Alice Proujansky was interviewed for the NPR blog’s The Baby Project. Also check out Alice’s photographs of a Nigerian midwife clinic on the Redux Archive here.

Chris Crisman was recently interviewed in the July 2011 edition of Advanced Photoshop Magazine.
 
“Internationally recognized photographer and professional Photoshop user Chris Crisman believes that a balance between creativity, communication and personal style are integral to becoming an accomplished digital artist. Whether quiet or boisterous in nature, the variable energy in each of his images reflects his life and the stories he’s trying to convey. Sometimes there is calm, and sometimes there is great activity, as Crisman believes photography should be a reflection of reality.”
 
“I use Photoshop as both an editing tool and a manipulation tool. The real power of Photoshop is that it allows me to go beyond capturing an image in a single frame.”
 
Be sure to visit Chris Crisman’s website.

Kevin J. Miyazaki was recently interviewed by This Is The What.

An interview with Tadej Znidarcic about his “Gay in Uganda” portraits was featured on Daylight’s blog.

Chris Crisman was the featured photographer and guest blogger for the Strobist.  He wrote about his new lighting techniques, reinvention, and taking chances to improve is portfolio.  Check it out!

John Keatley was featured on Adorama TV recently to discuss how he achieves his lighting and composition for each shoot.

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We recently interviewed our main roster photographer John Keatley to discuss his website design, social networking, his recent work and self promotion for photographers.
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Redux: You have recently redesigned your website and switched up the format of your blog to include more casual journal entries; what was your reasoning, and why now?
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John Keatley: Last year my website was published in the PDN Annual as one of the best photography websites of the year.  It was a great site, and I really liked it, but as I was thinking about updating the images on my site, I realized it didn’t let me present my work exactly how I wanted to moving forward.  Rather than let my website dictate my brand and how I present my work, I decided it was time for a new one.  Some of the elements from my old site that people really liked still exist in my new site, but it is overall a much stronger site.  Not to mention I got rid of all Flash and switched to HTML 5.
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When I began blogging 2 years ago, I used my blog as a way to highlight and announce new work.  I created a mission for what I wanted my blog to be about and I stuck to it.  As with my website, the blog served me really well for the first two years, but lately I lost interest in blogging and didn’t have enough time for writing as much as I used to.  I have also had a lot of ideas and content I thought of blogging about, but none of it fit with the original mission or format I had created for my blog.  That was when I realized I wanted to make my blog more casual and open it up to more than just releasing new work.  There is no reason why I should have to be so guarded about making sure my blog is presented in such a way. I think people want a more casual and personal experience out of a blog anyway.
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R: You’ve been awarded for great web designs in the past but with the recent boom in social networking how important do you think social networking has become for photographers today?
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JK: To answer your question, I think social networking is very important for photographers.  But that being said, it isn’t a magic bullet.  As with all tools we have at our disposal, it is an important piece of the puzzle, but to really take full advantage of social networking, you have to be doing other things also.
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R: What have you done to keep your business up with the social networking trend?
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JK: I try to read articles about what works and what doesn’t, as well as what the current trends in social networking are.  I keep in touch with my designer and web developer to see if there is anything I should integrate into my website and blog as technology changes.  It’s not enough to just be on Twitter or Facebook, you have to be creating content that is going to be of interest to others and also provide an easy way for people to share and talk about what you are doing.
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R: After your trip to Liberia you created a competition on your twitter for anyone who follows your account, what gave you that idea?
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JK: I had been thinking a lot about social networking around that time and considering how I wanted to interact with others.  I think I found myself wondering how many pictures I was going to take on my trip, and then realized that seemed like the perfect type of question to put out on Twitter.  It felt like a fun way to engage my followers as well as give people incentive to participate.  As important as it is to have interesting content, with social networking there has to be an element of giving back also, and this seemed like an opportunity to do something like that.  Not to mention I had not seen anyone do a contest like this in the past, and it is always fun to try something new.
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R: With your new website and blog you seem to be very inspired lately, what have been the sources for your inspiration?
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JK: That’s a good question.  I think there are a lot of things contributing to my inspiration over the last six months, but if I had to point out one thing I would have to say it is my new creative team I have been working with.  It’s hard to stay excited and motivated when you are trying to do everything in a photography business by yourself.  Fortunately I have come to the point in my career where I am able to work with some really great people who I trust and can count on.  This has enabled me to focus more on my vision and creative process.  I feel like I can make any idea a reality now, no matter how big a production it is, and I can’t honestly say I felt that way a year ago.  That confidence has really motivated me to go after some ideas I have had in the back of my mind for a while, as well as new projects I have been dreaming up.  From there, the success has basically steamrolled and led to more and more work.
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R: Can you talk about some personal projects that you may be working on?
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JK: Yes, I have been doing a lot of personal work lately.  At the end of last year, I shot the second annual Keatley Family picture, which has already drawn a lot of attention.  Every year now, I come up with a story or a situation and create a portrait of my family based on the particular concept.  I tend to have a dry, off-the-wall sense of humor, and I really want that to come through in these pictures.  I try to shy away from explaining this work as a “family picture” because that tends to paint a different picture than I am really after, but maybe I am just creating a new way of photographing a family.
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Along those same lines, I have been slowly working on photographing odd / awkward couples, and I just finished another image from this project as well.  This time, I had a set built to create the environment I wanted to work in.  Set building and taking more control has been starting to become a bigger part of my process as well.  Taking the extra steps necessary to make my vision turn out exactly as I want and not taking any chances or hoping to find the right space.  I’m really looking forward to doing more work with this project in the near future.
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My recent shoot for MiiR Bottles in Liberia felt very much like personal work as I had a lot of creative freedom to explore and shoot things that interested me.  I was able to shoot a lot of portraits of people I met there, and I came away with a solid body of work I am very excited about.
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Finally, I am also in the middle of a project I have been thinking about and planning for a long time.  It could be described as experimental and the concept has really evolved since I first sat down with the original idea.  I am not going to be releasing the images until I have the next two images finished, but to give you an idea of what I am talking about, there is a strong landscape element to the work which is very different from anything I have done in the past.  I’m especially excited about this project and the opportunity it has given me to really push myself and try something different and unexpected.  That is what I hope the project will be to people.  Unexpected.
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R: What gave you this idea for this project and what have you been doing to get the shots you want?
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JK: My experimental project resulted from my desire to work with more open sweeping landscapes as well as a change of pace from my portrait work.  What I discovered along the way is that I can’t, or don’t want to, get too far away from the human element in my work.  People, or the idea of a person, is so compelling to me and that is really what drives my work.  Maybe you don’t see a person in the image, but a trace that someone has been there is so necessary for me..  This project just helped solidify that even more.  I have been doing a lot of research to find the right locations.  That is one of the more exciting aspects to this also.  Traveling all up and down the West Coast to new places, to explore and search for just the right location.  There are never any guarantees I will find what I want, but so far I have always been pleasantly surprised.  Even when I don’t find what I had in mind, I usually discover something even better.

