livebooks blog

My name is Kari Alana Heron. I am a storyteller. I tell three-dimensional stories about food, culture, people, travel, and life using images and words. My portfolio site is www.kariheron.com and award-winning food blog is www.chefandsteward.com.

I started out taking photos of food when I decided to delve into my ambition to start a food blog with my chef husband some six years ago. As expats, it was a great way for me to introduce myself to Dubai, which was my new home and to merge our skills, expertise, and interests. I have been shooting since I was 9 on a 24 mm and eventually inherited my father’s 35 mm in my teens. I trained in photography from age 16 and went pro when I left the Caribbean and moved to Dubai. Why food? It doesn’t talk back. Seriously though, food is one of the most challenging subjects and I love the reward of conquering something that is so dynamic. Food and culture have always intrigued me.

I have a mad love for the Middle East. I fell in love some years ago. There is so much there – even though it may seem very basic to Western eyes. I felt I had my greatest personal growth in the Middle East. Jordan has been my most sacred place to shoot so far.

Since I have an extensive background in Media and Communication, I have learned that relationships are everything in business. It is the same with small clients and those names that make your client list look lush. Waldorf Astoria was a brilliant brand to work with and their Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates location is one of the most spectacular hotels I have ever shot in or had the pleasure of staying at. Red Bull is a fun brand and I headed up Marketing Communication for their largest Soapbox Race in Latin America.

I consider a perfect food photograph one that makes you want to reach through the screen and take a bite or want to go to your kitchen to cook or book a reservation immediately for that restaurant. A perfect food photograph is an invitation to treat.

Like most creatives, I am multi-talented. The body of my work that I am most passionate about includes photography, video production, writing recipe development, and food styling. I am a content producer. It is a blessing to be able to move seamlessly through the arts and not only express my God-given gifts, but earn a living income internationally from them. I love to travel for work and hop across the Atlantic up to three times a year. Travel is the best school life can offer.

I was commissioned to collaborate on a book which will be published soon. My husband and I are looking for some cookbook deals as we have got a few great books inside us. Food is a universal language that unites people from all over the world and as people who have lived our adult lives outside of our home country, it has been an integral part in our travels in our travels. My work is based on my respect for food, people, their culture and where they live. I am pretty big on social media and love connecting with people on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, and Periscope.

Christopher Paul Brown is an abstract photographer that has dedicated his time to capturing fascinating artwork. His work has appeared in numerous shows as well as having a one-man show in 1985. To see more of his work, visit his website: www.christopherpaulbrown.com.

In January of 1978 I used student loan proceeds to purchase a Contax RTS camera with a Zeiss lens. I was attending film school, but my intentions there were to work commercially and pay my bills. I needed a strictly artistic outlet and photography suited me best.

The reception to my marketing was strong. I was in numerous juried shows and publications. The Standard Oil Company bought one of my photographs for their collection and I had my first solo show by 1985. Shortly thereafter, for a host of reasons, I let go of the marketing side of photography. I continued to shoot and eventually replaced my 35mm Contax with a Mamiya medium format camera, began shooting in color, and by 2013 moved into digital photography. It was my excitement with the digital arena that helped me decide to market my photography once again in 2013. Shortly afterwards, I discovered liveBooks, which perfectly suited my web presence.

I consider myself an alchemist. The early alchemists focused primarily on matter. They were the precursors of today’s chemists and their belief was that hidden qualities lay within mundane matter. Unlike today’s chemists, they saw their own personal power as affecting the outcome of their alchemical investigations. In the 20th century, the surrealists and psychotherapists such as Carl Jung and Otto Rank took alchemy to a new level and applied to art and people what the older alchemists had applied to mundane matter. In my own view, consciousness is something shared not only among plants and animals, but also among ordinary items such as grains of sand, cars, and tables. Consciousness is all there is, but our world is wrapped up in a great masquerade.

