Stretcher Prints: making art from old plastic bottles

What can you make from 140,000 already used plastic bottles? I have a pencil that once upon was a plastic bottle. (It says so on it.) Probably quite a few of those. Or a gajillion combs. They seem to be popular recycled products. Headphones, too. They can be manufactured from recycled plastic bottles. But what about pictures? Apparently, yes. Co2nscience, a UK-based start-up wants to transform 140,000 bottles into enough felt-like canvas material suitable for photographic reproductions to cover a football pitch. (A European football pitch, not an American one.) That's 10,851 prints measuring 960mm by 710mm. Co2nscience is looking for £12,000 in Kickstarter funding get their Stretcher Prints project out of the ground and onto people's walls.

Stretcher Prints aren't framed; as the name suggests, they stretch over your wall and are secured through eyelets. Without a frame and because of the flexibility of the material, they're not restricted to flat walls but can decorate spiral staircases, for example. Oh, and they can go in the washing machine.

There are four different sized stretcher prints on offer, the cheapest starting at £49 if you want to have your own image printed on it. There are off-the-shelf prints available, too, but I'm guessing that you'd prefer to see your own pictures on one!

Co2nscience's Kickstarter runs until 10 April and they need another £9,000, or thereabouts, to make it happen. Who knew that a plastic bottle could become something so pretty? And it's so much better than going to landfill.

BBC Wildlife Magazine's Camera-trap Photo of the Year competition is open

Anyone who uses camera-traps to create images of wild animals, or uses camera-traps as part of their research into wild animals, the BBC, its Wildlife Magazine, and sponsors Lowepro, have a competition for you. It's the 2014 BBC Wildlife Magazine Camera-trap Photo of the Year competition.

The competition has been designed with both field researchers and amateurs in mind. It's split into two divisions: Camera-trap Research Project of the Year and Camera-trap Photo of the Year, each with three categories. It's rather pleasing to see photography as a tool, as well as the gorgeous images that it's capable of creating, being honoured simultaneously.

Camera-trap Research Project of the Year

This division is open exclusively to research projects that make use of camera-traps. Images can be submitted to one of three categories:

• New behaviour: Images taken during the course of research that show behaviour never before recorded
• New reach: Images taken during research that show a species never photographed before outside its known range
• Rare species: Images taken during research that show a species that is rarely seen or never photographed in the wild

The winners of each of these categories will go forward to be judged for the title of Camera-trap Research Project of the Year and a £3,000 prize.

The judges will be selecting their winner based on the quality of the research and the importance of the images to the piece of research.

Camera-trap Photo of the Year

If you're not trying to track rare species of frog in South America or look for socialisation traits in South East Asian primates, but just like photographing the badgers in your garden, you've still a chance to put your images up for judging into one of these three categories:

• Animal portraits: like any good portrait, images should capture the character or spirit of their subject
• Animal Behaviour: A compelling image that shows interesting or unusual behaviour
• British Wildlife: Amazing images that capture the spirit and behaviour of British wildlife

The winners of these categories will see their images published in the December 2014 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine and on the BBC Wildlife Magazine website, www.discoverwildlife.com and will receive a Lowepro Flipside Sport 15L camera pack, worth £122. Then they'll go on to compete for the title Camera-trap Photographer of the Year.

The closing date for entries is 30 June 2014, and all photos must be submitted online. As always, please do read the rules and terms and conditions before submitting any photos. You can find those, together with entry details, on the Discover Wildlife website.

Sony World Photography Awards' Youth competition winners announced

Update! 17:28, Thursday 20 March 2014: Bohran Mardani, who was originally named as the winner of the Youth Culture category, was found not to be 19 nineteen years old when he took his image, as he claimed. He has subequently been disqualified and Anastasia Zhetvina, 19 years old and from Russia, named as winner for her image Young talents. This post has been updated to reflect this. The Sony World Photography Awards' Youth competition is open to anyone under the age of 20. There are three categories to which they can submit their photos—culture, environment, and portraiture—and one winner is selected from each. Those three talented young people are each presented with a Sony A5000 as a prize, and one of them will be named as the Youth Photographer of the Year. She or he will be flown to London, to the awards ceremony, to receive the award and see their image exhibited at Somerset House. And this year's winners?

