My post about being down and out over dance photography the other day garnered quite a lot of comments and more e-mails that I’ve had over a blog post in quite a while… So now I’m properly curious…
Of course, there are lots of difficult things about different genres of photography. Portraits can be devilishly difficult, because it can be fiendish to get a good rapport with a model. Sports photography can be tricky because things are moving so fast – and indoor sports are even worse. Music photography can be a right bitch; landscapes are tricky because it’s all been done before; photographing fireworks is just plain hard; nude photography can be daunting because it’s a bit taboo, Food photography is hard because the photography subject spoils nearly immediately… and don’t even get me started on Macro…
In fact, I can’t really think of a single genre of photography which doesn’t bring its very own set of challenges to the table… What I’d love to know, however, is which particular genre is which gets you every time… Cast your vote below, and sound off in the comments if you’ve got a particular arch-enemy!
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If someone tells you “LOL learn how 2 autofocus, you dweeb”, you need to do 2 things: Live in the happy knowledge that whilst your camera might have had an off day, at least you know how to string a grammatically correct sentence together.
Ultimately, you are the photographer, and what you decide is how the final result gets done. Nobody can tell you what to do, and if you like your photo, then you’ve won one of the huge battles.
It’s the curse of all writers and poets: They spend months – years, even – crafting their masterpiece, and then nobody ‘gets’ it. They all ‘get it’ wrong. Tell you what though, that’s where part of the beauty comes from: If you are taking a photo which you meant to symbolise the innocence of youth, and your first 10 commenters feel it’s a strong commentary on, say, child abuse, then they are per definition right.
Remember that, just like you are not there to interpret your work, you’re not there to defend it either.
Technical aspects of your photographs might be objective: A photo can be accidentally over-exposed, blurry, or have some rubbish in the background which makes your photograph less-than-perfect. Once you start killing the technical foibles of your photographic work one by one (don’t go too perfectionist on it though, it’s not useful to end up deleting all of your photos because of every little detail), the actual creative work starts shining through, and this is where the worst potential for getting hurt comes from.
Luckily, there are quite a few things you can do as a photographer to make your site really zing in the search engines – and for the sake of making a nice round figure (and, of course, so the Digg and Reddit crowds will love it like a kitten loves tuna fish) – here’s a lovely top-10 list to get you started!
For the sake of photography, you can basically optimise your site for two types of search: Text search (what most people think of when they think ‘search’) and image search (take a guess…).
Context is important. The search engines want to know what your site is about. You might want to use the word “photo” in all of your filenames, to keep the context of a photography website consistent.
When you add an image to your website, you’re using an <img src="[URL]"> tag. You can – and should – add attributes to this tag, including an alt attribute.
In addition to using keywords in your ALT tags, make sure that the actual file-name contains the same keywords.
Use keywords in the page title. The page title is a header tag that causes text to appear in the top bar of the window when the page is open in your browser.
Anchor text is the text that appears on a page when there is a link; it’s the text that is underlined and/or in a special color to denote a link. These anchor text links should be descriptive, and – if possible – contain keywords relevant to the page you are linking to.
If you want to have a go at using unsharp masking in the darkroom (heh – if you want to put yourself through stuff like that, let me tell you; I like you), here is a concise guide how it can be done. I have had a lot of surprises when using this technique – mostly positive surprises, but every now and then, things go very wrong. Even then, it looks interesting, if nothing else.
A second way to test for lens flare is what is known as the ‘window test’. Aim the camera someplace indoors, but have a bright window just out of the view of the lens. If your image, upon developing ended up with the tell tale signs of lens flare, you know your camera can’t handle that sort of situation so well.
Okay, so I thought we were trying to avoid lens flare. Why would Photoshop come up with something people try to avoid? For the simple fact that lens flare shouldn’t always be avoided. In fact, it can a little something extra to your images when used in the right circumstances.
£10 also gets you DVDs so you could could consider getting a film which is vaguely photography themed. City of God (Cidade de Deus) is a fantastic film which is about a Brazilian kid who turns into a photographer for a newspaper. Gripping, moving, not too expensive, and photography related – what more could you want? Of course, you get extra bonys point and street cred for buying a foreign arthaus film! (
In this price group, the definite winner is the Gorilla Pod. Sure, it looks daft as a paintbrush, but it always gets looks. I got one for review from Joby recently, and I had to call them up and ask if I could please keep it – it really is that good. Basically, it’s a fully-fledged tripod that weighs next to nothing. Wrap it around just about anything (so far, I’ve had it around a car seat, around a desk, around a street lamp, and around a pub bar stool), and your camera is rock-solid. It beats the other micro-tripods hands down. Read more about the 
Perfect for getting creative, a 
Up to £100 / $200, we are in the territory of some mighty fine tripods. It’s the first thing you should have as a photographer –
Around this price, you can also get prime lenses. If your photographer dearest one doesn’t have one, surprise them with a 50mm prime. No photographer should be without a good prime lens: They are nothing short of amazing, and for what they are, they’re complete bargains as well – I 
Oh my, now we are suddenly in proper digicam territory. You should be able to get a 
Minimalism is one of those concepts that’s difficult to wrap your head around – In one way, it can be described as just keeping it simple, but there’s a lot more to taking a good minimalist photograph.
