Meet people and share beautiful moments with beautiful people. Then, later, remember those good times. With this one, I can say, I love photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aranburu84/5424219161/

Hi Aaron, I needed this video!

I know you have told me this before but college has actually killed my inspiration and killed my interest in photography as I don’t feel like I am gaining anything from it any more. 

I love photography, I love my JOB as a photographer but my WORK at college even if it is taking photographs is not fun, it feels far too rushed.

I am actually tempted to write a full-on review/essay on why I don’t think College/University is worth it but also what I have gained from a photography course but I reckon it would be similar to what most others have said.

___
My Story of Photography!

My love of photography came from as a child when me and my family were on holiday I always hated poorly composed family ‘snaps’ and over-exposed images, so I always asked to take the instant camera off my parents and take the ‘snaps’ but back then that’s all they were to me ‘snaps’.

When I got older I went on a trip to Kensington in London for Geography in which we had to document and write about the area of Kensington, this was also when digital compacts were at a consumer friendly price. So on this trip I was still taking ‘snaps’ that I was composing and getting them ‘technically correct’ however after the trip my Geography tutor told me that the images were incredible and showed it to the art department who also praised them. This was the first time anyone had ever complimented my photography and the first time I considered taking photography as a hobby and learning more about it, but I was still only in school and so I never considered pursuing it as a career especially as almost every teenager wants to be a photographer just like they want to be an actor so I assumed it was a ‘phase’!

It was not until I left school and went to Veterinary college that I figured, I only really liked Animals because of the way they are, I loved animal documentaries but I could not stand working with them. So whilst I was on a course for Veterinary care I was shopping one day and walked past a friendly camera shop nearby, I walked in and go speaking to the salesman (who in another story now works in a ANOTHER camera shop which ironically is my local again – he must be a stalker lol) was talking to me about bridge cameras and how they would be a good upgrade from the compact without dedicating to a full SLR, and with that I bought the Fujifilm bridge camera and loved it, started taking images and posting them on Facebook and DeviantArt and I absolutely loved the feedback I was getting from friends, but due to not hearing much on DeviantArt I just assumed it was friends being nice. Despite that after Veterinary college I decided f*ck it! I like photography and I don’t care if I am good at it or not it is what I love! So I enrolled in a Media course as an entry into photography, I bought my first SLR and started taking images.

Whilst studying at Media (and this is not brown-nosing this is 100% true) I stumbled across this image on DeviantArt http://aknacer.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=0#/d1pmvbx which led me to learn more about this photographer called Aaron Nace, to which I learnt he was full of conceptual images, which gave me a real direction in photography, I learnt that photography is not just about straight-simple portraits and product shots. With a bit of creativity you can create astonishing images that go beyond reality. This is where my passion for surreal conceptual photography started and I was ready to start my photography course.

One of the first and BEST lessons of my photography course was to find inspiration and then contact them and I am sure Aaron will verify this but I used this as a great opportunity to speak to Aaron, so I sent him an e-mail not expecting a reply as he was a busy photographer from Charlotte. Then the next day I receive an e-mail from non other than Mr Nace! I was astonished, you/he was so friendly and generous with sharing information and this was also around the time Phlearn had started. I remember asking him numerous questions and every time he would make time to answer then for which I can’t thank you enough, I even remember Phlearn Episode 11 of which you gave me a shout-out for a white balance query, you have no idea how special that made me feel, I was inspired to do so much more and I have been a keen follower of Phlearn since.

But if there is one thing I will always have with me it is this card (see picture) which you/he sent with my Phlearn bracelet, when I feel like giving up I have this card in my wallet and it reminds me of the way you have inspired me and continue to inspire me throughout. The bracelet and card never leave me!

This is not me brown-nosing at all in fact if this wins I will donate my Pro to anyone because I have bought a few Pros (can’t afford them all lol) and I want someone else to see what a great man you are and how much can me learnt from watching a video taught by you. People will call me a brown-noser I know, but without you I would have possibly given up a long time ago. You’re the reason I am still into photography!

This is a great excuse to tell you that story on a public domain because I know when I tweet it with 140 words its not the same. I hope this puts a smile on your face as its sent with bro love!

YOU PHUCKING ROCK!

