Author: marcsnaps

When I’m buying a lens or a camera, I care about one thing: does it take good pictures? That’s it. No test charts, no sharpness diagrams, no pixel-peeping. Take it outside, shoot with it, look at the photos. So when 7Artisans sent me their new AF 18mm F2 LITE to try, that’s exactly what I…

Street photography, minus the lab coat. Welcome to Marc Snaps, the new home of my street photography and the companion blog to my YouTube channel. If you’re here from the channel, you already know the deal. I’m the casual camera guy. I showcase cameras and lenses the way a normal person actually uses them, out…

Apparently there are still people who get to decide who qualifies as a “real photographer.” An article from The Phoblographer argued that photographers who make themselves the star of videos featuring their photography might be more “content creator” than photographer. And I have a problem with that. Photography has enough gatekeepers already. They’ll tell you…

Layered street photography is the art of stacking life: a face in the foreground, a gesture in the middle distance, a billboard in the back, all landing in one frame at the same 1/250th of a second. People usually do it with a 35 or a 50. I tried it with a long lens, which…

Everyone thinks the hard part of layered street photography is the camera stuff. It’s not. Cameras are the easy part. The hard part is standing still. Layering means waiting for three or four separate things to line up in one frame, and strangers do not choreograph themselves for your convenience. You find a good background,…

Some places make you work for color. Yellowstone is not one of those places. You point the camera at a hot spring and the Earth hands you a paint set. My job was mostly to not mess it up. I shot everything in JPEG, straight color, because when the landscape is doing this much heavy…

Here’s the mistake I see in every beginner’s street photography, and I made it for years: you walk around hunting for subjects. Interesting face, go. Cool jacket, go. You’re a sniper scanning for targets, and your photos look like it. Disconnected. Random. A pile of strangers with no relationship to each other or the frame.…

Every camera I’ve ever owned has a setting I’ve never touched. Not once. It sits in the menu like a gym membership I keep paying for. Here’s the thing: camera companies have to ship something new every year, so they invent features nobody asked for, and we all pretend we’ll get around to them. We…

The internet would love to tell you what a real photographer is. I’ve collected the rules over the years, and I’d like to share them so you can ignore them efficiently. Rule one: a real photographer shoots manual. Always. If your camera dares to make a decision, you’re basically a tourist. Never mind that every…

I like the a6700. I shoot with it. This is not a hit piece. This is a list from a guy who actually carries the thing, written in the hope that someone at Sony reads YouTube comments. (They don’t. But hope is free.) Fix number one: the rolling shutter. Shoot silent on the street, which…