Female photographers

Oriel

*deep breath*

Ok apart from Scarlett Page (son of Jimmy [already famous]) and Penny Lancaster (wife of Rod Stewart [already famous]) what other "front line" female photographers are there?

*FIRE IN THE HOLE*
*Stephen runs...*

Seriously though, the lack of females. Bonus points for hot ones...
When's the last time you watched a Premiership football match with a woman at the end of a 400mm 2.8?

rymus

i [heart] flamebait. Let the madness commence.

rymus

wait.. actually... I can think of one famous female photographer...

actually sorry no.. google is drawing a blank

Oriel

rymus wrote: »

wait.. actually... I can think of one famous female photographer...

actually sorry no.. google is drawing a blank

Can you name me ANY female sports photographers?

I mean, I know I'm onto something here. I just want to find out why. Why?

Rojo

Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman are good!


-actually, what do you mean by frontline?

Borderfox

I know a few decent female photographers, some do wedding , some do equestrian work. Oriel you are really setting yourself up for a big fall on this one

rymus

Oriel wrote: »

Can you name me ANY female sports photographers?

Do they have to be well known? Or good even?

Oriel

Borderfox wrote: »

Female photographers, some do equestrian work.

Hey, if they can't ride them, they shoot them. Didn't Dallas teach you anything?

Oriel

Borderfox wrote: »

I know a few decent females

Careful now.

rymus

Oriel

rymus wrote: »

Do they have to be well known? Or good even?

For the sake of my skin, both.

rymus

then I'm out.. my trump card was a little known photographer from the US who also happens to be a freestyle wrestler.. And hey, I'm pretty much sure it was a woman.


Also, the only thing more entertaining than searching for 'female sports photographer' in google is searching for 'female sports photography'. Heh.. alright

Oriel

Don't worry, Elven's flowers* will come and save us...

*That, I must confess, I actually quite like...

rymus

nice save there

Oriel

I actually brought up a serious point. But that's fecked now.
Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Oriel

rymus wrote: »

nice save there

100% truth. That woman has macro Gods looking upon her.
I've even commented on her flickr, and I don't do flickr.
Honest.

pete4130

Windy Osborn from way back in the 70's. She interned Spike Jonze when he was 14/15 years old and she was responsible for being one of the first people to use fisheye lenses for sports photography in skateboarding/bmx in its infancy.....ok, she's not famous in the real sense....but its an example!

rymus

but shes probably not goodlooking anymore, is she?

Having scoured google for many many tireless seconds, I can find no trace of this Osborn character.. Other than someone called Windy Osborn who was a wanted felon in the US some time ago.

RCNPhotos

Oriel wrote: »

Why are they so crap? DO they try and fail? Or do they just not try?

This will do you no good, I'm sure of it.

rymus

he's been told that before.. many many times.. Mostly by me too Always seems to come out the other end clean as a whistle.

xshayx

rymus wrote: »

but shes probably not goodlooking anymore, is she?

Having scoured google for many many tireless seconds, I can find no trace of this Osborn character.. Other than someone called Windy Osborn who was a wanted felon in the US some time ago.

Wendy Osborne

soccerc

Oriel wrote: »

Can you name me ANY female sports photographers?

Here's two Irish female sports snappers Lorraine O'Sullivan of Inpho and Aoife Rice formerly of Sportsfile now in Oz last time I heard

Fenster

It's actually an interesting question and (speaking as a geek) I think it revolves around how our brains are built. Look at any geek hobby: Photography, computing, video games, and you'll see it's male dominated. I don't think it's sexism, I think it's a simple orientation toward those interests.

Hey, look at my job. I'm an inventory controller. My work revolves around counting items, managing a large and unwieldy series of databases, and trying to detect areas of stock loss through statistical analysis. As an accounting position it was originally advertised towards women, but it drove off five people in the space of three months before they hired me. And hey, I'm loving the job.

Rojo

In Photography in DIT, the girl to boy ratio is 2:1

JMcL

Off the top of my head, Julia Margaret Cameron, Dorothea Lange, the aforementioned Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz (she's even still alive!), if I thought a bit harder I could come up with more.

Regarding normal day to day, our wedding photographers in France were a husband and wife team. In practice he did most of the actual shooting on the day, but it was definitely a team effort, and she did all the processing/presentation

Calina

Annie Leibovitz.

In terms of sports photography, internationally, there are a handful of women plying the watersports trade and the three main kitesports photographers in Ireland happen to be female, for example, all of them getting stuff published as well. Just cos it's not football - a pointless exercise if ever I saw one - doesn't mean it's not sport. In other words, you are displaying a crass amount of innocence, Stephen, which amounts to "if I haven't heard of them, they don't exist". It's a highly isolated world you appear to live in, I think.

The difference is a lot of women don't do the arrogance thing that allows themselves to shove themselves into the public eye. And I personally wouldn't touch wedding photography with a barge pole although weddingphoto.co.uk says they have at least one female photographer on their books.

In other words, just because you don't know about them doesn't mean they don't exist so here's something to be starting with.

JMcL

..and bubbling very close to the top of my head: Eve Arnold, Lee Miller, Martine Franck (Magnum member and also very much still with us) and Linda McCartney.

bernard0368

What about the Irish woman Hannah Starkey? featured in the genius of photography book.

