As you may know, there is a lot of confusion and insanity over photography on YouTube. If you are in the minority, who’s seen enough of superficial Leica M6 reviews and crave for theoretical content with more insightful knowledge, I’d like to present my (current) favourite channels, that go way beyond the generic, gear oriented trash or anything else, that has next to nothing to do with actual photography.

1. Still Life - Art and the photographic image

The author, Justin, talks about visual literacy, artistic expression, vision and many other theoretical art topics, delivered in sophisticated and academic fashion in the context of photography. Extremely well written and narrated.

2. Graeme Williams — Photographic Conversations

Similar to the previously mentioned. Very well educated stuff. This channel is new to me, but I’ve been enjoying it tremendously. Think about Gandalf giving a lecture about photographic theory in an Ivy League auditorium.

3. John Free

John usually takes us for a walk and talks in-depth about street photography. Not the embarrassing YouTube street photography, but the real one.

As a bit of a bonus content, here’s a really nice video of John Free on the Art of Photography channel.

4. E ī h w a z

Slideshows of amazing artists and their projects.

5. Alec Soth

Magnum photographer legend. He usually sits down with a photo book and takes a rather deep dive into a topic, that most YouTube photographers wouldn’t even recognise as a topic.   

6. Daniel Milnor

Dan has an interesting lifestyle channel that covers anything between his enthusiasm for biking and van life, but most importantly he is an actual photographer, who shares his thoughts and points of view on video. He has an industry background and he talks much about very functional (as opposed to the academic and philosophical approach of Justin or Graeme for example) and educational stuff while staying really far away from the generic YouTube photography content.