This podcast shows the process of editing and critiquing a set of photographs of India, which were created by workshop students from the Objectifs Center in Singapore. The goal was to get from approximately sixty images per person down to about twenty images. The final twenty images should tell the viewer something about the photographer as well as how they experienced India. Read More
This podcast explores the important process “working” a situation, making a variety of images of a given subject, by changing the photographer’s position, the camera’s orientation, the focal length of the lens, etc. Read More
I had an e-mail exchange recently with student on the question of creativity. He was not asking about software or lens choices, though those are perfectly valid questions at different points. He was asking the biggest, toughest question of all. I was impressed that he was able to articulate the question. He seemed impressed with my answer. That was when I realized that our exchange was worthy of a blog piece. Read More
This podcast explores the evolution of my photo-essays, including many of my grant-funded projects, including my work on the pesticide poisoning of farm-workers in California, the Israeli and Palestinian conflict, fishermen in Gloucester , MA as well as the communities of South Asian immigrants in America Read More
I almost never crop the photographs that I make. For me, the best images are captured by careful composition in the camera, and not ‘saved” by cropping after the fact. I will be the first to admit that I was not always so disciplined. In tracing my evolution from mad cropper to full frame perfectionist, I realized the idea of not cropping went from technical objective to moral imperative to aesthetic goal and now is a philosophical mission. Read More
This podcast explores the process of making one image, from recognizing the potential of the situation for a photograph, through composing and metering of the photograph and then actually making a variety of images. Read More
When I went to college, in pursuit of a Bachelor of Liberal Arts, my mother encouraged me to put my energy into what she called “learning how to learn.” I just finished a workshop where a student told me the best part of the class was that he had “learned how to learn the way to make the best photograph possible of a given situation.” Read More
This podcast explores the evolution of my “light studies,” which are photo-essays on the light and atmosphere of a given place. The first “light study,” on a train station in Philadelphia has since led me to do these projects across the globe. Read More
Regular readers of this blog may be wondering when I am going to stop writing about my “philosophy” and return to talking about cameras and photographing. I will right now. In this post, I am going to highlight one of the most important pieces of gear in my camera bag. Read More
I was reading an interesting article in The New York Times about the Presidential dress code. Barack Obama’s recent choice to be photographed without his suit jacket in the Oval Office was front-page news. It rang a bell and then I remembered how another President’s fashion choices changed my life as a photographer. Read More