LifePrint, a wireless, social photo printer is looking for a Kickstarter start

Portable printers, wireless printers, and smartphone-connected printers aren't anything new, but LifePrint is looking to bring something new to the market. It's seeking Kickstarter funding for its portable, wireless, instant, and socially networked printer that'll be both iOS- and Android-compatible.

We get the portable, wireless, and instant bits; but what do they mean by social? It means that LifePrint isn't just a printer, but there's an app, too. This will allow you to follow your family and friends and be followed by them in turn, wherever you all are in the world. Anyone you follow can send an image to your printer that you can choose to print, or not. Likewise, you can send your images to your followers' printers, if you're so inclined. Grandmother in Italy should be able to print images of grandchildren in the UK without a hitch. Not that you have to acquire followers if you don't want to; you can remain an undiscoverable recluse if you prefer.

Provided that you have a connection to the Internet, it doesn't matter where in the world your phone is and your printer is. They can be thousands of miles apart, but once you click 'Print' your image should be ready in about 60 seconds.

You can print any photo on your camera roll, and use the LifePrint app's editing tools before you print if you want. It's got the usual filters and borders, as well as speech bubbles and picture-stitching. Once you've printed, you can share your photo to the social media of your choice from the app, too.

All of this is, however, a long way off. LifePrint needs to raise $200,000 before 25 April 2014 to reach its Kickstarter goal, with Earlybird rewards starting at $99. If and when it reaches its funding, the projected shipping dates for printer units is January 2015 for iOS and mid-April 2015 for Android-compatible devices.

Will it make it? Well, according to Kicktraq, if pledges continue at the current rate, it'll get there.

And then the hard work for the LifePrint team really will begin. They have an app to develop and hardware to finalise, manufacture, and ship. If you like what you see, you know what to do over on Kickstarter.

Winners - the Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition

In the run-up to the gala awards ceremony in London at the end of April, the ten category winners of the Sony World Photography Awards Open division have been announced, selected from over 70,000 entries made by amateur photographers. Each of them wins a new Sony A6000 camera and they're up with a chance of winning the $5,000 prize that accompanies the title Overall Open Photographer of the Year.

• Architecture – Holger Schmidtke, Germany
• Arts and Culture – Valerie Prudon, Australia
• Enhanced – Kylli Sparre, Estonia
• Low Light - Vlad Eftenie, Romania
• Nature & Wildlife – Gert van den Bosch, Netherlands
• Panoramic – Ivan Pedretti, Italy
• People - Arup Ghosh, India
• Smile - Alpay Erdem, Turkey
• Split Second - Hairul Azizi Harun, Malaysia
• Travel - Li Chen, China

As well as their new cameras, all of them will have their images exhibited at Somerset House, London between 1 and 18 May 2014, and the winner of the Overall Open Photographer of the Year title will be flown to London to collect her or his prize at the ceremony.

Nigel Atherton, the jury chair commented: 'Nigel Atherton, Jury Chair, comments: 'Photography is a language that transcends national borders and cultures, race, gender and social background....No two of this year’s Open category winners are from the same country but all share the ability to visually interpret the world around them in a unique and captivating way. The winning and shortlisted images demonstrate this gift with aplomb.'

Burrard-Lucas is back with a better BeetleCam

We've been following the evolution of the BeetleCam here on Photocritic since the brothers Burrard-Lucas, tinkerers and wildlife photographers extraordinaire, constructed a camera on a buggy in a case that could be used to get up close with animals that you wouldn't necessarily want to photograph from point blank range. The prototype BeetleCam went on Safari in Tanzania in 2009, an improved version was taken to the Masai Mara in 2011, and in 2012 BeetleCams went on sale to anyone who wanted to try remote wildlife photography. In 2014, Will Burrard-Lucas is back with the BeetleCam Hybrid. The BeetleCam Hybrid combines a traditional BeetleCam base with a stabilised camera gimbal. The gimbal keeps the camera level when the BeetleCam is beetling around over uneven ground. And the operator can pan and tilt the camera without having to move the base. Want to check out the BeetleCam Hybrid in action?

There's also an improved version of the original-style BeetleCam, with a strong but lightweight carapace and the ability to record video and stills simultaneously.

If keeping your camera on the ground is a little too mundane for you, there's also a quiet, remote-controlled copter for aerial photography. Will took this to the Serengeti recently and achieved some stunning footage of wildebeest migrating.

All of these remote-controlled devices are available to purchase from Camtraptions. There's a range of specifications—with ot without a carapace, or copters designed for GoPros, mirror-less cameras, or dSLRS—but if you can't find what you're looking for, a bespoke build is an option.

