Photo Blogs
You hear about people with natural talent, you know they exist - the ones who can pick up a camera or a paintbrush or a pencil and ... make art instinctively. Lor is one of those. She's multi talented, multi faceted and hopes to be multilingual. You have to love a woman with this much on the go.
Rachel is one of the wonders of this business. "I love her stuff" seems a casual endorsement, I know - but it isn't. She articulates moods and atmospheres through the lense with a sensitivity which always makes me think and then, more often than not, smile. She sees little bits of light and shadows against the wall and translates them into sighs and whispers. "I love her stuff".
David is both brilliant and prolific and his blog is quite deservedly one of the most visited on the web. He has the rare keen eye of the observing poet, a tremendous sense of time and place and an unerring eye for composition and color. David's photography has an inherent sensitivity to the curiosity of the viewer and never fails to make an impact.
Now Justin is just a marvel. Plain and simple. He uses that big equipment of his like a craftsman. He likes angles and line drives and gritty things with soft underbellies and all his pictures tell stories. I often take quite a while to look at them, marvelling at the talent it takes to make a photograph into an etching.
Colorblind Photography
James Owens
James Owens says that he is, "indeed color blind, which may explain my inclination towards black and white photography. By day, I'm a Vice President for a Fortune 250 company in North East Florida and the rest of the time I focus on my photography". I have a soft spot for this blog, for the wondrous, ethereal images and the tremendous sense of composition and context.
Daily Dose of Imagery
Sam Javarnouh
Sam's site is one of my inspirations. Every day I go there and find something beautiful. There are a lot of in-the-moment, on the street, in the urban jungle photo blogs, but there is only one Sam Javarnouh and his daily dose is eye opening. Sam is both a master photographer and a master darkroom wizard and he has the keen eye for display of the minimalist. His site is a standard.
Oh! Oh! What a zest for all things magnificent has this photographer! He likes to stun you. He likes to wow you. He always does. (I mean, really, have a look at these for starters. He's just good and cool, that's all.
Carrie impresses me on a lot of levels. There, amidst the dull (dull like gunmetal grey) monochrome background of her clean and elegant site, you will find many gems. Look at them large, admire the texture, the sense of light she possesses, her eye for composition. I think perhaps Carrie has one of the best eyes out there and her academic study of photography pays off - here's an artist who gets what she's after with her camera. Exactly what she's after.
Lifted right from Baris' About page: "Andreas Feininger once said: 'a technically perfect photograph can be the world's most boring picture'. Well, first a technically perfect photograph doesn't exist, and second, a technically imperfect photograph can be very boring too. What's a boring photo by the way? Is boringness a criterion for the quality of a certain photo?". Articulate, educated, ocassionally contentious and always creative, this is one talented photographer.
I really love the design of this blog - it's very intuitive and clever - but it's those AMAZINGLY clean and crisp shots that I go to see. The ones that seem to come from a camera hidden in everyman's pocket for all those multitudes of opportunities that most of us blissfully ignore until Chrys points them out and says "Hey, look what I saw!" Boy, am I glad he does that.
A member of the other Utata, this photographer impresses me on a daily basis. I find I cannot improve upon the blurb on the site, so I give it to you whole, from the horse's mouth: : "HD Connelly is frequently drawn to the simple and understated details of nature - rich textures, natural lighting and simple forms - studying the same subjects again and again to compare the effects of time and to capture an ever changing sphere of life, death, decomposition and rebirth. The same spirit of change and curiosity she discovered in nature, now inspires her when turning to still life, architectural and street photography."
Oh that Heather. Boy, she's a tough one to review. Heather has a joyfulness that any one of her many (and seemingly omnipresent) cameras expresses without fail. She always brings me back to what this photo blogging is all about. Her site is simple and neat, "here's my photograph, enjoy" and always has snippets worth reading or following. Heather is both brilliant photographer and brilliant human being.
I authored a book titled Digital Portrait Photography which was made possible by the lovely folks at istoicaEVERYDAY who are the amazingly talented portrait photographers behind many of the illustrations for that book. Book details to follow - publication in September 2006.
An American guy living in Java. All by itself this would be interesting ... but Brandon's eye and poetic sensibility conspire together to create a virtual buffet of images brought to you from a "stranger in a strange land. He's Gulliver with a camera.
Miles. Well, I've been looking forward and backward in his archive to try and explain him to you ... "He captures the small motions of our humanness," is the best I could come up with. You get the idea he sits and watches a lot, like a cat, before he takes his shots. And he sometimes uses a Yashica which endears him to me instantly.
