UK - Young Fashion PotY

If you like clothing, photography, and are between sixteen and twenty-five years of age, you’d be bloody nuts not to enter the Nikon Young Fashion Photographer of the Year awards! 

A panel of judges will choose the twelve best entries whose work will then be displayed at Clothes Show Live 2006, which runs at the Birmingham NEC between 1st and 6th December 2006. Final judging will take place at the show and the overall winner will receive £2000 prize money, a one week placement with a top photographer, £1000 worth of Nikon photographic equipment and a VIP lunch at the show for 4 people. The closing date for entries is 20th October 2006.

Read the full details on PhotographyBLOG

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Make your own digital photo frame

Displaying photos is becoming a strenuous task. With services such as Photobox, you can print your photos cheaply, but who wants a stack of paper anymore? Alternatively, you could go the digital photo frame route, but the price of these devices is a bit silly, for what it is.

Unless… Well, the answer is in the head-line, really. Why not make your own?  

Chances are that you could procure a few-years-old laptop for little or no money, depending on the people you hang out with (no, I don’t mean your brother’s criminal mate, I mean how geeky people are. Jeez, you guys always think the worst of me! Honestly!).

Popular Science magazine recently ran a story on how it can be done…

The hardware: a four-year-old IBM laptop donated by PopSci’s IT department. Ask around and you’ll probably find a similar castoff machine, but if not, there are hundreds of suitable notebooks on eBay for less than $200—just about anything running Windows 2000 or better will suffice. You’ll also want to add Wi-Fi, either through a USB adapter or a PCMCIA card, so your mom can set the frame anywhere. (If the folks don’t have Wi-Fi, you can pick up a wireless router for about $20 online). To fit the screen’s nonstandard dimensions, I ordered a custom-made frame from americanframe.com, which offers hundreds of styles and materials and lets you visualize the matte and frame together before you hit ‘buy.’

The full, deliciously verbose version of the article is available over on Popular Science, or a more DIY-friendly version with more photos can be found here

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Tell me about photo blogs

Are you a photographer occasionally writing about photography? Post a comment.

Do you have your own photography blog? Post a comment.

Do you know of a site who runs DIY projects that sometimes are about photography? Post a comment.

Do you have a website which has some original angle on anything? Post a comment.

Do you run a page which has nothing to do with anything I’d be remotely interested in? Post a comment anyway.

See a pattern yet? Exactly – I’m very curious to find out more about what makes my readers tick – and of course, I’m looking for new sources from where I can pilfer ideas for interesting articles for Photocritic.

Too shy to post a comment in public? Send me an email instead – get your submissions in to hajejan@photocritic.org!

You can even send press releases, if you are a company, but if they are crap, prepare to be ridiculed.

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Aerial photography for a living

As some of you might have cottoned on to, I work in automotive publishing*. As such, I wade my way through thousands of press releases. Most of them are completely pointless, some of them are interesting, and others again spark my interest. There is a lot of amazing photography that happens when trying to show cars from their best angles, for example.

When the World Cup was raging at its hardest a couple of months ago, I saw a photo something quite unlike the others. Basically, it was a single photo, taken from the air, of 400 Toyota Yaris cars (you may know them as Toyota Vitz or Belta, depending on where you live) parked in the shape of a St George’s cross.

Today, I stumbled across the blog of the photographer who did the photos… 

A day in the life of Jason Hawkes would be something quite particular! For this particular job, well, let’s quote him:

Instead of flying a flag from their cars, workers at the Toyota Burnaston factory in Derbyshire have made one from cars. A crack team of 40 yard drivers and workshop technicians spent two 12 hour shifts reversing, turning and parking 400 Toyota Yaris cars into a giant St George’s Cross. The flag measures 80m by 40m and is a big message from a small car. The flag can be seen from 1000ft in the air and from miles around.

I remember thinking to myself ‘what? 40 yard drivers spent two 12 hour shifts? So they wasted 960 man-hours on this? Even if they work at minimum wage (£5.50), that means they spent £5,280 to park the cars – that’s roughly the value of one of the cars!

Never mind, I’m not here to rant about automotive companies, I’ve got my day job for that. Far more interesting is Jason Hawkes’ account of the photo shoot, done with a Hasselblad Ixpress H1D-22.

Also, make sure you don’t miss Jason’s commercial web-site.

