NERD Productions are delighted to introduce Manos to its continuously expanding talent roster. With his remarkable portfolio featuring delectable food photography, captivating portraits brimming with purpose, and the mesmerising landscapes of the Mediterranean, Manos brings a unique creative flair to our team. In an exclusive interview, NERD had the pleasure of discussing Manos’ portfolio, his award-winning image for the Portrait for Humanity, and the diverse array of influences that shape his distinctive style.

Manos Chatzikonstantis is a photographer inspired by good food, fascinated by light, captivated by elegant and appetising compositions and also passionate about the smallest detail in each of his carefully crafted images. His food shots, be they in the studio or on location are natural, inviting and always entice you to wonder about the story behind them. Manos showcases a distinctive ability to connect with places and people. His Mediterranean cultural roots are evident in the richness of textures, skilful play with shadows, and the use of colour. These elements collectively contribute to the unique and distinctive character of his work. 

His extensive portfolio includes contributions to numerous award-winning food and travel books worldwide. 

Manos has crafted for various clients like Quadrille Books, Departures Magazine, Atlas Magazine by Etihad, N Magazine by Norwegian, Murdoch Books, Vogue (GR), Kyle Books, Smith Street Books, ECM Records, Linwood Fabrics, Ink Global (UK), Pepsico and  Ouzo Plomari.

Q> Your portfolio reflects a deep appreciation for light, composition, and the intricacies of imagery. Could you share a moment that sparked your fascination with these elements and ultimately led you to pursue photography as a career?

Manos> Creative expression comes from diverse parenthood. So many things in one’s life, many of them unconscious, contribute to one’s style. I suppose growing up in Greece, being familiar with strong light and shadows plays a role. Warm sun, reflections, the softness of the evening. These kinds of things. Working with great people as an assistant is also quite formative. Observing art plays its role, I suppose, as does literature. One resonates subconsciously with certain elements, with certain techniques. I believe in observing the world closely and photography is pretty much the profession to follow if you are like that and a horrid draughtsman at the same time. 

Q> Your food photography is described as natural yet inviting, every shot we look at just gives us that ‘yum’ feeling. How do you approach each food shoot to ensure the dishes not only look appealing but also tell a compelling story?

Manos> What’s important is to understand the food itself and what the shot is for. It’s like a portrait really, where you have to connect with the person at some level and convey something. I need to know what the food is about, where it comes from, and what traditions it’s connected with. Then comes the technical part. Chat with the team if this is part of a production. Which bits need to be highlighted, how this particular food reacts with light and colour? And in the end, one has to have a story going. Where are we, where is this dish supposed to be, whose place is this? Even if it’s just a white background where the food is placed, it should bear the soul of the people involved in preparing it. 

Q> Your Mediterranean cultural roots shine through in the textures, shadows, and colours of your work. How do you incorporate your cultural influences into your photography, and how do you believe it sets your style apart in the industry?

Manos> I believe that one’s style has to be true to oneself to have some significance. I’m equally fascinated by the South as I am by the northern crisp sunlight or the shadows of an object lit through a window on a gloomy day. Maybe having lived in Germany and the UK, being originally from Greece.  I somehow came to understand and appreciate the southern narrative elements better and learn how to combine them with the northern ones. That might be one thing. And the other might be that I don’t particularly care for stereotypes and try to avoid them. Removing elements usually works better than adding. 

Q> Winning the Portrait of Humanity award and being shortlisted for prestigious awards like the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year demonstrate the recognition your work has received. Can you tell us a backstory of your Portrait of Humanity winning image?

Manos> Oh, I love this image. The great thing about living in London is that you rub shoulders with all those cultures, all those different people. The shot was made in Stamford Hill, where most of the Jewish Orthodox community lives. I was working on a book about Jewish kosher cuisine at the time and Purim was going on, a religious celebration similar to carnival. People get totally bonkers there during the festival. It’s a wonderful thing to observe and interestingly not many Londoners know about it. I was roaming the streets, camera in hand and these kids were just coming out of their place to join the festivities. I took a shot, then they noticed me and as they gave me a shy smile I managed another two shots. One of them made the Portrait of Humanity competition. A lovely moment. 