Now, when will I be able to go to Africa?

RoundFlash: a new light modifier from Inspired Photo Gear

Inspired Photo Gear is steadily augmenting its range of photography accessories, adding two new lighting modifiers to its Faith lighting stands and Lollipod multi-use supports. As well as stocking the Lightblaster, which we looked at and loved a few months ago, it's now selling the RoundFlash modifier, too. The RoundFlash is a lightweight (230g) and portable collapsible ring light and soft box that can be used either on- or off-camera. On-camera, you fit it around your lens with your hotshoe-mounted flash feeding into it. Off-camera, you mount your flash on a lighting stand and then attach the RoundFlash to it.

The RoundFlash modifier fits around lenses with diameters upto 10cm and is perfect with lenses designed for portraiture (it is a ring light, after all) for example Canon's 85mm. If you've an especially small lens, try adding a lenshood to create more stability.

There's even a video demonstrating just how fast it is to set up:

The RoundFlash is available from Inspired Photo Gear for a special introductory price of £92.95. If you don't want to spend on a ring light when you already have a set of speedlights, it might be worth a look.

'Social Photography' now available to download!

If you can't wait until next month* to lay your hands on a paper copy of my newest and shiniest book, Social Photography, it's available right this very moment for download as an e-book from the Ilex Instant site!

It'll cost you £5.99 and comes in PDF, so that you can read it on your desktop, laptop, or tablet of any flavour, and there are more formats on their way.

Of course, if you'd prefer to wait for a hard copy, you can always put in a pre-order now. It'll be £9.99 in the UK and $16 in the US.

Naturally, I'm incredibly biased, but it is a terribly handsome book and if you're looking to get more out of your smartphone and your social networks, a fabulous companion!

* Oh the excitement! A very large order of copies of Social Photography has been placed by a well-known US retailer, to go on sale by the end of April. The UK release is being delayed a little to cover this, but it should be on these shores by the end of May. If you can't wait that long, you know what to do!

'Experts' blame selfie culture for a rise in cosmetic surgery

Early this morning* I was perusing the BBC website, as I am wont to do every morning, when my eye fell upon the regular round-up of the newspapers and a headline in the Metro. Now, I am not accustomed to reading the Metro—it's aimed at metropolitan commuters and I, therefore, do not fall within its target demographic—but this headline had me rushing to its website.

Selfies blamed for plastic surgery rise

According to 'experts', the Metro doesn't care to enlighten us whom these experts are, 'The relentless rise of the mobile phone pictures, coupled with a fixation on celebrity culture, creates unrealistic expectations.' Furthermore, one-in-three US plastic surgeons has reported an increase in requests for plastic surgery from patients whose desire for intervention is based on looks-aware social media. One-in-seven US facial plastic surgeons has reported 'selfie pressure' as a common trend that had grown in the past year.

This trend is similarly noticable in the UK. The Metro cites Marc Pacifico, from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, who claims that young people feel under 'incessant pressure' to conform to idealised images of beauty and compare themselves to celebrity images and those that have been digitally enhanced.

Apparently, there has been a ten per cent rise in nose jobs and seven per cent increase in the number of hair transplants over the past year.

Pacifico is of the opinion that if the current trend to take selfies continues it will result in people who are unaccepting of normal variations in appearance.

Shall we just put the brakes on this runaway train of an idea for the moment? While self-portraits might be making people increasingly aware of their appearance, and perchance more critical of it when their photos spread far and wide via Facebook and Twitter and can be compared to perfectly primped and preened personalities, to lay the blame squarely at their shutters for an increase in requests for cosmetic surgery fails to look at the big picture. (Pun shamelessly intended.)

Our appearances have been under scrutiny for millennia, and there have been mirrors and looking glasses to aid in self-scrutiny for just as long. As a consequence we've been comparing our appearances with other people, and going to ridiculous lengths to preserve them, for generations. Elizabethan lead skin whitener, anyone? Or the obsession with the Vidal Sassoon-Mary Quant assymmetric cut in the 1960s? This is not new, but our visually intensive culture does mean that we are subject to unrealistic presentations of perfection and our own short-comings.

Selfies aren't the direct cause of people feeling inadequate in their bodies; they're one of the many vehicles that transport people to a skewed confrontation with their appearances.

