How Photography Helped Save My Life
By Michael Blanchard— I was arrested in February 2010 in Maine for drunk driving while attempting to drive to Boston to talk to my wife and try to repair the damage from our constant fights. I was the COO at a company in Maine and my wife was living in the city. She was my whole world, and I was losing her. With no other support system I fell apart, with only vodka to hold me together. When I was arrested a second time, in March, for...
Get Your Creative Mojo Back… It’s In The Cards!
By Christine Pentecost— I don’t think I have to explain why I’ve had a hard time feeling creative over the past 11 months. As a photographer, I would usually carry the camera with me in my car wherever I went. Once things started closing down and when, one by one, all my art shows got cancelled, my cameras started collecting dust. I lost all inspiration to photograph anything. With the start of the new year, I knew I needed to get out...
Paul Chaplo: Flyin’ High Over The Texas Plains
By Arthur H. Bleich— Paul Chaplo, 62, is a “a photographers photographer.” His technique is flawless and his clients, mostly commercial biggies in and around Texas, not only love his work, but love working with him. He holds a Master of Fine Arts Photography degree from Rochester Institute of Technology and leaves nothing to chance, which is why his work shines in annual reports, books and other venues. On assignment to shoot more...
Spending the 1958 Winter Solstice in Barrow, Alaska
By Arthur H. Bleich— The Wien Alaska Airlines war-surplus C-47 made a large circle in the dark, noonday sky. All I could see out the window as it began its final approach was the bright moon shining on a small cluster of lighted buildings surrounded by a vast expanse of ice. I lifted my camera to the window, set the focus to infinity and shot a picture at about 1/15th of a second at F-3.5, expecting nothing but a blurred image. Then...
$25 Will Restore A Blind Person’s Sight
By Albert Chi— If you’re a photographer or artist, eyesight is everything. That’s why a recent column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof caught my attention when he recommended several charities, one of which he’d personally visited in Nepal called the Cure Blindness Project. I thought it might be of special interest to those who are in, or love, the visual arts and want to make a one-on-one contribution to a cause that...
Our National Parks Odyssey: Heading In A New Direction
By Andrew Slaton— A cloudless, blue sky is excellent for just about everything except making dramatic photos. That’s what I had all summer in Wyoming. But it didn’t much matter to me. Low hanging scrub cedars dominate the immediate landscape. Concrete, ground up by time and pressure surrounds me. We are parked in a sparsely occupied, old RV park near the banks of Lake Whitney, in the Texas Hill Country. The weather is a lovely...
Dawn Wilson: Bears, Eagles, Foxes…and More
By Arthur H. Bleich— Always interested in the outdoors, it was probably preordained that Dawn Wilson, 49, would eventually settle in Colorado and become a renowned wildlife photographer. Growing up in New Jersey, her active and creative life in high school continued through her college and post-graduate years. From an early age she developed a love for the outdoors and wildlife, seriously considering becoming a veterinarian before...
Ghana: An African Portrait Revisited
By Peter E. Randall— Photographing and producing a book on Ghana was not on my mind when I first visited the West African country in 1984 as a United Nations consultant. I was hired to document an improved method of smoking fish, a vital task in a country with little access to refrigeration to preserve the catch. In 1958, Ghana was the first sub-saharan country to become independent. In 1963, President Kwame Nkrumah invited master...
Sloooooow Down For More Creative Images
By Albert Chi— Most photographers dread shooting when poor light levels require slow shutter speeds for proper exposure. Chances are pictures will end up blurred due to camera shake, subject motion, or both. And to compensate, you can only up the ISO so much before running into noise and artifacts. Here are some ways to make slow shutter speeds work for you. In fact, even when you have enough light to use faster speeds, shooting with...
Pros Tell How To “Get The Photos Others Can’t ->”
By Michael Freeman— When you know in advance that a situation forbids photography, you first need to have a very good reason to flout authority, and then you need to plan how to shoot surreptitiously. This is the serious end of investigative photojournalism, and while you’re not likely to be facing the same challenges as Hazel Thompson, there are plenty of valuable lessons to be learned from her remarkable shoot of kids locked up in...