Q> And to finish off, tell us a NERDy fact about yourself 🙂

Manos> Here’s two:

I love Superbad. 

When I edit photos I listen to weird, modular, glitch music. Or Frank Zappa’s mad guitar riffs. 

See more from Manos here.

I met Steve McCurry at a gathering at Punahou School last week.

No sooner had I introduced myself when we got into a funny and heated conversation over whether he was a photographer or an artist.

I thought he should call himself a photographer. He said he was an artist. I said, no he was a famous photographer. And so it went, back and forth, laughing, until we were asked to sit down to a fancy bento box lunch of roasted vegetables and sauteed kajiki.

McCurry was at Punahou April 1-3 as part of the school’s Creative Greats, a program to introduce students to legendary figures in the arts. For more than five decades, he has traveled the world as a photographer/artist capturing scenes of humanity and beauty to connect viewers to people and events they might never experience themselves.

He is famous, very famous, for his photograph “Afghan Girl,” the 12-year-old refugee with penetrating green eyes whose face in June 1985 became one of the most widely viewed National Geographic magazine covers ever.    

McCurry photographed the girl in 1984 — without recording her name — coming across her in a makeshift girls’ school in a tent in a refugee village near Peshawar, where he stopped to take photos of the students and noticed her stunning face.

She had escaped with her siblings and her grandmother after walking for two months over high mountains to get to the Pakistan refugee camp after Russians bombed her village during the Soviet-Afghan war. 

McCurry is renowned today not just for his image of the Afghan Girl but for hundreds of other pictures taken in places stretching across the world — depicting people in wars, natural disasters, celebrating important cultural festivals or just living their daily lives.

His photos evoke surprise and wonder mainly through the direct gaze of many of his subjects who make a viewer feel at one with them.

During a presentation on April 2 in the Punahou chapel for students, faculty and alumni, McCurry was asked by Punahou alumna Marcia Kemble how he approached his subjects to get them to relate to him so he could take such close personal photos. It was a question many other people asked during his visit.

McCurry said he learned to gain acceptance over time by trial and error. In 1983, he said he was photographing a family in Old Delhi, India when a man started screaming at him to give him the film. A crowd gathered. “I knew they would kill me if I didn’t give him the film. I did not want to ever have that happen again. I always try to understand, is this the right thing to do? Is it respectful? I always try to treat people with dignity and respect.”

He said he tries to make conversation with a person he hopes to photograph and when there is no common language between them, he said he even uses gestures or a tip of the head. A smile can go a long way.

A student asked about the danger of his work.

He said he came close to getting killed in Mumbai, India in 1993 while taking pictures of people in a festival carrying large statues of the Indian god Ganesha into the water. He was in the water himself to get the pictures at twilight when a group of men attacked him, pushing him under. 

“They were pounding on me, holding me down,” he said. “I lost every piece of camera equipment, but the film was OK in canisters.”   

He also nearly perished in a two-seater airplane taking aerial photos of a lake in Slovenia. The pilot flew too low. One of the planeʻs wheels hit a wave in the lake and it crashed, flipping upside down in the water. McCurry was trapped underwater until he figured out how to wiggle out of an elaborate safety harness and heavy helmet holding him down. “It was the worst experience in my life,” he said.

He was asked how much of his work is technique versus art and how he knew when he had a great photo.

 “As time goes on, you learn how to translate what goes onto paper. In the early days when I got back to the darkroom with photos I thought were great, I saw I had not paid attention to the background in a picture and how it should fit together with the foreground. You learn to pay attention to the quality of light. You learn to hone your eye,” he said.

At an earlier event at Punahou, McCurry talked about the Afghan Girl, Sharbat Gula, a singular photo considered by many to be a work of art.

He said he came across her when was covering the war, traveling back and forth across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 1984 and stopped to visit one of the many refugee camps in Pakistan.

