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.
Photographing buildings doesn't have to mean wide-angle lenses and fretting about correcting for the keystone effect. Any lens, and angle. Don't believe us? Let us show you!
Thomas Struth is one of Europe’s most exhibited and collected photographers. I got myself pretty excited about reviewing this offering from the Monacelli Press that showcases several of his series of work: cityscapes, family portraits, images of science and technology, museum photos, and nature pictures. There are also some essays examining Struth’s work. This is one hefty book. Does it live up to its weight?
I have a soft-spot for cityscapes and architectural photography. Why? I don’t know why. Why do I prefer lemon ice cream to vanilla and why don’t I like chocolate at all? But Struth’s cityscapes left me cold. What was I looking at? What was he trying to convey with his perfectly centred images of tower blocks? I’m really not sure. Nothing in these pictures, to me, conveyed the sense of place, the interaction of the people who live and work there, any feeling of vibrancy. They were just images of tower blocks. (Albeit one of them is in Pyongyang, which I thought was impressive.)
These empty and cold cityscapes did form an interesting juxtaposition with his images of museums and places of worship. These photos are full, busy. They depict school groups looking bored in the Louvre and people eating their lunch on the steps outside the Duomo in Milan. It’s not how you expect to see these places photographed, and that in itself is thought-provoking.
The images of science and technology are interesting, but they are not exactly anything that I’d be rushing to hang on my wall. In some instances they make good documentations of places or things, but that isn’t what I expect from fine art photography. It just a bit too, well, mundane, for me.
Struth’s famed for his family portraits and I was hoping that they would elevate my enjoyment of the book. Supposedly, he uses them to explore underlying social dynamics. Maybe I was missing something, but they looked pretty much like family portraits to my eye. I couldn’t detect whatever statement it was that Struth was trying to make.
So did the essays clarify anything for me? I thought that I was going to drown in the gushing hyperbole that one of them was spewing forth like an over-active geyser. They somehow managed to leave me feeling somehow inferior for not appreciating Struth’s work. That probably wasn’t the aim, but it was the outcome.
As a book, it’s a beautiful presentation of Struth’s work. If you like his photography, you’ll relish it. But what if Struth’s photography doesn’t set your heart racing and you struggle to connect with it? It’s one of those books that you’ll feel that you ought to like, but just can’t bring yourself to. It’s one of what my brother – who’s a musician – and I refer to as our ‘innocent pains’. My brother has Bach. It seems as if I now have Thomas Struth to add to Die Zauberflöte.
Thomas Struth Photographs 1978-2010. Published by The Monacelli Press and available from Amazon UK and Amazon US.
Towards the end of last year you might’ve stumbled across the gorgeous mirrored video of a drive through Chicago by Craig Shimala. As the dude said himself, applying a mirror effect to the video made it feel as if it were a mashup of the Jetsons, the flying car scene in Back To The Future 2, and a gamut of sci-fi films. (If you’re interested, he shot it on a GoPro Hero camera and edited it using Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio software.)
Towards the end of last year it seemed as if every geeky, gadgety, or photography website was featuring the awesome Glide 2, a slow-motion film shot from a high-speed train. In two weeks, it attracted a staggering 735,000 views.
That video was made by my good friend Graeme Taylor. He spoke to my friend and editor of Small Aperture Daniela, who was fortunate enough to be able to catch up with him over braised lamb shanks earlier this week, and heard about the similarities between maths and photography, finding a train suitable for filming, and devising a follow-up to Glide.
The video that caused all the trouble
Read the full interview over on Small Aperture - it's well worth a closer look!
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
Towards the end of last year it seemed as if every geeky, gadgety, or photography website was featuring the awesome Glide 2, a slow-motion film shot from a high-speed train. In two weeks alone, it generated over 735,000 views. It was made by the lovely Graeme Taylor, and I was fortunate enough to be able to catch up with him over braised lamb shanks earlier this week, and heard about the similarities between maths and photography, finding a train suitable for filming, and devising a follow-up to Glide.
Daniela: You’re not actually a professional film-maker or photographer are you, Graeme? What do you do?
Graeme: No, and seeing myself labeled with descriptions such as ‘video artist’ has been entertaining! I’m a research mathematician, which I’d argue is a creative activity far closer to, say, photography, than the tedious grind of high-school calculations. Both maths and photography require a certain amount of technical ability, but beyond that, inspiration, experimentation, and the desire to ask lots of questions that start ‘what if…’ or ‘how could I…’ are crucial. It’s just that in my day job I’m trying to capture the behaviour of abstract concepts rather than a landscape or piece of architecture.
DEB: So do you envisage yourself making money from photos or films?
GT: I’m still rather pleased that I’m able to make money from mathematics! To be honest, I like the fact that my photo and video projects are purely hobbies, rather than having to be financially viable activities. Probably as a side effect of the way mathematics works (where you publish your results for all to build upon), I’m more interested in people seeing and enjoying my work than trying to maximise the amount of money I can extract from it. Of course, if anyone wants to sponsor future projects, that’s fine by me!
DEB: Where did the idea for a slow-motion film of a train coming into a station originate?
GT: The usual role of slow motion video is to capture a complicated, high speed activity from a static viewpoint. My first thought was, ‘What if the camera is the high speed object?’ I hoped that this would allow me to recreate the effect of panning through frozen motion which is common in films – the most obvious inspiration would be bullet time, of course. Somewhere along the line I came up with the other piece of the puzzle, which was to record something mundane rather than an action sequence. Then a station seemed like an obvious solution.
EMP/SFM by Graeme Taylor
DEB: Did it take a great deal of preparation?
