Ask HN: Which photographers do you admire? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Which photographers do you admire?

18 pointsmadscphoto35 comments

Everyone has a genre of photography that they like the best. In your specific genre, which photographers are you inspired by and what do they photograph?

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I really like the tack sharp focus that Ansel Adams brought to the scenes he captured.[1] I later learned that he revisited the same places over and over in search of just the right mood, etc. I used to do the same thing when I worked in Chicago.

Myself, I'm into landscapes, time-lapses, and virtual-focus/synthetic aperture photography, though it's been quite a long time since I was able to venture forth and take photos. Here's my old "Top 100" folder from those days[2]

[1] https://flickr.com/photos/usnationalarchives/albums/72157623...

[2] https://flickr.com/photos/---mike---/albums/7217772029640662...

True, Ansel Adams really was a master of his craft. I have to study his work more, he has some amazing photographs! The black and white really does something for the picture, I always thought that the contrast it is able to bring out without being too much is very pleasable to the eye.

I took a look at your photos - a lot of them are good! The ones with the same person multiple times in the frame kinda threw me for a loop. How did you achieve that?

Stand in one place, take several pictures as the person walks/rides across, then use Hugin[1] to align the images, outputting each as a TIF. Then import those as layers, and use masking to compose them into the final image with GIMP[2].

If you're more prepared, you could just use a tripod to skip the need for alignment.

[1] https://hugin.sourceforge.io/

[2] https://www.gimp.org/

Weegee and W. Eugene Smith were my primary influences back when I was shooting as a hobbyist and, later, as a professional.

The former taught me the importance of simply being there and being ready to shoot in the moment, lighting and composition be damned. The latter showed me that you could compose art -- real, emotional and meaningful art, not just cookie-cutter photos -- by thoughtfully capturing emotional moments.

Wow, imagine having to do street work with a giant Speed Graphic camera like Weegee. Normally I try to be as stealthy as possible when photographing street, but that would be impossible with a camera of that size :-).

Both are very good, and shooting in the early to mid 1900's shot in black and white, which I really like.

What about you? Do you shoot color or b&w? Did you stick to street like Weegee and Smith or have you taken a different route?

Yann Arthus-Berthrand and Peter Menzel. They capture nature and human life like I've never seen before

"The earth from above": https://search.brave.com/images?q=yann+arthus-bertrand+the+w...

The Human (Musics) film is special: https://youtu.be/uog4eCZTUX4

Fascinating portraits of human lives all over the planet: https://www.menzelphoto.com/portfolio/G0000GPaxwfSZQ0Q

"What the world eats": https://time.com/8515/what-the-world-eats-hungry-planet/

Yann Arthus-Berthrand's "The earth from above" is amazing! Thank you for sharing it. It reminds me a lot of George Steinmetz's work whom I also shared in my own comment.

I've seen Peter Menzel's photos before they are very fascinating. Crazy idea to photograph entire families with either their belongings or what they eat in that way, but it totally works and nobody has done it before (as far as I know).

Do you take photos yourself?

I think their projects have great humanitarian and documentary value, I wish they were regularly repeated.

In what parts of the world has life become more similar to the viewers', in which parts has it remained distinct? What do people value? Seeing is believing, and understanding, and an opportunity for empathy.

I'm doing some amateur astrophotography myself.

Daniel Sanwald to me is one of the most innovative contemporaries. I’ve only met him once but seemed lovely too. Portraits and fashion.

Jamie Hawksworth has a keen eye and delivers warmth in his traditional process. He shoots landscape and fashion.

Nick Night and Craig Mcdean for pushing the boundaries of fashion photography.

Rankin for his work ethic. I could watch him working from my desk for about a year, he worked 12hour days 6 days a week. If he didn’t have a professional job, he always had a side project. Portraits and fashion.

The fashion and portraits genre is not one which I am very well versed in, and I haven't really seen that many photos from it as I haven't been seeking it, but they do make some nice images!

