The Phoblographer

On February 1st 1968 (49 years ago), Photographer Eddie Adams photographed a moment that would go down as one of the most iconic Pulitzer Winning photos made in history. During the Vietnam War, Mr. Adams photographed a number of horrific moments but the one particularly in question is of the Saigon Execution by General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan. Unfortunately, the image would haunt Mr. Adams to the point where he wishes he hadn’t shot it.

“As soon as he raised his pistol I took the picture.” said Mr. Adams in an interview. “I thought absolutely nothing of it. Went back to the AP office and I dropped it off.” He continues to state that he thought he got a photo of some guy shooting someone; then he went to lunch. Of course, this is usual with film. Sometimes you’ll get the image, and sometimes you won’t. You, as the photographer, just need to have the reflexes to adapt.

You see, the photo destroyed General Loan’s career because it became so famous. It’s horrific and on a glance you can see what’s essentially just an execution happening. The look on the other man’s face is one of fear. But the story behind the image is much more than that.

“That picture destroyed his life. And that’s what bothers me more than anything else.”

The second part of this story is even more chilling but a part of what comes with war. A South Vietnamese commander of a training camp was decapitated by the Viet Cong. Additionally, so too did his wife and six children become casualties of war. The children tried to hide behind sandbags.

Considering that this happened, all of the usual things happen in war: soldiers become angry because one of their own and innocent people were killed. I mean, just take a look at what’s going on in the Middle East right now. They wanted revenge and one of the ways that the soldiers found that they could deliver it was with eliminating members of the Viet Cong.

Mr. Adams made peace with General Loan later on; but the image still bothered him. Sure, it may have helped to end the way by showing the public some of the most devastating parts of the reality, but Mr. Adams said that he never wanted to hurt anyone or destroy General Loan’s life.

Today, the image remains a milestone in Photography History.

Lead image by manhhai. Second image also by manhhai. Used with Creative Commons permission.

This is a syndicated blog post from Women in Photography. It and the images here are being used with permission. All images by Amy Kanka Valadarsky. All text by Nicole Struppert.

If you haven’t checked out Nicole Struppert’s new blog called Women in Photography, then you really should. The site is dedicated to featuring, well, women in photography. But it also focuses on delivering and showcasing incredible work.

In this post, Nicole features the work of Amy Kanka Valadarsky. Check it out!

Hello Amy, tell our readers a little bit about yourself.

If you had asked me this question four years ago, I would have replied I am a software engineer, three years ago the response would have changed to “Goldsmith“, now I dare say I am an artist.

I am an only child; my mom was a highschool teacher and my dad an engineer. Growing up in a home where education and pragmatism were kings, the only relevant career path for me seemed to be medicine, engineering, or law. For a short period I entertained some thoughts about architecture, but these were cut in the bud by remarks like “and how will you make a living?”.I was always good at math (I would better be with my mom a math teacher .) therefore studying Computer Science was the easy path to take, a path I followed for the next 25+ years. One day, in my late forties, I realized home runs smoothly, children have grown up, and my life centers for 20 hours a day, 7 days a week around emails, meetings, and flights around the globe. It was at this point that I decided I want something more, and registered for an online class of jewelry design. This class led to 3 years of Goldsmith studies.and the rest of the story continues in the next answer.

When did you first become interested in photography as a mode of expression?

In order to sell my jewelry online, I had to photograph it. Very quickly I realized my photos were not good enough, and the ones taken by experienced photographers, were technically great.but were not a true expression of me. I started to shoot obsessively, determined to improve technically as well as capture the essence of my pieces, not just their details.

For my 50th birthday by husband booked us on a photo art trip to Venice, Italy. This was the first time I experienced the world as seen through the lens . and I fell in love.

Your submitted photos of your project „Misthaven“. How and when did you get the idea for this project?

I think it is a bit the other way around, the idea found me.As you can see from my work, nature was always at the core of my art. I took me a while to realize that when I photograph nature, I am looking for reflections of my internal world rather than beautiful flowers. The same realization struck me when I was shooting nude models. While everyone was looking for the best angle to capture the models, I was looking for images expressing the excitement and fear of being fully exposed. When I was processing the images from this shoot, the story was staring me in the face. This was the beginning of “Misthaven“, my enchanted forest.

Your images are very poignant and well composed. Do you first look for a framework for the composition or do you use your instinct?

