(Making a case for photo cubism aka joiners) Many times I witnessed photographers vehemently objecting to images like David Hockney’s famous “Pearlblossom HWY”, California   Just to show how far such objections go, recently a portrait photography group on FB, a group with many professional photographers contributing, took down this portrait with no explanation offered. Tobias, Chicago 2013 It just so happened that before taking … Continue reading The eye is a camera, but the mind is not!

What to do when the world is inundated with images of a subject you care to capture using photography. Continue reading Too famous to photograph?

Let me try to connect the work of Japanese Photographers from the 1950’s and 60’s to their aesthetic heritage and contrast their work from everything western tradition teaches us about photography and the ever elusive, perfect, prize winning shot.  If this blog makes you go out and experiment by giving up some of the control over the photographic process, then it achieved its objective. If it … Continue reading An Argument for Imperfection

Did you ever take an honest and thoughtful look at how children, childhood and adolescence feature in photography. More personally how was your childhood captured in images what parts of your youth did your parents decide to capture and more importantly what didn’t they?  I believe there is a vast field stuck in cliche, constrained by social conventions, devoid of progress and ripe for discovery. … Continue reading Children in Photography

Some practical observations on very wide angle, in this case 24mm and 12m. My primary conclusion, it can be lot of fun. Change of view point A wide angle splits the image into immediate foreground and everything else. That everything else is simply far and in case of 12mm very very far away. Effectively there is no middle ground. There is what is right in front of your … Continue reading Going very wide (wide angle usage)

For inspiration visit an art collection If you ever feel in need of inspiration I recommend a trip to an art museum. Here is why: It is nice to see images larger than standard screen size. It is not photography so there is no immediate comparison. There is just so much more history. The degrees of freedom on an empty canvas are far greater. The paintings you … Continue reading Faking it (arts as a source of inspiration)

How to capture excess? One answer, use  highly saturated colors, lots of motion blur and flash freeze the subject. To show how it works and to see if it works for you just browse my images from the 2015 Gay Pride Parade in Chicago.  How best to capture this cocktail made from heat, sweat, fun, testosterone, vanity, joy, rhythm, and finally hangover? Well, I decided to combine a wide angle 24mm with ND … Continue reading Deliberately Grotesque (motion blur and freeze flash)