Personally I find the documentary and travel genre most interesting. I think it's quite a hard genre to get right, though. When one thinks travel photography the mind immediately goes to the saturated, contrasty, increasingly dark (for some reason, what is this trend?) photos that are popular on Instagram, but the genre can be so much more interesting.

One photographer I really like is Mitchell Kanashkevich who photographs mostly people on his travels. He really has a way of developing relationships with them to allow him to take photos you don't often see.

https://www.mitchellk-photos.com/

Another fun photographer who is mostly taking aerials is George Steinmetz who photographs for National Geographic. His assignments and projects are mostly related to global problems such as feeding the world population and climate change. He has some beautiful photos, and his Instagram is also quite fun with each post being two halfs of an aerial for that panoramic feel.

https://www.georgesteinmetz.com/

Honestly, a lot of the National Geographic photographers take amazing photos.

Personally, I try to incorporate a bit of both's style in my own photography, but of course it takes years of practice. I do mostly travel, documentary and landscapes. You can check out my work below.

https://www.madscphoto.com/

Sean Tucker, Craig Whitehead (sixstreetunder), Joshua Jackson, Alan Schaller. They all mostly shoot street. Sean Tucker has a popular YouTube channel about Photography.

I used to watch Sean's videos all the time! I find street a bit hard as a genre because I feel that most photos I see are basically just random snapshots without any real story or anything that makes it special. Of course there are some talented street photographers.

Vivian Maier took some excellent photos and was basically unknown until someone found a bunch of her film canisters at a yard sale and developed them.

https://www.vivianmaier.com/

Henri Cartier-Bresson also took some AMAZING photos in his time. Some of them you really wonder how he got somewhere at just the right time.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/photographer/henri-cartier-bres...

A lot of Magnum photographers are very skilled street photographers, I think.

Definitely. It kind of depends on what you like. I'm drawn to aesthetics more than I am story. Those photographers are some of the greats though, for sure, and I do think most of the "greats" are that because they blend aesthetic and story perfectly.

I used to follow Van Wong[1] because he is an engineer turned artist. But haven't seen much from him in last few years. And I follow various tags related to photography, lately underwater photography has my interest.

[1]: https://www.vonwong.com/

Peter McKinnon (lifestyle, landscape, action shots) and Sean Tucker (portraits, street photography, nature sometimes)

Isn't Peter's style a bit of a meme these days?

I guess it’s getting old for sure haha, but you can’t deny the guy has skills

I think he is a talented photographer but he is unfortunately getting swept up in all the trends of Instagram in his photography, which makes his photos less authentic and interesting. His new obsession with REALLY dark and moody editing is a shame, in my opinion.

I'm not in product photography, but the work of Eberhard Schuy is really inspiring. He wrote some books about how he works, concealing nothing or at most a little bit of his tricks.

Sebastião Salgado… recently saw his photos of the Amazon, wow.

Mark Denney and Nick Page are two I really enjoy lately. Both do nature photography and I personally love their style and the stuff they try to teach.

I don't look for specific "photographers" - I follow various accounts/subreddits/etc for the pictures

Which accounts and subreddits are your favorite, them? :-)

A bunch of randos on Twitter (often found by rt)

... and a bunch of the <word>porn subs (that aren't actually porn) like /engineeringporn or /weirdwings

also ... not everything from the accounts/subs I follow is strictly "photography" (some is video, some is general conversation, etc etc)

Vivian Maier.

Definitely! Insane that she went unnoticed until after her death.

Andreas Gursky is doing amazing things. Go to an exhibition and look at the big pictures.

In no particular order:

Richard Avedon

Lee Friedlander

Sally Mann

Jerry Uelsmann

Ansel Adams

many many more I'm forgetting

Alan Schaller - Monochrome street photography.

sebastian segado is an all time favorite

Stephen Shore

Ken Rockwell just for the pedagogy

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

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