*) I’m the online editor for one of Future Publishing‘s automotive titles

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Panographies: Panoramas on Steroids

Do you ever look up at the sky, a towering office building, or an expansive landscape and wish your photos could capture everything you can see with your eyes? We do, so of course, there is a way to do it. Otherwise, why would we bother writing about it? :) 

Our pal Mareen does this neat thing she calls panography. Taking dozens of photos of a scene, she assembles a patchwork of images that more accurately represents what your eyes see when you’re not looking through a viewfinder.

Call it super wide-angle panorama or call it panography, I think it’s awesome. Check out the inspiration galleries on Flickr, and then go check out Panographies: Panoramas on Steroids on PhotoJoJo!

New software translates photo keywords

If you’re not working with photos professionally, you can’t really be blamed for not bothering with key-wording your photos. If you do, however, a new piece of software by Bedouin Ventures called BabelPix may just make your life a hell of a lot easier.

The software idea is laughably simple – it takes the keywords embedded into a photograph and translates them for you. So what, I hear you think, but this is actually a pretty big deal: These key-words are the very words that are used by stock agencies (such as Alamy) to search through their databases of images.

In other words, if you manage to keyword your images in more languages, you could instantly have access to a series of new markets. 

The software accepts .jpg or .tif image files with embedded keywords and translates those files to other languages with a simple interface. The English-Spanish/Spanish-English version was released today, but that more versions are in the works, including Chinese, German, and other languages.

It’s Java-based and runs on all platforms, and costs us$40. Check it out on the BabelPix website if you’re interested!

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Headshots and info for models

I only recently stumbled across Zerotopia. Despite being a commercial website, they do have a rather specialised information section, attempting to help models – and people who would like to become models – along in their quest. 

The vast bulk of the information is very well presented, and includes useful sections such as Headshots : Some things every model & actor should know and Advice for models. The latter covers a lot of info about contracts, how to work as a model, professionalism, tips about safety, and everything.

Despite being aimed at models, I believe photographers could also benefit from reading this, for a plurality of different reasons. The most important reason: You have to know what models expect when you work with them, if you want to be taken seriously.

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The Joys of Photography

Today you’re in for a real treat: A guest post by Vishal Bardoloi, on the joys of photography. (want to make a guest post? More info here!)

I’ve been a photography nut ever since laying hands on my dad’s copy of John Hedgecoe’s Complete Guide to Photography. So excuse me if I get a bit poetic.

The joy of photography is to find beauty in what you observe. It’s a pure mix of art and technique, and asks of its practitioner the highest aesthetic judgement. One must always be on the lookout for something interesting- a ‘moment’, a ‘face’, a story. 

For the longest time, though, photography was an expensive mistress. Expensive SLRs, limited films and high developing costs nipped most people’s desire in the bud. And when Digital came along, everyone went straight for the convenience of compact point-and-shoot cameras.

The result of all this cost-cutting is that people approach camerawork like a hoo%@# approaches $*! housewife approaches the dishes… a mindless chore to be done with the least possible cost/effort.

Well, that won’t do for me! I’ve bought myself an SLR!

A digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera is the holy grail of the photography enthusiast. Mastering it requires developing your judgement, understanding the inner workings of the camera, and getting a sense of timing. And of course, conquering the skill of Photoshop editing :P

SLRs are disadvantageous in some ways… they’re bulky, extremely expensive, and you cannot take pictures by looking at the LCD- only through the viewfinder on top. In other words, they’re not for the faint of heart.

Why SLR then?

For the same reason someone would drive a Ferrari. Or write with a Mont Blanc fountain pen, or buy an impressionist painting. Sure, you have excellent automatic cameras available- cheap & easy. But the automatic is plug-and-play. It’s made for convenience, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. The SLR, on the other hand, is like a Harley Davidson. Not everyone can handle it, but for those who accept the nature of the beast, it becomes a part of their soul.

Now if I’ve convinced you about the benefits of an SLR, why not read the rest of this article over on Vishal’s site? He’s got a wonderful introduction to the top 5 budget SLRs, and his other writings are rather nifty, too.

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A day in the life of the Paperazzi

Some of you who are reading this may recall the Prince Naseem Car Crash pictures and the ensuing court case that followed; We recently stumbled across the account of the day from a Photographer’s perspective.

The photographs were done by Gary Bagshawe, who bagged a cool £8,000 (US$14K) in one day from the pics,work, and is still making money off the photos today. 

May bank holiday 2005, World snooker final is on at the Crucible (didn’t manage to get a press pass….again) so the Mrs had me working in the garden re building the dry stone wall, oh joy!!!

