Can You Help Support the Programs and Projects?

If you like the work I do on my YouTube Channel, my Daily Photography Blog Podcast, my 6x6Portraits Photography Blog my RoyStryker Documentary Photo Project and/or my Gifted Art Film Portrait Project and would like to help out with a contribution to support me, become a patron or simply buy me a coffee, please use...

Photographing Children at Play in Safe America

I wish we didn't live in a world where there was so much suspicion about each other, where everyone is assumed to be 'stranger danger' until proven innocent. Where every man is looked upon as a creep, and everyone on the street has bad intentions. A man with a camera can only mean bad news....

What Has Happened to Street Photography?

I was thinking about influencers and how that's a word that never used to exist. In a world with social media, the goal of attracting large numbers of followers and becoming popular to become "Insta-famous," what have we done to art? Wasn't there always influence from major players like John Szarkowski at MoMA, and plenty...

I Don’t Need Anything, But This Leica and This Notebook

Being both a photographer (documentary/street) and a writer (stand-up comedy/screenplays), I came to the realization that there is a correlation between the two. Because both require something of me. See, I carry a Leica and notebook everywhere I go. When my parents took photographs when I was growing up, they took them out at Christmas,...

Street Photography Awards Are Only For Weirdo Photographs

I've noticed what wins street photography contests: Weirdo photos. Oddball pictures. Have you seen this? The photos at the right are the 2018 winners in StreetFoto. To my eye, none of them look like the classics by Garry Winogrand or Henri Cartier-Bresson, who I'm betting are masters that these street photographers look up to. The...

Nobody Cares What Camera You Use–the Camera Doesn’t Matter

Unless they can see the difference. Many people cannot see the difference. So, many people don't care what camera you use. The camera doesn't define you, or make your work.  You do! You define your work.  Here's proof.  This photographer shot 100 different cameras, and yet the work all looks similar.  Because it's not the...

The Secret to Creative Photographic Inspiration

I have a secret.  I'm going to share it with just you.  Okay? If you want to get inspired to make photographs (or to write, or to paint, etc.) there's one trick that you must know.  One little trick that is so mind-blowingly amazing, it'll change your creative life. Once you know it, you'll have...

Why Photo Contest Rejections Aren’t Necessarily a Bad Thing

How could that possibly be a good thing, having your work rejected, you ask.  Well, let me tell you about myself.  I've both won awards as a photojournalist and haven't won awards as a photographer. Why is that?  Timing.  Placement.  What the curators want. I have my brand of photography--documentary photography, photojournalistic storytelling, street life...

Why I Love Being a Photographer Living in Colorado

I live in Colorado, and while nature is pretty and mountains are beautiful, I'm not drawn to photographing trees, lakes and landscapes. I like people.  It's because I've been a photojournalist my whole life, and for me it's much more exciting to photograph a spirited interaction between a couple, a kiss, a funny face, a...

A New Year of Possibilities – 365 of Them!

01.01.2019 - All those ones!  Beginnings! It's a new year, 365 possibilities lie ahead.  What will we do with them?  What will we create? For me creation is the source, the inspiration, that gives me so much that is my reason for being.  I live to create photographs, stories, and even time spent with family...