Pro Techniques

He stands in about 3 feet of roiling surf, wetsuit jersey glistening from repeated dunkings. The sky above Oahu’s North Shore is deep blue. Undertow currents grasp his legs—eroding sand beneath his swim fins—as water rushes seaward to build the next huge wave. He holds his bulky waterproof camera housing tightly, faces west toward the setting sun and checks the long tether attached to his wrist. He turns his head to watch the wave rise ever higher—a towering blue-green monster that’s starting to curl, white spume blowing off its top. He braces himself as best he can against the forces raging around him, points the camera toward the golden Hawaiian sunset, and waits as tons of water begins to curl over him, forming a tube. At what he hopes is the right instant, he fires off several shots and prepares to be pounded and rag-dolled by the massive wave.

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris, on view at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art through May 4, 2014, features nearly 100 photographs and marks the first American retrospective of this Parisian-born (1813-1879) member of photography’s very first generation. Marville’s photographs are remarkable as images and also provide invaluable documentation of the transformation of Paris from a medieval city to the world capital we know today. The show is highly recommended for photographers, students of history, and everyone who loves the “City of Light.”

There is no doubt that a well-crafted lith print is, to borrow an oft-used phrase from my father-in-law, "a thing of beauty is (therefore) a joy forever." The trick, for the experienced and occasional darkroom users alike, is the production of such a print. I have always had difficulty getting consistency with the production of my prints. Despite this frustration, my...

There's one lens that's part of my 35mm/digital SLR system that I have used longest, continuously now for about 40 years. It is a homemade single-element soft-focus lens inspired by the Rodenstock Imagon lens for large format cameras. There are more images in my library of photographs made with this lens than any other. But why in this modern, high-tech world of...

The who, what, when, and where of the story are easy.

Commercial and advertising photographer Charles Orrico was commissioned about two years ago by an ad agency to photograph at the abandoned Kings Park Psychiatric Center in Kings Park, New York, on behalf of a holding company that planned to develop the site. Building 93, the main structure in the complex, was of special...

The earth rotates tilted on its axis approximately 23Þ. This fact renders most forms of astrophotography maddeningly complex. There is one form of night sky photography that is given to us in relative simplicity by our home planet's relentless spin: star trails. All we need to create gorgeous star trail shots is a camera, a tripod, and a remote or cable release.
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You promote the work that has your heart and soul in it, the work you want to keep doing.

The art director for an ad agency is setting up a storyboard presentation for a client's kick-off campaign for an upscale shopping mall. The plan calls for five evocative photographs to be used in print ads and on billboards. The photographs are key: they will set the look...