Photographer Profiles

Social documentary photographer Larry Fink, who’s well known for his striking black-and-white images of high society and the down-and-out, was honored at the 2015 Infinity Awards gala at the International Center for Photography a few months ago. In attendance at this sumptuous event were celebrities including the model Naomi Campbell, the actor Alan Rickman and photographers Steve McCurry, Susan Meiselas, Sylvia Plachy and others.

Capturing the fleeting moments of a wave's journey to dissipation, award-winning photographer Ray Collins feels much more at home in saltwater with his camera than on land. Photographing the relationship between water and light is what inspires him.

While walking around the pyramids in Cairo, Egypt, in 2004, photojournalist Ami Vitale spotted a man sitting alone in the desert with his camel. “We did not share the same language to speak to one another but as I approached, he laid his head on his camel’s head,” Vitale recalls.

Travel and nature photographer John Shaw lives his dream, traveling the world with his camera, without deadlines or obligations. His images go toward stock sales worldwide, in addition to being used in his many books. While he doesn’t shoot on assignment, magazine editors familiar with Shaw’s work will come to him when needed, or he’ll occasionally pitch story ideas to them when planning a trip.

Aerial photographer Chris Dahl-Bredine was one such dreamer, and while he’s not sure how big a role the flying dream played in his eventually becoming an ultralight pilot, he’s certain it was a significant factor. And, once he began flying, he reports—as do other pilots (the author included)—that the dream simply stopped. He considered becoming a licensed private pilot so he could fly light planes but once he experienced the thrill of ultralights, he realized it helped him recapture the dream: flying like a bird, wind in his face, view unencumbered by a cockpit.

On a Sunday morning not long ago I turned on the radio and by chance heard the legendary, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly say that his iPhone had made him a better photographer.
 

Andrei Duman shot this beautiful, ghostly image in Kolmanskop, a German ghost town in the Namib Desert in Southern Namibia, Africa. The town was once the heart of a diamond rush in the 1900s that drew hordes of German miners. But when the diamond fields dried up after World War I, the miners left the town and it was abandoned in 1954.