Sean Reid has written an insightful article titled “Yes, It Matters“. It is one of the best articles I’ve seen about the photographer’s choice of tools. The article appears on The Luminous Landscape web site, which has been a valuable resource for information about photography since the 1990’s.

David Alan Harvey is one of the great documentary photographers, a poet with a camera, famous for his books and for more than 40 essays in National Geographic. And he’s a blogger! He actually has four blogs: road trips, student work & workshops, work in progress, and family & friends. See David Alan Harvey’s blogs at this link.

What happens when you first pick up a camera? Sebastião Salgado, one of the great documentary photographers, shares his experience in a September 5, 2007 article in The Times (”Taking the espresso train”):

… Sebastiao Salgado is recalling the camera that changed his destiny. The memory is more than three decades old, and yet still vivid. There is a glint in his bright blue eyes, his Picasso-like bald head is leaning across the table, his bushy white eyebrows are raised and he is repeating his favourite adjective – “enormous”.

“My wife bought it when she was studying architecture in Paris,” he says in a French softened by his lilting Brazilian accent. “I had never taken a photo in my life but when I handled that camera and looked into it, I got enormous pleasure.”

He was on course for an academic career at the time, completing a PhD in France before moving to London as an economist with the International Coffee Organisation. Many of his assignments were in Africa and the camera – he had acquired his own Leica by now – always went with him. “The pleasure I got from it was enormous,” he says again. “So enormous, in fact, that I resigned from my job and became a photographer.”

That pleasure of looking through and handling a camera is, I believe, common to many photographers. It’s interesting to hear one of the best talk about this simple pleasure and identify it as a turning point in his life.

One of the best books I’ve found about wedding photography is Marcus Bell’s Master’s Guide to Wedding Photography:  Capturing Unforgettable Moments and Lasting Impressions.  Bell is one of the world’s great wedding photographers, and he offers some excellent lessons in this book.  Very highly recommended!

It’s always fun to see a well-known photographer at work. In this link, documentary filmmaker Mike Pulcinella shares some video of Martin Schoeller photographing a bodybuilder. Schoeller has a very distinctive portrait style sometimes called “Big Heads”. Schoeller’s book “Close Up” features many of these portraits.

Henri Cartier-Bresson helped develop a style of photography that influenced generations of photographers that followed. He was a master of quick composition and became known as the photographer of “The Decisive Moment” (the title of his 1952 book).The idea of photographing the decisive moment is sometimes misinterpreted by new photographers as photographing ONLY the decisive moment. That is, getting it in one shot only. That was my impression when growing up. But a look at Cartier-Bresson’s contact sheets reveals that in fact he shot very prolifically. A new article in The Independent notes that he shot one scene 16 times. I love the article’s quote from Truman Capote (from The Dogs Bark (1973)):

Cartier-Bresson is another tasse de thé entirely – self-sufficient to a fault. I remember once watching Bresson at work on a street in New Orleans – dancing along the pavement like an agitated dragonfly, three Leicas swinging from straps around his neck, a fourth one hugged to his eye: click-click-click (the camera seems part of his own body) clicking away with a joyous intensity, a religious absorption. Nervous and merry and dedicated, Bresson is an artistic ‘loner’, a bit of a fanatic.

That reminded me of a comment on the Leica Users Group (by B. D. Colen):

And for all the talk of the decisive moment, he shot like a machine gun, and really worked his scenes. Eugene Richards tells the story of first being voted into Magnum, and immediately heading for the filing cabinets that held HCB contact sheets. He said he was amazed at what a prolific shooter HCB was shot after shot after shot after shot of the same subject, worked from every conceivable angle.

Although we photographers try very hard to capture the decisive moment, there is also a secondary decisive moment: when we go through and edit all of our work, and decide which photos represent the decisive moments.

Earlier this year, a group of wedding photographers launched the Group of 10 web site.  I’m very pleased to be a member of the group.   As the site states, we’re an alliance of independent wedding photographers dedicated to providing exceptional photography.  We each have our own businesses and our own style, and yet we’re quite alike in out dedication to our work.   The web site is a joint effort and represents a new direction in marketing for wedding photography.  We’re very confident in each others work, and we’re glad to back each other up in the unlikely event of an emergency.

Back in 2002, I attended a workshop with Denis Reggie entitled “Digital Wedding Photojournalism”. While teaching film photographers how to go digital, Denis also offered his insights on the art and business of wedding photography. His approach to weddings, explained and illustrated during the 4-day workshop, inspired me to change careers and to start photographing weddings full-time. In an interview on Canon’s web site, Denis discusses his background and describes some of his current working methods. Please click here for the interview.