I love all types of documentaries, and I think it’s very important that artists and photographers educate themselves on the past greats and present ones working today. I watch documentaries on photography, fashion, art, and anything else I find interesting. It’s an education coming from a very successful person in that field that everyone can learn from, and I find them to be very inspirational. When I don’t feel inspired or I’m frustrated with things not working out for me, I put on a photography or artist doc and learn about their past struggles and their process that they go through. It’s always a great way to remind myself that everything is going to workout and to create that crazy idea.

1. The Man Who Shot Beautiful Woman

I have watched this documentary around 3-4 times. It is based on the life of fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld who started his photography career later in life, like myself.

Most people have never heard of him, I never did until I stumbled upon this documentary. Blumenfeld was the highest paid photographer in the world in the 1940s and 1950s, shooting for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. His photos were way ahead of his time, so stylized and experimental, I was in awe with what he created because nothing like that existed before him. He had many personal struggles as many great artists do, all which is talked about in this must-see documentary. 

2. Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters

I love Gregory’s work. I have his photography book sitting on my coffee table as constant inspiration. This documentary follows his journey on set in small town, U.S.A. as he creates this series of unforgettable images. The impactful and somewhat haunting photos are a one image cinematic masterpiece, each image looks like it was taken out of a movie. 

It’s a depiction of small town America with a little bit of fantasy. These photos will stick with you and make you wonder what is actually happening. It’s incredible to see what he goes through to get one image, like taking a street sign out of the cement instead of moving his camera. This is a must-see for inspiration and all the possibilities available to photographers to create the perfect image. 

3. The Eye Has To Travel

No, this is not a documentary about photography, but is a documentary about fashion, creativity, and seeing the world as an artist. Diana Vreeland, who lived a very eclectic life, was the editor at Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Sometimes, inspiration comes from other creative people who aren’t photographers, but a different kind of artist. What you take away depends on how open your mind is. I found her so inspirational and a great reminder of that era. 

4. Queen Of Paradis

Reine Paradis is a Los Angeles fine art photographer. I was first attracted to her work because I really like neon colors and love blue. This is another photographer that has gone far above to get the shot. In this documentary, Reine travels the country for the perfect location, but looking at the final image, you think she could have just Photoshopped the image together. But that is what I love about it, especially since I don’t love Photoshop. I’m more of an in-camera type of photographer. Of course, the final image is Photoshopped to put it all together, but the location is real, and I think that is where the creativity comes from. It’s really about the artist’s experience and feeling that makes the image work. Since she is her own model, it has to be that way. 

5. Slim Aarons: The High Life

If you have not heard of Slim Aarons, Google him now and then rent this documentary. You will see many photographers out there today are copying him, some of them blatantly. You will see what I mean in this great documentary. Now, we all know that pretty much everything has already been done before, so nothing is really that original. Aarons captured the luxury lifestyle and brought people into that world like no one had seen before at that time. His images take you to a place and time we all wish we could experience.

I’m very inspired by Aarons and have no problem admitting that I would like to shoot some images similar to his. A lot of the travel images you see on social media by today’s photographers in Italy and around Europe were first shot by Aarons. Take a look at his work and then look at Instagram photos, and they will look very familiar.

I love Palm Springs. It is my treasured getaway from L.A. So, his Poolside Gossip shot at the famous Kauffman house in the early 1970s is one of my favorite photos and by far his most iconic image. Once you get to know Slim Aarons, you will never look at Instagram lifestyle travel photos the same again.

I hope you take the time to watch one or all of these documentaries. I think they will inspire you, light a fire inside you, or just give you permission to say “yes” to that next crazy idea. 

PhotoPills might be the most popular app for planning photoshoots. However, there is another feature-rich app that can do even more. In this video, Alyn Wallace shows the app Planit Pro and some of its unique features.

If you read my article about night photography and saw the included video, you know I’m a fan of Planit Pro. It’s my favorite tool for pre-visualizing my landscape and night photos. It has a powerful VR mode and 3D terrain maps, allowing very detailed planning of the perfect camera position.

As Wallace shows in his video, those 3D terrain maps also include iconic buildings for some cities. Those models make executing challenging night photo shoots easy, even using a long lens. In his example, he shows the planning for an image of the crescent moon behind one of the large mosques in Istanbul. The result perfectly matches his plan.

Wallace continues to share additional features of Planit Pro that are not yet available in PhotoPills. It seems the team at PhotoPills is also working on a major update, which should bring its feature set closer to that of Planit.

Since both apps are not very expensive, I will continue to use both for now. I prefer PhotoPills’ AR mode in the field, while I like to use Planit for in-advance planning. It also allows me to save offline maps, which is important when I travel. Because it’s not as intuitive to use as PhotoPills, I’d encourage anybody who wants to give it a try to check the Planit documentation here.

Rarely can Katy Fielder picture her father and not see a camera in his hands. 

Across a more than 40-year career, John Fielder made a name for himself as one of Colorado’s premier nature photographers, producing roughly 200,000 photos in his ongoing attempt to capture the state’s natural beauty. 

Fielder, who died Aug. 11 at the age of 73 following a prolonged battle with pancreatic cancer, will be remembered for his love of life and his commitment to nature, friends and family. 

“I’d always imagined my dad — with what an outdoorsman he was — hiking and skiing until he was 90 years old and never having any issues with it,” said Katy, Fielder’s youngest daughter. “It’s a huge, huge loss.” 