A little bit of both. When I select a particular angle, I work by instinct, but once I find it, I start composing the image shifting positions slightly until the frame and especially the light are right. In „Misthaven“, I discovered how the square format crop can further strengthen the composition.

Why did you choose to photograph in B&W?

I always shoot in color. At first, I look at the images, and I am captivated by the color. It is only later, when I start piecing the images into a story, that the color becomes a distraction. It draws attention to itself, focusing the eye on the physical rather than the symbolic. That’s when I start looking for the right way to translate the image into B&W.

How did you cultivate your sense of composition?

I have no doubt that some of it is the imprint of the very cl...

All Images by Lennart Bader. Used with Permission.

Intimate portraiture is less about a sexy subject or an immaculately furnished set location, it’s all about the feeling, the emotion, the character of the frame. It has a raw, real, but at the same time warm and inviting feel. Lennart Bader has spent years developing his style of intimate portraiture, which blends a sexy boudoiresqe environment with elements of lifestyle portraiture and color theory to create these powerful and intimate images.

Like many high school aged kids, Lennart Bader was influenced by the friends around him. One summer, when a friend received a Canon 300D and 50mm lens he was blown away by the look of the images taken with a wide open aperture. For his next birthday he requested a camera of his own, and ended up receiving a Canon 350D. “That’s when my addiction to photography and cameras begun.” He tells The Phoblographer.

Mr. Bader’s experimentation with photography as he aged was less about taking images of anything and everything, a very common reaction to learning photography, instead he focused on his retouching and playing with his images to give them a look and feel that he wanted – regardless of what it actually was like. “This retouching and especially coloring turned out to be my game changer: I always tried to colorize the pictures not like the scene LOOKED like when I lived these moments, but how it FELT like.” Mr Bader noted, “I started to think that I maybe should look into that more, that I might have some kind of special approach to taking and coloring pictures there. So why not try it with models?”

The goal of Mr. Bader’s intimate portraiture is to achieve that authentic feel, that intimate emotional response to viewing an image as if you were there, in the moment. “I capture moments how I lived them, so my goal is authenticity. I love to create results so that the viewer takes a look at a picture and basically lives the situation him/herself, feels the vibes, starts seeing the movement of the moment.” He says, and to achieve this he specifically stays away from overly posed and overthought images, instead giving his models more freedom, having them move around freely and capturing them and their real emotions/reactions throughout the shoot.

“I get the best results when I can develop a certain relationship with a model before and during a shoot, when there’s a connection evolving and you find your flow.” Mr. Bader says of the process, “The model then knows what I want and lets go of certain rules that he or she uses in other shoots, and that’s when the magic happens.”

These days Mr. Bader has come quite a ways from his Canon 350D, now choosing to capture his moments with a Canon 5D Mark III, which he says 90% of the time is paired with the Sigma 35mm F/1.4 ART – his favorite lens. But with the impressive results he is seeing from Fujifilm and Sony shooters, that may soon change he notes “For now, I stick with Canon because it just feels familiar. If I’m not really convinced by the upcoming 5D IV, there might come a change of equipment in the future though.”

You can find more of Lennart Bader’s incredible intimate portraiture over on his Behance profile here, a selection of this work is also available below.

All images by TJ Drysdale. Used with permission.

“My first wedding gig ever was for a super rich couple who spent tons of money on their wedding. They hired me as their photographer, and I charged them a grand total of $300 for the entire thing.” says photographer TJ Drysdale— who is a portrait photographer based in Tampa, Florida. His work uses all natural light, and he portrays slices of time where the subject is searching for something, be it physical, spiritual, or otherwise. He’s been featured in many publications for what has been called a “romantic, graceful, and understated style.”

TJ has been shooting for many years now, and we talked to him about his sources of inspiration and how he built his career.

Phoblographer: Talk to us about how you got into photography.

TJ: I had been into film making and cinematography for many years and even went to college for it. In all honesty, I became involved in photography completely by accident. When I was 21, my grandparents bought me my first DSLR camera. Originally, I started taking nature photos, but soon decided that my true love was in taking portraits and depicting emotion and stories. Although I feel that film making will always be my first love, that art fell into the shadows and gave rise to my focus on fine art photography.

Phoblographer: What got you into creating portraiture and surreal, painterly imagery?