In the camp, he said could hear the voices of children in a tent that turned out to be a girls’ school taught by a woman who had been injured in the war.

The teacher gave him permission to photograph the students in hopes that it might draw the attention of the outside world to the plight of the refugees.

When he saw the girl with the green eyes sitting in a corner, he found her face astonishing. “I knew I had to get a picture of this girl,” he said.

She was shy, he said, but when she saw him photographing the other girls, she became more comfortable. “It was almost like she felt excluded if I didn’t take her picture,” he said. He took photos of Gula both with her shawl covering half of her face and her full face.

McCurry said at the time he knew it was a great picture. But the most important photo shoot of his life was over fast. Gula jumped up and ran off to play with the other girls, just like that.

After her face appeared on the National Geographic cover, McCurry said not a day passed without dozens of readers writing or calling the magazine asking how they could help her with money, food, goods. Men even wanted to marry her. She became the symbol of the suffering of Afghan villagers caught in the middle of death and destruction not of their own making.

In 2002, McCurry and a film crew from National Geographic returned to Pakistan where they launched a difficult search for her, initially not even knowing her name.

“So many people pretended to be her. They swore up and down they were the girl,” he said. Men pretended to be her husband. When they finally found Gula in a village in the mountains on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, she of course looked much older, a married woman with four children.

Gula now lives in Italy, where she was granted asylum in 2021 after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.  She had been welcomed back to Afghanistan in 2017 after she had been arrested and threatened with deportation by the Pakistani government for using forged identification papers — a common practice by hundreds of Afghan refugees in Pakistan as they struggled to remain in the country. The Afghanistan government at the time welcomed her back with a large new home and a stipend.

But when the Taliban seized Afghanistan, Gulaʻs supporters knew she needed to leave for her own safety with the government cracking down on women, especially celebrities in a country where Taliban officials wanted women to be invisible.

McCurry still lives in Philadelphia, where he grew up. He said when he was 19, he took off from his family’s home to live in Europe for a year, which made him realize he wanted to travel for the rest of his life.

“I started to realize there is a big world out there. I wanted to see it all but I realized I needed a purpose. I couldn’t just travel. I went back to school,” he said.

After he graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in film and fine art photography, he worked for two years as a news photographer at the now-defunct newspaper, the Philadelphia Bulletin.

When he had saved enough money, he took off for what he expected to be six-week trip to India, which turned into two years. After that trip, he kept returning to India as his career as a photographer flourished. In the years since, he has worked in dozens of other countries.

He urged the Punahou students to put down their devices and get out to see the world, “to enjoy the adventure of being human. To experience life happening right in front of you. To see the commonality of humanity no matter where you are. You can really learn a lot.”

At age 74, he doesn’t intend to stop. After the Punahou visit, he headed home to Philadelphia to regroup before taking off on assignments in Italy and Cambodia.

“If you are doing what you love, why stop? This is what energizes me,” he said. “This is what gives purpose to my life.”

Like most people switching careers, photographer Grace Chon found herself miserable. She was a stressed-out art director at a large advertising agency. Like someone in wet clothing stuck out in the cold, she needed a change while still being authentically herself. “…I ultimately decided to return to my childhood love of photography and bought an entry-level DSLR,” Grace tells the Phoblographer in an interview. “I started volunteering with a dog rescue by taking headshots of the dogs to help them get adopted, which turned into a side hustle pet photography business. After about 9 months of juggling my full-time job art director gig and the photography side hustle, I went all in on photography and never looked back.” Unlike the myth of Orpheus, she succeeded — clearly.

All images by Grace Chon. Used with permission. For more, please visit her website, Instagram @thegracechon, podcast and Hey Retriever

How Dog Photographer Grace Chon Gets Her Moments

These days, Grace shoots with the Canon R5 — she loves the autofocus and the high ISO output. She mates it with the 16-35mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm lenses. These help her cover everything she needs. “Each lens tells a different story and I love choosing the lens for the story I want to tell,” Chon states. “If the environment is a big part of the story – like I’m outdoors in an epic spot – 16-35 is my go-to so I can capture more of the scene. It’s also so fun to use for wide angle portraits on pets.” She uses the 24-70mm lens to capture candids of animals and their humans while the 70-200mm is better for action shots. When she needs to shoot really nice portraits, she reaches for her 50mm f1.2.

