We spoke to photographer Benjamin Eagle about his portrait photography project #IamYezidi. No stranger to hostile environments, photographer Benjamin Eagle‘s recent project #IamYezidi focuses on the Yezidi women who were held captive by ISIS. He spent five days in Iraq photographing the portrait series. The resulting exhibition took place in London last month, and featured the images alongside snippets of the women’s personal stories.
Fact: lots of photographers don’t know how well a focal length will work for them when it comes to portraits. But don’t worry any longer, we’ve tested a number of them on full frame cameras when it comes to portraits and we’ve got just what you need.
Every photographer has fond memories of disposable cameras. Whether it was some weird project you had to do in first year art school, the “I only shoot film” phase that most of us go through, or childhood memories, we’ve all got a soft spot for those crappy plastic junk boxes that only work 50% of the time.
One of the problems with digital photography for years has been high ISO output. While it’s become much better when you look at the photos on a screen, it’s still not perfect when it comes to printing. With film, you can tell that you’re looking at film grain when you enlarge and print a photo at something like 17×22 paper. But with digital, you’re bound to find digital looking noise; and it’s very apparent in the color noise, etc. But in the past few years, a few cameras have come around that produce fantastic results at higher ISOs. Here are some of our favorites.
It’s pretty darn clear that film photography is coming back into fashion despite what haters may say. This goes hand in hand with photographers of all types trying to find a way through all the Instagram algorithms. It’s a rough world out there, but there is surely something to be said about producing good quality content consistently along with hashtagging just right and creating an inspirational message for your devoted followers. So if you’re looking to figure out the latest and greatest way to cut through all the fluff on Instagram, just note that it has everything to do with creating quality content. For those of you who suck at content, here are some tips.
Portraiture and gaming the system on Instagram isn’t always so simply. In fact, it’s pretty difficult. But photographers have been trying to cut through all the noise as best as they can for as long as the platform has been around. Getting better photos for Instagram starts in-camera, then with the editing process, and then with creating better content overall on the platform. So here’s what you should know.
I’m a fine art photographer living in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Most of my recent work concerns the commodification of suffering, and the ethics of eating animals. My work explores these themes by presenting animal organ meats that are intended for human consumption in an unfamiliar context where I hope that the underlying ugliness of our food system is exposed.
Shooting portraits in natural light can sometimes honestly be tougher than using a flash; but that’s all considering that you haven’t done any sort of scouting beforehand. However, natural light portraiture can be pretty simple if you can find a way to figure out the artistic vision parts as the technical parts can all be pretty simple too once you just pay attention to and carefully think about what you want.
Nude model photography is one of those things that gets knocked a lot in the photography field. ‘Anyone can take a good picture when you have a model who looks like THAT’ is a common retort to photographers posting sexy and nude images on social media. But as any photographer who has actually shot or attempted to shoot it knows, its a lot harder than ignorant commenters realize.
My name is Debmalya Sinha and I’m a personal documentary photographer. As Martin Parr once said, “Unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs”; I started looking for my vulnerabilities inside my otherwise easy and mostly satisfying life and quickly found out one can find pain even in the intense orgasms inside the most loving embraces of life if one is looking for it. Emptiness and fear became central to my photographs and my life during this period. A downward spiral of self inflicted sufferings later, I slowly realised that crisis is not only about pain and suffering. Simultaneous joy of an ephemeral moment and the sadness as it floats away is a projection of vulnerability too and can be expressed together. This helped me start my current project “Mono No Aware” where I’ve explored emptiness and togetherness concurrently in a dreamlike fictional sequence. Here is a very short video of a subset of the pictures from the project.