TJ: Over time that is just how my style developed. I have always been attracted to pretty light and colors and Renaissance paintings and subconsciously all of that meshed together and became the perfect mix of what my style is today.

Phoblographer: The story of every photographer’s first professional gig is always either an inspiring one or a hilarious one. Talk to us about yours.

TJ: Oh goodness! Mine is certainly more hilarious than inspiring. My first wedding gig ever was for a super rich couple who spent tons of money on their wedding. They hired me as their photographer, and I charged them a grand total of $300 for the entire thing. I felt like I wasn’t experienced enough to ask for more so I majorly undercharged! The lesson learned here was to always have confidence in your ability and to research your industry pricing first.

Phoblographer: Where do you tend to draw your inspiration from and how do you feel that has evolved over your career as a photographer?

TJ: The way I see life is what inspires me. Who I am as a person shows through in my photography in a very raw and very real way. I am drawn to scenery and light, and am constantly trying to find who I am as a person and as an artist. The story of self-discovery is a very clear message in my artwork.To find inspiration, I chase the light. I live my life in a way where I keep an eye out in the world for the way light hits different locations, beings, and natural elements. Traveling new places, seeing different things, and meeting exceptional people all play a role in my source of inspiration as well.

In the beginning of my career, I would look to other photographers and photos for inspiration, but these days, I draw the inspiration from my surroundings and every day life.

Phoblographer: Considering that you’re a New York native, you sure do like to take pictures in the rolling hills and near the shore line. Why do you gravitate towards these areas vs big, urban cities and rooftops (as far as your commercial work goes)?

TJ: Even as a young adolescent living in NYC, I was never drawn to the city. Although skyscrapers are beautiful, I would always draw beaches, mountains, and wide open areas. Living in the city, urban areas are something that I saw a great deal of. Oftentimes, you are immune to the surroundings of your home city and are constantly long for a change of pace. Since I grew up around urban areas and rooftops, my creative work longed for wide open space and rolling hills. My childhood in the city has subconsciously forced my work to gravitate to the countryside.

Phoblographer: Many photographers...

All images by Theik Smith. Used with permission.

“My lighting style is borne from a mish-mash of influences; movies, comic books, fashion – oh, goodness, I love, love, LOVE Horst P. Horst and Richard Avedon!” says photographer Theik Smith. Theik is based in Brooklyn and is a fight coordinator, writer and photographer. His work is quite interesting with its specific use of lights, darks, and some forms of contrast more or less. It’s almost as if he spotlights certain areas of his photos, reaches out to you, and beckons you to look in a specific spot.

That’s exactly what many artists do–except that Theik finds a way to also create interesting shapes and use figures in visually striking ways.

Phoblographer: Talk to us about how you got into photography?

Theik: I got into photography in probably one of the most roundabout ways: I was that kid with a point and shoot film camera all throughout my adolescence, with a great chunk of my allowance money going towards batteries and film and money for the pharmacist to develop my shots, all the way through high school. I then moved on to other things when my trusty Olympus point and shoot died, right before the Great Big Digital Revolution. I got into acting and then fight directing, which carried me all the way through college.

When I got my first “real” fight choreographer gig for a film, I was immensely disappointed with how my fight scene turned out. I found myself unable to translate the concepts in my head into effective communication with the Camera Operator and Director of Photography (DP). I kept on working as a fight choreographer/stunt coordinator on short films, Independent movies, and webseries all over town, and eventually decided that the best way for me to better my craft, what I needed to do was to buy a DSLR and start filming my own fights. So, I bought a Canon t3i for WAY too much money at the time, and swore to learn as much as I could about cameras and lenses.

Mind you, this was all so that I could learn how to talk to any DP or Camera Operator on a set that I was called in to work for!

And, it worked! I was able to talk framing, offer intelligent suggestions for lens choices, and just generally learn to appreciate amazing cinematography all the more. Around the same time, I realized that some of the best cinematographers were also absolutely amazing photographers. I took a look at my trusty t3i and decided that I was going to get back into photography, immediately.

September 2012, right around my birthday, I had my first portrait session with a buddy of mine at dusk. The shots are absolute crap.

I love them fiercely to this day. I haven’t looked back since.

Phoblographer: What made you get into portrait photography?

