Barry Tanenbaum

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Feb 18, 2015

[Column Note: Most people come to professional photography by traveling a familiar route: from an early fascination with cameras, to photo classes and courses, followed by assisting a pro to gain some real-world experience. Then comes striking out on one's own as photographer, which, if all goes well, is followed by the frequent printing of invoices. Others, however, arrive at a pro career sideways—that is, coming at it from another occupation. The stories these "second career" pro photographers tell tend to be quite interesting, even inspirational. And those stories are what this new online column, titled Going Pro, is all about.]

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Feb 10, 2015

“It was a two-month expedition, and it had taken weeks just to hike into the area and weeks to get to this point on the mountain,” photographer Tom Bol recalls about the above image.

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Jan 02, 2015

It’s welcome news to any photographer when the look of their images becomes a distinct, signature style. That’s exactly what has happened to Benny Migliorino, whose specialty is environmental and location portraits. “A lot of people say that what I’ve become known for is dramatic lighting,” Migliorino acknowledges, “but I didn’t set out to be known for that—it’s just the way I like to light, and the way I want my photographs to look.”

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Dec 30, 2014

The kinds of commercial images Ann Elliott Cutting is likely to be called on to create for her clients are interpretive, fanciful, or elaborate illustrations of ideas and concepts. Or, in some cases, they’re all of those adjectives combined into one image. In other words, “create” is exactly the right word for what she does.

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Nov 25, 2014

“Photography is always a bit random in the UK because the weather is so changeable,” Martin Turner says. When he and his friends arrived late in the afternoon at the Weston-super-Mare seaside resort in North Somerset, they were greeted by “absolute, gorgeous sunshine.” Which lasted about 45 minutes. “All of a sudden the sky went black,” Turner says, “and we had to stand underneath the pier whilst it chucked down rain for quite a while.” Then the clouds broke, and at about 8:00 in the evening he was able to capture this sunset image.

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Nov 11, 2014

The concept is elegantly simple: place the object of choice in a location of choice; take photograph; repeat as needed. The artistry is in the stylish sensibility you bring to the project. It’s a self-assignment for the imaginative and the adventurous. A skewed sense of humor doesn’t hurt, either.

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Oct 21, 2014

“You can’t go to a place like that and not be aware of the symbolism all around you,” Robert Rathe says of the northern Israeli town of Safed, where he spent a day exploring and looking for photographs.

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Sep 23, 2014

(In March 1986, the Least Bell’s Vireo, a bird species that Moose Peterson had volunteered to photograph, was listed as endangered, and Moose, who was just starting out as a photographer, was about to learn the power of a single image.)

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Sep 09, 2014

Mark Alberhasky, for one. Put him in a great situation where he can take very cool photographs and he’ll nail them nine times out of 10. Chances are, though, that won’t be enough. Just because the photos he’s making look good doesn’t mean he won’t be thinking about what he can do to create even better ones. You can attribute that drive to several factors, one of which is his early realization that if he took a straightforward photo of what everyone else was seeing, no matter how good a photo it was, it would be just that: what everyone else was seeing. The goal was to come up with his own ideas and add them to the creative process, and many of Mark’s photos are the result of taking that e

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Aug 19, 2014

Green Spring Gardens in Alexandria, Virginia, is a favorite place for photography for Cindy Dyer, who specializes in botanical subjects, and it was there that two years ago she was featured in an exhibition of 88 of her photos. A visitor to that exhibit, who happened to be the wife of an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, saw her work and mentioned Cindy to her husband, who happened to be looking for specific subject images to license for stamps. Cindy submitted 20 photographs of ferns, from which the Postal Service selected five for First Class Forever Stamps, which are currently available for purchase online at the USPS website.

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