Archive for May, 2006
Artist or Snapper?
Photography is probably the most accessible form of art in the world. Granted, a box of crayons is (marginally) cheaper than a disposable camera, but in theory you do not need any skills to use the camera. Aim it at something, and press the button. Chances are that what comes out is a photograph that is roughly in focus, vaguely correctly exposed, and you will be able to tell what you photographed. If you use a box of crayons, you will first have to learn to draw. . Recently, I spent a few hours reading a brilliant book by Roland Barthes, titled Camera Lucida (or La Chambre Claire, in its original language). It is a short book, filled with short philosophical ideas, thoughts, observations and opinions about photography, all in essay form. This particular book is recognised as being one of the most insightful books into the art of photography. In essence, this article are my thoughts on the same subject.
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Concert Photography
Of all the types of photography ever invented, I would claim that live concert photography is up there among the most difficult ones. You have five thousand fans behind you, and there is a band in front of you. Nobody stands still. In fact, even the notion of standing still ruins the idea of a good music photo. The bouncers hate you, because you are in their way. The crowd is jealous of you. Crowdsurfers will kick you in the head. The band thinks you're annoying. The lighting is never bright enough, and changes so frequently that you're screwed even in the few moments that it is. And nonetheless, concert photography is one of my all-time favourite pasttimes. It's hard. It's unrewarding. But it's deeply gratifying on a personal lever. It's about capturing the mood. Capturing the looks. Capturing something the audience is feeling. Of course, it's also something I know something about - I've done my share of concerts... Tristania - Live in Manchester by Photocritic.org on Flickr
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Make your own camera out of paper!
There are cheap projects, and then there are Cheap projects. This is one of the latter, no doubt. In this project, we aren't modifying a camera, we're building one completely from scratch! And is that wasn't enough, you can do so with some tape, some paper, a paperclip... You get the picture: Just stuff you have kicking about the office.
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Quick-release neckstraps
Another of those dirt-cheap yet incredibly useful camera modifications - quickly detachable neck straps! There are tons of reasons for why you could want to remove the neck strap from your camera. If you've got a light camera, most of the time you don't need it anyway, but even for SLRs, it makes sense: Straps can get caught in the wind, or you may prefer to keep your strap on a very short length, which makes taking it off and on tricky.
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Intro to digital photography
One of my old mates pointed out that the DIY network has a surprisingly thorough introduction to digital photography. It appears as if the article series is mostly just a transcript or summary of a television programme, but the articles are very well written, interesting, and have a series of "further reading" links. Although I knew all of this before, I just wasted an entire afternoon reading all the links. Highly recommended, in other words :)
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Photography, meet Tetris!
Photos make for great gifts, but the whole "get a print and a frame, combine the two, whoopee" thing is getting older than dinosaurs smoking pipes, knitting scarves in rocking chairs. So what you want is original presents, with an original touch. So what do you do? Well, what about Photo Blocks? Cheap to make, but they look good, and at least it looks as if you've made an effort.
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Polaroid + Pinhole = Pinholaroid
A lot of pinhole photography stuff recently, but that's because it's cool, yo! My old mate over at PhotoThoughts keeps coming up with these groovy, outlandish camera mods, and I love him for it:
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Stand inside the camera…
So, you've gone tired of making pinhole cameras out of milk cartons, tins, and boxes? You are thinking bigger? These guys built a pinhole lorry, using the entire loading bed as a pinhole camera! American photographer Shaun Irving and English Art Director Richard Browse have created what they believe to be the world’s largest mobile camera. Designed in America and constructed in Spain, the cameratruck is a simple box camera built right inside a standard delivery truck. Measuring 5 metres long, 2 metres wide and 2 metres high, the gigantic camera is capable of taking pictures almost 3 metres across.
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Cafe Society in Freetown, Sierra Leone
I don't normally do this, spamming random photography projects, but this one is something special.
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Bulk loading your own film
Ah, it's a proper blast from the past, this one... Did you know you can actually load your own photographic film into 36mm canisters? It's possible, it's easy, and it actually saves you a mahoosive amount of money, because buying film in bulk is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying film by film.
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My day job, if it can be called that, is being a writer. I've got one book out there so far and it's awesome, so go ahead and buy a copy! It's available from 
In front of you, five hyperactive men with guitars, drums, and microphones. Behind you, five thousand fans. In your hands, a camera... You're going to need more than just a little bit of good luck to pull this one off. That's where this book comes in.
Take a Canon EOS 450D. Attach a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Hit the streets of London. See what happens.
