Camera Exposure Settings I Use (Film & Digital)

I thought I'd share my exposure settings for how I make photos on black and white Ilford HP5+ negative film and also on a digital full-frame Nikon. Proven ways that work for me. Often without a light meter on a Leica. First off, you can certainly use (A) aperture priority if you have a camera...

Photographs Made! Not Shot, Not Captured, Not Taken Nor Snared

I make photographs. Sometimes that involves photographing news events, life on the street, and other times people posing for my lens for a portrait. But all those photographs are made. I make an effort to create an image the way I want to, using photographic and compositional techniques as well as my experience on how...

When I’m Out in the Street, I Walk the Way I Want to Walk

Every time I go out to photograph in the streets, I get out of my car and it looks like nothing to photograph. People walking, doing nothing. Nothing interesting, that's for sure. "Nothing to see here, move along." And so, I do. I move further up the street. But there are stories that inevitably cross...

Street Photographers: The Quickest of Them All

Street photography is a style of documentary photography many photojournalists create when they're between assignments because they see little bits of life that others often miss. And they have to photograph those moments--there are stories unraveling in front of them, how can they not? Oh, and also get the exposure correct, and the composition, all...

My Two Events for Denver Month of Photography

Denver Month of Photography is a biennial event (every other year) and it's on this year, March 2023. Check out the full schedule of events and get to the galleries and get inspired! DenverMOP.org I'll be hosting two events, one on Street Photography and one on The Wise Photo Project in late March. Both are...

Ideas Are The (Elusive) Gold That Needs Mining

Harvey Stein is a documentary portrait photographer having photographed the people of Coney Island for over 50 years. He's published, he's known and his work is collected. In the photographer world, he's a made man. He may not be a household name with Tom Cruise-like fame, but he's known among his peers, the best kind...

In a World of Struggle, I Choose to Photograph Joie De Vivre

Alfred Eisenstaedt, a Life Magazine photographer you know--he made the famous photograph of the sailor kissing a nurse in New York's Times Square at the end of World War II--is a photographer who I am a big fan of, the reason being while others were photographing the struggles of war, he was photographing joy. He...

Finding Themes in the Street

There are certain things I will always photograph. Street vendors are one of them. There's something about going to someone who's working in a portable box all day serving up breakfast bagels, hot dogs, pretzels and knishes. What's there not to love? Like this group of photos from New York last month. They form a...

We Are at a Societal Crossroads, a Most Important Time to Be a Photographer

It's never been a more important time to be a photographer than today. You might question, "Why?" When it seems like everyone is a photographer with a phone in their pocket and there are more photographs being made today than at any time in the history of photography. The thing is virtually none of those...

Meet at the Meat Market

There's something about signage and markets. From all the way back to the Walker Evans documentary days, there's something to photographing signs to save today for a future audience. To look back on someday when things are no longer the way they are today. This is what drew me to photograph this meat market in...