The More People Turn to Exclusively Using Their Phone for Cameras…

...the less people there are who look like real photographers out in the field. Hence, the more the real photographers stand out. (Yes, I am calling phone photographers not real photographers--to me they're not.) Not to take anything away from phone photographers--they're documenting their world for a moment's look. They're notetaking their life. That's not...

Do People Still Make Family Portraits To Hang In Their Homes? Young People, Too?

So, as some of you know, I make museum-quality silver gelatin hand-printed family portrait photographs using real film in vintage wood cameras. It’s a specialty for sure and the photographs are not easy nor inexpensive to create.  A friend said to me that I’d be lucky to give a photograph away, that no one wants...

Teaching How to Make Magic in the Film Camera, To Print Photographs They’ll Hold Dear

It's a generous medium, photography.”Lee Friedlander I've been teaching film photography to several different people the past few weeks and it's so rewarding to see how they light up when they finally understand their camera and realize that they can do it, they see how it works, and that they can make actual film photographs....

What You Can Get with an Ask

Sometimes you just have to ask. You might get what you're asking for. I was recently in Urbana Illinois and I thought to look up online if there were any photography exhibits happening locally. I got the first result: Urbana Museum of Photography. Wait, what? There's a museum of photography right in this town? Wow,...

Reaching Out, Asking For What You Want

I was traveling through Illinois recently and stopped for the night in Champaign/Urbana. While there, I googled "photography exhibits" and one of the results was the Urbana Museum of Photography. What? There's a museum of photography right in the small mid-western town where I'm staying? And it's dedicated to analog photography? I'm so in. This...

What Are We Photographing For?

What's the plan, Stan? We get a car to drive places. We get a house to live in. We get a chair to sit in. We get a TV to watch shows. We make photographs... For what? I know I've asked this before but it keeps coming up. What are we making photographs for? Why,...

The New Canvas, The Empty Frame, The Blank Page: GO!

Every time I sit down to write these photography essays I start with no idea what to write about. I have nothing but a blank page. (It's actually a blinking cursor at the top of this WordPress page, but you get the idea.) What to do? I don't know. If you don't know either, welcome...

Embracing Risks, Taking Chances & Possible Failure

What if you try something new, something you're not quite sure about how to do, so much so that it even makes you uncomfortable? Good! See, you could fail. Excellent! There's nothing great happening when we're sitting at home in our easy chair. There's no magic when we are working the familiar, the comfortable way...

A Goal to Create Boring Photos

There's an annual gathering of people to look at old family movies called Home Movie Day. Because what was boring no longer is. Well, it may be, but we're not watching just for the content but the setting. The cars, the buildings, the businesses in towns no longer there. There is much to be gained...

The Life of a Dinosaur, AKA the Digital Image

If you make a photograph at a long exposure, is it really a photograph, or something more like a timeograph? Say it's a portrait of someone but you make it with an exposure of 15 seconds. Isn't that a time lapse rather than a moment in time frozen? 15 moments of a life? Photography is...