Working to Create a Portrait of F. Murray Abraham

I had been trying to get a portrait session scheduled with F. Murray Abraham when he came to Boulder for the film festival, but I couldn't get it set up. The festival couldn't accommodate me, the podcast host, The Hollywood Reporter, was and then wasn't communicative, and I was on my own to get a...

It’s a New Year, 2023, My 36th as a Photographer!

I consider myself extremely fortunate for I get to say I've been a professional commercial photographer and photojournalist my whole career starting at age 23 as a staff photographer at the Trenton Times, New Jersey's capitol newspaper. I majored in college in communications and expected to go into television and interned at WPVI, the local...

Roy Stryker is Back After A Summer Vacation

The Roy Stryker documentary photography project was on a summer hiatus, but it's back starting this week. The photo project, named for the man who hired the documentary photographers after the Great Depression to show America to Americans, was started in 2016, and we now have over 450 posts by multiple photographers from across the...

Watching and Documenting the Lives of Others AKA Joining the Circus

I've been fortunate to be able to be a working photographer all my life. From the moment I left college, I immediately got work as a photojournalist, then a staff photographer position at a large daily newspaper, and then have worked as a freelance commercial, advertising, and editorial photographer, totaling 35 years in photography. During...

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...

Show Me What You Like, But Also What You Don’t Like

At many restaurants, after asking about how some menu item is and the waiter or waitress replied, "Really good," and then when I asked about a different dish and again they repeated the same answer--in fact multiple times for every item I asked about--I've said, "Tell me what's not good or that you don't recommend."...

Oh, News Biz, How Ye Have Changed

When I was a photojournalist at a daily newspaper in New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s, we had an editorial board and certainly a point of view politically--we were the conservative broadsheet in town compared to the tabloid-sized competitor with their "Page 7 Bikini Girl". There's an old newspaper line, "If it bleeds, it...

Nobody Photographs Like Me

I make photographs that are uniquely my own. The kind of photographs are not like what you typically see on Instagram or Facebook. Editors have even said that my photos look different than most photos--there's an authenticity to them. They look real. There's an emotional quality to them. I'll take that, that is exactly what...

Documenting Light and Life as an Editorial Photographer

I mostly work with black and white film for personal photographs--pictures of friends and family, some photography projects. When I am working for editorial or commercial clients, it's digital. Clients need photographs sharp, in color, lit and ready for publication immediately. That's where digital shines. I wield a pair of Nikon full-frame DSLRs. Give me...

Photographers Rate Card (PhotographersRateCard.com)

How is a new photographer supposed to know what to charge for professional photography services? You don't see lawyers, and architects and contractors working for low rates, to get started, to get their foot in the door of their profession. Somehow, because anyone with a camera and little else in the way of credentials can...