Mar 21 2011

The Unfussy, Beautifully-Crafted People Photography of Tamea Burd

Category: Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 9:47 am

Tamea Burd_Vancouver photographer_1“Ideally, the best choice would be to incorporate the nature and the nurture,” Tamea Burd wrote in response to one of my recent posts. “Natural, unfussy photo taking and then really detailed, crafted post-production work on the resulting images.”

I really liked this sentiment from Burd, a wedding and portrait photographer, who was responding to my question: “Are you images fundamentally created in-camera with little technical fuss, or do they require painstaking control, either in-camera or in post-production?”

I absolutely love Burd’s images, which bear witness to the fact that she is achieving the photographic ideal she expressed in her comment.

Burd’s wedding, portrait, head shot, and family photography consistently exhibit two wonderful qualities that work beautifully in harmony with each other:

• On the one hand, Burd’s images feel utterly casual in the in-camera picture making sense. There seems to be little fuss. The comfort of her subjects is palpable, and many of her best images feel like casual snap shots.

• On the other hand, it is clear that Burd is carefully crafting her images in post-production, giving them a modern, compelling aesthetic. Her use of techniques such as black-and-white processing, vignetting, saturating colors and employing localized focus ensure that her no-fuss images become much more than snap shots.

The best part of Burd’s work is that she doesn’t go overboard in post-production. This ensures that her images retain what is best in casual snap shots — intimacy and approachability — while also meeting the standards of excellent professional photography.

It’s hard to discuss images that don’t call attention to themselves, but do exactly what they are supposed to do: call attention to the people they document. So here, to represent themselves — and the no fuss, carefully crafted work that the photographer put into them — are four of Burd’s images.

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Tamea Burd_Vancouver photographer_2 Continue reading “The Unfussy, Beautifully-Crafted People Photography of Tamea Burd”

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Jan 26 2011

Older Photographers: Richer Creative Lives

Category: Creative Process, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 10:16 am

AfterCapture Blog_110226_Older Photographers_1-1The majority of photographers I interview are between 45 and 55, and they possess a depth that younger photographers do not. Yes, there’s something wonderful about the raw energy of the younger photographers I meet. It’s just that this energy might fizzle out.

If it doesn’t fizzle out, something very special happens. As photographers continue to work through their decades, they push themselves to embrace new technologies, to redefine their business models in evolving markets, and to take on new creative challenges, even if their clients don’t demand it.

We always say that learning photography is really learning to see, and this is true. But we tend to express this sentiment in relation to a very limited sense of seeing — the visual sense. Older photographers seem to continue to learn to see on a much deeper level, in terms of what it is to be a working artist and, most important, how this relates to their continual growth and satisfaction as an individual.

I share this thought because once again I find myself thinking of something Stewart Cohen told me when I interviewed him for “In Search of Identity” for Rangefinder. I closed the article with this memorable sentiment:

“I’m 49 and I haven’t done anything else except photography since 1983. I was once like any other typical 30-year-old, hotshot photographer — having exploded onto the scene, thinking I had made it. My Identity project has helped me see that, in the arc of my career as an artist, my true style is only just beginning to come out.”

Older photographers seem, almost inevitably, both wiser and more creative and yet also more humble. Like Cohen, they seem to look to the future with more excitement. They are less concerned with the fleeting satisfaction of the external rewards of money or recognition. More than anything, they seem to want to open new doors that will help them continue to develop their sense of vision.

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Jan 17 2011

Judy Herrmann: Reinventing Creativity

Category: AfterCapture & Rangefinder Articles, Business & Marketing, Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 3:38 am

After Capture Blog_110117_RF1110_Judy Herrmann_Reinventing Creativity_1“If you really want to earn a living as full-time, self-employed photographer, you’re signing up to work in an industry where you have to watch for every opportunity and be ready to take advantage of them,” says commercial photographer Judy Herrmann. “There is creative vision — a photographer’s artistic voice — and then there is vision for business and career. These two things have to work together, but they are not the same.”