Half way through this enviable task I heard a lot of sirens, and I mean loads. Having chased many a blue flashing light I could tell that there were fire engines, police cars and Ambulances, I looked towards the Mrs and said “that sounds nasty and continued my joyous task of re building the wall, about 5 minutes later I heard more sirens! Then I saw the air ambulance fly overhead. I looked pleadingly towards my better half…

Read the rest of the account over on Pixalo, in their A Day in the Life of a Professional Photographer article.

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DOF problems a thing of the past?

I haven’t actually tried it myself, but I recently stumbled over a piece of software called HeliconFocus. It promises to eliminate the DOF problem you get when photographing objects. Just imagine: You can photograph on the sweet spot of your lens (around f8 seems to be the highest sharpness / DOF tradeoff for most of my lenses), yet get everything in the image in complete, perfect focus!

Of course, this is a genius invention for people who work with Macro photography especially…  

As the programmers themselves say:

HeliconFocus is a program that creates one completely focused image from several partially focused images by combining the focused areas.

The program is designed for macro photography, micro photography and hyperfocal landscape photography to cope with the shallow depth-of-field problem.

Helicon Focus also aligns images as objects often change their size and position from shot to shot. This function is especially important for macrophotography.

Give it a shot. If anyone would like to do a review of it, let me know!

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Can I use the photos I take?

The other day, I received a question from one of my readers: “As an employee, if I took photos of the factory I work in, can I use them or publish them on a web-site?”

The answer depends on a lot of different things, but the short version of the answer would be “Maybe, but not without asking first” 

In some circumstances, the place you work may be working on top secret things: If you work in a printers’ house, for example, and you happen to publish photos in which the front page of a big-name magazine is visible – even in the background, this could cause problems.

Your job contract may have something in it about disclosure, and you may be prohibited from taking photos, or publishing them, by a tiny little sub clause in the contract.

In practice, you are on private land, and would have to seek permission from the land owner to take photos and to publish them. Without going into too much detail, I would probably say that sticking to what your rights are and what the law says isn’t sufficient in this case:

Most importantly, your job is important to you, so you will definitely not want to do anything to incur the wrath of your employers. Even if your photos are not showing any industral secrets or anything, it may be that the machines that work in your factory are quite special, and that the engineering solutions that went into setting them up are industry secrets – even though you may have seen them every day for ten years, it may be just the kind of information your competitors are looking for!

Basically, I would say that you should go to your line manager. Tell them your intent, and suggest that they get to see a print of all the photos you take before you publish them. Even if you have a clause in your work contract that prohibits you from taking photos, your line manager may think it’s a brilliant idea and let you take the photos anyway. In addition, having shown the photos to the management before anything happens means you can always just shrug and say that you did clear it with them before publishing anything.

Let us know how it goes!

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Adding threading to compact cameras

There are a lot of cameras out there that have no attachment for filters. Mostly, this isn’t a problem, but every now and again you will want to get a little bit more creative, obviously! I was thinking about how to solve this problem, and then Rolf sent me a tip: Why not just use a short piece of PVC linkage to connect it? 

The idea is as simple as brilliant, of course. And the upside is that if you use rubber bands to hold the filter holder against the camera, you don’t have to leave any marks on your precious camera either! It’s only a couple of quid worth of materials, and it works brilliantly.

Check out the pbase article for quick instructions and some handy pictures!

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Becoming a professional snapper

You want to be a hot-shot snapper, and turn your hobby into a job, do you? It’s a tough business to get into, but with a bit of knowledge, a little bit of skill and a lot of patience, it’s entirely possible to get photos in print in magazines and newspapers, and get paid for it!

Editors receive many photos every day and very few ever get published. You can save them and yourself some time by following the simple tips collected below. 

First of all you need to assess if the picture is of national or local importance. An armed robbery with bodies lying all over the place and crashed police cars etc. would be of national importance but a photograph of a bus having smashed through somebody’s garden wall will probably only be of interest to your local paper. If in any doubt phone the picture desk and ask if they would be interested in the image.

(from Pixalo)

Employers want people with strong imaginations and technical skills in photography. The most qualified individuals have degrees in photography or journalism. Portrait and freelance photographers must have technical aptitude as achieved through some kind of training.

(from Career Overview.com)

Being a photographer can mean many different things. Anyone who picks up a camera and clicks the shutter is a photographer of sorts. More seriously, for most of us a photographer is someone who engages a considerable proportion of their life in photography. Most of the time people want to know how they can make a career out of something that at the moment is just an interest.

Many of us dream of becoming rich and famous, of having our work shown in great art galleries, splashed across the leading fashion magazines and in large on the newspaper front pages. While it is always a possibility that photography will make us a celebrity, reality tends to be more mundane.