With my photography, I experience myself as less of a creator of images than a conductor of energies beyond myself. Just as a lens conducts light and a wire conducts electricity, I invite and allow energies beyond my conscious understanding to flow through and co-create these images. My job is to stand astride a polarity: on the one hand I am open, accepting the serendipity of the unexpected, of whatever appears that is beyond the surface of things, but at the same time I am focused on creating a strong image that reveals a depth that is beyond words. With these two intentions, polar opposites though they are, powerful energies are often released. When I am lucky, they manifest images that offer depth and richness.

My work is the opposite of a mental construct. I don’t begin with a series in mind of a title for a photograph. Rather, the series or title reveals itself afterwards. Each image, and series of images, has a consciousness of its own, related to my consciousness, yet also independent of me. In many ways, I am like a paleontologist who unearths pre-existing bones from the earth. In my case, the earth is a metaphor for the unconscious and the unexplained.

I believe these images tell non-linear stories. They seem to be both subterranean and unconscious. I think of them as the wordless shards of dreams that have survived awakening.

Chuck Haney is a professional freelance photographer/writer based in beautiful Whitefish, Montana. He travels extensively across the United States and Canada in pursuit of the finest and most intriguing images. His provocative use of natural light in landscape, wildlife, and outdoor sports images have drawn national acclaim and have landed him many assignments including advertising campaigns.

Chuck’s finest images grace the walls of many residential and public spaces. His travel and outdoor lifestyle articles have been featured in numerous national and regional publications; adding to 13 coffee table books, over 190 magazine covers, and numerous sole-photographer calendars to his credit. Chuck enjoys teaching a series of popular photography workshops across the country each year. To view more of Chuck’s work, please visit his liveBooks website: www.chuckhaney.com. Follow Chuck on Facebook and Instagram!

My career in landscape photography began gradually. I would go for bicycling excursions in nearby Glacier National Park and see all these wonderful scenes unfold before my eyes. Soon, I was returning with my SLR camera in tow. This was in the early 1990s when I learned to shoot with film and manual settings.

For me, a perfect landscape image is one that places the viewer into the scene by using a wide angle lens and lots of depth of field. The best shots have fleeting magical light that happens briefly during stormy weather patterns and invoke an emotion. It’s also important to carry the correct equipment. I, for one, cannot leave my home without a sturdy tripod. I always mention to my workshop students that a good tripod is your friend for life.

As for my projects – there is no single one that I can choose as my favorite. Actually, whatever I’m working on at the time is my favorite project. The scope of my portfolio is wide and vast and I enjoy the fact that I work on such a variety of subject matter. One week I am shooting city images for my new book, “Portrait of San Francisco” and the next week I find myself searching for interesting barns for stock use in calendars.

I shoot at a wealth of interesting places; my favorites vary based on the time of the year. I love shooting in the deserts in Spring, the Great Plains in early Summer, hardwood forests of the Midwest in Fall and ski action or quite winter scenes near my hometown of Whitefish, Montana.

I am passionate about my craft. I think this is well-represented in my Portfolios pages on liveBooks, which highlight my favorite and most popular images. I think a photographer does best when he/she shoots subjects that they enjoy…You can tell that I have a zest for many subjects!

One piece of advice that I can give to fellow landscape photographers is to get to know your location by being patient and to take a closer look at what is really around you. You will discover a whole new world that could easily just slip by without careful consideration and reflection.

Want to be featured as one of our guest bloggers? Email us at social@livebooks.com!

Living in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Joshua Holko is a full-time Professional Nature Photographer who specializes in polar photography. Joshua is a fully accredited AIPP Master of Photography and member of the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (AIPP). He has won countless awards for his photography including being names the 2015 Global Arctic Photographer or the Year.
Joshua is officially represented by Philip Kulpa and the Source Photographica Gallery in Australia and Aspen, Colorado.

To see more of Joshua Holko’s work visit his website: www.jholko.com.

Photography is at its core a still medium that we use to tell stories. The problem with much of the photography that is referenced in the blog post “Will the Real Landscape Photography Please Stand Up” is that there is no story being told by the photograph. Or rather, the story is one of technical perfection and a pretty picture.

Photography is the art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place or thing. It frequently has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. And that brings us to the art of seeing. An art that is being lost in a sea of technical perfection. Sure it takes technical skill to set up a camera and tripod in a beautiful location with great light and make a pretty picture. It takes artistic skill, however, to create an evocative photograph with emotion and mystery.

