Photojournalists (and many other photographers, not to mention “regular ole people”) will be well aware of Wright, especially since she gained a broader audience with her recent book, “Learning to Breath.”
The reason I point portraitists to Wright is because regardless of what country she finds herself in (a lot), Wright focuses on the people—and does so with incredible, respectful sensitivity. But that can be said of many photographers. What’s particularly great for portraitists is that Wright often turns her surroundings into backdrop-like studio environments, and her images have an intensity and sense of calm that many portrait photographers would like to bring to a commercial session.
An important extra bonus is that Wright’s site is Flash-driven and well conceived, allowing one (you!) to just sit back and go for a quick, inspiring ride.
But speaking at supersonic speeds to try to cram ten critical tips into five video minutes was a losing strategy for Rick. Even covering “only” five tips in that time would have been too much.
If you are a successful photographer secure in you image making there’s no need to turn to “Rick Sammon’s Exploring the Light: Making the Very Best In-Camera Exposures.” If however, you need help with your process, your composition, your use of natural and strobe light, not to mention critical fundamentals regarding exposure, this book is a fantastic, easy and enlightening read.
“Exploring the Light” is also a perfect book to recommend to the would-be photographers or amateurs you encounter who need a good, helping hand, but that find that most basic photography how-to books fall short. The reason most basic photography books fall short is because they miss critical fundamentals or over-explain over-rated technical fine-points.
“Learning to Breath: One Woman’s Journey of Spirit and Survival” by acclaimed photojournalist Alison Wright is definitely a book of note for picture professionals. Whether you will find it amazingly and uniquely inspiring or whether they will find it frustratingly lacking will depend utterly on personality, interests and taste in literary style. From my point of view, each perspective – that the book is a soaring success or a frustrating failure – seems entirely valid.
“Learning to Breath” revolves around Wright’s horrifying, very-near-death accident in a bus in the windy, isolated mountain roads of Loas, just after New Year’s 2000. As always, Wright was busy both globetrotting around the world to photographically record endangered cultures as she also Continue reading “Inspiring Photojournalist Shares Gasping Buddhist Learnings”
I try to avoid writing reviews of books I don’t deem worthy of reading. But I feel that it is important to steer you away from Scott McNulty’s “Building a WordPress Blog People Want To Read.”
McNulty is one of the few people actually earning a living blogging, and he is certainly an expert on the topic, having a wealth of information to share. But that wealth is not shared well in “Building a WordPress Blog.” The book definitely contains valuable tidbits, but this information is Continue reading “A Blogging Book To Avoid”
So, as a community of photographers dedicated to the health of community, what do we do about the fact that photography schools are utterly useless? Personally, I think we should stop the insanity. How? Simple. Let’s all head to the nearest photography school, poor a few thousand gallons of gas on it, and then flick a match on the out-dated, out-of touch institution.
No, no, I’m not an anarchist, and I certainly don’t want anyone to get hurt. But, it’s not an exaggeration to say that people are getting hurt by being lead to believe that professional photography skills are best learned in a photography school.
This one goes out to all of you who are considering going to a photography school. Also, just as important, to all of you who get asked for advice about attending one. I’m also reaching out to all of you who care about the health of the image-making industry as a whole.
My message is the fact is that we need to destroy photography schools, which are utterly useless, totally out-of-date and totally out-of-touch institutions.
“Real World Video Compression” sounded pretty boring to me, even though I’ve started playing around with video, and even though I’m pretty excited about the convergence of still and motion.
Written by compressionist extraordinaire Andy Beach, “Real World Video Compression” is a surprising delight and utterly relevant to still-focused picture professionals—from movie-making photographs to office-bound photo assistants prepping Flash movies of still images for the Web.
Do you see the image within the image in this B&W gradient? There is one (really) and if you figure it out how to find it, you are a definitely Photoshop üuuuuber geek. Rock on!
If you can’t even figure out how to begin to approach the problem (um, like me) don’t worry. You can still enjoy learning by following the thinking of David Friedman.
New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham is an excellent fashion/street image-maker with a insightful sense of humor, and he shows how powerful simple, still-image-based motion pieces can be with his, “On the Street: The Water Dance.”
Besides enjoying Cunningham’s images in his three minutes of silly insight into a New Yew winter “tradition” – the “jumping game” — you can really appreciate the simple new media power of this piece. It’s just still images smartly put together with a voiceover, but it’s a great attention grabber.
No need to capture motion, write a story, add music or use fancy graphics!
Can’t you see how you could put this to use for wedding clients or promotional efforts? Maybe you already have. If so, share your story!
Portrait photographers should definitely check out the website of renowned photojournalist Alison Wright. . . to see amazing images and to gain for cross-pollinated inspiration.