Theik: I honestly love people. Don’t ask me to shoot landscapes or architecture or real estate. I don’t have the patience or the eye for it – more of the former than anything else. But, I love working with people. And, I love the challenge when someone tells me, “Aww, man, I hate taking pictures. I always look awful!” Man, you tell me that, and I’m going to work like HELL for you, to prove you wrong. I want everyone to have great pictures of themselves. I want people to see themselves the way that we see them at their very best. Recently, I had a corporate headshot gig and I taught this computer programmer how to pose, offered him a quick tip on what to do with his eyes and made him laugh. Took four frames of the guy and showed it to him – and, his stunned, jubilant response of, “Oh my God – that’s good. That’s really good. This is the best picture I’ve ever had of me,” made my DAY.

Those moments of people feeling great about how they look – especially if they’ve always felt dread and fear and sadness when it comes to looking at themselves – is what drives me.

Phoblographer: What inspires your specific lighting style and how do you feel that it helps you creatively express yourself?

Theik: My lighting style is borne from a mish-mash of influences: movi...

All images by Jillian Powers. Used with permission.

“I chose this time of day because it is the moment we begin to criticize and shame our bodies. It all started by photographing my roommate, Aliya, moments after she woke up. It was the day before her boudoir session and I wanted to test the lighting on her skin at a specific time in the morning.” says Jillian Powers on her series “I Woke Up Like This.”

Photographer Jillian Powers is a 21-year old wedding photographer located in Chicago, Illinois. She’s a hustler that spends all of her time building her business, helping others, and adventuring around the world when she can. So when she pitched us the idea of “I Woke Up Like This” we were quite intrigued due to it being a departure from the rest of her work.

“I Woke Up Like This” began in October of 2014 as a personal project but quickly grew into something larger than she expected. Jill now dedicates half of her time to building the project and traveling all over the world to do so. We talked to her about what the project is about and the portrait sessions.

Editor’s Note: Because we know lots of you read our site at work, we’ve chosen a couple of photos that your workplace may find a bit less offensive. However, we truly feel that “I Woke Up Like This” is a project that needs to be shared. And for that reason, we think that you should check out the full project.

Phoblographer: Talk to us about how you got into photography.

Jillian: Some people spend their whole lives trying to figure out what it is they’re meant to do but for me it only took twelve years before I decided that photography was going to be my lifelong profession. I was around eleven when I took a trip across the midwest with my Grandfather for the last vacation of his life. He taught me how to use his film and digital cameras and demanded I document the entire trip. My grandfather is my biggest influence, he’s the one who put a camera into my hand for the first time when I was young. From there on out, I never stopped shooting. I’ve been shooting for ten years now and it’s been one heck of a trip trying to survive as an artist but it’s all starting to pay off. It takes time to reach that seemingly un attainable title of full time artist.

Phoblographer: Have you always been into portraiture? How did you get started?

Jillian: I was actually absolutely TERRIFIED of people growing up. Ask anyone, my social anxiety was through the roof growing up. The only people I could photograph where friends. But once I turned sixteen, I was invited to shoot some work for a non-profit called Small Planet Big Plans. Only thing was, I had to pay my own way. At sixteen, you don’t really have resources for that kind of money and my parents were definitely not financially capable of sending me there.so I started my own business. I started doing work for un-godly low prices so I could book enough to pay for the trip. I ended up raising the funds and traveled all over the country photographing water sources for a well drilling pitch they were presenting to some big potential donors to the project. We pitched the donation proposition to a few people and the photographs apparently had a huge impact on the success of them. We raised over sixty thousand dollars and brought water to an entire town.

From there, I knew photography was powerful and important. That photographing people opens so many doors to help others. I went from the girl who would get sick in a room of new people to the gal shooting strangers nude at her home.

Phoblographer: What motivated you to want to do the “I Woke Up Like This” project?

Jillian: Watching my friends tear themselves down. Watching any woman tear herself down, seeing others feel as low as I have felt. Which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I’ve always felt held back by my appearance. Whether I was a size zero, or a size 18 like I am now.no matter what size I was I was never enough for others.

“I was actually absolutely TERRIFIED of people growing up. ...

All Images by Mary Stuart. Used with Permission and Creative Commons License on Behance.

When she isn’t at home in Rome, photographer Mary Stuart is a world-wandering traveler, photographing people and projects all over the globe. Heavily inspired by movies and cinema, Stuart documents these trips with self-portraits shot from her hotel in a given location.

