Do You Want To Be A Photographer Or A Repair Tech?

by Johnny Martyr "I just found this awesome Konica Autoreflex at my local thrift store for just $25! It works perfectly and just needs to be cleaned. But I noticed that sometimes when I wind the advance lever, the shutter opens. Is this normal?" "I just bought this awesome Olympus XA rangefinder from eBay for...

Twitter X, Threads & My Take on Social Media Best Suited for Photographers

by Johnny Martyr I don't know about you, but I am not really all that concerned about the controversial rebranding of social media platform Twitter to simply, X. If you'll notice, I have never even embedded a clickable Twitter icon to my posts or website, so there's nothing to change on my side! But what...

Digital Analog

I'm often asked, if you shoot on film, how do I get my images? I explain that I scan the negatives and edit the files digitally. Next the photos are uploaded to my website where they can be viewed and downloaded as if they had been shot with a digital camera. "Isn't that cheating?" Well...

Photographers Photographing Photographers

My wife and I operate a small local photography business and we often joke about the sad fact that we are out taking other families' portraits so often that we never take any of our own. The walls of our house are filled with memorable candids that Stephanie and I have taken of our kids...

Shining a Light on Bright-Line Viewfinders

Over the years, many different manufacturers have offered many different types of accessory viewfinders that have taken on numerous forms. I have tried only a handful but am pretty committed to what are known as as "bright-line" accessory viewfinders. Unlike early viewfinders that consist only of wire frames of appropriate sizes or even simple optical...

Leitz 5cm f3.5 Elmar: The Meaning of Gestalt

I'll admit it. As I shuffled around the streets of downtown Frederick, Maryland anticipating the paths of passersby and lifting my little black Leica to my eye, I imagined that this is what it was like for Henry Cartier Bresson before this equipment was legendary, new methods were standard practices and the genre was a...

Happy Birthday, Kodak Tri-X

Kodak Tri-X, as a concept, has been around since the 1940's when it was a 200 ISO b&w sheet film. Because it was their first fast film, when Kodak released the 400 ISO roll film version, the Tri-X name was maintained. Just like Kodak TMAX P3200 revolutionized low light photography in 1989, Tri-X was an...

Film Photographers, UNITE!

I'm not usually one for human interaction. Part of the reason I got into photography was so that I would have something to hide behind at social gatherings. So it's not often that I meet up with other photographers. But this past Friday night, that's exactly what I found myself doing when fellow photobloggers Mark...

The Final Moments of 9/11 Photographer, Bill Biggart

*I originally published the following article on Petapixel on September 11th, 2020, it is reproduced here in honor of the 20th anniversary“With a press pass around his neck and a camera bag over his shoulder, in the middle of a crossfire – Bill was in heaven.”  --Wendy Doremus September 11, 2001 was a sunny Tuesday...

What is a Snapshot?

It's what we call a photograph that appears to be made with little consideration for the tenants of imaging and principles of design. Voigtländer has a lens named after it. It's usually proceeded by the word "quick." What is really meant when we call something a "snapshot?" I started thinking about this because, when I...