, boring explanation of composition and technical details.
A substantial part of the book is dedicated to his incredible portrait work. It’s always interesting to see how some of the most celebrated pictures came to be.
But my favorite sections of the book are those dedicated to his personal projects, from photographing bees to his son. They show how Winters has embraced the camera not just to create beautifully crafted portraits of celebrities, but also to document his personal life, what he was seeing at the moment, and make it all a work of art.
This is the big takeaway of the book, in my opinion. Even though there are some actionable strategies shared in these pages -photograph often, pay attention, don’t forget to live life-, Road to Seeing is not a field guide on how to make better photographs. Dan Winters shows us instead how he carved his own path, and he encourages us to do the same. That beyond the craft and all the technical considerations, the artist must be curious, persevere (even obsess), and explore.
Recommended read if you can find a copy at your local library. Otherwise, you might be able to buy an electronic version of it somewhere.
After years of sharing my work online -my images, my workflow, my opinions, my successes and my mistakes- it still surprises me that most of the little “hate” I’ve received has been about how I treat my cameras.
This happens less now that I’ve switched to digital -apparently, no one seems to care about the fate of a soulless Sony camera. But it was a different story when I used to shoot film with my beloved Bronica SQ-Ai. You’d think I was committing some kind of crime whenever I showed that camera getting rained on. I probably caused some panic attacks the day I dropped it on a sandy beach.
And because the work I created with that beauty is still out there, every once in a while I get another message along those lines.
Whenever I get one of these messages, I think of something I read a while ago about books, which I’ve adapted to cameras: “buying books and reading books are two completely different hobbies”.
There’s nothing wrong with appreciating and loving the design of a beautifully crafted camera, even if it only serves as decoration on a shelf. Just don’t expect everyone to feel the same way towards devices that were meant to take photos out in the field, in the real world.
I like to say that instead of photographing a location, I capture the conditions. That’s why I often don’t go somewhere, I go there when something is happening.
That was the case for my last trip to Lake Tahoe. I had been there a few years ago, and struggled with the image-making. I knew the place had potential; I just needed the conditions that work best for me.
Several days before the trip, I noticed the forecast: up to a foot of snow in the Tahoe area. I have some of my favorite spots in the weather app, so I’m almost constantly checking the conditions around me.
Of course, long-term forecasts can be little more than educated guesses, especially when it comes to predicting the weather up in the mountains. So, I waited until the last minute to book a room, once it was pretty clear the snow was coming.
Luckily, prices not only didn’t go up... they dropped. Mid-December is low season in Tahoe. It’s cold for swimming and hiking, but too early for skiing and the holidays. I find that when conditions are bad for crowds, they usually make for good photography… and for finding relatively affordable lodging.
I am so glad I gave Tahoe another chance. After all, there are no bad places to photograph, only bad conditions.
When we walk with a camera in hand, we tend to focus on what's in front of us, to the sides as we pass by, or up and down for the more observants among us. But rarely do we look back.
No matter which direction we’re walking, the light is always different behind us. Something we might have dismissed at first glance could reveal itself as extraordinary when viewed from the opposite angle.
Looking back isn’t an easy habit to develop, but it's one that will pay off.
You might be wondering if this will make our walks longer. Absolutely. Much longer. But that’s the point.
I recently finished reading “The Zen of Creativity” by the zen master and photographer John Daido Loori. This mix of skills gave me hope the book would offer a new and fresh perspective.
The book does indeed give valuable insights into applying some of the Zen art principles to photography and other creative areas.
Here are the main takeaways I got from it:
Embrace a mindset free from preconceived ideas and expectations. In photography, this might mean taking the time to fully observe familiar subjects. Also, visit locations or subjects that you haven’t seen before, with no prior knowledge about them, or exposure to another photographer’s work of them.
The goal is to achieve a state of awareness devoid of distractions --achieved through meditation and consistent practice. I believe this is a very important aspect when it comes to photography, and that’s why I often emphasize the importance of practice. The more familiar we become with our equipment, the less it gets in the way, letting us to focus on what’s in front of the camera and on what we want to say.
Be mindful of what our senses, beyond vision, perceive and how we can communicate that through our photography. Evoking emotional responses in the viewer should be our primary objective. Even not on the book, I’d also like to point out here that those senses can trick us into believing our images are better than they really are. As photographers, we have a context the viewer does not have, and if the photographs are not strong enough to convey what’s necessary, then they’ll only speak to us.
Lastly, Loori emphasizes the significance of feedback. Not on technical aspects, but on the emotional impact our work has on the audience. He believes that most artists develop their career without truly knowing what their work means for their audience, if anything. They know what the art critics say, and whether the work is commercially successful or not. But beyond that, they are blind.
I go into much more detail on this book on my Patreon page.
I didn't follow the rules I've set up for myself... and I missed a couple of good shots.