Dogs look so cute and hilarious when their heads look huge in a portrait!

Grace Chon

The Moment of the Best Dog Smiles

Obviously, Grace’s background has helped her with making compelling images. She learned while working in advertising that it’s all about a great idea and execution both working together. “Crafting a great idea is excellent creative problem solving – You have an idea you want to communicate, and you have to make sure you’re showing the idea in the strongest way possible,” she says. “I like to look at an idea from all angles and think a lot about how to push ideas to be even better, considering if there is a more interesting or entertaining way to tell the story. This definitely comes from years of training and working as an art director in advertising, because the goal is always effective communication told in the most interesting way possible.” This essentially is the idea of always keeping your technical and artistic brain connected. But what it also entails is staying in tune with your own emotions to capture moments that are perfectly picturesque.

She’s photographed some of the most famous dogs in the world, but the ones that impact her the most are the rescues. She worked on a job for LA Animal Services a while back on a rebrand and had quite the experience. “The dogs I photographed were so sweet and loving, and it was really sad to know that many were likely never going to make it out of the shelter system,” she tells us. “So many beautiful, hopeful faces that end up being euthanized. I wish I could have brought them all home with me.”

Thoughts on AI Imagery

Anyone can go to an AI image making platform and find images of dogs. She thinks AI is a tool, and ultimately it’s up to the artists to make something with it.

“It’s the same thing with a camera –  it’s a tool that can create mundane things that look like generic stock photography, or incredible things that make people feel something. I think a lot of AI projects out there can be really boring and mediocre (akin to generic stock photos), and then there are some AI projects out there that blow your mind in the idea and execution of it.

Grace Chon

What she’s most concerned about is how AI models are trained and infringement. She hopes companies will move toward training models with proper licensing, compensation, and artist consent. 

AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT

The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.

Today, we are all driven by technological advancements. With this in mind, the needs of individuals have also shifted – especially when it comes to the capabilities they look for in a smartphone.

In this digital age, content has become king – it acts as a hobby for some, a form of income for others and entertainment for almost every generation. Almost everyone is a content creator these days – and they understand the importance of having high-quality visuals to complement the message or story they’re putting out to their following.

The features of the smartphone they ideally choose can make all the difference when it comes to standing out in a crowd – and that’s where the HONOR Magic6 Pro comes in.

In response to the rising significance of artificial intelligence and the increasing popularity of sportography, a term used to define the act of capturing fast moving objects such as athletes or wildlife, smartphone manufacturers have devoted considerable efforts to improving capture speed and image clarity on their upcoming flagship devices.

But HONOR, a global leader in smart devices, which takes first spot in the AI race, has already taken proactive steps to lead the industry in camera innovation by integrating HONOR-patented AI technology into its Magic6 Pro – improving both the hardware and software.

With groundbreaking developments achieved over the past two years – the brand’s latest flagship from the Magic Series allows users to unleash their inner content creator – capturing the most exhilarating moments with exceptional clarity and preserving those fleeting moments in stunning detail.

The HONOR Magic6 Pro has been named the ultimate camera smartphone with a Gold DXOMMARK score of 158 points. It comes equipped with an AI Falcon Camera – aptly named for its ability to capture every little detail, introduces a 180MP Periscope Telephoto Camera Lens and a range of industry-first features that make this device the ultimate smartphone for aspiring content creators.

Capturing every detail.

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The upgraded AI motion sensing algorithm led to huge advancements in the HONOR Magic6 Pro compared to its predecessor, the HONOR Magic5 Pro. While the old version relied on 270 000 images to train the AI on actions like jumping, walking and running, the upgraded version uses a vast training dataset of 8 000 000 images across 10 scenarios, resulting in even smarter AI capabilities.

