Strobist
I heard about and read through a good chunk of the Strobist, a blog about flash photography, so I’m finally buying a proper off-camera flash. So far all my macrophotography is done by just laying some paper over the target and using the on-camera flash as a source of light, which works /fine/ but it is difficult to aim and it gives you very samey lighting on all shots.
I am not a big fan of “smile at camera big family photo!” style stuff and I’d like to improve my Human Photos, but as any quick perusal of an amateur photographer’s flickr will show you, we have a habit of not photographing people because we don’t know any models and it’s impolite to photograph strangers in public without first getting a model release signed. Birds and buildings have no such requirements. Perhaps I can invite friends for walks and bug them for photo opportunities.
(There was a “Photograph the epic everyday” competition by the local arm of NatGeo and it was pretty clear they wanted like, photos of charity workers and inspiration porn and whatever but a) it’s a pandemic and b) the aforementioned reluctance of amateur photographers to photograph strangers. The photos were mostly of animals and scenery.)
Presumably photojournalists don’t have this reluctance, what’s different in their acculturation?
Or “paparazzi”, I spent time in Hollywood at the end of the Lohan era but originally that was an Italian thing (the word means “mosquito”, off their Vespa [“wasp”] scooters)