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We recently sat down with one of our photographers Chris Crisman to discuss his newest work and what inspires him.
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Redux: Recently you have been recognized for your work from your hometown of Titusville, Pa by the One Life photo competition, and AmericanPhoto magazine; why do you think this body of work has been so intriguing to people in the
industry?

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Chris Crisman: It’s really about familiarity for me.  I am from Titusville first and foremost.  I have lived in Philadelphia for 12 years, but I am still from Titusville.  Titusville is my muse and all of my work here comes very naturally.  I dig back in to my memory and think about the people and places from my childhood, then I go recreate that feeling or a dream or an experience using the people and places.

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R: The blog “Strobist” featured your work this fall and you mentioned how important your personal work is to you as an artist, how does focusing on your own personal work affect or improve your assignment work?
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CC: I feel in a lot of ways your personal work defines your assignment work. The ultimate beauty in personal work is that you have the freedom to express yourself and create your vision however you want to. There are no parameters of space on a page screen, clients, editors, etc. That ability to push your personal boundries of creativity and craft in your personal allows you to grow as an artist, therefore giving you more to offer in assignment work.
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R: Your work as been described as painterly, mostly due to your lighting style so what do you do to
control the lighting in your images? Do you set up most shoots with similar lighting or do you base lighting choices on the subject matter?
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CC: The lighting in my images is always very deliberate. Different environments and subjects always call for changes and modifications, but the overall idea behind my lighting is to light in a way that creates interest and shape on the
subject. In the same sense that painters use the brush to create highlights, shadows, and the tones in between. I try to create light on my subjects that shapes and defines both them and their personality.
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R: You have some beautiful new landscape work on your website and blog, why the departure from portraiture? What inspired this body of work?
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CC: I was three years into photography before I started shooting portraits. In those first three years all I shot were landscapes. As a function of my work now I see them as an extension of my creative process as a photographer rather than a departure from portraiture. Many of the portraits or scenes with people in them walk the line between portrait, landscape, and lifestyle. That said, it’s really no departure at all. The inspiration simply “I wonder what i can do with landscapes now…”, having not really focused on it since I began photography.

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R: How do you think your landscape work visually connects to the rest of your work?
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CC: Maybe I started to explain this with the last question. The connection between the landscapes and my other bodies of work are very clear to me. I believe that all of my photography has a cohesive voice. This allows for me to take what I see and apply my creative vision to it. Maybe it’s landscape work yesterday, portrait today, lifestyle
tomorrow. The process for all these images are very similar. Clearly I do not need to direct the trees & clouds, so maybe landscape just gives me a break to shut my mouth.
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R: Have you been working on any other new personal projects?
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CC: I really want to finish Titusville Collection 1 this year. Would love to publish that somehow. Aside from the continuing Titusville and landscape projects.  I recently spent a week in Florida creating a body of work that leans a little more to the lifestyle realm. I’m also bringing video in to the fray as often as possible. I’ll be shooting a lot of video in Titusville as soon as time allows for that.
R: What gave you the idea to create a body of work that you consider lifestyle, and what have you been doing to get the shots you want?
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CC: The idea for creating lifestyle images came about organically. In a way it’s a combination of my portraiture and landscape work. i was finding myself directing people beyond portrait expectations and that led to this. It’s a bit of a personal challenge as well because I know lifestyle work is it’s own animal and something that on the surface is quiet different from the bulk of my current work.
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To view more of Chris’s work visit his personal website at www.crismanphoto.com

In February, Mark Peterson and his photographs were featured in a video on VisionProject.org. See the full podcast here.

Miller Mobley was featured on the blog “Strobist” to discuss his move to New York City, and turn towards more advertising work.