Herein is the real issue. It's the expectation of perfection and the inability to separate everyday reality from Hollywood fantasy that leaves people feeling as if they aren't, somehow, perfect as they are. Just I have argued concerning the use of Photoshop and image manipulation in magazines, the key to better body confidence is in education. It's about an understanding that we're all different and that none of us is perfect. Not one.

But do you know what I find even more disturbing than the insinuation that it's the selfie that can be blamed for an increase in the desire for cosmetic surgery? It's the frequency with which cosmetic surgery is presented as an accessible and normal solution for problems that exist in people's heads. When a doctor who wishes to bring affordable cosmetic surgery to the masses wins the BBC primetime TV show The Apprentice and when cosmetic surgery clinics and procedures are advertised on daytime television, it makes me think that people's emotions are manipulated more than their images are.

So instead of lamenting Pacifico's comments on the threat of the selfie to people's tolerance of normal variation in appearance, shouldn't we be using the selfie to celebrate that we're different? To revel in hair that's dark or blonde; curly or straight. To appreciate tall people and short people. To wonder in amazement at different skin tones. To actually take stock that we're all different and that's rather amazing.

(The BBC and the Metro)

* It's now yesterday morning, but nevermind.

Art Storefronts: a complete website solution for photographers?

We all know that any photographer worth her or his salt has a website that's handsome, easy to navigate, easy to maintain and customise, and offers potential customers a feel for a photographer's style. As a consequence, there are plenty of companies that provide just these sorts of websites for photographers. They're easy to personalise, they show off photos beautifully, and they provide photographers with a web-presence that doesn't demand too much thought, time, or energy. And to help photographers make more money from their photos, some of them include print and product fulfilment, too. Now there's a new one on the scene that is aiming to take on the likes of SmugMug and Zenfolio, giving photographers print and product ordering facilities in addition to giving them a website that shows off their images and gives them a professional front. This one is called Art Storefronts.

Art Storefronts offers all of the portfolio website features that you would expect: a library of customisable responsive designs, easy social sharing functionality, and access to analytics.

What Art Storefronts believes sets it apart from other sites offering portfolio hosting and product sales is the interactive buying experience it offers your customers. Visitors can 'test drive' a wide variety of different options with dynamic live previews, and complete their purchase with a simple checkout process.

If you don't want Art Storefronts to fulfil your orders, you can take control of that yourself. Should you prefer Art Storefronts to handle print orders, you set the markup on your products and receive 100% of it.

Price-wise, you can expect to pay $19 per month for a basic package; $29 per month for the middle-of-the-road option; or $49 per month for the all-singing, all-dancing variety. It's certainly worth checking out if you're interested in selling prints direct your website.

Take a peek inside other photographers' bags with InMyBag

When I was growing up, I was taught that it was rude to go ferreting around in a lady's handbag. Yes, your mother might have a handkerchief in there, but no you don't fish it out for yourself. It's a principle that applies to any bag, including camera bags. But don't you ever wonder what other photographers schlep around with them? If you are a bit of a nosey-parker, InMyBag is inviting photographers to open up their bags to public scrutiny so that you can take a look. You can see what a wedding photographer uses compared to a wildlife photographer against a sports photographer versus a portraiture photographer.

More than just having a look at the kit people use, participating photographers also share their favourite images and words of advice. The aim is to build an entertaining, inspiring, educational, and fascinating insight into photography.

Anyone who wants to share their photographic philosophy, their favourite photo, and a shot of the contents of their camera bags can sign up to do so. There's a goodly selection of kit there already, but the more the merrier!

Selfies is now on sale in the US!

When Shooting Yourself went on sale in the UK last summer, Haje was ridiculously excited about his book devoted to self-portrait photography. Unfortunately, he was forced to put his excitement on ice for the US edition, which had a little longer to wait for its release. Thankfully, that wait is over and we can pop the champagne corks because Selfies is now on sale in the US!

Don't worry, the entire book doesn't comprise selfies of Haje. He does put in an appearance, and so do I, but there are gorgeous images from photographers Carly Wong, from Elly Lucas, and Callan Kapush, amongst many, many others. Some of them are dab hands with props, some are location shooting gurus, and a few even take off their clothes! It's full of tips and tricks, and ideas and explanations. And it's fabulous.

You want to lay your hands on a copy? Awesome! You can pick one up direct from the US publishers, HOW, from an Internet behemoth bookseller, as a swanky e-book, or from your favourite bricks-and-mortar bookshop.