I featured these thoughts from Herrmann in “Judy Herrmann: Reinventing Creativity,” a recent profile for Rangefinder that focuses on Herrmann increasing efforts — through workshops, consulting and her new blog, 2 Good Things — to help creative professionals gain more satisfaction through their carriers, making more money doing more of what they truly love.

“Reinventing Creativity” is probably the most important article I wrote in 2010, but — dangit! — I probably gave it the worst name.

A much better, if less flowery, title (that would have really pissed off the design team) would have been:

“Judy Herrmann: How To Reinvent the Business and Creative Aspects of Your Photography Career in a Harmonious Manner, Over Time, In an Ongoing Process, To Earn More Money and Feel Profoundly More Satisfied In Life.”

That’s what Herrmann’s insights are all about, and there are a few things that make them particularly valuable.

One is that Herrmann is full-time working photographer, and has been for two decades, and her increased interest in supporting other photographers with the challenges of business-creative success comes from an honest passion to help. She says providing consulting services to photographers “is one of the few things in my professional life that actually gives me a deep sense of meaning.”

Another reason Herrmann’s guidance rings true is that she is deep in the reinvention trenches herself, and has been since she was 27-years-old. That’s when she forced herself, for the first time, to figure out how to make more money with more satisfaction through her photography. (I reported on this in “Triumph Over Fear” for Rangefinder a few years back.)

That’s right. I have been talking to Herrmann about this topic for years now, and distilling her insights into less than 2,000 words was painful. This woman has so many valuable insights to offer professional photographers that I’m just dying for you to be aware of her. And then — damn me! — I gave her article a crappy name.

Luckily, you can get in touch with Herrmanns’ ideas directly through her posts on ASMP’s Strictly Business Blog. Good stuff, like “‘If you don’t know where you’re going…you might not get there.’ – Yogi Berra” and “Looking Forward, Looking Back.”

After Capture Blog_110117_RF1110_Judy Herrmann_Reinventing Creativity_2Another reason Herrmann’s reinvention insights rock is because she is adamantly adverse to serving in a counseling capacity. “I make it clear that I am not a therapist,” she told me. “This is not psychiatry. What I’m really teaching people is problem solving. It is defining a problem very, very clearly and then brainstorming solutions.”

“What I’m trying to do is to give people an arsenal of tools,” Herrmann explained. “My goal is to make my client not need me any more.”

One place you can learn from Herrmann how to not need Herrmann is at the ASMP’s Strictly Business 3 conferences (Philadelphia, February 25–27; Chicago, April 1–3).

Yet another reason Herrmann’s strategies are so valuable is that she is not formulaic in her approach for working with photographers. She says, “I don’t think there exists a one-size-fits-all answer to this kind of problem solving.”

Can you see why I think it’s so important to learn about Herrmann’s business reinvention processes?

So, poopy title aside, I urge you to download “Reinventing Creativity” and soak up Herrmann’s ideas.

To be clear, I am not concerned about drumming up consulting business for Herrmann (although, um, I do get a percentage of all fees she earns resulting from this post).

What makes Herrmann’s insights so invaluable is that they don’t depend on her or, for that matter, any other career consultant. Like all great ideas, Herrmann’s strategies are a distillation of other people’s great ideas. And like all great ideas, you can put them to use for yourself on your own.

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Dec 02 2010

Unpretentious Jane Goodall by Stewart Cohen

Category: AfterCapture & Rangefinder Articles, Photographers, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 5:35 pm

“How naïve I was,” Jane Goodall recalls in Through the Window, going on to share:

As I had not had an undergraduate science education I didn’t realise that animals were not supposed to have personalities, or to think, or to feel emotions or pain . . . Not knowing, I freely made use of all those forbidden terms and concepts in my initial attempts to describe, to the best of my ability, the amazing things I had observed at Gombe.

