Our National Parks Odyssey: Metamorphosis, Part 2
by Andrew Slaton— As Wyoming’s towering mountains began to thaw, we hit our stride, spending more and more time apart, fully immersed in our new endeavor as business managers. We found our rhythm and dialed in each of our roles. I was the mechanic and extra driver, as well as the company’s web developer. Ellen managed employees and customer service. Pretty much everything behind the scenes was her jam. There wasn’t really much time...
Our National Parks Odyssey: Metamorphosis, Part 1
By Andrew Slaton— I’ve learned that stagnation often seems to be the natural state of humanity. But this is not how people thrive… it is merely how one survives. And Ellen and I need change. Dallas in December is a crap shoot. For many reasons, really. First, the weather is often all over the place. Blustery and in the 40s one day, and the next, 75 and sunny. It wreaks havoc on my allergies. Also, we spend most of the year away from...
Photographing a World Within a World
by Joshua Haruni— As a photojournalist, I became curious about the resurgence of the “Practical Kabbalah” amongst mainstream Israeli Jews and was intrigued as to why, at the end of the 20th century, educated people with full access to modern medicine, technology, the law and democracy were turning to religious scholars and ascetics for help as if none of the above existed. I knew from my Jewish upbringing that the study and practice...
Favorite Photo Places: Hot Air Balloon Festivals
By Will Keener and Ron Wolfe— It’s hard to imagine an event that could provide more colors, shapes, characters, configurations, and downright joy to photographers than a hot-air balloon festival. The kaleidoscope of color and the interaction of the setting, the viewers, the balloons and their crews make for a stunning variety of possibilities. Living within hours of one of the first and finest balloon festivals, experience has taught...
A Rock Photographer’s Tribute to Jimi Hendrix
By Baron Wolman— In April 1967, my life changed unexpectedly, and for the better, when I met Jann Wenner—a then twenty-one-year-old freelance writer and student at the University of California, Berkeley. I had been photographing bands for a while in the Bay Area, when Wenner told me of his plans to start a new kind of music periodical. It would become Rolling Stone. He invited me to join him in his endeavor and I immediately agreed,...
Unique Frames Give Images Extra Pop
By Arthur H. Bleich— Frames are fantastic for making your images stand out, but rather than going for traditional plain ones, here are some unusual options (and the stories behind them) to make your pictures shine. We’ve even obtained some special deals just for Red River Paper blog readers should you be interested in purchasing some of them. Ross and Kristen Hunter live in Edinburgh, Scotland and have always been attuned to things...
12,000 Free “Roadside America” Images
By Albert Chi — Tooling along in a spiffy, rented Cadillac, John Margolies, architectural critic, author and photographer would take off on months-long road trips throughout America along with his Canon FT, a 50mm lens and a trunkfull of ASA 25 Kodachrome film. It was the 1970s and the new interstate highways were about to bypass the venerable old ones where here and there and everywhere roadside signs and kitschy statues and...
Keeping The Faith: Empty Sky Project
By Steve Simon— Faith is an element of my photography that continues to surface in my work, not only in the stories I choose to pursue, but also in my philosophy and approach to shooting. What happened to me with my project Empty Sky: The Pilgrimage to Ground Zero was an exercise in faith and belief in my work, and a great example of what can happen when you put your work out there. The story dates back to just after 9/11. I decided...
Photographing the White Horses of the Camargue
By Tony Bonanno— I’ve photographed horses for many years– quarter horses on western ranches, grand prix jumpers, rodeo horses and wild roaming Spanish Mustangs, but none have intrigued me more than the White Horses of the Camargue in the South of France. I’d never heard of them until about five years ago when I was leading a photo workshop in Cuba and one of the participants, Jody Willard, a photojournalist from California...
Miyako Koumura: Capturing Japan’s Flowers For Posterity
By Arthur H. Bleich— It’s midnight in a small town west of Tokyo and almost everyone’s asleep except for Miyako Koumura who’s loading her photo equipment into an old, silver-gray Honda Fit (her economical and reliable companion, she calls it), preparing to set out for Chuzenji Lake in Nikko National Park, about a three-hour drive north. By the time she arrives the sky has begun to lighten and, after parking her car,...
