Bless the Lord

When was the last time you updated your website? Despite the popularity and traction of social media sites, having a stand-alone website to promote your work and build your brand is key to connecting with your given audience. In this week’s podcast, we explore the dynamics of building and maintaining a professional caliber website with insights from both sides of the coin. We start by chatting with website designer Alex Vita, who shares pet peeves as well as the best practices he’s honed...

We’re all about flower power on this week’s podcast, in celebration of Valentine’s Day. Joining us in discussion are photography curator Danae Panchaud, co-author of the recent book Flora Photographica, along with contributing photographer and audience favorite Abelardo Morell. After describing the book’s genesis and scope, Danae delves into the extensive research process she and co-author William Ewing employed to sift through many thousands of photographs celebrating this wide-ranging...

"Selecting photos is a different skill than making them,” explains renowned picture editor Mike Davis in this week’s podcast. This essential understanding forms the core of Davis’s new book Creating Visual Narratives Through Photography: A Fresh Approach to Making a Living as a Photographer. Davis approaches this topic with a mix of clarity and candor, to offer deeply engaged yet highly accessible insights about making photos—and making sense of those photos—while also discussing the elusive...

In some locales, the period between Christmas and the New Year is known as the Wild Nights, where mischief reigns in the darkest days of the northern hemisphere. We’re digging into this theme for our last show of 2022, in a chat with photographer and producer of this very podcast, Jill Waterman, who has been documenting New Year’s Eve traditions and exploits around the globe for the past 38 years. We first spoke with Jill about this project in the two-part show Legacy and Commitment in...

For anyone seeking a new camera to gift or to hold this holiday season, we present the eighth annual installment of our Cameras of the Year episode! Featured in our discussion are 16 new cameras from Canon, FUJIFILM, Hasselblad, Leica, Nikon, OM SYSTEM, Panasonic, and Sony—presented in alphabetical order. In addition to a detailed review of each camera on our list, we also discuss trends such as the shift from separate cameras for photo and video to a single camera geared to content...

In an era brimming with instant gratification, some things are worth the wait. This is an apt takeaway from our chat with photographer Charles Daniels about his long-outdated film from the legendary Boston Tea Party and other 60s-era music venues, rarely processed until recently. Joining Daniels in conversation is his long-time partner Susan Berstler, and Gerald Freyer from Film Rescue International, the unique image processing and digitization specialists entrusted with his mother lode of...

Food, glorious food—there’s no better time than the holiday season for a bountiful exploration of food photography—a fan favorite. For this episode of the podcast, we’re delighted to connect with food blogger, educator, and content creator extraordinaire Joanie Simon. Listen in as she discusses the magic behind her aspirational, achievable shooting style. Besides examining the limits to reality when shooting fake food, Simon describes her collaborations with a dedicated crew, offers advice...

Mike Tyson has long been a boxing legend, and for this week’s podcast we speak with the photographer who was there from the very start. Lori Grinker was just a student with a semester-long assignment when she first met Tyson as a 13-year-old kid under the tutelage of famed boxing trainer Cus D’Amato. Grinker’s inside access over the next decade offers an intimate portrait of Tyson that few others have seen, and is now published in the book Mike Tyson. Listen in as Grinker describes how she...

It’s leaf peeping time in the northern hemisphere when trees break into riots of color as autumn plows a path from north to south. Two of the best regions for capturing the show here in the US are across New England and along California’s magnificent Sierra Nevada. To help get you up to speed when preparing for your own foliage excursions, we speak with landscape photography specialists in each of these regions—Jerry Monkman in New England and G. Dan Mitchell in California’s Sierra Nevada....

The art of photography offers boundless potential for altering and enhancing human perception—this is the focus of our conversation on this week's podcast. Listen in as we go down the rabbit hole of visual discovery with alchemist of photography Abelardo Morell. From his early desire to enlighten students by transforming his classroom into a camera obscura to his ever-expanding universe of ideas—and the subsequent tools he uses—to record moments in light, Morell is an undisputed master in...