The minimalist movement started in the late 1960s, which sort of makes sense: I’m all for the music of the era, but tie-dye would do my fucking nut – no wonder people were striving for simplicity. As a stepping stone to post-modernism, minimalism works very well when combined with surrealism – and that’s where Grzesiek’s photograph comes in…
To me, minimalism is all about doing creative things with lighting: by being selective about what you light and how you have a fantastic opportunity to pick out details from a scene.
Rather than making what you’ve carefully lit the center of the focus of the image, you’re essentially drawing the onlooker’s attention on what isn’t there – check out the image to the right.
The egg-in-eggcup is an odd one as well, because it conforms quite strongly to the 
Colour in minimalism
I was torn as to whether the photo can be labelled as ‘minimalist’ or not – but similarly, it’s easy to see how the very same scene could be photographed at a different time of day, for a much stronger impact.
Obviously, there’s nothing to stop you from including people in your adventures in minimalism either – It’s just far more difficult.
Rachel’s experiments in keeping portraiture simple, however are particularly effective. The style of the image on the right remind me of the work of the amazing Katie Cooke (who runs the 
I’ve stumbled across Jason’s site, 
“Basically”, he says, “I launched it as a site to try and sell my own pictures as canvas and poster prints 5 months ago. Then I realised that there are so many really good photographers out there, completely unknown, yet they have no idea about the internet or how to create a website to sell their work and earn some extra cash.”
The instructable to 
300 was shot entirely using blue- and green-screen, which is a technology which allows you to create the backgrounds digitally. Of course, the actors use props etc, but the fact remains that nearly 90% of all the footage used in the film involves various types of visual effects. The film was in post production for nearly a year — ages, in film industry terms.
Now, to apply the ‘crush’ technique, you need to adjust the levels on your image so the black comes out stronger. Obviously, you need to do these changes only to a selection of your image, otherwise, it’ll come out way too dark.
When you’ve got the contrast right, you’ve got to start playing with the colour — it’s got to be right, after all.
Throughout my photographic history, I’ve had a lot of different cameras. I started with a Canon A-1 SLR (which I still have!), and then went through a series of exciting cameras. I had a Canon RS, which used to be the fastest camera Canon ever made. I had a Canon EOS 1Nhs, which was pretty damn quick as well. Then I went digital, and had a D60, 10D, 20D, 300D, and now I’m on a 30D. Why such a quick succession? Well, I used to work as a photographer, and cameras get used a lot. They get bumped into things, they get dropped, and the shutter mechanism gets slack after taking tens of thousands of photos. Also, I’m a gadgets nut, and I love playing with a new camera. Sure, there are no massive differences between the D60, 10D, 20D and 30D, but for every upgrade, there was a little bit more speed, a few new toys, and they just got better and better.
The first lens I bought for my kit was the 28-105 f/3.5 zoom from Canon. It is a decent lens, but in retrospect, I regretted buying it. I quickly replaced it with the 28-135 f/3.5 image stabilized lens. When I go travelling and have to pick a single lens, is the lens that gets to go on adventure with me. It’s wide enough to be useful for most landscape stuff, and zooms in far enough to be good for portraiture, wildlife, and all that. It’s also a macro lens, and it works surprisingly well at taking photos up close, too. It’s not a cheap lens, and it’s not all that sharp either, but it has a special place in my heart nonetheless…
The next lens I bought was a 70-200 f/2.8 EX APO lens from Sigma. It’s bloody expensive, but it’s also one of the best lenses I own. Because it stays at f/2.8 throughout its zoom range (in general, zoom lenses that have the same aperture throughout their zoom range are of better quality for reasons that are slightly beyond this write-up, I’ll do that one as a separate article some day), you get a long lens that’s perfect for concert photography. Which, incidentally, is why I bought it. (more about concert photography 
Other stuff in my kit bag is the Lensbaby lens, which I’ve fallen completely in love with (as explained