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?
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.
Balance doesn't mean symmetry; it means an internal consistency and tension within your photos. And it's a vital element of composition.
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...
Getting a feeling of speed and excitement in your video shoots isn't hard - as long as you know what you're doing. Here's some pointers to get you started!
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.
One way to get great results with street photography, is to ensure that your subjects don't know they are being photographed. An SLR camera will always be noticed - but what if you could get some good snaps with a mobile phone?
In this video, I'm exploring how that would work...
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
© Kamps Consulting Ltd. This article is licenced for use on Pixiq only. Please do not reproduce wholly or in part without a license. More info.
We’re going to be taking a few days’ break over the festive season. All our opinionated ranting takes it toll! We’ll be back in the New Year ready to rock and roll again.
Until then, everyone at Small Aperture would like to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, and peaceful New Year.
In the spirit of Christmas, and good cheer, and giving, and not being grouchy, and trying not to tear out our hair with too many things to do, we thought that we’d give you an extra week to submit your photos to our December competition. This means that you now have until 29 December to snap a gorgeous photobook-winning portrait.
For the full details of the competition, have a look at the competition page, and then submit your portraits to our Flickr pool for our perusal.
Have fun!
Back in November, David Cameron announced that the Government was going to take a closer look at intellectual property. There were probably plenty of people who groaned ‘Not again?’ but if they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it. So as people who make images – and very importantly people who might use those images to make money – we really ought to stand up and make our voices heard.
The review is being led by Professor Ian Hargreaves. He’s Professor of Digital Economy at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and Cardiff Business School. (Swanky title, no?) Making a decision needs to be based on evidence, and he’s looking for that evidence from people who make use of and benefit from the intellectual property system, and in particular small- and medium-sized businesses.
If you run a small photography business, or any other type of creative business for that matter, that means you.
In true Government consultation-stylee (and believe me, in another life I organised enough of them to know) there’s the web-based thinking bit and the in-person talking bit. The web-based thinking bit provides you with some questions to help marshal your thoughts that you can then send to the review committee, whilst the chit-chat sessions will be taking place in the New Year.
There are quite a few questions, but you don’t have to answer all of them. The key areas are:
Take a closer look here.
The review is due to be published in April 2011. I’ll report back on what it finds.
You’ve been hearing this for years, but by now, I think it’s definitely safe to say that the iPhone has truly changed the way we do things. From geo-tagging photos taken with your DSLR to increasing environmental awareness, the iPhone seems to do it all. And now, you can go ahead and throw away that Spanish to English dictionary. This new iPhone app takes translation to a whole new level.
Yes, yes, there are a billion translation apps available for your iPhone. But there’s only one that uses the iPhone’s camera. That’s right. The newly released Word Lens app actually performs a visual translation in real-time using augmented reality through your iPhone’s camera. Whaaaat?!
Just aim your iPhone’s camera to any Spanish text, so long as it’s not sloppy handwriting, and it will instantly translate it into English and display the new text on your screen. And it even translates back from English to Spanish. However, these are the only languages available at this time.
The only kicker is the price. While the app itself is free, it will cost you a hefty $4.99 for each direction of a translation you want. For example, Spanish to English is five bucks, and it will cost you another fiver to get English to Spanish.
I went ahead and purchased the app earlier today, and while it seems to be a little inaccurate at times, it works pretty well for the most part.
Now, all they need to do is add Korean-English translation so I know what I’m ordering next time I go to my local Korean BBQ joint.
Unless you’ve been living beneath a rock – which I really hope you haven’t been because it seems a bit cold and uncomfortable to me – or on a mission to outer space (you got awesome pictures, didn’t you?), you can’t have failed to notice that Disney’s latest offering, Tron: Legacy hits the screens tomorrow. And it’s bouncing in in an awe-inspiring blaze of 3D glory. Or so we’re meant to think, if we subscribe to the hype. If you’re me, it’s more a shrug of indifference because, dammit, I don’t like 3D.
