Mar 31 2010

Inspiring Portfolios from Photojournalists

Category: Business & Marketing, Creative ProcessEthan G. Salwen @ 11:05 am

A great post from 10,000 Words from last year features a number of excellent portfolio websites. “20 Photojournalists’ fantastic portfolios” is not just for photojournalists, but will be of interest to any photographer who is continually searching for for new ways to present increasingly diverse bodies of work.

AfterCapture_Blog_100331_Photojournalist Websites

As the post’s intro points out:

The digital era has revolutionized photography. Photojournalists not only have access to high-end cameras with a seemingly infinite number of features, but their photos can be presented in many different ways, including slideshows and multimedia packages. However, it doesn’t matter the technology that powers the photography, what matters is the eye and innate skill of the photographer, as evidenced below.

The inclusion of multimedia along with still photography is one of the hallmarks of the best portfolios, such as that of Chris Jordon, which is straight forward, but which excellently concentrates on the story of the images presented — whether stills or multimedia presentations.

The 10,000 Words post suggests that all that “matters is the eye and innate skill of the photographer.” I disagree. The point is not the skill of the image maker, nor their skill in editing their best images (not easy) but, ultimately, how they best take advantage of technology to best show off those skills.

Check out the portfolios featured in the 10,000 Words post, and let these photojournalists inspire you in ways you can continue to improve your own presentation.

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Mar 26 2010

James Nachtwey’s Searing Words On War

Category: PhotographersEthan G. Salwen @ 12:01 pm

“Photojournalist James Nachtwey is considered by many to be the greatest war photographer of recent decades.” This is from Nachtwey’s bio on the TED Talks website. This is true — that Nachtwey is often considered the greatest living war photographer. However, whether or not James Nachtwey is the “greatest” war photographer is really not that interesting of a question.

In fact, the question itself belittles the photographic contributions of all image makers of conflict. (Good god, this is not the Oscars!)  Even talking about there being one, greatest war photographer (as in, “I vote for Robert Capa!”) overly romanticizes a photographic specialty that is not romantic at all. (Just check out  what Don McCullin has to say on the topic.)

While Nachtwey’s brilliance as an image maker seems unquestionable, to me what makes him truly intriguing is his personality. This man has an intense charisma that is impossible to ignore, whether you are drawn to it or repelled by it. When you are in a room with him — craning your neck as you try to hear his soft words — he has the power of attraction that rivals the gravitational pull of a black hole.

I have seen Natchwey speak two times, and I feel like I’ve been on assignment with him, having watched “War Photographer,” the incredible documentary by Christian Frei. Continue reading “James Nachtwey’s Searing Words On War”

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Mar 24 2010

Introducing the dpBestflow.org Blog

Category: Online Resources, Technology InsightsEthan G. Salwen @ 1:49 pm

AfterCapture_Blog_100324_dpBestflow_blog_1In December I told you about the launch of dpBestflow.org, an amazing online learning resource for best practices covering all aspects of digital imaging for professional photographers. This week dpBestflow.org launched a blog, and you’ll very likely want to add it to your RSS feeds.

As project director Richard Anderson explains in the blog’s first post, the dpBestflow.org blog will “answer frequently asked questions we hear at the dpBestflow seminars,” “share interesting articles, websites, forum discussions and events,” and help us “discover what is on the site.”

This last point is particularly important.

The content of dpBestflow.org is extremely well organized. However, the scope of topics is so massive that it is hard to appreciate just how amazing this learning resource is.

The dpBestflow.org blog offers a new “front door” to dpBestflow.org content for busy photographers, directing us to the areas within the site of greatest interest to our specific needs.

Anderson told me that a number of contributors will be writing for the blog, making frequent posts. Sweet!

Welcome to the blogosphere, dpBestflow.org!

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Mar 22 2010

Best Practices: How to Format a Hard Drive

Category: Technology Insights, Workflow & DAMEthan G. Salwen @ 3:43 pm

The weekend I put my new LaCie 1.5 TB drive on line for my Mac, and I’ve got to give a big hand to Peter Krogh and dpBestflow.org for making sure I did it right. It’s a very simple process, but it requires being alert to a few things that I, for one, certainly did not know.

In the “Hard Drive Handling” section of dpBestflow.org (which was written by Krogh), I encountered this:

Putting new drives into service

When you buy new drives, you should do a little preparation to increase the likelihood of trouble-free service. As part of this preparation, it’s a good practice to zero all data on the drive. ‘Zero all data’ means that you write all ones and zeros on the drive, using the formatting tools available for your operating system. Doing this will ensure that every bit on the drive is touched. This will force the drive to do a thorough scan of the volume, find bad sectors and mark them as “off limits.”