(from the excellent, in-depth How to become a photographer, from About.com)

As digital cameras become more and more popular, many readers and photographers are starting to submit their images to magazines for possible publications in digital format. It’s only very recently that many magazines have actually started to accept digital images. One of the main reasons for this is not for the lack of well composed and news worth images, but for the fact that digital cameras in the past didn’t have enough resolution and level of detail to reproduce well in a magazine. In fact, many excellent digital pictures have been rejected because of this simple reason. In addition, how digital pictures were sent to the magazine by photographers was another reason their pictures didn’t appear in print. Poorly printed digital images, being supplied in the wrong format and those sent in by email were the main culprits.

(from How to submit digital pictures by Ephotozine)

If you’re interested in a lot more info, How to become a professional photographer by Danny Steyn.

Finally, if you use DeviantArt, add Chris Weeks to your watch list. The man’s a prolific photographer (and also the guy pictured in the illustration picture of this post), and frequently writes about his work on his DA blog. You may also want to have a read of A Day in the Life of a Professional Photographer, over on Pixalo.

Good luck in your new career :)

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Why do you take photos?

In theme with our recent posts about what makes a photograph controversial, and what photography is in the first place, my Canadian friend Cory Johnson shares some thoughts about why he takes photos…

When we see an image, what moves us? Why do we feel what we do?

Trying to analyze that is opening a whole Pandora’s box of issues.

Photographers are visual artists. We “see” things just a little bit differerently. Why we see differently, and how we see, well, who knows….. We have our own “personal filters” as it were :) 

I take photos because photos are nothing but a frozen moment, an impression, in time. And life itself is just an endless collection of moments and impressions.

Each of these moments leaves us with an impression. From impressions arise a myriad of thoughts. Some thoughts you like, some you may not like. Some you choose to remember, while other thoughts fall into the black hole of the mind, to be forgotten forever, dissolving into the void. Or do they?

Why do we remember the thoughts we do? What attracts us to that impression? What attracts us to that image? What of that image? Is it beautiful? Tasteful? Does it fill you with joy? Happiness? Or do you find it repulsive? What do you consider ugly? How do you define beauty? Can something so ugly and repulsive be beautiful?

There is a beauty in everything we see and interact with. But if something repulses you, then why? It only reflects something in you. Take a look, see for yourself. Or do you find the same image lovely and beautful? If so, then why? Something in you reflects that as well. But how often do we remember those impressions? Not as often as we should. If something is ugly, we should remember that, too.

Define beauty. Define ugly. Because really, in the end, everything just is. It is us who attaches an impression of that moment to our existence. The moment itself does not know anything about being beautiful or ugly. It just is. Therefore you can find a moment beautiful and ugly simultaneously.

We interact with that moment and leave our impression on it. Who else remembers that moment? Is their impression the same? The moment itself just was. It did not know what to be. But we leave our impression on that moment, that image, which carries on into the ethers of space and time.

I see order and I see chaos simultaneously.

I see ugly and beauty simultaneously.

I find those moments awesome – “full of awe”.

Contributed by Cory Johnson, of Vancouver’s Max Photography.

As a ‘food for thought’ item – why do you take photos? Tell us in the comments of this post!

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Photographing a Child's Birthday Party

Of all the types of memories people cherish warmest, the birthday parties of young ones come high on the list. But there is so much to think about!

The Digital Photography school site has come up with a dozen tips to maximising the photographic evidence of a birthday party of a little one. Much of it is rather obvious, but there are a couple of nuggets among the tips. If nothing else, it’s worth taking a quick peek just to see the pictures of the happy kids. After all, you’ve gotta party like it’s their birthday! 

The tips include:

1. Designate a Party Photographer
2. Get a Child’s perspective
3. Mix up Your Shooting Angles and Focal Lengths
4. Adjust White Balance Settings
5. Look for the Party Details
6. Use Bounce Flash or a Diffuser
7. Know the Party Plan
8. Shoot Candidly
9. Shoot out of Relationship
10. Planned Shots
11. Take Before and After Shots of the Party
12. Shoot in Burst Mode
13. Include Adults in your Photos

For the whats, the hows, the whys and the wherefores, you could do a lot worst than reading the full How to Photograph a Child’s Birthday Party article :)

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More on live concert photography

Bloody hell, we didn’t half open a can of worms! It seems as if everyone, their dog, and their uncle have views on concert photography. Great, of course, but not all of it makes sense. In the past we’ve covered live photography at big and smaller venues, and both of those entries attracted a lot of insightful comments (you may want to go back and re-read the posts and comments, because there really is a lot of good going down there).  

