Alain Briot - Artistic License

A few years ago I wrote an essay titled Just say Yes. The purpose of this essay was to provide an answer to a question myself and other fine art photographers are asked repeatedly: do you manipulate your work? In this essay I proposed that rather than argue endlessly and often fruitlessly about why we 'manipulate', we could simply answer 'yes.' Doing so answered the question and made the point that manipulation was an essential aspect of our work.     Read Article

Ian Plant - Twelve Significant Photographs a Year

Ansel Adams once famously said, "Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop." I don't know how many days Ansel spent in the field in a given year, but I do know this: the pace of nature photography has become much more hectic than in his days of 8x10 view cameras and glass plates. Forget every year - it seems these days we're expected to make twelve significant photographs every trip.     Read Article

Kory Lidstrom - Holding Out For A Hero

Hero images. That's the term many photographers use to label their very best images. The ones that really stand out. The true keepers.

So, when I entitled this essay "Holding Out For A Hero", I wasn't referring that that cheesy song from Footloose. I'm talking about the extreme lengths photographers - especially landscape and nature photographers - go to make an image that they're truly happy with. A hero image.     Read Article

Luke Ormand - Book Review: A Sea in Flames

To see the ocean on fire is a harrowing sight - to set the ocean on fire in order to help alleviate an environmental disaster, well that truly is frightening. The image of thick, charcoal colored smoke erupting into the air as black oil burns atop the azure Gulf of Mexico is the image that graces the cover of Carl Safina's latest book, A Sea in Flames, an apt photo and title for one of the worst environmental catastrophes in human history.     Read Review