AI Era: Death of Photography?
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An Important Reminder for Every Photographer
The debate over whether expensive gear is essential for high-quality photography is ongoing in the photography community. A professional photographer’s experiment with Sony’s cheapest interchangeable lens camera for a week of professional work offers insightful perspectives on this topic and serves as a great reminder that you don’t always need the latest and greatest.
Coming to you from PJ Pantelis, this great video follows him across four real photo shoots over a week, including a food shoot, two product shoots, and a portrait session, using Sony’s most affordable camera, the ZV-E10. To maintain the challenge’s integrity, instead of pairing the camera with expensive lenses, he opts for affordable options recommended by YouTube’s cheap lens expert, Mark Wiemels. The chosen lenses include a 27mm f/2.8 for around $15, a 35mm f/1.8 for about $150, and a unique 60mm macro lens priced at approximately $140. Pantelis’ initial skepticism about these cheaper lenses quickly turns to surprise as he finds them outperforming his expectations, particularly the macro lens, which he credits for some of his favorite images ever. This experience highlights how affordable gear can still produce high-quality results, challenging the notion that expensive equipment is a prerequisite for professional photography and underscoring the importance of sound technique.
During the shoots, Pantelis encounters some initial challenges with focusing and lighting, especially with the kit lens. However, switching to the third-party lenses yields much better results. The 27mm and 35mm lenses become his go-to choices, offering the needed depth of field and image quality. The macro lens, despite its manual focus and challenges, proves invaluable, especially in product photography. Pantelis’ success in delivering quality images that seamlessly matched his previous work and received no negative feedback on platforms like Instagram underscores the equipment’s capability in a professional setting.
For any photographer questioning the necessity of investing in high-end gear, this video is a must-watch. It demonstrates how, with skill and creativity, one can achieve professional-grade photography with more budget-friendly equipment. That’s particularly important in an industry where we are frequently attempted to buy our way to better results. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Pantelis.
Junebug Weddings Unveils Finalists for ‘Best of the Best’ Wedding Photography Contest
Junebug Weddings Unveils Finalists for ‘Best of the Best’ Wedding Photography Contest
In an endeavor to celebrate love captured in still frames, Junebug Weddings, a premier wedding planning website, has recently unveiled the finalists for their annual Best of the Best Wedding Photography contest. A contest that set a global stage for photographers to showcase their talent, it garnered submissions from practitioners of this art form worldwide, accumulating nearly 10,000 photos as candidates for the honor.
A Confluence of Emotion, Artistry, and Scenery
The contest, known for its discerning taste in photography, selected 50 out of the near 10,000 entries for the final line-up. These images, each a poignant tale of its own, are distinguished for their ability to stir potent emotions. They exemplify the art of encapsulating the profound love between couples, often set against an array of awe-inspiring backdrops that further heighten the visual appeal.
Curating the Standout Images
Junebug Weddings demonstrated a keen eye for quality, choosing photographs that not only exhibited technical skill but also conveyed deep emotional resonance. The images selected for the final showcase are a testament to the transformative power of photography – turning fleeting moments into timeless visual narratives. The final collection, a rich tapestry of diverse styles, themes, and perspectives, is a tribute to the art of wedding photography.
Accessible Artistry
The selected images, a remarkable fusion of art and emotion, can be viewed on the Junebug Weddings website. This accessibility ensures that these cherished moments are not limited to private albums but are shared with a wider audience, inviting them to partake in the joy, love, and beauty that these photographs encapsulate.
This Photographer Captures People’s Silhouettes And Nature During Sunset (17 Pics)
Today, we would like to present you with images by Aaditya Shrirang Bhat, a young photography enthusiast from India who creates unique photo stories during the sunset. The 21-year-old man is a recent graduate with a degree in psychology from the Arts faculty.
Most of the photos shared by the photographer online feature nature. On his Facebook profile, you can admire some macro shots, as well as breathtaking landscapes. Finally, there are photo stories showcasing people’s silhouettes and the sun, playing a crucial role in each shot. Scroll down to see a selection of the best images by Aaditya and to read our interview with the photographer.