Katy said her father passed away peacefully, while looking out at the Gore Range where he had explored endless trails and crevices, at his Summit County home with family by his side. 

‘Always pointed at nature’

From her earliest memories, Katy, 37, said she was swept up in her family’s expeditions to various pockets of Colorado. It began as a toddler harnessed to her father’s body while they glided on skis across High Country snow. As she grew older, Katy became accustomed to routine camping trips that could be weeks long. 

“I don’t think there was a day that went by without him looking out at the mountains and saying how incredibly beautiful this place is and how grateful we are to live in it,” she said. “As kids, when he would take us out into the wilderness, I think he’d show us that the world and the environment is a really big place.”

And Fielder, “never did not have his camera with him,” Katy said. “It was always pointed at nature.” 

But it wasn’t until one evening on the Eastern Plains, standing near the Pawnee Buttes, that Katy, then aged 8 or 9, stopped to think about what her father was doing. As the warm light of sunset fell over the two rocky sentinels that make up the formation, Katy stared at Fielder, who was engulfed in his work. 

“I remember I realized just how incredible and how beautiful the state was, and seeing my dad capture it, I really understood what he was doing,” Katy said. 

Fielder embraced involving his family in his work, said Katy, who remembers peeking under the cloth of her father’s large frame camera before he captured a shot. At home, Fielder would bring Katy and her siblings downstairs to the basement where they would ponder over photo transparencies on his light table. 

Fielder would even ask which ones they wanted to see in his books and calendars. For Fielder’s acclaimed pictorial history book 1870-2000, or as Katy calls it, “the big brown book,” he had the family help pick the cover.

Since beginning as a professional photographer in 1973, Fielder’s work has appeared in more than 50 books. In January 2023, he donated his Colorado photography to History Colorado and wrote in a subsequent column for the Summit Daily News: “I have never felt that I ‘owned’ my photographs, only that I was borrowing these places to visit and record, and that I would give them back someday.”

‘An inspiration to many’

Mountain guide author Jon Kedrowski, who became a close friend later in Fielder’s life, said he remembers growing up with the Colorado photographer’s work in the 1990s. 

“I had coffee table books of John’s that my parents had bought me when I was a kid,” Kedrowski said. “He was such an inspiration to many people, including myself.”

The two first met in the late 2000s during one of Fielder’s book events where they struck up a conversation about their love for outdoor exploration. Fielder told Kedrowski to reach back out and, roughly a week later, Kedrowski did. 

They formed a friendship for the remainder of Fielder’s life that included mountaineering, rafting and backpacking with llamas, one of Fielder’s favorite ways to get around, Kedrowski said. 

“At a time when I was trying to find life in my direction and my career, we could go out and leave the world behind,” Kedrowski said. 

Kedrowski said Fielder became a mentor to him, helping him navigate his own aspirations of becoming a photographer and nature writer. For Kedrowski’s first book in 2012, “Sleeping on the Summits,” Fielder wrote the foreword and later provided photos for subsequent mountain guides. 

Outside of his professional standing, Fielder helped grow Kedrowski’s outlook on life, too. 

Fielder was always “finding the joy out of struggle,” Kedrowski said. Whether it was avoiding capsizing during a 165-mile rafting trip or triggering an avalanche in the backcountry (the latter of which ended in a swift return home and a round of margaritas), Fielder lived life with a smile. 

“He always had a desire to seek more wilderness, more adventure and never look back because life is too short,” Kedrowski said. 

He remembers a time during one of their backpacking trips when this philosophy was acutely noticeable. Kedrowski said he asked Fielder what time it was to which he replied, “Time doesn’t matter here.”

Kedrowski said the message he heard was, “Don’t wait, if you’ve been putting something off that you’ve been wanting to do, don’t wait.”

‘The soul of the place’

Fielder’s life was not without tragedy. In 2005, he lost his wife Gigi to Alzheimer’s disease. In 2006, his son J.T. died by suicide. 

After both losses, Fielder became heavily involved as a volunteer in raising awareness around Alzheimer’s and suicide prevention, said Colorado author Steve Walsh, who published a children’s biography of Fielder in 2019. 

“He did a lot of work on the environment and conservation but also in the personal aspects of his life,” Walsh said. “I think it showed what a really well-rounded person he was. Family and nature were No. 1 for him, in that order.”

Fielder’s environmental and conservation work was in many ways an extension of his photography and deeply held beliefs about the natural world, Walsh said. 

When taking a photo, “Probably the most important thing was the essence of the place, the soul of the place,” Walsh said. “It wasn’t just how pretty a mountain was around him, but what it elicits.” 

Fielder has helped lead public policy on environmental efforts, such as the Great Outdoors Colorado initiative in 1992, which has since protected 2 million acres of open space, parks, trails, wildlife habitat and ranches worth $2 billion using Colorado lottery profits and other funds.

Fielder’s photos were also used to promote the passage of the 1993 Colorado Wilderness Act, which enacted a slew of environmental protections. 

His daughter, Katy, said those efforts show how Fielder’s work offered more than just scenic imagery. His photos were also a call to action. 

“Our politicians really are crucial for protecting Colorado and the beauty and land we love to use here. And if they’re not seeing it every day, it’s probably easier to lose sight of that,” Katy said. 

“The most important part of his legacy was not how much he loved Colorado,” she added, “but showing everyone else how beautiful Colorado is so that they could love it as much as him.”