Videos

Karl Taylor answers critics, showing how his videos are made: 2,000-word scripts read from a foot-pedal autocue, a Sony FS7 and 50mm shooting 4K so zoom cuts hide fluffs, and six or seven videos recorded in a day. He refuses affiliate links, allows one Squarespace message monthly, and shares outtakes.

Lindsay Adler opens B&H's Depth of Field 2018 urging photographers to build careers deliberately, not accidentally. After seventeen years shooting everything, including babies she disliked, she warns that taking any job traps you, that technique makes you good but style makes you great, and recalls an editor rejecting her portfolio.

Alan Schaller's B&H talk traces how he settled on black and white street photography in cities. A former composer who burned out writing commercial music, he argues that drilling one practice beats dabbling, that shooting in series gives work a point, and that storytelling belongs alongside technique, not after it.

Karl Taylor explains how his quarterly competitions are judged and how to improve odds in any contest. Interpreting the theme is paramount, yet entries for macro included landscapes, a strawberry and Venice, while a montage broke the single-image rule for Moments. He flags over-Photoshopped work and previews themes and prizes.

Karl Taylor catalogues thefts of his images, from a Brazilian brewer to an art store selling his ballerina shot as oil paintings, plus vloggers reworking his scripts. His remedies: embed copyright metadata in Lightroom or Photoshop, run reverse image searches, invoice offenders, and use trade bodies or Pixsy and Copytrack.

Pye Jirsa, co-founder of SLR Lounge, discusses five reasons photography businesses fail, drawn from students and his own mistakes: setting the wrong expectations, since loving the craft, like loving coffee, differs from running a business, and offering every genre at once, which narrows the audience and muddles the marketing message.

Karl Taylor explains photography pricing, dividing the trade into commercial photographers who bill businesses day rates and usage fees, and social photographers selling hours, prints and albums. Starting from required profit, he totals monthly costs and a $5,100 salary to $8,825, showing $200 an hour needs ten billable hours weekly.

Jessica Kobeissi runs through the ways photographers earn, after insisting on a price sheet, model release and contract. Client work like seniors, engagements and weddings grows by word of mouth, as hers did; influencer shoots must be paid, never traded for exposure; and campaign work is hard to break into.

Karl Taylor, a professional for over 20 years, sets out seven steps towards a photography career: understand more than the basics, including emotion, mood and story; choose a niche after experimenting; rent equipment before buying to learn what fits; practise relentlessly and analyse your work against professionals; and consider pricing.

Karl Taylor breaks down a whisky-bottle shoot on black Perspex: a softly lit background, gold foil card behind the liquid to make it glow, two strip softboxes fired through doubled tracing paper so the light gradates smoothly, one serving as an edge light, and focus held on bottle and label.