Really. I don’t like 3D.
Yes, I’m probably supposed to be salivating in star-struck wonderment over the fight scenes and pinned to my seat, hair swooshing behind me, by the realism of the chases, but the truth is, I’m not. I’d much rather be watching it in 2D.
I’m not a miserable technophobic grouch, I promise. Here’s why 3D doesn’t rock my world.
My first reason is completely, utterly, and totally personal. And it’s the singular most important one why 3D cinematography and I aren’t getting on. It gives me a headache. Sit me in front of a 3D projection wearing those ridiculous glasses and my eyeballs will begin to pulsate. Before long I’ll think that they are about to canon out of the back of my head in a streaming red and orange arc. I do not want to spend 90 minutes like this. Actually, no, I don’t want to spend even ten minutes like this. If this is supposed to constitute entertainment, then please sign me up for something different.
For a while I thought that I might be some freak of nature whose ocular function was somehow deficient. But, no, I’m not. The more that I ask around, the more that people tell me: ‘Oh yeah, 3D makes my head hurt, too.’ Now in my universe, this does not constitute a good business model. Why persist in making films in a format that will actively deter film-goers when a perfectly acceptable alternative is already being used? If you think I’m going to willfully subject myself to migraine-like symptoms and hand-over my hard-earned pennies to do so, all so that I won’t be able to enjoy a film, you’re from Planet Crazy.
The perfect hairband
Then we move on to the glasses. Now, I’m not overly fussed by the aesthetics of wearing 3D glasses. First, I live with sunglasses virtually super-glued to my nose; second, in a cinema, it’s dark. Who’s going see you looking like a human version of Brains from Thunderbirds? (And I’ll tell this for free: they make excellent hairbands.) But going to the cinema shouldn’t be an accessory-dependent experience. Seriously guys, in the grand scheme of cinematography, that’s a retrograde step.
When you consider that the Gerry-Anderson-inspired-glasses also contribute to a 30% loss of colour in your average film, it’s even more regressive. No, it’s not a swing instead of a roundabout, or a small loss for a bigger gain. It’s a third of the sharpness of the imagery being sacrificed for a piece of technology that is supposed to immerse you in the world of the film. But hang on a minute, beautiful cinematography that uses creative camera angles and intriguing depth-of-field, sublime colour, and a tight script well acted will also immerse you in the world of the film. You don’t need 3D to do that.
The ever-entertaining and frequently-insightful Mark Kermode also points out that 3D isn’t new technology. It is something that has been pushed on cinema-going audiences since the 1950s (and the first patent for a 3D film was around in the 1890s), but has never caught on. Why, I wonder? Maybe because people who watch films are discerning enough to see that 2D films do what they do really, really well. And why is it being pushed again? Kermode reckons it’s an anti-piracy move.
That’s a good argument, but I can’t help thinking it’s a bit like fashion. Some trendy Shoreditch-type was raiding her Mum’s wardrobe and stumbled on a 1980s retro-tastic jumpsuit. She started wearing it in her infinite fashion-forward-wisdom. And yes, where fashion went, we followed, for five minutes. Then we realised that we looked ridiculous and having to get out of one to have a pee was a Herculean feat. So we consigned them to the ‘Never again’ heaps in our wardrobes, for our daughters to dig them out in twenty years’ time and repeat the sorry cycle.
Martin Scorsese, on the other hand, has been waxing lyrical over 3D. ‘Every shot,’ he says, ‘is rethinking cinema.’ His newest film, Hugo Cabret, is due to be released in late 2011 and has embraced 3D technology to the full. Scorsese points out that we live in 3D, so why can’t we watch films in 3D? Well, I’d hazard because film isn’t real life, it’s film, and 3D gives me a headache.
And if Scorsese wants to sell the aesthetics of 3D like this: ‘But it has a beauty to it also. People look like… like moving statues. They move like sculpture, as if sculpture is moving in a way,’ then he really needs to think again. I’d rather watch realistic 2D people than 3D marionettes, thanks.
