I loved   Julia Margaret Cameron's photos before I ever saw them. It was her story that got me. She was handed a camera when she was 48. But not a camera like you and I have. It was 1863. There were no iPhones. There was no film. There were only big glass plates, soaked in chemicals, loaded into a huge wooden box. Julia spent an entire month experimenting with glass plates, lenses, and developing chemicals before she got a single image that worked. Imagine that: a whole month just to make...

It’s easy to think of photography as a single invention. Someone, somewhere, “invented the camera,” and that was that. But that’s not how it happened. Photography only showed up when a handful of completely different discoveries—about light, glass, and chemistry—finally overlapped. For a long time, people had pieces of the puzzle without realizing what they were holding. People Discovered Light Could Project an Image At some point in the ancient world, someone noticed this: If you sit in a...

The question I’m often asked is, “What tripod should I buy?” But the better question is, “Do I need a tripod at all?” And the honest answer is, it depends . Most Real-Life Photography Doesn’t Suit a Tripod If you’re like me, you might start out following toddlers around the house, capturing candid moments, or chasing trail runners through a forest. You quickly realize you can’t use a tripod for that kind of photography because the moment is gone before you even get your camera mounted. For...