Why Film, Really, Why Kenneth?

I always carry a Nikon DSLR and a 28mm f1.8 lens with me in case I come across a story for my Roy Stryker photo project. And I have a few lenses in in my car, the most useful is a 70-300mm f4-5.6 Nikkor Zoom that is slow, cheap ($75) and small, yet sharp as...

Everything Doesn’t Work Out As Planned (and That’s a Good Thing)

I was working on a photo prompt "pairs" for The Photo Game, and I was going for the obvious, photographing a pair of pears on my light table. Alright, that's fair, meets the requirements. It's a fine enough photo. Something else, what else can I do--I know, I'll try them on the window sill. Then...

Gauche in the Living Room? No Way! (Changing The World, One Photograph at a Time)

It's a quite different world nowadays the way we use photography from when I was growing up. When I was a kid, there were regular visits to the portrait studio or a school photographer would setup in our auditorium to make our class photos. There was something to it--the lights, the camera, the tripod, the...

Polaroid Goodness & The Joy of Meeting “Unknowners” with a Camera

This is Bill and Bob. They're a couple of fishermen I saw yesterday walking down a path to the pond at Rogers Grove in my town, one carrying a small green net. I told them that once I saw that net, I knew I had to photograph them. "That net says 'hope'," I joked with...

Story Content vs. Bokeh + Corner Sharpness

Since the first photograph in 1839, photographers have been asking the question, "What should I photograph?" The best answer is, "What can you photograph?" Meaning, what do you have access to? The first photograph--a street scene at the Boulevard du Temple in Paris in 1838 by Louis Daguerre. Can you photograph the Hollywood premiere from...

I Don’t Plan to Make Photographs

You really never know when your friend is going to resemble an umbrella pole/post, and the camera has to be with you, on and ready to shoot. This is why I take a camera with me everywhere. I don't intend to shoot anything when I take my camera. I just notice life's little moments and...

Golden Age of Analog Photography

We are really living in it, a new golden age of analog photography. Sometimes we can't see something while we're in it. You can either be in the mountains, or off the mountains looking at them--they're impossible to see while you're in them. But there couldn't be a better time to be an analog photographer....

The Kind of Photographer, Artisan or Technician

Is there a difference between the photographer who uses film versus the one who uses digital cameras? And I always preface this question with the understanding that there is no right and wrong way with art--neither digital nor film is inherently better than the other, just different ways of working. I was thinking about the...

“But People Are So Busy…”

I don't believe that. What are we so busy doing? People say that everyone is in such a hurry today, they have kids that have to get dropped off to after-school activities or sports. But wait, they've always done that. Are kids now on six or eight teams instead of the one or two they...

Why Gear Does and Doesn’t Matter

What is the need for the biggest and best most expensive gear? I was out and about this weekend and saw protesters for the Black Lives Matter movement in my town and made photographs in both digital format with a Nikon D610 and 35mm and 120 film in a Leica M3 and a Rolleiflex 2.8C....