The camera can now capture a diverse range of sports and activities that extend beyond the realms of stretching, walking, running and jogging, covering 10 kinds of mainstream sports – perfect for the sports and health vloggers or influencers.

HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts the Sport Portrait Algorithm.

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The all-new HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts the Sport Portrait Algorithm, allowing photographers to effortlessly capture portrait shots with natural bokeh effects, even in fast-moving scenarios. Utilising fast, accurate focus and motion detection, the algorithm captures the frame of the moving portrait with clear detail.

When it comes to high-quality content, professional photographers widely prefer telephoto lenses due to their ability to provide a close-up perspective that is crucial for capturing impactful shots.

To make these sportography capabilities accessible on smartphones, HONOR has taken significant strides in enhancing its telephoto lens.

HONOR Magic6 Pro provides a 400% enhancement in light sensing ability compared to the flagship products from other market players, ensuring clear captures of faraway objects with excellent fidelity.

In addition, the telephoto lens supports 2.5 optical zoom, and up to 100X digital zoom. Users can capture subjects up close or at a distance with unparalleled precision, preserving exceptional sharpness, clarity and depth in every image.

In addition, HONOR Magic6 Pro boasts advancements in dynamic range, light sensitivity and long-range vision. With a remarkable 210% enhancement in dynamic range, HONOR Magic6 Pro ensures accurate colour reproduction even in bright settings, offering photographers an unparalleled experience to effortlessly capture fleeting moments.

With the best combination of industry-leading hardware and software solutions such as the AI Falcon Camera, HONOR’s commitment to pushing technological boundaries and embracing emerging innovations sets new benchmarks in the industry.

The HONOR Magic6 Pro is available for purchase in black and Epi green for the recommended retail price of R27 999, available at selected retailers.

Documentary photography captures moments from everyday lives that not only show how people around the world live but can also serve as a reminder of events in our own lives. By reflecting on the past, bygone moments are brought back to life and reflected in our memories. This is particularly true when the images document aspects of childhood. 

“These boys had just finished school and were fooling around before heading home,” Rico explains. “Watching them reminded me of my own childhood memories. Most days, I would drag out the time from finishing school to getting home, messing around with friends.” 

The most interesting images are the ones that allow the viewer to interpret the scene. In this photo, the focus is on the interaction between multiple subjects, creating a sense of intrigue in the viewer. “In this case, it was important for me to include the boys who were watching. You have one boy watching me and another boy watching them, while I am watching them all.” This gives the picture a narrative level.

“When composing this image, I needed to get everything proportionally in the frame – and especially the two boys watching,” Rico explains. To do so, he paid particular attention to the framing of the image in post-processing. 

“It was all about the corners. I cropped the image in post-processing and converted it to black-and-white. I felt that their skin tone against the school uniform would really make the image pop.”

Rico, a first-generation black Caribbean from Grenada, was raised in South-East London. From the tender age of two-and-a-half, he knew he was destined to be a pilot, and today, he has achieved his dreams and is soaring high in his career. Rico’s passion for photography and capturing moments has always been his forte, and he has now established himself as a “self-proclaimed” documentary photographer.

Tech details

Camera: Nikon D850
Lens: Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24mm f/1.8G ED
Aperture: f/9
Shutter speed: 1/200 sec
ISO: 1600

You might be interested in the best cameras for black and white photography, along with the best lenses for street photography. 

A total solar eclipse swept across North America from Mexico on Monday (April 8). The moon completely covered the sun, darkening the sky and revealing our star’s hidden outer atmosphere. While people in Ireland and Scotland may have had a glimpse of a brief partial eclipse, those in the rest of Europe didn’t get to see anything at all. In fact, Europeans will not see a full eclipse before 2026.

But for Americans, the event turned out to be a rich experience, with plenty of impressive footage that will surely serve the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which asked members of the public to send their observations in, as part of NASA’s Eclipse Soundscapes Project.

