New England based Visual Storyteller

Tag: fine art

Selling prints, for love or money

I am just winding up a workshop in Italy, which was great fun (and equally great food.) A question that came up in this workshop, as it does in many, (and came in this week from a former student via e-mail) got me to thinking about selling photographs as fine art. The former student who raised the question is part of one of the ongoing critique groups that I lead, where I meet (on-line) with a few photographers every couple months to do a group critique of their ongoing projects. The question spurred an great dialogue within that group, which in turn spurred this blog entry. As I was laying out my thinking for the blog piece, I was thinking of titling it simply, the good, the bad and the ugly. Read More

An impromptu course in design of web-sites for photographers

These days, all photographers, from commercial/documentary to portrait/fine-art, live and die by their web sites. That should mean that most websites for photographers would be built with the same goal, showing the photographer’s work to its best advantage. You also would think that an equally important goal would be making those same sites easy to navigate and very user friendly. Based on my recent experience reviewing 13 photographer’s web-sites, those assumptions would be largely wrong. Read More

Why photographers need editors

There are numerous aphorisms about what separates the serious/successful photographer from the amateurs/posers. Great quotes, such as: “Hobby photographers worry about equipment; Professional photographers worry about money; Master photographers worry about light” are already out there. In this blog entry, I propose to add one more to the list. Read More

Expanding thoughts on the question is photography art?

While en route to Guangzhou, China, we spent a few fascinating days in Hong Kong. A series of events got me thinking about the old “is photography art?” question. I am not sure that such a question is ever really likely to be fully “settled.” Based on what I saw and did while in Hong Kong, I added a couple of new perspectives to my own thinking about that question. Proof again that one benefit of going half way around the world is that you see things differently after such a trip. Read More

What every photographer should know about model releases

Model releases seem to be the source of more confusion than almost any other aspect of photography for aspiring (and established) professionals. I am asked about them during every class or presentation that I give. The irony is that model releases are remarkably simple. Read More