More info: Instagram | Facebook
Youth without aging, life without death: A photographer’s journey
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European folklore’s long and rich tradition dates back thousands of years, probably to the Neolithic Age. Yet, despite the technological onslaught of modern life, the artform continues to thrill and terrify in equal measure.
A comparatively modern tale is Youth Without Aging and Life Without Death, published in 1862 by Petre Ispirescu – although the story has far older roots, adapted as it was from Romanian folklore.
Among those inspired by the tale over the centuries is British photographer Laura Pannack, who in November published a book of her images under the same title. It chronicles her regular visits to remote parts of Romania, particularly the desolate Transylvanian region of Maramureș where time seems to stand still.
Perhaps more than any other part of what is one of Europe’s most underdeveloped countries, Maramureș’s beautiful scenery and the simple lives of its inhabitants allowed Pannack to confront her constant anxiety about the dissipation of time.
Pannack told CGTN: “I was trying to escape something that is impossible to escape, which is my constant fear of time running out. I jam way too much into my schedule, so my relationship with time is quite complex.”
Her first visit to Romania in 2012 also helped Pannack process a shocking tragedy. “After three or four years of living in a house with strangers, one of the boys there – who was around my age – randomly fell off a cliff and died in a freak accident,” she recalled. Her shock led to what Pannack described as “that cliché of thinking life’s really short. I was looking to confront what happened where I had quiet, and time and space to process it.”
Decamping alone to Romania with her camera became a productive method of processing Pannack’s grief. An early conversation with a hired translator helped her project take shape.
She explained: “I was speaking with my translator on a constant basis on our car rides. On the third or fourth trip he said ‘everything that you’re describing that you’re feeling really reminds me of this tale Youth Without Aging and Life Without Death.’
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“The minute he said that I thought it was a great title and the more I explored the tale I realized how much it resonated with everything that I was feeling and saying. Then it became a question of how could I not just visually execute the images that would accompany this tale but use it as a catalyst for ideas and create something entirely new.”
The folktale itself was initially passed to author Ispirescu by his father while growing up in Bucharest. It contains philosophical ideas about man’s place in the universe, immortality and the cycle of life.
According to Pannack: “Essentially the tale is based around a prince who’s been promised that he will live forever. When he’s 18, he discovers that his father was lying to him and embarks on a quest to find this land where time does stand still.
“He encounters beasts and obstacles along his journey but finds it and when he’s there he’s very happy. However, one day he wanders into the Forest of Lament and begins to miss all the things and people that were in his life previously. He’s warned not to, but returns to find his loved ones have all perished and then he dies.”
This photograph of a forest was directly inspired by the folktale. /Laura Pannack
This photograph of a forest was directly inspired by the folktale. /Laura Pannack
Pannack says the tale has a clear moral. She explained: “The idea is that time is not something that you should chase in terms of having an infinite amount. It’s actually about who you spend it with and how you spend it, which is a lovely moral. For me, that’s very true in that I can be quite stoic and I believe I’m helped by being present in the moment, instead of fearing the future.”
The haunting quality of the photos in Pannack’s book, particularly those of the villagers in Vișeu de Sus where she was invited to stay in their home by a stranger, convey her emotional journey. The stranger’s gesture was typical of the warm welcome she says she received throughout her travels across Romania.
She said: “I could choose any image from the book and tell you how my relationship with the tale encouraged me to create it. Often I saw something out of the car window and literally stopped the car, got out and photographed it.”
She explained: “There’s a line in the tale that says ‘All of a sudden the forest began to move.’ If I hadn’t read that line I probably wouldn’t have stopped at that forest and taken the photo which looks visually like a bit of a mirage.”
One of the most striking photographs in the book is entitled ‘Heaven and Cyanide.’ “That photograph was a real construction,” she said. “I’d researched this lake and visited it several times because I knew it was polluted with cyanide and might be certain colors one day, but different colors another.
“Then I bought a mirror in a flea market because I knew I wanted to reflect the heavens above, the hell beneath, with the earth beneath. I wanted the mirror at a certain angle so that you couldn’t see the sky, so there was an infinite point of unknown. So some photos were constructively and conceptually thought out, whereas others were simply more reactive – even more so when working with people.”