(The) Narrative
Matt O'Sullivan
I love the "in your face"ness of Matt's site. It's beautifully rendered and designed and the photographs are of that variety that I often say to the person nearest me, "Geesh, will you look at that!" and "Yikes! How does he do that?"
Selected Canada's top blogger in the 2004 Bloggies, Rannie is both a lovely human being and a very talented photographer whose eye for the specatular in the mundane is laudible. But there's more. Rannie is a "presence", a bona fide mover and shaker, always up to something, always working with the photo blogging community to make things happen. He's the man, I tell you.
Todd has the eye. The eye for grandness inside of the circadian pool. Our sites bump into each other now and again (we've been selected for a few of the same accolades) and, I must tell you, I always feel like the country mouse that sneaked into the city on the back of the turnip truck. He's so very talented that you simply must go there and look at his work.
"You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." Says Pablo. And Pablo is a smart man with a smart sense of composition and a killer instinct for color and space.
I want to be Tracey. Oh, that's probably wrong to say, but nonetheless, I do. She's irreverent and spontaneous and finds magic in things most of us would not even notice. I'm a big fan and even though I could point out all the reasons why I love Tracey's photographs, I think it's best to just say that she has "it". You know. "It".
Irina expresses my mind for me sometimes, which I always appreciate. She captures moments and expressions and very often they resonate in profoundly personal ways. "Yes," I often say, "I see that. I get that. I understand that." She's interested in things and has the patience to follow them until they pose properly for her camera.
Sensitive Light
Graham Jeffery
"My aspiration is simple, to photograph what I see, in a sensitive light." Graham says on the front page of his site and I can give him no better accoldae than to say "he succeeds".
From Stockholm, Sweden Fredrik says that smudo is "content without cause" but I don't know. I think it's a fine cause to give people wonderful things to look at and consisder everyday. It's that "corner of my eye" intelligence that Fredrik has that sets him apart, I think - the "did you see that?" inherent in all his photographs.
I love Scott's work - it's colorful and energetic and loaded with nuance - not just pretty cartoons here but illustrated moments and notions we've all lived and thought. He's a professional and his work appears in a slew of noteworthy publications and most recently he has signed onto the utata team to create template skins which is pretty darn cool, you ask me.
We know him as holglomaniac on flickr where I first got to know him and since that time I've been nothing but impressed. Edward has a keen eye for the already observed ... just not in that way, and his unusual and unique perspectives often give me pause and make me go back again for a second look. He's a fine individual and a rockingly good photographer.
(A) Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania
Kathleen Connaly
Ah, there is beauty and romance and sentimentality here, people. There is a love of life and a joyous connection with her surroundings. One of my personal favorites since the first day I happened across it, every time I go I wish I could meet Kathleen, hear her stories ... take her photograph. This is the natural diamond you find at the mouth the cave, people. The real thing. Whatcha waiting for?
Caroyln would be my bestest friend ever if she lived closer. We have an amazing synchronicity to our lives and our art even thought we do very different kinds of photography. Carolyn is so loaded with talent that all I can say is the same thing I said on her Flickr profile: "[Carolyn] is really an elf. How else to account for all that magic and loveliness? I tell you this: she is a tide. And she will move you." Start with this one because it's bleeding brilliant.
Writing and Blogging
Marya Figueroa is one of my heroes. I've known her a long time in this and that internet venue and I have always been impressed by her wit, intelligence and charm. She's funny and ... you know ... cool like everyone wants to be cool.
An always enlightening, always entertaining blog that includes literary, visual arts, poetry and sometimes a little politica. Never fails to teach me a thing, make me smile or remind me of something important I had forgotten.
Other Artful Places
Timothy works with paints and the notions of geometry, space and zen awareness. The engaging mutability of his work is both invigorating and calming, alien and familar, vague and precise. Working out of a restored Victorian manner in rural Virginia,Timothy never fails to delight and amaze.
Resources
photoblogs.org
A portal site that lists and ranks over 13,000 photo blogs.
Travel Photography and the Law
Aimed at travel book photographers, this is nonetheless a very readable and direct explanation of many of the laws in place governing what we can and cannot photograph.
Copyright Guide For Photographers
The American Society of Media Photographers
The 411 on Copyright for Net Photos
A comprehensive guide to the various issues regarding publishing photography on the internet.
Canadian Photographers Network
Online community for professional photographers working in Canada.
Western Canada News Photographers
Online community for professional news and journalistic photographers working in Canada.
The Digital Journalist
Multimedia magazine for photojournalism in the digital age and one of my favorite sites on the internet.
Photo Quotes
A searchable selection of quotations from famous photographers.