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Here’s when and why you should quit photography

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Photography as a business is hard work. Really hard work. Ask any successful photographer and they’ll tell you. Even if it looks like they have an easy life now, they’ll tell you they had years of struggle to get where they’re at and they’re still probably doing more work than you, even after attaining a measure of success. If you’re a hobbyist, you can probably ignore this post.

Running a photography business (or any kind of business at all, really) isn’t for everybody, that’s for sure. But when and why should you call it a day and find a “real job”? That’s the question commercial photographer Scott Choucino attempts to answer in this question as he talks about some of his history in photography and how he approaches the work.

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There are two halves of your creative journey, which one are you on?

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In both our life and our creative journey we’ll deal with all sorts of challenges, obstacles, and questions. But both of them could come down basically to two phases: “the morning” and “the afternoon.” Building upon Carl. G. Jung’s theory, Sean Tucker explains how our creative journey can be divided into these two phases and why it’s important to recognize and enjoy both of them.

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Stop letting bad weather prevent you from making great photography

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The weather here in the UK isn’t particularly great right now. To be fair, it’s rarely all that great here, but at this time of the year, it’s even more wet, windy and colder than ever. It’s uncomfortable weather. It puts many people off wanting to head outdoors with their cameras. But bad weather can actually make for some of the best photographs.

Landscape photographer Chris Sale set out to prove this theory by heading out into England’s Lake District to shoot landscapes in some pretty unpleasant conditions. In this video, he talks about the challenges of shooting in these conditions and why you might want to do it too.

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Times are hard, but don’t give up on photography

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This corona-madness has lasted for far too long, and it will probably last for a while more. There’s no doubt that 2020 has been hard. Even if we haven’t contracted the virus, many of us have been depressed, anxious, out of work, unable to travel… Because of all that, we may not really feel like shooting, or we just don’t think there’s anything to shoot. If you’re a hobbyist like me, maybe you feel like giving up photography at this point. Well, this video from Spencer Cox addresses this feeling, and it could be exactly what you need to hear right now.

Spencer kept it short and sweet, and straight to the point. If you’ve felt like giving up photography lately, this is definitely something to watch, and I’ll give you some of my thoughts and experiences from this weird year as well.

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If you ever wondered where the phrase “Watch the birdie!” came from, here you go

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“Watch the Birdie” – that’s what my parents told me, to make sure I look into the camera before they took a photo of me. I guess lots of you guys remember this saying. With the renovation of a 140-year-old historic brass birdie, I show you the origin of this phrase.

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This is my favourite $1 lighting modifier

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I’ve always been drawn to interesting looking light. The simple, soft and flat light of softboxes and other standard modifiers rarely hold my attention and I’ve often felt like that softbox lighting doesn’t exist outside of the studio. It’s always looked a little too clinical for me.

We’re shown interesting light all of the time when we’re observing daylight. Dappled light as it falls through leaves, dancing sparkles of light on water, rays of light through buildings and other structures, but we rarely try and bring that interesting looking light into the studio. In fact, many of us chase and covet this idea of ‘perfect’ light from a generic modifier and although there is certainly a time and a place for that, today I’d like to share a lighting technique that is a little more visually engaging.

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Newspaper Navigator is a free online base of 1.56 million newspaper photos

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The Library of Congress has created a fantastic online trip down the history lane. Newspaper Navigator is an online base consisting of 16,3 million newspaper pages, out of which 1.5 million are photos. It covers the period between 1900 and 1963, giving you a whole lot of historic newspaper photos and headlines in just a few clicks.

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9 behaviors of great photographers that you should embrace

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We all look at the most successful photographers and wonder what would it take to “be them”. There are some things that we can point to with certainty that are the key to their success. Skills, intelligence and very importantly, discipline.

You have probably heard the phrase “Work smarter, not harder”. My experience has shown that most successful photographers actually do both, They are definitely hard workers, but they work smart by embracing a set of values and adopting behaviors that help them accomplish their goals and dreams.

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Three reasons why you should share your not-so-great photographs

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No matter what genre of photography you shoot, there are images you have in your head that you want to create as examples of “great” photographs. And if you manage to pull them off, then fantastic. You share them far and wide. But what about the pretty good, not terrible, above average, but not great photographs? Should you share those?

That’s the question put forth by landscape photographer Ralph Goldsmith in this video. When it comes to his own answer, it’s a resounding yes, absolutely, share away, and he gives three of his reasons why.

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If you’re struggling to understand stops and exposure, you need to watch this

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What is a stop of light? Essentially, it’s a relative quantity of light. Either half or double of a pre-existing amount. But what does that really mean? And why does it take Rob Hall 8 whole minutes to explain it? Well, that simple concept comes with a lot of implications in photography, and it applies to everything from our ISO, aperture and shutter speed to flash power, flash distance, neutral density filters and more.

Understanding what a stop of light is and what it implies are vital for creating good and consistent exposures in photography, and it’s one of its most basic principles. If you don’t understand it, it can be difficult to figure out what problems might be occurring when you shoot an image and it isn’t what you expected.

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