Hush, my boy, I will give you youth without age and life without death
– Extract from ‘Youth Without Aging and Life Without Death’ by Petre Ispirescu
For ‘Heaven and Cyanide’, Pannack ‘wanted to reflect the heavens above, the hell beneath, with the earth beneath.’ /Laura Pannack
For ‘Heaven and Cyanide’, Pannack ‘wanted to reflect the heavens above, the hell beneath, with the earth beneath.’ /Laura Pannack
Thousands of photographs taken in three-to-four-week bursts over a five-year period make up her collection which Pannack first began displaying in 2016. Pannack mostly shoots on analogue for her self-initiated projects and this time chose to only use expired film to tie in with the themes of expiration and the fragility of life.
This year she was asked by publishers Guest Editions to make them into a book which includes large format photographs, polaroids, drawings and Pannack’s own personal notes.
Pannack hopes they will inspire viewers to examine their own concept of time and fragility.
Pannack is now halfway through the second chapter of this work, this time focusing on tales from Germany’s Dubener Heide region, with the work being supported by The Passage residency.
“Photography is about capturing timelessness,” she reflected. “For me personally a photographic image is more open to interpretation. The anonymity of images opens up multiple opportunities for narratives.”
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Memphis photographers capture a year of challenge and change
Much of photography’s strength lies in the medium’s ability to testify to what was.
In our reporting, our photography serves as evidence, centers the value of emotion and evokes possibilities. With the same diligence used to tell our stories, we shine light on harmful parts of our community that benefit from being obscured. We try to help preserve history to disarm erasure.
In order to create a more perfect collective history to take into 2024, we asked some of our regular contributors and other photographers in the community to share the five best images that resonate with what they saw, learned or felt this year. Each piece over the next three days will include a collection from two different photographers. We hope to continue traditions of remembering with y’all in the years to come.
Andrea Morales
In this sixth year as visuals editor at MLK50, I doubled down on using photography to bear witness to our community’s struggle and celebrations in equal measure. I know that memory can suffer when you wake up weary.
“Such is the power of the photograph, of the image, that it can give back and take away, that it can bind,” wrote bell hooks in her essay “In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life.”
As photographers, we make work to remember in the way that hooks reminds us we can: re-member by bringing together severed parts and fragments in order to behold the whole.
How we remember this year faces irreparable fracture in our memory because of the ongoing genocides, merciless economic inflation and the traumas we’re surviving. Our struggles and our joy are connected in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “single garment of destiny.” But, ultimately, oppression creates fault lines causing the weight of the world to not be experienced evenly.
Photography can help reclaim our past, renew our bonds and, through it, we can recommit to finding ways of sharing that weight. As hooks says, if one searches the images carefully they will find “a recuperative, redemptive memory” with which to build a radical future.
Bailey Sullivan
Bailey Sullivan spent his year growing.
While that’s normal for a teenager, Sullivan was really invested in his growth as a photographer.
MLK50 heard from the art teacher at his school that he was an avid photographer with an interest in photojournalism. We asked him to share some images that help us understand what is worth taking away from 2023.
“My hope is to become consistent and to be able to look back on photos that I took, even if just a month ago, and to not be embarrassed, but proud of what my one month younger self was able to accomplish,” he said.
The photos in his collection represent different lessons he’s learned in his journey to visual storytelling. His mother was a photographer in the armed services, so his enthusiasm is deeply instilled.
“She made sure that I appreciated the art form and fostered my love of art and documentation of all varieties,” he said. “Photography is an incredible art form that can tell the true story behind a person and write a narrative that explores the depths of the human imagination.”
Andrea Morales is the visuals director for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Email her at andrea.morales@mlk50.com
This story is brought to you by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, a nonprofit newsroom focused on poverty, power and policy in Memphis. Support independent journalism by making a tax-deductible donation today. MLK50 is also supported by these generous donors.
Got a story idea, a tip or feedback? Send an email to info@mlk50.com.
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Ottawa 2023 in photos: Photographer Ashley Fraser’s favourite photos of the year
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Nothing quite captures the tone of a year as distinctly as a collection of images. And so, here’s a look back at Ottawa in 2023, through the lens of Citizen photojournalist, Ashley Fraser.
A look at some of the top images captured by photographer Ashley Fraser during 2023:
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