For the past several years, I’ve been really loving the Tamron 17-28mm f2.8 lens. It’s lightweight, weather resistant, durable, fast to focus, and has great image quality. It’s truly hard to beat it because of how useful it is when you’re traveling. It goes from a wide-angle to a semi-wide field of view. If you’re a fan of the 28mm field of view instead of 35mm, then this lens will be perfect for you. Oh, it’s also very affordable. The Tamron March Mega Sale is running until April 7th, 2024. Here are all the deals you care about.
It’s easy to become inspired by modern photographers and all the great work that they do. We profile many of them here in our interviews. But at the same time, some of the earliest photographers have a purity about them that removes all of the ambiguities around modern photography today. One of those photographers is Diane Arbus. For her time, she was very pioneering photographer who worked to tell very important stories. Her images often were a slap in the face to conventional standards of what was considered normal. But most of all, she didn’t give into the idea of documentary-porn or the idea of making the image all about herself. Instead, her images were all about the people in front of her camera.
Yes, it’s real! The dream is alive, and it feels like a single lens that a photographer can have on them. Very few things are as great as having just a single lens on you when you’re traveling to shoot photos. The new Nikon Z 28-400mm f4-8 is exactly that. No other company has made something like this. The closest other brands have gotten while making a good lens is the Tamron 28-200mm offering — which starts at f2.8. Combined with the DX-cropping ability on Nikon cameras, their build quality, and the autofocus, Nikon is probably making the best lens for travel photographers.
Average photographers copy one another, but good photographers take work that came before them and push it a step forward. Here at the Phoblographer, we’ve renewed our pledge to photographers and strive to showcase work that can’t be easily created or replciated by AI imaging. The photographers we feature also make images that truly do hit soul deep. So to celebrate this, we’re featuring a few incredible women. These folks make photographs that you’ll feel deep down.
“This series was meant to be a visual representation of being ‘suffocated’ or overwhelmed by your thoughts; it’s a continuation of a self-portrait concept I shot back in 2019,” says photographer Najiyyah Floyd to the Phoblographer in an interview. “The idea came from my own experience of feeling overwhelmed by my constant overthinking. I was sitting in my apartment one day consumed by my thoughts, unable to make a move without overanalyzing the next.” She then decided to channel this energy into creativity. So Najiyyah gathered some yarn and got to work.
“Every day, I wake up with a smile on my face, excited about photography,” says photographer Tyler Shields to the Phoblogrpaher in an interview. “It gives me a life that not many other art forms can. Making a movie is a long process with many people involved, but with photography, it can be minimal and intimate, which gives it a magical quality.” Part of this joy comes from the fact that he’s working on a brand new book too.
“Their life can be destroyed every week for sure but they stay here because the earth is geared for their culture and this is simply they home,” says Philippe Echaroux about the people he photographed near the Bromo volcano. “I don’t go there to try to gain their trust, I am just a human going to meet other human and together we will create maybe Art, or just share point of view and experiences. I see this in a simple and deeply human way and it always worked.” This method is far unlike what so many other documentary photographers do.
The old school film-look, softness, halation, and all! It’s right here! This month, the Phoblographer is giving away a beautiful 7Artisans 50mm f1.1 lens in Leica M-mount to one lucky subscriber. It’s overall in pretty great condition and brings with it the patina and aging that makes its beauty shine through. Now, we’re giving it …
Fact: Photography is in danger. It’s in danger of being replaced by AI because so many people do not understand how it is an art. More people use photography as something to simply capture — instead of to create. As it is, photography has struggled to be recognized as a fine art in the same way that paintings, sculpture, and more have been. And a major part of this is due to people creating for algorithms instead of creating images for themselves with artistic expression. This is something that every photographer or anyone interested in photography should teach to their children. And we’re going to look at five photographers who do this.
“…not all brands are open to creative ideas, many want to realize their specific idea,” says photographer Maria Raymers to the Phoblographer in an interview — also expressing that she’s really interested in the brands that give her creative freedom. “…the resulting works turn out to be much more interesting than if we simply implemented their certain idea.” Maria’s photography has a special thing about it that embodies magic and an ethereal look simultaneously. And none of this would’ve happened without her grandfather.