So often I hear that 3D is really worth it for one or two scenes in a film, that it makes them stand out far beyond the others. But what about the rest of the film? Is it worth it for that? Does 3D really make for the immersive, spectacular experience that film-makers would have us think? The answer for me is a resounding no.
Until they can find a way to make stereoscopy not induce headaches, not require glasses, and not reduce picture sharpness, it’ll have to remain in the dressing up box, until our kids decide to turn it into a fashion statement. For five minutes.
I doubt very much that you wish you were right here. As lovely as the Small Aperture mansion is, it’s pretty drafty right now. How about the Isle of Jura, just off of Scotland’s west coast, for a week next summer? Sounds ideal to me, especially if I could win the trip there with a photograph.
The Isle of Jura and Visit Scotland have dreamed up a competition where three people and their partners can win a week’s holiday on Jura, as well as an Olympus E-PL1, by submitting a ‘postcard’ of a destination that inspires them. Take the photo, explain what makes the place amazing, and submit your postcard. The judging panel includes Jim Richardson of National Geographic fame. (He’ll also be on-hand to give the winners a two day photography master-class.)
Entries are being accepted between now and 21 January 2011. All of the details are available on the competition website.
P.S. Deer out-number humans 30 to 1 on Jura
P.P.S. My favourite whisky comes from Jura
If you didn’t already know it, I’m a bit of a cricket fanatic. Admittedly not quite as much as my brother, who can recall batting averages, but enough that I’ve been staying up into the small hours to listen to coverage of the Ashes from Australia. So when the Wisden-MCC Cricket Photograph of the Year competition was announced, I got a bit excited.
You can submit up to three photographs to the competition, and they can show anything provided that it is cricket-related. Whether you have Graeme Swann taking the final wicket at the Adelaide Oval two weeks ago, or the sun setting on a game of beach cricket in the summer, it’s all good. Just make sure that they were taken this calendar year and you lodge them by 17 January 2011.
The winner walks away with a cash prize of £500 and a £500 voucher to spend on Canon equipment with Park Cameras. I’m looking forward the results of this one.
Full details are available on the MCC website.
Image: Played On, by Jim Campbell
A few days ago, Small Aperture revealed that UK government agency the Office for National Statistics was running a photography competition encouraging minorities to be counted in the upcoming census – which included a particularly hair-raising case of rights-grabbing: they wanted to pinch entrants’ copyright and had the gall to say it was to protect it from misuse and abuse.
We decided to make it our mission to see if we could do anything about it. Guess what? They quickly went in and removed the offending clause from their competition Terms and Conditions.
“Remove, you say?” – Yes, they have quite literally removed clause 18. The terms and conditions jump from clause 17 to 19.
They told us: ‘the ONS did not intend to prohibit the rights of photographers in any way’. That’s much better, folks. Now repeat after me: First engage brain, then concoct the legal primal ooze that solidifies in a terms and conditions document.
It just goes to show that you don’t have to accept hogknobbery like this: Tweet, blog, complain, and make sure that people understand that rights grabs are a big deal to photographers.
So, after all that, If you are interested in entering the competition, (by coming up with two pictures and 500 words that show the changing population of Britain over the past 50 years), check out the details on the competition website – yes, including the new terms and conditions.
Ask kids to take photos and you’ll get amazing results. That was the premise that Photobox and Childline worked on when they launched their Young Photographer of the Year award, and that was exactly what they got. The competition was pretty simple: entrants had to be under 18 and their photos had to show their view of the world. The results? Not so simple: the standard was so high that four prizes had to be increased to five. Take a look for yourself.
Winner of the Under 8s category was six year old Amelia Spain. She snapped My Sister’s Red Boots when she was lying in a pile of leaves, trying to photograph a mouse with her Mum’s camera!