A speedier Android Instagram experience

Instagram has pushed out an update to the Android version of its app, making it smoother, sleeker, and speedier, whatever Android device you're using. From giant sized handsets to more compact and slightly less well specced devices, Instagram should load faster and be responsive. The profile screen should load twice as fast and with an app that's been halved in size, overall performance should be faster, too.

As well as functioning more speedily, it should look sleeker, with simplified visuals that make better use of screen space on smaller handsets and keep navigation easy with a rearranged layout. Instead of just being nice to use for people with the latest handsets, Instagram looks to be pushing its global appeal.

Our World Book Day giveaway has a winner!

What do The Casual Vacancy, Room on the Broom, and Darwinia have in common? Apart from being books, that is. They're all being read by people who entered our World Book Day giveaway. And what's special about The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau? That's being read by Neil Corman, who's our official prize winner! No, the winner wasn't selected on his book choice. I plugged all of the entrants' names into Random Thing Picker and it picked one for me.

Congratulations Neil! If you drop me an email with your details, I can arrange for a super-special pre-publication copy of Social Photography to be dispatched to you post-haste. And thank you to everyone who entered and to the Ilex Press for providing the prize. I do enjoy these little treats!

The Flickr-Getty deal is no more. What now?

A communication sent to all photographers who have licensed their photos using the Flickr-Getty partnership has leaked, detailing that the agreement between the image sharing site and the stock house has reached its term and will not be renewed. For five years, editors from Getty have been able to trawl Flickr looking for photos that they think might sell and contact their photographers directly, giving them the option to license their images through Getty. The contract is now up, and while it won't be renewed, Getty hasn't ruled out working with Flickr again:

Our original agreement reached its end, and while we continue to be open to working with Yahoo!/Flickr, we do not have a new agreement at this time. We will continue to work with the tens of thousands of contributors and license the existing content.

So what does this mean for Flickr contributors who've licensed images through Getty, and what does it mean for Flickr?

Nothing changes for Flickr photographers whose images are licensed through Getty already. Just because the Flickr-Getty contract has concluded, the photographer-Getty contracts won't be terminated. The Flickr collection will be renamed 'Moment' and will include images from Getty's new iPhone app of the same name. Combined with its freshly signed agreement with EyeEm, Getty looks to be venturing deeper into the mobile photography market.

As for Flickr, and by extension Yahoo!, this presents them with the possibility of licensing images themselves. Yes, this is pure speculation on my part, but it isn't beyond the realms of imagination. An easy licensing option administered by Flickr or Yahoo! based on an archive of in excess of five billion images might be attractive to its users, attractive to image buyers, and offers Yahoo! the chance of some much-needed income. It would take more than feather to knock me down if Flickr announced an in-house licensing deal for its users within the near future.

(Headsup to Amateur Photographer)

Vine knows it when it sees it and chooses to ban porn

Porn: some people love it; some people are digusted by it, but we all know it when we see it, right? It's this 'we know it when we see it' approach that Vine is adopting with its new policy covering sexually explicit content on its social netowrk. Vine reckons that explicit sexual content isn't a 'good fit' for its community so its users will no longer be able to post looping six-and-half second videos of it. Vine doesn't, however, want to be seen as too prudish. Unlike Facebook and its draconian 'no nipples' policy, there's no banishment of bare breasts, and content showing nursing mothers, Femen protestors, and nude models will remain welcome on Vine. In fact, Vine estimates that in excess of 99% of its users won't be directly affected by the policy change. For anyone who violates it, however, the punishment is account suspension until the offending material is removed. Persistent posting of forbidden content will result in permanent account suspension. The changes are laid out in a blog post and a specific sexual content FAQ.

Vine maintains that it doesn't have anything against sexually explicit content, just that it would prefer not to be the source of it. Doubtless the App Store and its policies prefer that it wouldn't be the source of it, too.

University of Cambridge seeks cash to buy Captain Scott's Antarctic negatives

When Captain Scott ventured to the Antarctic on his ill-fated polar expedition in 1911, it wasn't just about racing Roald Amundsen to the South Pole. He was accompanied by a strong scientific team, and Herbert Ponting, the official expedition photographer. Ponting's images of the expedition are well-known, but he also tutored Captain Scott in the use of a camera and several other members of the team had cameras, too. The Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, which is a sub-department of the University, holds Herbert Ponting’s glass plate negatives and his presentation album from the same expedition, the prints and albums of all the other expedition members equipped with a camera, and the remaining prints of Scott's photographs in its archives. Together, they form the most comprehensive photographic record of the expedition held anywhere in the world.