DublinWriter

There's also Cathy Loughran.

rymus

heh... he kinda asked for that little lot. Get googlin' boy!

eas

may have already been mentioned above, but Jill Greenburg caused a stir last year.

http://www.manipulator.com/

ThOnda

Alexandra Boulat (dead now), Lauren Greenfield.

Oriel

JMcL wrote: »

Annie Leibovitz

There. There's one famous one.

Oriel

Calina wrote: »

you are displaying a crass amount of innocence

Downright ignorance actually.

elven

I suppose it comes down to 'famous in what circles' really. I couldn't tell you of any 'famous' - as in household name - female sports photographers, but I couldn't tell you of any male ones either.

I could have pointed out the obvious ones though like Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus... was Susan Sontag actually a photographer or did she simply bore us all silly writing about Diane Arbus and her circus people?

As for wedding photographers, I couldn't again tell you the names of the really big guys, and I know none of them that I know of are female. But on a slightly lower echelon of the trade I have seen/heard of hundreds of female wedding photographers. Solo ones, that aren't just their husband's assistant - which I've also seen tons of times. I would be inclined to maybe suggest that the US is ahead of us in that respect, women seem to have more of a gap in the market there than here.

Besides, why has nobody mentioned Anne Geddes? *cringe*

As for above... macro gods, eh? Can I use that on my website?

People, don't take the flamebait. Ignore the emarks that are meant to wind you up and treat it as a normal discussion

Hugh_C

Oriel wrote: »

When's the last time you watched a Premiership football match with a she-thing at the end of a 400mm 2.8? Is it the muscles? Is that it?

Fancy yourself as a sports photographer Oriel? I believe this is one of your efforts ...

Miguel_Sanchez

Nan Goldin.

RCNPhotos

Jeff Lebowski, what a name. Rojo, you're into DIT? Do you know Joanne and that?

Rojo

Joanne? I've never heard of her! Lecturer or student?

Monasette

Oriel wrote: »

*deep breath*

...I've yet to see one single female wedding photographer. Why?

You can't have looked too hard, then. A quick look on http://www.weddingsonline.ie/supplier-directory/search/101/photography/ shows a whole bunch of professional photographers with names that look suspiciously like WIMMIN.:)

Having said that, my local camera club (http://galwaycameraclub.com/) has more men than women in it. The chaps, myself included, do spend more time banging on about the technical aspects of photography as if we knew what we were talking about. Wish I could say that our pictures were better, mind.

Calina

Oriel wrote: »

Downright ignorance actually.

I thought about it but I wasn't quite awake enough to summon up the requisite amount of nastiness.

However, julie has asked us to be nice so I will only say this, talent is not the be all and end all of being a famous photographer. Selling yourself is. Evidentally men are better at this than women are, as it's reflected through all walks of life, not just photographer celebrity.

Incidentally, I'm interested that you'd only heard of photographers who are famous by association. From that I'm assuming you read Hello Magazine.

There are a lot of women photographers out there. I don't judge photographers by how famous they are but how much I like their work. I suppose I can afford to do that.

440Hz

Calina wrote: »

julie has asked us to be nice so I will only say this

Indeed, however "being a spanner" and flaming is against board wide rules.

trishw78

Did anyone mention Dorethea Lange think she was the first woman photographer in Magnum

Covey

Calina wrote: »

There are a lot of women photographers out there. I don't judge photographers by how famous they are but how much I like their work. I suppose I can afford to do that.

On that note here's one of my favorites. Not sports and certainly not famous but an inspiration to me, especially on valuing the place where you live. So many of us want to go somewhere to take photos, when the best are always all around us, as we understand that environment much better.

Jill Coleman and the People of the Klein Karoo.

Blog http://sugarbird-freedomtodream.blogspot.com/
Photos http://www.irisf64.com/Portfolio.aspx?m=26

thebaz

another sweeping thoughtfull statement , Mella Travers is one of my favorite living Irish photographers -- and i like Patti Smith --

Its hardly surprising that most premiership photographers are male , since its a male sport , and they understand the game better , much like males make better football commentators !

Fashion on the other hand , i would expect to be the reverse

p.s. Fenster i though you were working as a photographer ?

Fenster

I've given it up, sort of. In every single photographic job I've had I had endless people either trying to weasel me out of my rights or pay, and I just called it a day after I had to go to court to stop someone from stealing my photos.

As it is, I've turned my attention to writing and I'm bashing out a few pieces which I've had in mind for a while.

mathias

Im not really into the whole " famous" photographer lark , but I was bought a book for Christmas by a Lynn Goldsmith , according to the blurb she is one of the most famous rock /gig photographers around.

Well , no doubt about it , there are some stunning shots in that book.

Edit: This is it ...

http://www.amazon.com/Rock-Roll-Lynn-Goldsmith/dp/0810994054/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200673767&sr=8-1

thebaz

Fenster wrote: »

As it is, I've turned my attention to writing and I'm bashing out a few pieces which I've had in mind for a while.

good stuff (the writing) -- it seams so hard to earn an honest decentliving in photography , apart from weddings !!

bradnailer

What there's female photographers :eek:
What's next Doctors, private sector Directors !

TelePaul

hughchal wrote: »

Fancy yourself as a sports photographer Oriel? I believe this is one of your efforts ...

Zing!!!! Pwnd

440Hz

Got a fair giggle outta that one myself earlier hugh!