Technology Explained, Practice
Daniela Bowker
Resolution and pixels and image quality! Oh my! ...

When you hear the term 'high-res' thrown about with such abandon when it comes to images for web use, have you ever stopped to think just how big or how high quality and image meant for the web needs to be?

Resolution and pixels and image quality! Oh my! Saving images for the web
Feature Articles, Photography Theory
Haje Jan Kamps
Low-contrast photographs don't have to be boring

There's an assumption that high-contrast images are more dynamic, more compelling, more inviting. Have a go at some low-contrast photography. You might surprise yourself with the results.

Low-contrast photographs don't have to be boring
Feature Articles, Theory
Daniela Bowker
Seeking balance in your photos

Balance doesn't mean symmetry; it means an internal consistency and tension within your photos. And it's a vital element of composition. 

Seeking balance in your photos
Feature Articles, Photography Theory
Haje Jan Kamps
Training your photographic luck

Great photos might be down to a little bit of luck, but most of that 'luck' you make yourself. Don't believe us? Read on...

Training your photographic luck
Feature Articles, Practice
Daniela Bowker
The ups and downs and ins and outs of ...

Photographing buildings doesn't have to mean wide-angle lenses and fretting about correcting for the keystone effect. Any lens, and angle. Don't believe us? Let us show you!

The ups and downs and ins and outs of photographing buildings

globe

Book Crossing meets photography - the Disposable Memory Project

Autosave-File vom d-lab2/3 der AgfaPhoto GmbH

I’ve found my favourite photography project of the week, almost certainly of the month, and given that we’re almost in November, probably of the year, too.

Take a bundle of disposable cameras, leave them places across the globe, ask people to snap a picture or two before passing on the camera, and see – quite literally when (or if) the film is developed – where the camera travelled. It’s the Disposable Memory Project.

Matthew Knight dreamed up the idea back in 2008, when he was standing in a dry cleaners somewhere in the scary metropolis that’s London and spotted a cheap single use camera for sale. (Don’t tell me that you’ve not had an astonishing idea in a most incongruous place.) If he set one free with a message on it, a unique URL to enable its progress to be tracked, and a return address so that the film can be developed and uploaded to the project’s website, what would happen? It was a slow art project that fused analogue and digital and rather piqued his fancy. (And now mine, too, for that matter.)

A few years on, over 350 cameras have been released into the wild and 30 have made it home to date. They’ve visited 70 different countries, including the South Pole, Everest’s Base Camp, and the Gambia, and travelled over 440,000 miles, which is to the moon and back. Speaking of the moon, they’re hoping to get a camera into space at some point in the near future, so if anyone can help them out there, let them know!

The Disposable Memory Project has 1600 members, all of whom have been brought together by a randomly distributed camera and the marvel that’s the Intergoogles. If you’d like to send your own camera off on its journey, buy a disposable camera, and then head over to the Disposable Memory Project website for the instructions to generate a unique URL and a camera-leaving kit.

How long do they anticipate the project continuing? For as long as they can fund it, and disposable cameras remain available for purchase. I hope that’s a while yet. It’s a damn cool project and I’m off to leave a camera somewhere.

You can see more of the project’s pictures on the website, and you can follow their cameras’ adventures on Twitter as @FoundACam, too!