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When I read this last night it made me think of the portrait of Goodall that Stewart Cohen made for his book Identity.

I was reading Matt Ridley’s The Agile Gene, in which Ridley notes that, “Goodall’s anthropomorphism had driven a stake through the heart of human exceptionalism.” This is important to Ridly’s notion, when comparing human beings to “lesser animals,” that:

There is no exact parallel to the human scheme. But in the animal kingdom, there is nothing exceptional in being unique. Every species is unique.

AfterCapture Blog_101007_Stewart Cohen Identity_1This made me think of another one of Cohen’s Identity subjects, Erik “Lizardman” Sprague, who in the book shares: “I generally find the claim of being unique to be rather trite since we are all by nature individuals and thus unique.” That’s nice sentiment coming from a guy who has filed his teeth to points and tattooed green scales on his face. It also seems to speak to perfectly to Cohen’s approach to Identity, and so I used it in the opening of my article reporting on his project.

Identity Beyond Symbolism

In his simple, black-and-white portrait of Goodall Cohen has included a blatant visual reference to the concept of evolution. There Goodall is, sitting in Continue reading “Unpretentious Jane Goodall by Stewart Cohen”

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Oct 18 2010

Multiple Set Ups Keeps Subjects Comfortable and Candid

Category: Creative Process, In-Camera Techniques, Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 12:30 pm

AfterCapture Blog_101018_Cohen Tip_1During portrait sessions we should always be sure to photograph subjects in multiple locations with different lighting set ups. Yes, this gives us more images to select from, but the biggest benefit is that it helps keep our subjects relaxed — a real maker or breaker in people photography.

This great advice comes from Stewart Cohen, whose life and “Identity” book project are the focus of a recent article by yours truly, in Rangefinder. I write:

For his still portrait work, Cohen uses multiple locations whenever possible and sets up a variety of lighting situations, even when time is tight. “This makes such a difference when working with people,” Cohen explains. “People react differently in different situations. It keeps the interaction flowing, keeps the subjects involved. Shooting frame after frame of a person in the same situation can be awkward for the subject.”

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Oct 08 2010

Stewart Cohen: In Search of Identity

Category: Books, Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 10:43 am

AfterCapture Blog_101007_Stewart Cohen Identity_1“Stewart Cohen is a photographer here in Dallas but of world renown and he’s come out with a new book that’s got portraits of folks,” says the hyper-happy Good Morning Texas reporter as he cheerfully plugs Cohen’s book as a great, last-second Father’s Day present. (Clip below.) “Portraits of folks.” I like that. I bet Cohen did, too.

I’ve interviewed Cohen a number of times and I am always refreshed by his utterly mellow, down-to-earth manner. A commercial photographer specializing in people, Cohen earns top dollar on big jobs for big clients. Before I first talked to Cohen I assumed he might be the rushed and frantic type. However, he invariably picks up the phone with a relaxed, friendly “What’s up, man?”, and he makes it clear that he’s genuinely interested in the answer.

AfterCapture Blog_101007_Stewart Cohen Identity_2Cohen’s book with “portraits of folks” is called Identity: A Photographic Meditation from the Inside Out (Dream Editions Press). It’s a labor-of-love, personal project that Cohen worked on for ten years, only seeing it come off the press earlier this year. I tell the complete story of Cohen’s project in “In Search of Identity,“ written for the latest issue of Rangefinder. I first discussed the topic with Cohen in 2007, and I think the long-term reporting paid off. Not only am I able to share with you Cohen’s perspectives after he has gone to press, but I refer back to Cohen’s earlier perspective — when he thought he ready to go to press, but when, it turns out, he was not even ready to stop photographing for the project.

"T. Boone Pickens" by Steward Cohen.

"T. Boone Pickens" by Steward Cohen.