This was certainly a best practice I didn’t know about, but it makes really good sense. (Heretofore I just plugged-and-played. Major oops.)

When I my launched Disk Utility to perform this “zeroing out,” I found myself a little perplexed, not exactly sure which settings to set. (Don’t you hate that sense of almost knowing what to do with your computer, but being just a little uncertain.)

Luckily, right below the above text, Krogh provides this super dpBestflow.org video:

These are the the two steps I would have never figured out without Krogh help (applicable to Macs with Intel processors): Continue reading “Best Practices: How to Format a Hard Drive”

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Mar 19 2010

Shooting The Stars: The Big Dog

Category: Creative Process, ViewpointEthan G. Salwen @ 12:39 pm

AfterCapture_Blog_100319_Stars_1

This is the first in a series of six images I emailed to friends last week, on returning from my vacation in Mendoza, Argentina.

During the trip I became obsessed with learning the constellations in the Southern Hemisphere, and I had started using my camera as learning tool. (Still, there was time to take this one self portrait.)

To see the rest of the images in this series (they get better), continue reading this post.

Stay tuned for my next post to learn about my star photography techniques, how I used my camera to help me study the Heavens and how I made this series. Continue reading “Shooting The Stars: The Big Dog”

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Mar 17 2010

It’s About Professionalism, Stupid

Category: Viewpoint, Workflow & DAMEthan G. Salwen @ 11:40 am

AfterCapture_Blog_100317_Professionalism_1Just because someone is a professional photographer doesn’t mean he embraces the highest levels of photographic professionalism. Inversely, just because someone is not making his living from photography does not mean he does not embrace image making with utter professionalism.

Ideas about exactly what defines a “successful photographer” and how this relates to “photographic professionalism” have been on my mind since I talked with Richard Anderson on Sunday, then Howard Ruby on Monday.

Richard Anderson is a professional photographer, a digital standards expert and the driving force behind dpBestflow.org. On Sunday he was talking about how this is the true golden age of photography. In relation to his best practices work, Anderson noted how all serious photographers must embrace digital imaging best practices if they want to reach the highest levels of professionalism.

“You can shoot something in the morning and post it on the Web in the afternoon,” Anderson said enthusiastically regarding why this is the real golden age of photography. “You can have a million eyes seeing your image faster than you could have processed film before digital.”

I agreed that this is exciting, but I didn’t see exactly how it related to professionalism. After all, doesn’t this observation apply to everyone with a digital camera and very basic Web skills?

“People can still tell if professional ability has been brought to bear in an image,” Anderson told me. Continue reading “It’s About Professionalism, Stupid”

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Mar 14 2010

You’re Not Alone: All Photographers Suffer From Depression

Category: Creative Process, ViewpointEthan G. Salwen @ 1:43 pm
"Migrant Mother," 1936, by Dorothea Lange.

"Migrant Mother," 1936, by Dorothea Lange.

If you are interested in Darwin, theories regarding evolution of the brain or why depression might have a positive side, definitely check out Depressions Upside.” I just reading this fascinating article by Jonah Lehrer, featured in “The New York Times Magazine” online. Lehrer is lucid, and he relates a number of intriguing thoughts from thinkers trying to understand the paradox of depression. (Why would we evolve a quality that saps of us the desire to eat and have sex?)

The title of this post is meant evoke my desire to supportively embrace all of you creative types who, like me, at times feel slightly or seriously depressed, and who at these times often feel seriously alone and, probably worst of all, are seriously unable to engage in aspects of your creative process or simply get basic, necessary work accomplished.

Although my title is meant to suggest comfort, it is somewhat backwards. For one thing, all photographers do not suffer from depression. For another thing, many photographers seem to be quite alone — at least in their creative and professional pursuits.

So my title might not be accurate, but I think the sentiment is valid, and it comes from something I have learned first hand: A lot of successful photographers suffer from bouts of depression — from light but serious to downright crippling. And yet, at least in their public personas, many of these  photographers come across as upbeat and cheery. Continue reading “You’re Not Alone: All Photographers Suffer From Depression”

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Mar 10 2010

Time-Lapse Photography Inspiration

Category: Multimedia & VideoEthan G. Salwen @ 2:03 pm

For some serious inspiration in time-lapse photography, check out “12 Creative Uses of Time-Lapse Photography (and 4 Ways To Create It),” a post from “10,000 Words.”