A well-crafted portrait is a beautiful thing, and this week’s podcast takes a deep dive into creating individual, group, and family portraits, both on location and in the studio. Our guests are master portraitists Monica Sigmon and Michael Taylor, co-owners of SigmonTaylor Photography in Williamsburg, Virginia. Please join us for tips on everything from how to arrive at a signature style when working on location to the practicalities and pitfalls of establishing a dedicated portrait studio...

Nature and wildlife photographers seeking to put their images to work for the good of the planet will love this week’s podcast. Our first guest, Jaymi Heimbuch, founded the Conservation Visual Storytellers Academy to teach photographers how to connect their pictures to a larger purpose. Listen in as Heimbuch discusses ways to harness the three A’s—Action, Audience, and Affect—and successfully target the people you want to reach with your work. After a break, we hear from Heimbuch’s star...

There’s a special feeling to photographing sports action that hooks you from day one. Listen in as we talk sports with Sony Artisan of Imagery Jean Fruth, and longtime Sports Illustrated Director of Photography Steve Fine. In 2019, Fruth co-founded Grassroots Baseball to celebrate the amateur game at the youngest levels. In her latest book Grassroots Baseball: Route 66, Fruth photographs young players in the same heroic manner as the pros. When it comes to equipment, she recommends the best...

With a camera in his hand, Harvey Stein owns the streets, having spent the past 50 years capturing quintessential moments and making sensitive portraits of the people he meets there. In this two-part episode, he shares details about his photographic process while also conveying the wisdom he’s acquired in publishing 10 books of photographs. We first caught up with Stein at the 2022 B&H OPTIC Conference in June, where he spoke about his newest book Coney Island People: 50 Years. He describes...

Sapna Reddy and Matt Kloskowski have more in common than just colorful photos of birds in nature and soothing landscapes. In this week’s episode of the B&H Photography Podcast, we investigate how their respective work lives have fueled the technical mastery that allows their creative vision to flourish. We spoke with them both as part of our continuing coverage of B&H’s 2022 OPTIC Conference. We begin the show with Dr. Sapna Reddy, who balances a rigorous medical career in radiology with the...

This episode of the B&H Photography Podcast was originally published on July 29, 2021. We revisit it today to mark the passing of the podcast torch from creative producer John Harris to Jill Waterman, a creative content writer for the B&H Explora blog, who appears as a guest with Davies. Harris will continue to be an avid listener to the show, and we hope he’ll also grace us with his voice on occasion as a future guest. Photographer Sally Davies embodies a remarkable creative spirit, and we...

On this week’s episode of the B&H Photography Podcast we return to the 2022 OPTIC Conference for two enjoyable and pragmatic segments about macro photography. While both photographers we speak with are well-rounded professionals, their not-so-secret joy is crawling around in gardens and woods, making beautiful close-up macro photographs of insects, plants, and the tiny wonders of nature. Our first guest is Chris McGinnis, who specializes in spider and insect photography and is an OM System...

On this week’s episode of the B&H Photography Podcast, we are pleased to welcome photographer and director Brandon Tauszik and journalist Pendarvis Harshaw to talk about their recently completed project, “Facing Life,” an effective blend of form and content, whose principal image format is the cinemagraph and whose content speaks to one of our society’s most pressing issues: prison reform. Our discussion takes on both aspects as we learn how cinemagraphs are produced and how Tauszik uses...

On this week’s episode of the B&H Photography Podcast, we are pleased to present a conversation with photographer Camille Seaman, and pleased to do so from the halls of the OPTIC 2022 Photo Conference, which we have certainly missed over the past two years. Seaman was a keynote speaker at the 2022 OPTIC Outdoor, Wildlife & Travel Photo/Video Conference, which is hosted by B&H and held from June 12-15, 2022, in New York City. Please check the above link to find an archive of the conference’s...

It’s been a minute since we spoke about drones on the B&H Photography Podcast. The last time we did, it was about drones in news photography and before that, drone work in landscape photography. But today we welcome back to the show one of our earliest guests on the podcast, Randy Scott Slavin. Slavin is an aerial photographer and drone operator, as well as a motion director and still photographer. He started his company Yeah Drones in 2013, at the dawn of drone use in film and commercial...