Creating images with mystery and emotion starts with seeing with better eyes. Weather, light, and composition all play a vital role in the process but the real emotion is going to come from the story you are trying to tell with your photograph. I wrote in my book review of La Nuit du Cerf (Night of the Deer) about how photography is a subtractive process and what we exclude is often more important than what we include. Photographs are often successfully emotive because of what the photographer chose to exclude, rather than what he or she has included. Giving a sense of something is often far stronger than showing the whole thing. Leave something to the imagination of the viewer in your photographic compositions and you will find your images become stronger, more emotive and mysterious. The story does not have to be completed in a wide-angle frame that encompasses absolutely everything. It is often well worth letting the viewer fill in the blanks in their minds’ eye. After all, no photograph can compete with the stimulated imagination. The more you can fire the imagination of the viewer the more successfully emotive your photograph will become.

I cannot recall who it was who was first quoted as saying “Don’t photograph what it is. Photograph what else it is” but this statement is great advice we should all keep in mind when we are out taking photographs.

I have judged many photographic competitions over the last few years and without a doubt those photographs that are more successful are the ones that tug on my emotional strings. These photographs create a connection with the viewer that is deeper and more meaningful than the feeling a pretty picture might impart.

Learning to see with better eyes takes time but is something we can train ourselves to do. Looking at photography books or attending galleries (not just photographic galleries) and exhibitions are two good ways to improve your vision. Look at how other photographers whom you admire interpreted a scene or subject and analyze what it is that created the connection for you to the work. Think about what is is you are trying to say with your photography before you click the shutter. I frequently ask workshop participants what their photograph is about when they ask for feedback on their images – I often receive a blank stare in return. If the photograph doesn’t know what the image is about, how is the viewer supposed to know? It might be a photograph of a Penguin and that well be the answer, but the real answer should be about what the photographer is trying to say about the subject.

Lets look at this photograph of mine on Gentoo Penguins in the sea ice near the entrance to the Lemaire Channel in Antarctica as an example. This photograph is about “being left behind”. It tells the story of the Gentoo Penguins in their environment. We know (even though they are small in the frame) that there are penguins because of their distinctive shape. We know they are in Antarctica because of the giant icebergs in the background. We know they are in their natural environment as they are walking across the sea ice. Yet, it is that one lone penguin that is lagging behind that creates the emotion in the photograph. When this photograph was judged at the 2014 APPA Awards, the judges giggled and commented about the story being told. The mere fact the photograph elicited giggles speaks to the emotive content. The photograph subsequently received a Gold Award.

Now, if you put your thumb over the screen and cover up that lagging penguin then suddenly the story is now nowhere near as strong and the real power and emotion of the photograph is gone.

The same applies to the overall composition of this photograph. To the left of the large iceberg just out of frame is a large island. To the right-hand side is a mountainous peak, likewise just out frame but neither of these elements are important to the photograph so I excluded them to simplify the frame and distill it down the essence of what I wanted the photograph to be about. I wanted to tell the story about the penguins on the ice with the little feller playing catch-up. Excluding these extraneous elements not only cleaned up the frame, but it also left the imagination to fill in the blanks about what might lie just to the left and right. Our mind’s eye fills in the blanks and at least in my own case, I imagine the sea ice continually stretching out in both directions. This is far stronger than seeing the Island and mountain that are just out of frame.

Learning to see with better eyes is a core aspect to creating emotion in your imagery. Learning to use the elements available is another. Those who have travelled with me to the Polar regions know I relish bad weather. Snow, blizzards, and dramatic weather provides the perfect canvas to create emotive imagery. It doesn’t have to be Polar though – a breaking rain storm or the edge of weather will almost always provide an opportunity to tell an emotive story. The take-away to remember is that the weather provides only some of the feeling and drama to the photograph. It is your composition and choice of what you include and exclude that is going to tell the story. Remember, like all good stories, a photograph should leave the viewer wanting more. That is the key to getting emotion and mystery into your photographs.