Tracking flight patterns might seem fairly obvious, but then I never thought of using data from the FAA! The time-lapse documentation of the reconstruction of a Katrina-ravaged home is a great piece, and reminds of the time-lapse possibilities in documentary photography. Seeing a man age eight years in less than two minutes is bizarre, but is certainly idea-provoking. Of the 12 samples, my favorite is definitely the cross-country road trip, mesmerizingly shortened to four minutes. Nice!

Unfortunately, the “10,000 Words” post doesn’t deliver as much as I had hoped on the ways to create time-lapse photography, although there are a few links. The site’s previous entry also offers a few time-lapse photography tips and links, but nothing super substantial.

Are You Time-Lapsing?

Have you been bit by the time-lapse bug? Have a time-lapse video to share? Know of any instructional resources that are better than the ones featured in “10,000 Words”?

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Mar 08 2010

Black Star Rising: An Amazing (Not-Just-PJ) Photo Resource

Category: Online Resources, The IndustryEthan G. Salwen @ 1:30 pm

AfterCapture_Blog_100308_BlackStarRising_1Sure, you know that “Black Star” equates to photojournalism, but did you know that Black Star hosts a Web Site stuffed full of truly valuable information for working photographers of all manner?

Well, I didn’t, and it’s my job to know. But (not that I should look for excuses!), perhaps my oversight of “Back Star Rising” (the Web site resource in question) came from the fact that photojournalists often seem so “out there” from what the rest of photographers are doing.

In any case, you don’t need this post to find the value in “Black Star Rising.” Just head on over there and take a gander.

If I’m assuming to much about your knowledge of Black Star, let me share a bit of the agency’s history, as explained by the site:

“The list of those who in the early years signed a contract with Black Star reads like a Who’s Who of photojournalism in the following decades: Walter Bosshard, Robert Capa, Ralph Crane, Herbert Gehr, Fritz Goro, Andreas Feininger, Ernst Haas and Philippe Halsmann, to name but a few.”

“According to photo historian Marianne Fulton, Life brought Black Star 30 to 40 per cent of its business. Black Star, in turn, contributed to Life becoming the most popular magazine in America for nearly three decades, with tens of millions of readers.”

You can see why I equated Black Star to photojournalism. And you will certainly see why Black Star Rising rises far beyond the needs of photojournalists alone. Here are a few recent blog posts:

“Writing Your Photography Marketing Plan: Setting Goals.” By Matthew Kauffmann.

“Get Trippy with Black-Light Photography.” By Jeff Wignall.

“Eye on Image-Making: Sales Is Not a Four-Letter Word.” By David Weintraub.

This is good stuff!

AfterCapture_Blog_100308_BlackStarRising_2Regular categories include: Advice for Clients, Art of Photography, Business of Photography, Photography Law, Photojournalism, Stock Photography, Teaching Photography, Video and Multimedia, Video Blog Posts.

This is good stuff!

Did Black Star Get a Rise Out of You?

Presuming your not a photojournalist and also presuming that you ran to check out “Black Star Rising,” let me know what you think. Do you like the site? How does it relate to your specialty?

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Mar 05 2010

Still, Video and Social Media: Gail Mooney Will Open Our Eyes

Category: Creative Process, Photographers, The IndustryEthan G. Salwen @ 10:30 pm

AfterCapture_Blog_100305_Opening Our Eyes_1“We are two people — a mother and a daughter — embarking on a journey around the world to document and film the stories of individuals — ordinary people who are following their own dreams, passions and ambitions and doing extraordinary things.”

This is from the Gail Mooney’s new website, “Opening Our Eyes: Global Stories About the Power of One.” As the site explains, Mooney — an accomplished documentary photographer and filmmaker — will be heading around the world with her daughter, Erin Kelly, to gather the material they need to create a feature length film.

This is a project worth keeping tabs on. For one thing, it’s Mooney’s latest personal project, which are always impressive, as she uses them to push her photography forward, both creatively and in terms of business.

“Opening Our Eyes” is particularly interesting to those of us in the industry because Mooney will be pushing her limits in terms of working in both still and motion, employing light and affordable equipment. In short, she will be heading into waters that many of us will heading into ourselves — still & motion — and she does so with the insights of an impressive background in traditional still and motion.

Mooney is in a perfect position to show us how to capture both great stills and motion, ensuring that both get put to the best use. (To see what Mooney’s capable of, check out her shorts for “The Delta Blues Musicians” and “Freedom’s Ride.”)

Freedom’s Ride from Gail Mooney on Vimeo.

This is not to suggest that “Opening Our Eyes” will be about photography for photographers. Hardly. As always, Mooney will focus on the story — on her subjects — focusing on the task of best communicating that story to the most appropriate audience. Continue reading “Still, Video and Social Media: Gail Mooney Will Open Our Eyes”

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