All posts filed under: Storytelling

Three Black photographers who explore the world through color

There is a reason we don’t see the world in black and white. Colors are an integral part of how we experience life and how we communicate. For a photographer, colors are another tool to set a mood and help tell a story, and getting them right can make or break an image. In celebration of Black History Month and the role color plays in our lives, we spoke to three photographers, who are all part of the Black Woman Photographers collective, about their work and how they explore their subject matters with color. Daniella Almona For a photographer, understanding color is just as important as understanding composition and angles. At least to Lagos-born, Atlanta-based photographer Daniella Almona. With her portraits, she works to highlight blackness in all forms and plays with highly saturated colors in backdrops, props, clothes, and make-up to bring out her subjects’ features. With lush reds, warm oranges, and velvety blues drawing the viewer into the frame, she elicits emotion in both her subjects and audience. “The way colors interact with …

Life lessons from a pro: Joe McNally on capturing his imagination

Joe McNally has seen it all. Known for his technical skills and vast storytelling experience from shooting for the likes of LIFE, National Geographic, and Adidas, McNally has worked in over 70 countries on both journalistic and commercial assignments. In his new book, “The Real Deal: Field Notes from the Life of a Working Photographer”, he looks back at the past 40 years of his work and the stories, skills, and observations to come out of it. We talked to McNally about his book, how he ended up where he is today, the experiences and lessons he has gained along the way, and that time he brought a cow into the kitchen. Where did the idea for the book come from? There are many photographic books in the marketplace that show you the f-stop, the shutter speed, where to put the light, where to put the camera, it’s basically a blueprint for producing X type of result. This book is not that. The motivation for the book stems from being a photographer for a very …

Using HDR for architectural photography

While blending or merging several exposures into one final High Dynamic Range (HDR) image remains a popular creative option for landscape photographers over the years, its use in architectural and commercial shoots has some big benefits that are unique to the challenges of shooting these genres. In many scenarios, especially outdoors, photographers can normally rely on graduated filters to balance a scene by blocking large parts of the frame with a neutral density layer – evening up the brightness from the shadows to the highlights. But while this works well on large, sweeping horizons and foregrounds (i.e., landscape shooting), when it comes to making that process work for odd-shaped buildings and structures with various hotspots and dark areas, we’re often unable to use the same approach. And where using a filter isn’t an option, or where the sheer amount of “fill light” you’d need to balance the scene becomes prohibitive, that’s where Capture One’s HDR Merge function can now deliver the results you need. How It’s Used HDR Merge relies on you capturing two or …