Why I love photography – though question, really. For me,nowadays, it is a two-stage rocket. I started photography some 25 years ago when I bought my first camera, a Minolta Dynax 9000i. I took pictures and they generally s*ck*d – the love for photography died after a few years. The analog camera then collected dust for many years, unused. Ten years ago I picked up diving – i was immidiately addicted and I still am today. When I watched life underwater I wanted to share the experience with my famliy and friends – I bought a simple underwater camera (which was digital, 3.2 megapixels) and started taking pictures again. The first 100 or so pictures s*ck*d big time, but than I started to master the difficulties underwater. The pictures were getting better and better. When I felt the camera wasn’t able to capture what I wanted, I upgraded. So the equipment changed to Olympus and then to Nikon. I started to enter underwater photography shoot-outs, ranging from local competitions to the open Dutch championships.  So diving and photography were strongly connected for the last 8 – 10 years. Currently I am taking my first steps in concert photography – which is as demanding as underwater photograpy.

The picture that encouraged me to push my limits is attached: it was the first image where people looked at me and said: wow, did YOU make this?  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/uw-eric/2486938572/

My comments seem to be disappearing ! I ll check back in a few or comment again. Awesome episode as always Aaron.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikkifroom/6850637417/in/photostream 

I have a lot of feelings when I look at art, it is a special gift from the artist to me or to anyone that wants to let the artwork in, I have always wanted to achieve that with my photography, let people in and give them something like none other.

It’s interesting you should bring this up. While I’ve done some photography in the last few months, I really haven’t had any photo shoots in the last 3 or so months. But since then I’ve actually had a huge desire to get into filming. Being on some music video sets (of which one was my own band’s) and really getting to understand how things work has fired me up.

I’ve since acquired two music video projects I’m going to film in the next month or so. I’ve been building rigs to shoot certain shots and angles, created some light setups and have been getting chops up with test footage and doing animatic cuts with that footage, not to mention scouring YouTube and the internet for any piece of filmmaking advice I can get.

But the best thing about all this is that I’m finding that it’s all coming fairly naturally and I’m absolutely loving it. I’ve always been passionate about films and have always watched the behind the scenes documentaries on DVDs and such and it’s not until now that I’m really starting to see just how these things are done, myself, down to camera angles, scene composition, how best to portray action and emotion and such.The thing that gets me is, while I haven’t done a photo shoot in a while, filming and editing seems to me to be far more satisfying than photo shoots and editing photos ever were. I feel as though photography was really only a step in that inevitable direction.Sorry for the life story. The End.

I love photography for many reasons. One of these reasons, and maybe the best, is the feeling I get when I browse my old picture. I recently had to browse over 12000 of my old pictures to import them in LR4. It took my a few hours but it was an incredible ride and brought me back to 2002 when I shot my first digital picture. It is so long ago that I actually had hair back then!

Browsing all these pictures gave me a sense of time, how thing, and I, have changed in the last 10 years. And it also showcased how my work changed. At first I was shooting mostly people, then travel photography, then wild life, weddings and now I am doing conceptual work, in the horror genre. 

This new adventure in the conceptual/horror genre is the most fun I have had so far. I love the planning phase, doing sketches, looking for reference images, looking for location, finding models, MUA, etc… Putting all this energy into a single picture is very different than my old approach of shooting 300pics and picking the best one. Now I have a clear vision of where I want to go and the pleasure is in the journey as much as the end result.

Here is one of my first conceptual picture. It means a lot to me because it was the first shot I scheduled, made the MU, envisioned, ect that matched my vision. Now I am moving to bigger things, and my discovery of Phlearn couldnt have happened at a better time!  

Here’s my offering.

I’ve been interested in photography for a few years now and consider myself an “advanced beginner”. Around september last year I was getting very frustrated with a 365 Project. A photo every day is VERY HARD. Up to that point I considered myself a landscape/HDR photographer. However through Aarons images/tutorials and lots of different amazing images on Flickr I was becoming more and more intrigued with conceptual photography. Anything I may have done before was largely inspired by others images. Until this image. I decided that I would design an image from scratch. Quite a few designs later I came up with this….

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jameswarwood/6099873546/in/photostream

This was my Eureka moment. I saw what I am capable of producing photographically and conceptually. And this is my challenge for this year. The quantity of images produced is being purposely reduced to allow the quality to increase. For me images can’t be rushed. The design/idea needs to be right and the edit should be considered. I’m firmly head along the “Digital Art” route now (whatever that may be! ). I love this type of photography and for me that is all that matters.