One of the better and more structured sets of comments came from Boudist:

You can be technically adept but still take crap photos, the trick is knowing when to click the shutter. Watch the performance for a moment, where is the light on stage? You may have to wait for the performer to move into the light.

My favourite shots are ones that show emotion and energy. Go for a shot when the singer steps away from the mic, you don’t want it obscuring your shot. Try and get one when the singer is “in the moment”, reaching for a high note or gesticulating.

… Who also goes into further depth in a separate article titled “Tips for live music / concert photography : Boudist“. Worth a read!

Making money off your concert photos

Originally, we had a lot of information here on how you could monetize your concert photography, but it all became a bit wieldy. I would strongly recommend you have a look at our seperate writeup on event photography, and our making money off your photos article.

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Camera mounted on a bicycle

I am quite fond of bicycling (I recently did the London to Brighton bikeride), so when I stumbled across a guide to making a steadycam mount for a bike, my curiosity was instantly set ablaze.

The creator explains:

I wanted to shoot some video while riding my road bike, but didn’t want to deal with a helmet mounted camera and of course I didn’t want to hold the camera in my hand. An initial attempt at mounting the DV camera was totally unsatisfactory, so my next step was to build my own “steadicam” camera mount that would absorb some of the shock, providing a better quality video.

I haven’t yet seen the device in action, nor have I seen any video of it working, and I’m not entirely convinced that it will: There are no dampers involved here, just a spring, which means that the initial bump would be absorbed, but as the spring brings the camera back into place, you’d still get a pretty big bump. He is on the right way to creating an on-bike steadicam, though, which is a laudable an dexciting project in itself.

So, without further jibber-jabber: Check out the DIY: Bicycle – Steady Cam – mount project at Instructables!

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Unusual pinhole camera projects!

Over on Photon Detector, Nicolai has collected a great sample of odd pinhole photography projects:

The great thing about making cameras is that they’re really dead simple: box light detector (film or sensor) hold for light = camera. When there’s no lens involved, there’s heaps of room for creativity. While many people opt for more traditional materials like wood, metal, foamcore, or modify an existing camera, some people go all out.

Here’s a [doubtless incomplete] roundup of some of the stranger things I’ve seen people make pinhole cameras out of, to date. Note that many of these links have construction instructions!

Wicked stuff – check out Photon Detector: Blog : Weird pinhole camera roundupthe full article for all the links! Sorry about the broken link. Fixed now!

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Take the damn photos already

A commenter who identifies himself as Wigwam Jones took great exception to our recent writeup on Photography: Rights vs Respect. Personally, I disagree in part, but Jones makes his points so succinctly, that it’d be a shame not to toss it up to a wider audience.  

The way photographers lose their rights is by implying to others that they have some sort of right to not have their photograph taken. Eventually, people begin to believe it. There is no ‘right to privacy’ in public in the USA, as you stated. While it is up to the individual photographer to decide if he or she wants to take a photograph of a particular scene or individual, asking for permission is asking for trouble. Take the photo. Do it. Do not apologize, do not ask for permission. Permission is for sucks. Uphold freedom, take the photo.

Did the ATM machine that just took your photo as you walked by ask your permission first? What about the police surveillance cameras on light poles and traffic signals? How about the various cameras in every convenience store, bank, and many other businesses? Just because they are automated, those who put them there are somehow off the hook? No. If a person is in public and I want to take a photo of them, I do. I will not stop doing it. I’m doing the heavy lifting of ensuring continuing freedom of the press and freedom of expression by doing so.

The Amish know perfectly well that they don’t have the right to demand that no one take their photo. They will turn their heads or turn their backs at the last moment to spoil the shot – that’s their right to do so. But their desire is not the same as a right – if I indulge them, it is me indulging them, not their right to demand it of me.

Take the photos. Liberty beckons. Get busy.

Wigwam Jones is a photographer. He is currently working on putting together an on-line photography course, which can be found on Camera Mentor. It’s a work in progress, but we can’t but wish him good luck on his effort!

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Guest bloggers wanted!

Have you got a passion for photography? Do you like to browse about and find quirky things to do with photography? In that case, you’ve got what it takes to be a guest blogger on Photocritic?

Don’t worry too much about your writing (I work as an editor in my day-job, so straightening out copy is second nature to me), it’s far more important that you have passion and an eye for what makes a good story!

The best way to get involved is to drop me an e-mail (hajejan@kamps.org) with some news tips, or even a draft (or fully written-out) story!

Cheers,

Haje Jan Kamps
Editor, Photocritic.org

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