It’s Summertime! 25 Cool Tips For Great Photos
By Albert Chi— 1. Avoid wandering aimlessly around looking for good pictures to shoot. Always give yourself a mini-assignment to stay on track. Like, street vendors, kids at play, people at bus stops, interesting doorways, afternoon shadows, and so on. That way, you have a direction in which to go and the challenge of trying to interpret things in your own unique way. 2. Most zoom lenses give you larger apertures at wide-angle...
Our National Parks Odyssey: A New Door Opens
This is the sixth of an ongoing series about Red River Pro Andrew Slaton and his wife Ellen who, along with two dogs, Islay and Skye and Colonel Bubba, the cat, left the comforts of Dallas to hit the road full time in a travel trailer, with the goal of photographing all 59 U. S. National Parks.— By Andrew R. Slaton— The warm, early morning light filters through the cottonwoods. It’s a dreamy way to start our day. We’ve finally arrived...
The Encaustic Photo Artistry of Jill Skupin Burkholder
By Arthur H. Bleich— On the last day of January, 2014, a small, brown package arrived at the home of Jill Skupin Burkholder, a photo/artist who lives in Palenville, NY, a tiny hamlet nestled at the base of the Catskill mountains. Inside the package rested a highly sophisticated HCO ScoutGuard trail camera, capable of capturing night photographs of wildlife and then transmitting them to a remote iPhone for instant viewing. The images...
David Bergman: On the Road with Bon Jovi’s Band
by David Bergman— I’ve had the honor of traveling the world to cover music and sports events for over 25 years, and my most enjoyable gig is when I’m embedded on a tour with a band. I’ve done this with a number of groups so far, including Bon Jovi and Barenaked Ladies and I’m working with with country superstars like Luke Combs now. People frequently ask me what my typical day is like. I’m sure most working professional photographers...
Photos Overlooked For 35 Years–Found!
By Peter E. Randall— Sand and surf. Babes in bikinis and babies in diapers. Muscular teenagers and spry golden agers. Boardwalks and arcades. These were among my subjects in the summer of 1983 at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire’s largest tourist destination, where I set out to document tourists relaxing, playing, and romancing. I like challenges so when a friend gave me a small Olympus XA camera, I thought it would be a fine tool for...
Back to Basics: Using Focus Creatively
By Suzanne D. Williams— You can exert a great deal of creative focus control over your images once you learn how to use some of the basic functions your digital camera offers. First, though, let’s define a few terms that are essential to the process. Photographers who use the term “point of focus” refer to the subject or object in a photograph where they want to draw the most attention. “Focus” itself...
Seeing Differently
By Michael Freeman— One of the first tenets of professional photography is that you have to try harder, always and all the time. There’s almost too much said about this, so I’ll restrict myself to one only, from American photographer William Albert Allard: “You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you have and probe deeper.” Well, maybe I’ll allow...
Sell Your Images At Art Fairs
By Christine Pentecost— I thought long and hard before I did my first art show. I was afraid to give it a try, afraid of failure, afraid of not being good enough. To actually set up a display and sell face to face was a daunting thought. But when an friend contacted me one day and said she couldn’t do a local show and would I like to have her spot, it took about five seconds to say “yes”! I was excited about it, but very apprehensive....
American Manga Artist: Jean-Paul Deshong
By Arthur H. Bleich— In Japan, Jean-Paul Deshong is a Mangaka, an artist who creates comics or graphic novels– an art form long revered in that country. Top manga artists there make high six-figure incomes and are superstars of the art world. Deshong, an American comic book artist, decided a few years ago to write and illustrate Sons of Fate, a novel set in Japan’s Tokugawa period of isolation from the West that lasted more than two...
Think Inside the Box For Dramatic Flower Photos
By Christine Pentecost– I’ve always been intrigued by photos of flowers on pure black backgrounds, so last summer, I decided to do some black box photography, using an abundance of mountain wildflowers blooming around our Montana homestead as subjects. I began by making a box that had four sides: right, left, top and back (no front or bottom) that was 24” high by 15” wide by 17” in depth, using black foam core. The two pieces that...
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