White Pocket: Millions-of-years-old Fantasy World
By Will Keener and Ron Wolfe— White Pocket is photographer’s dreamland; a remote, other-worldly experience in the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona that looks like chef whipped up a colorful concoction from chunks of multi-colored fudge. Writers tend to wax poetic in describing White Pocket, seeing visions of gum drops, ice cream cones, dragon’s eyes, and other objects in this altered version of what was once an ancient...
Photojournalist With Soul: Carl Juste
by Arthur H. Bleich— Red River Ppaper Pro Carl Juste has a personal intensity that permeates every photograph he makes. His images speak in a way words cannot, making an immediate connection with the viewer. He is a master visual communicator. Juste, 56, was just two years old when his family was forced to flee Haiti to escape political persecution. They settled in Brooklyn, NY, and spent ten years there until they moved to...
Favorite Photo Places: Howl with the Wolves in Montana
By Christine Pentecost— I’m fortunate to see a lot of wildlife. Living with my husband in the mountains near Bozeman, Montana, close to Yellowstone National Park, we’ve had black bears look into our windows, moose wander through the yard, bobcats and mountain lions meander through our property, and an over abundance of deer visit us, just to name a few. The diversity of wildlife in our area is amazing! I’m lucky to be able to enjoy...
Clouds Pose Cheerfully and Make Great Images
By Gavin Pretor-Pinney— It is easy to forget that you live in the sky—not beneath it, but within it. Our atmosphere is an enormous ocean, and you inhabit it. This ocean is made up of the gases of air rather than liquid water, but it is as much of an ocean as the Atlantic or the Pacific. You may think of yourself as living on the ground, but all that means is that you are a creature of the ocean bed. You still inhabit the atmosphere...
Our National Parks Odyssey: The Ultimate Challenge, Part 2
By Andrew Slaton— So here we were in Florida, as March rolled closer to April. News about the Coronavirus sparked fear throughout the country. All of our state and national park reservations were canceled out from under us, and photo jobs were postponed or canceled outright. The world, to most everyone, looked a bit more uncertain. But for us, not too much more uncertain. Let’s be honest here: Our lives for the last four years have...
Our National Parks Odyssey: The Ultimate Challenge, Part 1
By Andrew Slaton— It’s mid-May at American Horse Lake in Oklahoma as I sit down to write. Things are beginning to open back up, but the second wave of a global pandemic still looms as an inevitable possibility. So much has changed. The Sooner state in the spring is awash with color. Newly budding branches green with rebirth. Skies of complex and ever-changing hues of blue, then textured white, then glowing pink and orange. Reflective...
Thank Essential Workers With A Personalized Card
By Albert Chi— More than 100,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19 since the year began so it’s easy to understand why the Sympathy and Get Well card slots in store card racks are bare. But Thank You cards are also in short supply at many locations as grateful survivors and their families snatch them up to send to medical staff and others who’ve gone above and beyond to save patients. Yet, there’s a whole cadre of essential...
Back to Basics: The Power of Light
By Suzanne D. Williams— Light is the key element in every photograph and having an understanding of it is essential to becoming a good photographer. Relying on your camera’s automatic settings will at some point become a hindrance because these settings can be misleading. The camera does not always make the correct choice. Instead, you, the photographer, must be able to recognize the light and know how it will affect your final...
Nina Katchadourian: Photo Artistry at 36,000 Feet
By Arthur H. Bleich— It’s 2011. On a jumbo jet 36,000 feet over the Pacific headed for New Zealand, night has fallen, the cabin lights are dimmed and most of the passengers have dozed off. Nina Katchadourian slips quietly out of her aisle seat, cellphone in hand, and makes her way down the aisle to one of the lavatories. She’s on a mission in conjunction with a project she’s titled “Seat Assignment” and tonight...
Printing Project Idea: Print for a Photo Album or Framed Wall Art
Remember looking through your family’s photo albums? While at home during this time, why not work on creating your own photo album. Whether you use 4×6 or 5×7 for prints, we have the sizes and surfaces you need to print your inkjet photos to last for years to come. The two most popular papers for photo albums are our UltraPro Satin and UltraPro Gloss. If you don’t already...
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