While some observers managed to capture the path of totality, other eclipse enthusiasts were able to take stunning photographs of different phases of the sun and the moon.

A total solar eclipse swept across North America yesterday, and footage captured on the day was spectacular

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Image credits: Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

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Image credits: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images

Naturally, stars observing the stars was a fitting part of the whole event, with celebrities including Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and his son Gilbert, as well as one-half of the Selling Sunset Oppenheim twins, Jason Oppenheim, sharing their own experiences observing the eclipse on social media.

More than 30 million people were able to see the eclipse’s path of totality, making it a pretty unique eclipse, Mashable reported. Those on the path of totality were mainly in the US states of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine.

However, eclipse viewers near Torreón, Mexico, experienced totality for the longest, with the impressive phase lasting four minutes and 28 seconds, CBS News reported.

While some people managed to capture the path of totality, other eclipse enthusiasts were able to take stunning photographs of different phases

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Image credits: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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Image credits: Liao Pan/Getty Images

Most places along the centerline of the path of totality saw a totality duration between 3.5 and 4 minutes long, according to NASA.

The 2024 total solar eclipse will be the last one for a while in North America, as per Eclipse 2024. There will be several other total solar eclipses scattered between April 8, 2024, and August 12, 2045. However, the 2045 solar eclipse will be the next one visible across most of the contiguous United States, according to NationalEclipse.com.

As a result, thousands of people traveled to get a glimpse of the jaw-dropping phenomenon, with many eclipse chasers waiting for the event, as the last eclipse of that magnitude was observed on the continent on August 21, 2017.

30 million people were able to see the eclipse’s path of totality in Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maine

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Image credits: Danny Lawson/Getty Images

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Image credits: Jesus Verdugo/Getty Images

This year’s eclipse was unique due to the totality phase lasting a little longer than in 2017 as a result of the Moon lining up a little closer to the Earth during totality, appearing just a bit larger in the sky.

Scientists in several parts of the US are now conducting studies to better understand how yesterday’s total solar eclipse affected the planet, The Independent reported.

Space Physicist Darci Snowden from Central Washington University sent up balloons to capture data and better understand how the weather changed during the eclipse.

Eclipse viewers near Torreón, Mexico, experienced totality for the longest, with the impressive phase lasting four minutes and 28 seconds

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Image credits: NASA

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Image credits: InspireMore

Weather balloons capable of flying up to 33 km (20 m) were flown into the stratosphere, carrying battery-powered instruments for collecting data on temperature, humidity, pressure, as well as wind direction and speed, as per the British newspaper.

Additionally, a NASA team also launched data-collecting jets above Earth’s atmosphere to learn more about the structure and temperature of the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

Colleen Hartman, director of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies, said: “The total solar eclipse is a really exciting way to engage the public in science while at the same time advancing our knowledge of the sun and its impacts on us here on Earth.”

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Image credits: Kristopher Stetson

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Image credits: officialdannytrejo

Moreover, scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory are reportedly studying how the solar eclipse affected the topmost layers of the atmosphere, including its outermost ionosphere layer, where many satellites orbit.

They hope to study how the ionosphere (the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth) responds before, during, and after the eclipse as the Sun’s radiation suddenly dips, The Independent reported.

Researchers also observed how animal behaviors changed when the eclipse passed over North America.

Jimmy Kimmel and Guillermo Rodriguez, Danny Trejo and his son Gilbert, as well as Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim, observed the eclipse

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Image credits: jimmykimmel

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Image credits: jasonoppenheim

As the eclipse neared totality, many animals in the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, including sloth bears, red pandas, reindeer, and ostriches, reportedly went to sleep as if it was nighttime.

Shannon Borders, curator of the zoo’s Heart of Africa exhibit, told The Columbus Dispatch: “About seven minutes afterward, it started to lighten back up a little bit and they all stood up and they started grooming as though they were preparing for the day.”

Observers in Fort Worth Zoo, Texas, said some animals displayed curiosity and vigilance during the eclipse.

People flocked to social media to share their amazement at the scene

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