Photo Websites

Do you like surfing photography websites? I do. There is a huge number of sites related to photography, and one lifetime would not be enough to surf through all of them. So I’ve been searching for a place where I can find links to the best photo websites only, or at least to above average ones. You know what I mean - some good starting place for photography related surfing. And I have found one which I am satisfied so far: it is a website photolinks.ch - selected photography links. The emphasis is on the word “selected” here. Of course, the term “good photography website” is rather subjective, so no one will find only the sites he considers good there, but the ratio between interesting links/boring links is much greater comparing to other photography related directories I visited before. There’s quite a lot of photo-links there to keep you busy for a few weeks, but not too much to waste your time by pointing you to poor websites. Happy photo surfing!

What’s your best starting point? I’m quite curious to know.

Let’s continue our race through the memorable photography websites. Our today’s station is a website of an environmental photographer Pat O’Hara. I haven’t received permission to publish a thumbnail of his work yet, so you will have to rely on my word, that you will see really good photos there. My favorite portfolio is called Garden of the Mind’s eye, a thematic work “acting as a counterbalance to Pat’s classic work of sharp hyperfocal landscapes.”

“Ultimately, my goal is to nurture in others a deep and enduring respect for the inspirational qualities of nature – to encourage active participation rather than passive viewing.” - Pat O’Hara

© Phil Borges

When I was a child, I was not very keen on reading books. But there was one exception - I loved the books about Indians. I liked to read stories about those brave and peaceful people, about canyons and buffalos. But there are people, whose love for those native civilizations is much greater than mine. One of them is a photographer Phil Borges, who has been visiting and documenting people of indigenous and tribal cultures for more than 25 years. At his website People Of Indigenous Cultures, you can see some of his unique photographs from many places of the world and learn more about those precious people and their customs.

Linguist Ken Hale estimates that 3,000 of the 6,000 languages that exist in the world today are fated to die. How sad! Languages of people like those you can see on Phil’s portraits. And do you know why? Those languages are no longer spoken by the children. But it’s not that nothing can be done about it, and Phil knows it. His contribution is to establish “Bridges to understanding,” which will connect children of indigenous communities with those of urban schools. And how to build those bridges? With the help of photography.

…continue ->

© David Michael Kennedy

It was a few weeks ago, when I stumbled across the website of the famous New York Institute of Photography. The only thing I remember was this: there is a simple Three-Step method, which they call a secret of every successful photograph ever taken:

Step 1. Know your subject.
Step 2. Focus attention on your subject.
Step 3. Simplify.

This is what they teach their students. But I think there is one more step, a secret of secrets, which even New Your gurus didn’t make public yet:

Step 0. Love you subject.

Photographer David Michael Kennedy was educated right there, at the New York Institute of Photography. And if you visit his website (www.davidmichaelkennedy.com), you will see that he followed the guidelines of his teachers. Be it landscapes, portraits of celebrities, everyday people or American Indian ceremonial dancers and elders, all those pictures are evidences of his photographic mastery. Does he also follow the Step 0? Well, that’s something you have to figure out yourself. I saw he does.

“I have been photographing people, well known and unknown, for over 30 years. My primary interest has been to discover and unveil the uniqueness that makes each person a unique being. I find that when I successfully photograph a person the image we create is quite amazing.” - David Michael Kennedy -

“Great Grand Nana, 1997″
© Lloyd Erlick

If you call Lloyd Erlick a “photographer,” he may take it as a horrible mouthful. “Artist?” - that’s a pretentious overworked word. And what about “portraitist?” - ostentatious! But if you put all this together, you’ve got it settled, since Lloyd is a black and white photographic portrait artist.

“Oh man, aren’t you a bit pretentiously ostentatious now?,” I almost hear your thinking. Well, I am not. I already visited his site www.heylloyd.com and watched his beautiful black&white family portraits. Whole ten pages of nice photos, all with stories and technical info behind them.

“Pride is a dangerous thing, and it’s certain that as a portraitist I pride myself on my ability to ’see’, understand, perceive, feel, the people whose portraits I make. And yet time after time I see things in the pictures I missed at the time I made the portraits. This is one of the fascinating things about photography in general, and especially about photographing humans.” - Lloyd Erlick -

© Jonathan Clark

Cemeteries are places I visit very rarely. When I do, I always think about those people buried there. I fantasize about their life path they walked here on this Earth. About their dreams and wishes, about the happiness of their mothers in the moment of their birth, about the sorrow of their loved ones in the moment they passed away. And then, I think about their afterlife. About that eternal law of cause and outcome, governing all sentient beings.

Just yesterday, I’ve got into this “cemetery-walk mood” again, while visiting Jonathan Clark’s photo website called “After Life” - a series of photos “shot in two London cemeteries between the hours of dusk and dawn over a period of 2 years”. But they are not just photos. I saw the falling leafs, grass moving in the wind, birds flying in the sky, and more. I’ve been always reluctant to browse through the flash sites, but this one is an exception. So, here you go: Jonathan Clark - After Life. Tell me, do you believe in afterlife?