My Sister's Red Boots, by Amelia Spain
The competition for the 9-12 category was so strong that the prize had to be split between 10 year old Daniel Adams and 11 year old Chris Pritchard. Daniel’s Butterfly was photographed in Muscat, Oman, whilst Chris took his shot of the Lemur Tree in Fuengirola Zoo.
Butterfly, by Daniel Adams
Lemur Tree, by Chris Pritchard
Heather Elisabeth Bailey’s superb Trapped came out of her going through a tough time, but wanting to make something positive and creative out of it. Can you believe she’s only 14?
Trapped, by Heather Elisabeth Bailey
Finally, Elisha Hook took the prize in the 16-18 year old category, with her surrealist-inspired photo, Shadow.
Shadow, by Elisha Hook
All five of them have won an overnight stay at one of the UK’s favourite tourist attractions, as well as a digital camera, and a stash of Photobox goodies!
To take a look at all of the entrants, head over to the competition website.
‘A honourable art gallery? Surely not? Well, yeah, that’s how it works!’ That was Haje’s reaction to RedBubble, an online art gallery and community, when it launched back in 2007. He was taken by the business model that a group of Aussie creatives had dreamed up that allowed artists a hassle- and risk-free means to put their work online and sell it. RedBubble set the base price for a print and the artist set the mark-up. When a print was sold, RedBubble took care of the billing, production, and postage whilst the mark-up went to the artist. Easy-peasy!
The world has moved on a touch since 2007, though, what with England seeming to be doing okay at cricket, so I thought that I’d catch up with the RedBubble crew, as well as some of its users, to see how things have changed since the heady days when they first hit the aether.
Sunrise by the sea
Speaking with Martin, RedBubble’s MD, it seems that RedBubble hasn’t changed an awful lot over the past three-and-a-bit years. Its ethos is still the same: it’s about providing artists with a community and an opportunity to sell their work, as easily as possible. The business model is still the same. RedBubble sets the base price; the artist sets the mark-up. What RedBubble has done, though, is grow.
Four months after it began, there were 30,000 images on the RedBubble site. Today, there are over 5 million, and over 2 million people visit the site every month. If you’re looking for art, you’ve a lot to choose from; if you’re selling stuff, that’s a lot of people looking at it.
Red, pink or green?
But RedBubble isn’t just about selling art, though, it’s a community, too. Richard, one of the members, told me: ‘The community is fabulous. Everybody is encouraging and supportive and willing to help people learn and improve.’
At first, RedBubble only offered prints, albeit flat, mounted, or framed. Now images are available on canvas, as postcards, greetings cards, calendars, and posters. There are even stickers and some clothing options options available for designers. As Richard says, it’s an easy way to display your work and make a little bit of money on the side.
RedBubble is focused on continuing to expand its current model, as well as the development of The Bubbler blog. Martin told me that their basic viewpoint is that they stand for artists, to help people be creative and to develop. Sounds pretty good to me!
Thanks to Richard Keech for the photos. You can check out more of his work on RedBubble!
We receive lots of emails here at Small Aperture asking us to beat on the big drum to get photo competitions noticed in the big bad world of the intargoogles.
Some competitions we’ll run as articles – and some we won’t. Whether it gets to bask in the glory of our editorial glow or is lobbed heartlessly on the pile signifying ‘Eh, whatever’, depends on a few things. When we were asked to promote a competition run by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to encourage people from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds to complete next year’s census, for example, we thought: ‘What a great idea!’ But our enthusiasm was seriously dampened when we read the competition’s terms and conditions.
We’ll quote it directly from the ‘Then and now: family stories‘ website for you:
‘18. Upon submission, the entrant agrees to transfer the copyright for any images and content to ONS. This will ensure proper control over the copyright and protect the entrant from inappropriate or illegal use of their images. All images uploaded to the 2011 Census website and Flickr will be deleted from any ONS databases and records by 31 August 2011.’
Yes, you read that correctly. If you enter the competition, you agree to transfer the copyright of your images (and of your words, the competition has dual elements) to the ONS. (Never mind that, under UK law, you cannot sign away copyright without physically signing a piece of paper, but that’s a different matter.)