Throughout “In Search of Identity” I weave in a profile of Cohen, highlighting his career and trying to illuminate a bit of his identity. If you are serious about commercial portrait photography, I’m sure you will appreciate Cohen’s story, and how he remains dedicated to improving his craft after nearly three decades on the job.

I open the piece with a description of Cohen’s image of Erik “Lizardman” Sprague, and then share a quote from Sprague featured in Identity: “I generally find the claim of being unique to be rather trite since we are all by nature individuals and thus unique.”

I continue by saying:

“Sprague’s words lucidly challenge the Continue reading “Stewart Cohen: In Search of Identity”

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May 11 2010

The Best Photographers Are People, Too

Category: Books, Creative Process, Photographers, The Industry, Viewpoint — Ethan G. Salwen @ 7:57 pm

AfterCapture Blog_100511_Identity_1“The thing I walked away with from this project is that people are people are people,” Stewart Cohen told me today of his “Identity” project. An excellent and accomplished commercial photographer, Cohen has been working on this personal project for ten years, recently reaching a major milestone by publishing “Identity: A Photographic Meditation from the Inside Out” — an elegant, labor-of-love book that includes 50 portraits of famous people who caught Cohen’s interest. Next to each full-frame portrait are words by each subject, in their own handwriting, commenting on their identity.

For “Identity” Cohen made 130 portraits, editing them tightly for the book. Although all his subjects can be labeled “famous,” they do fall into the any one, easily definable category, such as “musicians,” “scientists,” “Nobel Prize winners,” “activists” or “politicians.” Six of Cohen’s subjects point to the breath of his coverage: Bobby McFerrin, Erin Brockovich, Oscar Niemeyer, Jane Goodall, Stephen Hawking and Jack Kilby. (Jack who? He’s the Nobel prize winner.)

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“Whether your a drifter or bad-ass scientist, the human experience is the human experience,” Cohen told me. “There’s no magic. People become what they want to become.”

Continue reading “The Best Photographers Are People, Too”

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Jan 12 2010

Learn Stock Photography Strategies from Jack Hollingsworth

Category: Business & Marketing, Online Resources — Ethan G. Salwen @ 1:33 pm

Today, Jack Hollingsworth posted a Twitter poll asking, “How many of you Photographers have a physical portfolio (besides your website/blogsite)?” It’s a good question, and it motivated me to check out Hollingsworth’s Web site. There I found a work-in-progress featuring just two videos:

• “See The World” is a snappy portfolio piece featuring gobs of Hollingsworth’s images that zip by with quick pans and lively music. You won’t really see “the world,” but you will certainly a great example of how a large body of work (a photographer’s overall style) can be presented quickly.

See The World from jackhollingsworth on Vimeo.

• In “Coming Soon” Hollingsworth speaks directly to us to explain what’s going on with his site. He shares that he is currently building a totally new site that will be part-free and part-subscription based. The four topics he will focus on are stock photography, lifestyle photography, Continue reading “Learn Stock Photography Strategies from Jack Hollingsworth”

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Apr 09 2009

Vote & Learn: Portraits That Pop

Category: Business & Marketing, Creative Process — Ethan G. Salwen @ 6:06 am

ACMF_NG_042The obvious reason to head to the “People’s Choice” voting section of PDN’s “Faces Photo Contest” is to, um, vote. However, when I went to do so myself, I quickly realized that the process is very educational. The thumbnails are tiny and numerous, so I found myself thinking about what makes a portrait truly stand out — pop off a crowed page, whether or not it is stunning in its own right. Continue reading “Vote & Learn: Portraits That Pop”

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Feb 27 2009

Inspiration for Portraitists from Alison Wright

Category: Creative Process, Photographers — Ethan G. Salwen @ 5:06 am

ACMF_NG_21Portrait photographers should definitely check out the website of renowned photojournalist Alison Wright. . . to see amazing images and to gain for cross-pollinated inspiration.

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.

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