“There’s a deep sense of loneliness, of being away from home in a no-place/neutral-impersonal-place like a hotel is, in an atmosphere of waiting.” Stuart explains, “Those series depict me in my room always naked and pictures of the buildings and the city I’m in.” Interestingly enough, like many artists, Stuart’s beginning with photography started as an outlet for her youth.

“.in late 2008. I was suffering from panic attacks and couldn’t even get out of my room, so my mother thought was a good idea to give me my first camera ever, a canon 1000d, to make me go out and soothe my anxiety by taking pictures, using the lens as a sort of protection from the world.” Stuart says, “It worked, people started telling me that I was talented and I continued.”

In terms of inspiration, Stuart says that she is heavily inspired and influenced by movies and cinema. “I love to take both architecture, portrait and self-portrait photos mixed together as they were some frames from a movie.”

The glory of self-portraits is that the gear setup is rather lite, Stuart says the majority of these travel logs are shot with a Canon 50D, 5D Mark II and 24-70mm F/2.8L II. She says she has stuck with Canon over the years because that is what she learned with, but that both Leica and Fujifilm have really interested her of late.

You can find her full self-portrait series over on Behance, and her facebook page.

All Images by Alejandro Misteró. Used under a Creative Commons License.

In the center of Tijuana, Mexico is a 100 year old hotel called St. Francis. It has never been remodeled or updated and retains that very old look and feel of an early 19th century hotel. Photographer Alejandro Mistero got to thinking about this old city landmark, right at the heart of a bustling chaotic modern city, thinking of all the stories that each room of this hotel must have had.

“So I decided to give something back to this hotel by making a boudoir series shooting with different models in different rooms,” Mistero says of his Stories of St. Francis series, which is broken into chapters as he examines different stories with different models in various rooms of the hotel. The images have a very raw, intimate feeling and much like the hotel in which they are shot, really give you that feeling that you are looking at something lost to time.

Mistero publishes his chapters of the series over on his Behance profile, and we highly recommend having a look. We have a selection of the images below which have stood out to us from the series – enjoy!

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All images by Lionel Arnaudie. Used with permission.

Photographer Lionel Arnaudie graduated from the ETPA photography school with honors in 2011. He currently lives in France and recently completed a fine art photo series called “Idol.” The series explores society’s fascination with celebrities and idols that we look up to–but it also has a darker side which conveys how society eventually destroys these idols.

We chatted with Lionel about the fascinating series.

Phoblographer: Talk to us about how you got into photography.

Lionel: I got into photography quite late. I have always been interested in visual arts. And I have been drawing and clay modeling ever since I was a child. But photography brings me something more. Thanks to image editing softwares, photography offers an infinite number of creative possibilities. That’s why I entered a photography school in 2008, when I was 21.

Phoblographer: What inspired the Idol project?

Lionel: This series was not really inspired by anything specific. However, the idea came to my mind while I was doing a lot of research and collected documentation about ancient sculptures, and painting in general. I had never worked with nude models, so that I gathered a lot of information about the body and its movements to be able to choose the right positions for the Idol.

Phoblographer: We’re assuming that these were all done with second curtain flash and with no real amount of photoshopping correct?

Lionel: That is not exactly how it happened. For this series, the post-production stage represented about the three- quarters of the final result. Every model was photographed individually and they were all put together afterwards, thanks to an image editor. The main challenge was to photograph a lot of people that all were to appear on a single image. This technique required me to know very precisely what the series was going to look like before the photo shoots. There was also a long work on the esthetics.

Phoblographer: For years and years, society has always idolized certain celebrities, politicians, athletes, creatives, and more.What specific message are you trying to get at with this project?

Lionel: In this series, I wanted to evoke the strong influence that public figures in general have on their audience, and, conversely, how the public can end up “destroying” their idols. Everybody needs to identify with somebody or something they regard as an ideal. In a way, the idol embodies what we would like to become and what we will never and cannot be. But these ideals can be very easily and rapidly replaced by new emblematic figure.

Phoblographer: When you went about wanting to create the images for this series, how did you explain it to your models? Did you storyboard the images?

Lionel: Yes, this is the way I have always been working to design my series and explain them to the models. None of my series’ has been improvised during the shooting. Every project is the result of a long drawing period. After this preparation period, I show the final sketches to the models with an explanation of the project to convince them to work with me, and to give them a clear vision of what I want the final series to look like.