Now, we’re pretty used to seeing rights grabs. Both here on Small Aperture and over at Photocritic we’ve been quite vocal about the scourge of paid-for competitions and rights grabs, so we try our best to not publicise them. But it was the qualifier: ‘This will ensure proper control over the copyright and protect the entrant from inappropriate or illegal use of their images,’ that really had our blood boiling.
As I read it, we’re being told that we, the competition entrants, are not considered bright enough to ensure our own copyright, so it’s best removed from us. This is so bloody offensive that I barely know where to begin with this one. Am I, or anyone else who takes a minute to read through a comparatively short set of terms and conditions, that stupid? Seems as if the great brains that deal with statistics for HM Government think so. In fact, in their desperation to protect the inappropriate appropriation of our images, they’ll appropriate them from us inappropriately.
I’ve called and asked for some clarification on this – I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll have some more answers for you, and it will have turned out that the legal boffins let the horse run away from the stable just a tiny tad too far. But for right now, colour me far from impressed with one of our government departments.
For a little under a year, The Guardian has been running a Sunday feature ‘The 10 Best…’ It has covered everything from fashion blogs to female comedians via mathematicians. Yesterday, it was the turn of photographic portraits. I was thoroughly surprised by the 10 photos selected by Eamonn McCabe. There was a mixture of candid shots, street photography, and posed portraiture. Some were of celebrities, some weren’t. Most, but not all, were black and white. And they weren’t necessarily what I would attribute as the ’10 best’.
But then it occurred to me: what exactly was it that surprised me in his selection, which you can check out here, and why should I be surprised at all?
The point is, of course, that these portraits are his personal opinion of what constitutes the ‘best’. Just because I disagree with, or am surprised by, his selections doesn’t invalidate them. In fact, it’s a bit of an eye-opener. What is it that he sees in a portrait that I don’t? If anything, I’d like a bit more commentary on what it is about these portraits that ‘does’ it for him, rather than the background to photographers who took them. (Don’t get me wrong, I am interested in that, I’d just rather be discussing the photo.)
I took this photo a few years ago. Why do I like it so much? It says something about my subject that, at the time, was important to her.
If I’m going to become a better photographer, knowing how other people interpret pictures is pretty useful. It doesn’t have to mean that I’ll stop taking the kind of photos that I like, more that trying to see a picture through someone else’s eyes shows me something new, a different angle, an alternative perspective. I’m not asking for anyone to justify her or his choices, more try to explain to me what it is that makes it outstanding.
And of course, from time-to-time we put up a ’10 of the best..’ here on Small Aperture. For us, these selections are very much about finding 10 shots that we hope will inspire you to go out and take some pictures. But for now, I’m kinda interested in knowing what are your favourite portraits. You don’t have to offer ten. One, or three, or five, will do. But what is it about that portrait that makes you go ‘Oooh!’?
(Thanks to Catherine for the image of me. Why do I like that one so much? It captures the day that it was taken perfectly. I look relaxed. We had sunshine and showers.)
The New York Historical Society wants your pictures of Times Square. It doesn’t matter if your photographs are architectural, portraits, reportage, or snapshots. Whether you’re a tourist or a super-enthusiastic amateur isn’t important, either. It’s about creating an archive of contemporary views of Times Square that will be searchable today and in the future.
There are some things take into consideration, though. Your pictures need to have been taken between 21 November 2010 and 31 March 2011. They need to take in Times Square from West 42nd to 47th Streets at Broadway or Seventh Avenue. They need to be in guf, jpg, or png format. They need to be at least 1,200 by 1,500 pixels (which is 8″ by 10″ in old money). And you can correct the colour and crop a bit, but nothing that alters the original subject matter is allowed.
Of course, the photo (or photos, you can make multiple submissions) must be yours, but you should check out the submission details for yourself. You can do that, and find out how to submit your photographs, here.
(Headsup to Photography Blog.)
