An Iranian music streaming website Melovaz recently came under fire for removing images of women from album covers. World-famous artists like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Lana Del Ray were removed from the artwork of their own albums. What’s more, if the album covers featured men – these men were left intact, while the women were photoshopped out.
Blackrapid designs a camera strap for women inspired by how they “carry their babies”
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BlackRapid has launched a new shoulder sling camera strap especially for female photographers. The Nicole Elliott strap aims to reduce the pressure on your neck and shoulders and to do it with style. But the inspiration for the strap has raised some eyebrows (including mine). The company emphasizes that “the way women have been carrying their babies for centuries” is what inspired the design of the camera strap for ladies.
This photographer helps survivors of domestic violence to love themselves again
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A photographer from Belarus, Dasha Buben, has published a powerful and meaningful project titled I Survived. She has photographed the survivors of domestic abuse in Belarus for over a year, and her aim is to help them love themselves again.
Dasha’s portraits don’t tell the story of victims. She sees her subjects as heroes who have gone through a lot, yet have found a way to survive and get back on their feet. I have talked to Dasha about this amazing project, and I learned of the challenges and emotions she and her subjects have gone through during the photo shoots.
TIME issues a set of covers shot on the iPhone
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“Phoneography” seems to be gaining in popularity when it comes to magazine covers. After Billboard, Sports Illustrated and Elle, TIME Magazine also went down this road. But, they went a bit further than just issuing one cover shot with a smartphone. They hired a talented Brazilian photographer Luisa Dörr to shoot 46 portraits and 12 magazine covers with an iPhone, using nothing but natural light and a reflector. The portraits and covers are a part of TIME’s “Firsts” project, featuring 46 women who are changing the world.
What can stock photo searches tell us about perception of women in advertising?
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In the Women’s History Month, Adobe Stock Team has decided to conduct an interesting study. They wanted to find out how the image of women has changed in advertising and creativity. Thus, they have analyzed the data for over 450 million Adobe Stock searches in the last year, trying to find out whether the perception of women has changed over this period.
Searches for images of women are up 39% year-over-year, but they examined what types of images people looked for when they needed stock photos of women. It’s surprising and amazing how much you can find out from the stock image search.
Women’s Work – a project that breaks down professional gender stereotypes
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Gender stereotypes exist in all fields of our society, and jobs are no exception. Even Google Image Search separates men and women in different job groups. Photographer Chris Crisman created a project that blurs the traditional line between “men’s” and “women’s” jobs.
In a project “Women’s Work”, he created environmental portraits of women in their workplace – and they all work at the positions traditionally held by men. The results are stunning, powerful portraits of equally stunning and powerful women.
Fathers and daughters: why do 2/3 of the population prefer that dads will take family photos?
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It’s Father’s Day today and accordingly, my email inbox has been deluged with gift ideas for fathers. Even if they are photographically inclined (you might not believe how many press releases I receive that aren’t even in my preferred ball-park) the chances are that they won’t present me with many opportunities to feature them. I was surprised then when something did catch my eye.
The press release in question concerned the results of a survey conducted by the photo-printing company Photobox that focused on the habits of picture-taking within families. Admittedly it was only a small survey, conducted on 2,000 people, but it threw up some interesting results—namely that almost two thirds of fathers (61%) believe that they take better photos than their other halves, and that 68% of mothers prefer that their families’ fathers take the photos. For me, this was especially noteworthy because it vindicated the conclusion of a discussion that I’ve been having since at least 2011.
The question that has been under discussion: ‘Where are all the women photographers?’ The conclusion? That girls being photographed by their fathers has a lot to do with it.
These are incredibly broad statements, with some far-reaching implications, so perhaps we should unpick them a little.
Powerful photo series explores the silent abuse directed towards women everyday
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They say an image is worth a thousand words, but the reality is silence can sometimes be more powerful than words ever are, for better or worse.
It’s for this reason that Hungarian photographer Miklos Kiss has started a powerful photo series titled ‘Silent Consent.’[Read More…]
How To Take Beautiful Portraits of Women With Or Without Photoshop
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Building on last weeks April fools joke, where I riffed on the absurd idea that women actually prefer to look awful in photos and the current anti-Photoshop and no-makeup selfie trend making the rounds on social media – in this week’s article, I am going to share how to use proper lighting, posing and the right lens to make women look gorgeous without Photoshop, and then how I touch up portraits in Photoshop.
But first, we need a before and after (complete with cheesy internet meme).
Yes, this is the same woman…read on to find out how I went from before to after.
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