Photo How To

Midway in my talk with Daryl Hawk about his travel photography, he mentioned that it was relatively easy for him to approach people and get their okays for impromptu portrait sessions. “I’m polite, I know something of their culture, and I spend time with them,” he said. Then he added, “And I speak a universal language.”

This amazing image might look like it was shot on a different planet but it was actually captured in commercial photographer Michelle Monique’s living room for her first paid gig back in 2009.

In this column we look at some of the business aspects of fine art photography: getting established, finding clients, looking for gallery representation, marketing techniques, and finding your style and direction. Special thanks to this month’s contributing photographers: Sean Bagshaw (Outdoor Exposure Photography, LLC), David Bowman, John Granata (John Granata Fine Art), Robin Hill, and Cheyenne L Rouse.

We’ve really been enjoying The Lab’s ongoing video series about photography and the group’s latest clip (embedded below) could be its most creative one yet. In the 2:30-minute spot titled “MINDFRAME – Think First. Shoot Later.”, six photographers are invited to a cemetery and are asked to capture “eternal life” in a single photo.

In a previous "Weird Lens Challenge" video from photographer Mathieu Stern we learned how to easily create a cool, retro looking video using a 1950s Photax plastic lens. In a new fun and informative clip, Stern uses a rare 1960s Kenko 180-degree fisheye lens to create a unique circular field of vision.

Hi everybody! I’m very excited to be launching a new Q&A column here in Shutterbug—a magazine I’ve been reading, and been a fan of, for so many years—so it’s truly an honor to be here with you. I invite you to send in your questions to editorial@shutterbug.com, and I’ll do my best to answer them in Ask a Pro. OK, let’s jump right to it.

Long, long ago in a land far away, photo hobbyists often used yellow filters on their lenses when shooting black-and-white film. Monochrome film was a bit more sensitive to blue light back in those days, and that caused skies and clouds to blend and become an indistinguishable mess. For reasons we’ll see later, green filters were often used for portraits.