Hello and welcome to the Small Aperture November photo competition awards ceremony. Please do help yourself to some birthday cake – it’s lemon, which is my favourite – and a glass of champagne or cup of tea. November’s theme was darkness, and there were some cracking entries. Haje and I had a tough time choosing a winner. After we’d narrowed it down to three contenders, there was a bit of back-and-forth to settle on an over-all victor. So well done and thank you to everyone who entered.
We’re delighted, however, to announce our winner:
Untitled, by Jonathan Horst.
Many congratulations to Jonathan. If you’d like to get in touch with me via email, I shall arrange for your prize to be sent to you!
Please do take a look at all the entries, which you can see here. And December’s theme will be announced very soon. We hope that you’ll enter that one, too!
Hello, one and all! It’s the first Wednesday of the month, which means that it’s time to start our photo competition. Once again, we have a groovy prize lined up for the winner! This month, we’d like you to submit a portrait for our contemplation and consideration. Black and white, or colour, it doesn’t matter. What we want is a picture of a person to make us go ‘Oooh!’
The competition opens today, that’s Wednesday 1 December, and runs until Wednesday 22 December in the spirit of Christmas, we extended it to 29 December 2010. Please submit your entries to the Small Aperture pool on Flickr.
The rules are the same as October’s and November’s, but I’ll reproduce them here for you. Again, Haje and I will aim to have the results to you within a week of the competition closing.
Good luck!
The Rules
If you’re getting ever-so-slightly fed-up with the range of different memory cards that camera manufacturers insist on supporting, and not being able to record lots of frames of continuous shooting in RAW, as well as thinking that your HD-movie-recording capacity is a bit measly, then the end might just be in sight. Maybe. Perhaps.
SanDisk, Sony, and Nikon have put together their heads and drawn up a proposal to standardise memory card formats. They’ve put their idea to the Compact Flash Association. (What a great name. I keep imagining pint-sized superheroes running it.)
The idea is to create a new specification of memory cards that’ll meet the ever-increasing demands of photographers. You should be able to transfer upto 500MB of data per second (a bit of an improvement on the current 167MB maximum) and your memory card might be able to hold 2TB of data.
Sounds okay to me!
Photographs of water + online exhibition = increased awareness of water pollution.
That’s the equation Greenpeace is working on, anyway. It has joined forces with Steply, the iPhone photo-sharing app, to create a user-curated online gallery of water-themed photographs and bring to people’s attention just what it is that we, and heavy industry, are doing to the earth’s water supply.
It’s a pretty simple process. If you use Steply, you take a photo to make Poseidon and the Naiades proud, you tag it with #gpwater in the photo description, and you share it to Steply between now and 12 December 2010. Steply will even send you a ‘special item’ to show that you support the campaign. (Although they’ve not been so kind as to tell me what the ‘special item’ is. I’m guessing it won’t be a Rolex.) If you don’t already use Steply, you can download it here.
Greenpeace is hosting the Hope and Pain exhibition of water-themed pictures by Eugene Smith, Aileen Mioko Smith, and Lu Guang at the Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong, from 4 to 12 December, too.
You can find out more, and look at everyone’s contributions, here.
You know that story we posted a few days ago about SLR cameras being banned from the streets of Kuwait?
It turned out that it caused a bit of uproar – and rightly so. But it also turns out that it was incorrect.
The Kuwait Times have just published a retraction on their original article.
If single lens reflex cameras are banned - can you use a twin-reflex camera instead? The point's moot now anyway, by the look of things.
They say:
“[we] published an article titled ‘Multi ministry camera ban frustrates artists’ in which incorrect information was provided. The newspaper regrets failing to verify the information. The article wrongly stated that a ban on DSLR cameras was implemented by the Ministries of Information, Social Affairs and Finance.
This information is false. In a follow up investigation, it was proved that no such ban has been issued. We regret this error and deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused.”
So, break out your SLR camera and re-book your tickets to the middle east – we’re all ready to go