HellooO, am in love with clouds ..
i like to take sunset and sunrise photos ,also that was the purpose of buying my (sweet nikon d90)
thanks Aaron for these videos <3
http://flic.kr/p/71Zqno

Hello
I first discovered that I loved photography when I was twelve years old and taking a photography class in school. I was so fascinated by how a camera works and how you develop a film all by yourself (by this time I shot analog), it was just a huge fascination to me.
Later I started to photograph everything around me and when I photographed everything I started to experiment with doing selfportraits and this was when I was longing for more. My dad saw my passion for photography and he was so nice to buy me a DSLR which I didn’t get out of my hands for weeks. I wanted to learn everything about how to handle it, how to create the shots that I desired to take. And with every day that passed I learnt more and at the end the camera became some kind of body part to me. Every time I have it in my hands I feel happy and more complete. I just love that feeling.
When something really bad happened to me and my family last year my view on life and on photography changed. Photography became more than just a wondeful hobby and became an essential part of my life. I learnt that nothing lasts forever and that you have to cherish the moments that you got and I realised that photography gives me the possibility to catch these moments, to share them and make them unforgettable and this helped me to realise that the world is beautiful and that I have to embrace every day.
Also photography really helps me to deal with personal problems and to express myself when I can’t find any words. So I decided to start a twelve-months-selfportrait-project to reflect my feelings and what has changed in my life during the year 2012.
The following photo is the very first photo of this of this project and you can read the discription below to understand what it’s all about.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/57625831@N08/6689331405/in/set-72157628826796955

I discovered photography early on in my life as an outlet to channel my creativity and wandering mind.  Humans are all different in the sense that each of us share our feelings and thoughts in a way that is unique to each of us and though I did not realize this until recently, I use photography to communicate my story.  I have always felt that life is a blessing and everyday needs to be treated with appreciation and a positive attitude.  Staying true to how I am and being able to share what is most important to me in my photos is something I never take for granted.  For myself, creating art that has a meaningful story behind it is something that I hope everyone has a chance to experience at some point in their life.

Sometimes I dream of the things I love most in my life and it inspires me with new ideas.  This photo represents all the things I love most and makes me thankful for how blessed I have been.  To be able to capture something so beautiful pushes me to learn more and understand more, and is why I continue to take pictures.  Sharing a one-of-a-kind night with someone who you care about so much always give you such a good feeling inside when you think back on the memories.  This photo was taken one night during a snow storm in the mountains when my fiance Keri and I went for a walk in the middle of the night.  There was one lamp that was shining bright in the middle of the woods and the light that is shined on Keri and the snow was absolutely beautiful.  It made me realize, right then and there, that I had everything I ever needed.  Ever since then,  I wake up every morning thankful for what I have.

Thank you Aaron for creating an environment for others like myself to share our experiences and grow together.

I love all form of photography but
especially abstract photography. When I do my abstracts, it’s my
“alone time”. It’s a time when nothing else exist and I just
focus on what I do and think and how I will do it. It’s very zen
I also love photography for bringing all kinds of talent together. It
creates synergy and enthusiasm in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else.

I just noticed how ugly the thumbnail of my pic is. I think it was messed up by the blog image processor!

Good stuff!

 By doing exactly the same thing, I mean stopping my 365 Project in order to produce better images. I miss the rush of having to do a photo every day, but I’m able to think about an idea and tweak it until I get just what I want to produce photographically.

People, family,  my own son make me love photography. As we made this photograph, my son Frank and me, we had fun. Fun before, during and after the making of the phtograph. We called it “The optimist”.

Thanks for sharing! 
Before I came across your videos and tutorials, I experienced loss of enthusiasm because I found my work horrible and felt like an idiot. Photography is my creative outlet and hobby in a busy everyday life. 
I have a studio at home, but have never really liked those typical “studio-photography-thing”. Whenever I go to second hand store or other shops, I buy weird things that may come in hand for my shoots. Recently the creativity came back to me, so now I m on a new inspirational wave. From you, I learn some new ways to build my images, and learn new things every time I watch your tutorials. Thank you

The images I´ve shown below, are from a live action role-play that I frequently join as their photographer. Afterwards I post the photos on their facebook group. Lots of joy!
Through the last year, LARP is probably the only thing that has kept the passion going. 

I long to bring my ideas into manifestation.<3

where is my picture?

ok, last try: