Photographing Life’s Little Moments

I've always been a fan of the little moments in life. When I'm at a wedding, I often think about how the bride and groom will wake up on a regular Saturday morning together, and how a lifetime of those Saturday mornings cumulatively say more about them than their wedding day with all its pomp,...

A Time for Documentary, A Time for Conceptual

I talk about making photos and my approach, and sometimes I forget that there's another whole way to make photographs. Not documentary. Not people that you meet in the street and ask for their portrait. Not street photography. A photographer friend recently commented that she is looking for more photo subjects, new ideas of what...

The Difference Between Going Out to Make Photos and Simply Going Out to Live (and Finding Photos)!

There is one way to make photos that involves taking the camera down off the shelf, dusting off its (n)everyready case, peeling that leather wrap off and setting it aside, removing the lens cap, putting the camera in hand and heading out to make photographs at the birthday party, holiday celebration, or ___________ (your event...

The Camera In Hand Makes the Photograph

Which camera inspires you to make what type of photograph? There are times when I carry a small Leica IIIg with a tiny 50mm f3.5 or Leica II with its 35mm f3.5 collapsible lens in my front jeans pocket because they make me feel good having a small candid camera always at the ready, and...

Street Photography is a Tap On The Shoulder: “Hey, Look Over Here.”

Happy Street Photography Day, which is celebrated on Henri Cartier-Bresson’s birthday, August 22nd, which is today. Cheers, Henri! So, let’s talk about street photography and creating good street photos—documentary photos of people living their lives, photographed in public, candid pictures of interesting moments of life for the most part. Interesting is the key word here....

No Ads, No Sponsors (I’m Just Not Wooing Advertisers)

I just paid WordPress to upgrade my site to take off advertisements as I realized they were showing up inside the body of my posts, and they were distracting and annoying to me. And if I didn't like them, you, my readers, shouldn't have to put up with them. So, welcome to 6x6 Portraits ad-free!...

Making Art Requires Showing Up for Life (and Coffee)

I've said it before: The muse exists but she has to find you working. But that doesn't mean you have to know you're working. I wasn't going out to make photographs, I was walking to get coffee and parked a block up the street because that's where I found a parking space, and I wasn't...

What Made Photography Valuable?

Helen Levitt and Walter Rosenblum made street photographs in New York in the 1930s through the 1950s. Vivian Maier made street photographs in the 1950s through the 1970s. What made them relevant, what made their work valuable? It took a special person, a real photographic artist to go out in public and shoot film photographs...

Humor & Story in Street Photography

Everyone loves a laugh. I think that's safe to say as a generalization, because a joke is a story. But not all documentary and street photography can be comical. But some just are--that's life for you. I spent a day in New York City and was walking through and saw this scene below unfold. I...

Making a Photographic Difference

Legacies. Making a mark on the world. The reason for being here. The point. What's yours? Mine's obvious to me. Like Eugene Atget's goal of documenting old Paris before it changed in the late 1800s and early 1900s, which he knew was his life's goal, even if no one else knew about it while he...