What the Institute doesn't hold, however, are 113 'lost' negatives of Scott's images. These negatives record his early attempts at photography under Ponting's direction as well as those he took of the team on the Southern Journey. In order to secure the negatives for the archive, the University needs to raise a total of £275,000 before 25 March 2014, after which point they will be sold at auction.

The university has already succeeded in raising £75,000, and is asking for donations to reach its £275,000 goal. Explorer Sir Ranulf Fiennes explains why the negatives are regarded as important for the archive: 'The negatives of Scott’s lost photographs are of major significance to the national heritage. Scott’s attainment of the South Pole and his subsequent death captured the public imagination on its discovery in 1913 and continues to exercise an extraordinary fascination. The negatives are a key component of the expedition’s material legacy as an object and as a collection in themselves.'

He speaks at greater length in this video:

Anyone able to make a donation can do so here.

Reflecta's smartphone scanner

Reflecta has just announced a new Smartphone Scanner that allows you to easily (and fairly cheaply) digitise your prints and negatives to your smartphone for easy sharing. I quite like the sound of this. Capable of digitising 35mm negatives as well as 6 by 4" and 5 by 3" prints, the Smartphone Scanner holds your phone in a cradle while the iPhotojet app works to capture the print or negative that's been inserted into the holder. Once the image has been scanned, you can adjust its brightness and colour before saving it or sharing it to Facebook or by email.

It's compatible with iPhone 4 / 4S / 5 / 5S and Galaxy S2 / S3 / S4 and is supplied with all appropriate cradles. You can power it by USB or battery and it's supplied with four AA batteries, a USB cable, holders and a Quick Start Guide.

The Smartphone Scanner is being distributed by Kenro in the UK and Ireland, and will cost about £40.

EyeEm and Getty Images team up to licence mobile photos

You might be thinking that EyeEm, a mobile photo-sharing app, and Getty Images, the international stock agency, have been in the news enough this week. On Sunday EyeEm announced that it is establishing EyeEm Market, a means for its members to sell their mobile photos and today Getty Images unveiled its new embed feature that will make 35 million images free for use in non-commercial contexts. Now, though, they've teamed up to announce that Getty Images will be making EyeEm images available for licensing across its platforms, including iStock by Getty Images and a bespoke Getty collection. For EyeEm, this places their users' images on a huge stage with millions of potential buyers for royalty-free and rights-managed licences. As Florian Meissner, EyeEm's CEO said: '... now because of our partnership with Getty Images and their extensive distribution network, members of our community will have a great opportunity to earn revenue from their creative work.'

From Getty's perspective, Craig Peters, SVP Content, Getty Images says: 'We are seeing increased demand for fresh, original content that reflects the world as consumers see it, so we are pleased to be partnering with EyeEm to open up this collection to our customers and to provide this talented community of photographers with a new revenue stream.'

Whatever anyone might wish to say about the death of professional photography, Getty perceives that there's a need for mobile images and EyeEm is able to fill it. We can't make it go away by ignoring it, so we might as well embrace it.

It's exciting times for Getty, EyeEm, and mobile photographers.

It's World Book Day so we're giving away books to celebrate!

Thanks for your entries, everyone! It was just a one-day give-away to celebrate World Book Day and we're now closed to submissions. In celebration of the marvellous World Book Day our lovely publishers the Ilex Press has offered up some free books for Photocritic readers. It even includes a pre-publication copy of my newest book Social Photography which isn't yet available in the shops. How rather awesome!

To enter our little giveaway, we want you to do one simple thing: tell us what book you're reading at the moment. It's probably easiest just to leave a comment here on Photocritic. But you can enter via Twitter if you prefer.

If you want to enter via Twitter, send a tweet to me (@SmallAperture), Haje (@Photocritic), or Ilex (@Ilex_Photo) and include the hashtags #WorldBookDay and #IlexGiveaway. (We'll need the hashtags to collate the entries, so don't forget them!)

Winners will be selected at random. I'll stick a pin in a list or something.

Anyway, to get the ball rolling, I'm currently reading Them: Adventures with Extremists by Jon Ronson. It's hilarious.