For the past five years, I’ve been using high-resolution full-frame cameras for my photography -- starting with the A7Rii, and now the A7Riv. This choice might seem surprising, especially given the type of images I create.
The reason is very simple: cropping.
I crop every single photograph I take, even when I get the perfect framing in-camera. Creating square images means I “discard” a third of the pixels, every single time.
A7Riv’s 61MP let me crop even further, and I often do. Switching to APS-C mode gives that extra reach I sometimes need, effectively turning my 28-200mm superzoom into a 28-300mm, while still producing large, detailed files.
In fact, in APS-C mode, the A7Riv matches the 26MP of a dedicated crop-sensor camera like the a6700. This means I can mount a lens like the 70-350mm and get an equivalent 525mm focal length in a compact setup -- much smaller than the full-frame counterparts. Or mount a prime like the 35mm 1.4 and "switch" to 50mm with the press of a button.
So, it’s not about having 61MP images; I couldn’t care less about that. It's about the flexibility those megapixels give me: I don't have to carry as much gear; or I can shoot in bad weather and not have to worry about switching lenses to get the focal length I need. I like camera gear that gets out of the way, because I can focus on what really matters: subject and composition.
Oh, the delicate balance between consistency, working a subject matter or location over years, and avoiding stagnation. To make matters even worse, we live in a fast paced world that demands new and shiny things every couple of weeks. What is a photographer to do with all of this?
Black and White takes whatever the world has to offer, and gives us the freedom to create our own version of it. Images that only existed in our mind before.
In this video, I share some tips and techniques to get creative with Black and White photography, how we can take a snapshot and transform it into a fine art piece.
If you are like me, and like going out often and taking lots of pictures, you might have hundreds if not thousands of photographs sitting in your memory cards or in a hard drive. In this video, we'll see how we can go from hundreds of images to just a handful of ones, our very best photographs.
"One of the downsides of the disposable camera is that it’s fun, which is in strict contrast to real professional photography which must always be stressful, or else you go to photography jail." - Casually Explained (YT)
Photography is the best excuse to go explore the world. Even better, to discover a whole new dimension that has always been there, hiding in plain sight. The camera is a superpower. But it all starts with a pair of comfortable shoes.
This photo by photojournalist Evan Vucci is already an iconic image of our times. The amazing Imitative Photography YouTube channel has a great video showing how that photograph was made - a rare example of how great photography is done.
And yet, some still miss the point. “Right aperture / exposure / iso”, “there’s nothing special about being on this spot, they literally were right there” are some of the comments. Go figure.
Now, I have no idea what the exact settings were. Evan had much more important things to focus on, so it is likely that they were already dialed in for the conditions, or that he was shooting in some semi-automatic mode. In any case, he could've missed on some of those settings and the image would've still been as iconic as it finally turned out to be.
Indeed, the image is iconic not because it's perfectly exposed, it has no noise, or because the color balance is accurate. No, it's all about the story it tells. And making it might look easy, but it was anything but that.
What those commenters are missing is that the image was made because of Evan’s vision, who was able to anticipate what was going to happen next by moving to the right spots; the big balls it takes to point a camera at a presidential candidate when armed forces are looking for a shooter (who you don’t even know if is still active!); the experience it takes to frame your subject perfectly in a chaotic environment without thinking much about it; and the practice it requires to know how to use your camera as fast as Evan did, literally an extension of his body.
When something looks easy but yet only a few manage to do it, you know they are some of the best at what they do. Of course, there’s nothing especial to that shot, provided you are at the right spot, at the right time, ready and with the skills and experience required to make it happen. Other than that, nothing to see here.
In a world that is constantly trying to sell us shortcuts and workarounds, it's important to realize that the road to great photography is rather unassuming and kind of boring. It is the accumulation of great work made over the years with hard work that we can start building a body of work. It is a very simple path, but not easy to follow.
In order to make great photographs, we need to know what makes them great in the first place. Developing a photographic taste is crucial, both internal (our own taste) and external (the objective truths of the medium).
In this video, we dive deep into this topic and talk about how we can get better as photographers by improving our taste.
I am a huge advocate of daily photography. I try to take photographs wherever I am, whatever I’m doing. One reason is that there’s always an image waiting to be made, but also because I believe the more we do it, the better we get at it.
Surely, blind practice can be detrimental in deterministic scenarios, like basketball: sticking to a bad shooting technique when you are missing all your shots can make you a worse player in the long run. Practice doesn’t always make perfect without feedback and corrections.
But what does “perfect” even mean in photography as an art?
When we take photographs often, we become more familiar with our camera, our process, dealing with different subjects and lighting conditions, and post-processing.
More importantly, spending a bit of time every day paying attention to our surroundings, looking for something worthwhile to capture, can only make us better observers.
And above all, mistakes are not to be avoided in photography. Experimentation is fundamental to growing as an artist, even if it doesn’t seem like it at first.
There’s never been perfection in art, and there will never be.
