Barry Tanenbaum

There was something about the lights, the wet streets, and the look of the café that Bill Durrence and his wife, Barbara, passed on their way back to the hotel that rainy night in Paris last September. He took this picture to capture the feeling of that moment, but the scene’s mixed lighting and his camera’s white balance weren’t in sync with his intent.

Longer story short: With a high-flying imagination and no shortage of necessary technical skills, Ali Jardine turned a creative hobby into a creative business by networking the new-fashioned way—with Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr, Facebook, and probably some other social sites she didn’t have time to list or mention.

So while many wedding photographers react to a situation to capture the beauty they might see, Scott Robert, as he’s known in the industry, feels that as a photographer who’s charging $10,000 or more, he’s got to knock it out of the park every single time, no matter what. So he became a director of brides, grooms, and situations.

Proximity was a factor: corporate and advertising photographer Robert Rathe lives about 10 miles from the long-closed Lorton Correctional Complex in Fairfax County, Virginia. So was a fascination with the concept of what constitutes a prison—physical structure or state of mind? And so was the attraction of documenting and preserving a bit of local history.