GT: My original plan was to record from a train that wasn’t stopping, so that I’d have constant speed through the station. I also knew I wanted a slam-door train so that I could film through an open window rather than glass. So the idea spent a lot of time on the back burner as I tried to think of a suitable journey – although I travel a lot by train, I couldn’t find a location that was busy enough to warrant filming, yet somehow unimportant enough for the train to blast through without stopping.
So I stopped trying to prepare and decided to wing it! Having decided to take my chances with stopping services, I took to travelling in the front carriage of trains (no great burden on London-bound journeys, as that meant booking first class) and always having the slow motion camera with me. As it happens, though, Glide was my very first capture of this type, and Glide 2 was taken the following weekend at the same station. So, perhaps a happy accident – if my first few experiments had failed due to poor light or focusing issues (as many other attempts have), then I might have given up early.
DEB: How does it feel knowing that you’ve made something that has become an intergoogle sensation?
GT: My favourite part has been people I know getting in touch to say they spotted it on a blog they follow, through facebook friends, or the like, rather than as a result of my own efforts at self promotion! It’s also fascinating to track its progress on Twitter and to see how different descriptions might or might not catch attention and propagate, or when it made an impact in non-English speaking communities and there’d be a flurry of comments I could only decipher with Google translate.
Elliot Bay Waterfront, by Graeme Taylor
DEB: Do you have people you look to for inspiration, or people’s work you respect or admire?
GT: I gave up on trying to compile a Flickr favourites stream, or posting photos/videos I particularly enjoyed, because I’d never have time for anything else! But generally speaking, I’m most interested in techniques that allow us to see things the human eye ordinarily wouldn’t: from compressing extended periods of time into a single picture with long-exposure pinhole to capturing slices of action with high-speed digital imaging. Any image/footage that I look at and think ‘How did they manage that?’ will impress me, whether it’s from a big name or just some random online experimenter like me.
DEB: What kit do you use?
GT: All my slow-motion work has used a Casio Exilim FH20 in 210fps mode. There are a few others in the Exilim high speed range and some are quite old, so with some shopping around it’s easy to find one at a reasonable price these days.
I also have a Canon 550D, which can do 60fps in 720p quality. With a lot more post-production than the Exilim it might be possible to push that further and still get something that feels like video rather than stop-motion, but I suspect high-end video software would cost more than the camera!
Curious Christmas Kitten, by Graeme Taylor
DEB: What was it that got you interested in photography and film-making?
GT: Looking back, even at high school I was always the guy with the camera, and hosted pictures from social events online – which in those days meant getting film developed, scanning each image, and hand-coding the site. If only I’d had the sense to invent Facebook… I kept shooting casually through undergrad, then I started taking a lot more photos as a post-grad. When I finished my PhD I made the jump to the world of dSLRs.
But whilst it’s rare that I’ll go somewhere without a still camera to hand, film-making tends to be restricted to specific projects. Still, the sudden success of the glide idea and the high-def modes on the 550D mean I’m thinking about video a lot more these days! After all, I have a few hundred subscribers awaiting a follow-up…
DEB: So what’s next, then?
GT: I have a location in mind for a glide-like film using a car rather than a train, which is complicated by my inability to drive! So the next slow-motion footage I post will likely be from this year’s Upchuck juggling convention, which is happening in February. I’m also thinking about the opposite end of the spectrum, which is time-lapse. I spent last week in New Orleans and have a few hundred photos from that to sift through. Oh, and there’s the day job to attend to as well.
Many thanks to Graeme for this interview. If anyone is interested in collaborating with Graeme on some slow-motion film work – from martial artists to scientists – let me know and I’ll put you in touch.
We’ve reviewed all sorts of editing suites here on Small Aperture: free ones, cheap ones, and not-so-cheap ones. Some won our affections whilst others left us hyper-ventilating with frustration. But they were all aimed at people who have the time, the inclination, and the skill to edit their own pictures. What if you don’t have any of these things?
What if you’re a bit like my mother? The camera only comes out on holiday or at special events. You take okay pictures that with a bit of tweaking could be good, or even really good. But honestly, you don’t know what you’re doing when it comes to editing and really, you can’t be bothered.
It’s a paid-for editing service. You upload and organise your images, and someone who does know what they’re doing crops them, fiddles with the contrast, corrects the colour, and does anything else that might make an average snap look like a decent photo. If they don’t think that an image needs any help, or if it’s beyond help, they won’t touch it and you won’t get charged. You can choose from a one-off service, which costs up to 25c a picture, or a monthly subscription that starts from 12.5c a picture.
But is it worth it?
I uploaded 11 of my photos and let my assigned editor loose on them. (And of course I gave them an edit myself, for comparison purposes.) Twenty-four hours later, when they were ready, how did things look? Well, some results surprised me, some also disappointed me, and others pleased me. I won’t take you through all 11; I’ll show you three examples.
The disappointments
Oddly, all three images that I would have sent back to be re-edited (which is free) were portraits. This one happens to be of my brother.
Original, unedited:
My brother, composing
Edited by Krome, and in my opinion over-sharpened:
Over-sharpened by Krome?
Edited by me, and sent black and white:
Josh, in black and white
The surprises
A few images came back and surprised me. They were by no means bad edits. They just weren’t how I envisaged they’d come back. If nothing else, it shows you a different creative vision. And I suppose for people who want creative control over their pictures, this is where Krome falls down, even if you can leave notes on each photo for your editor. She or he isn’t in your head. But, if creative control isn’t top of your agenda, and editing is just about having a better picture, what does it matter?
Original:
It's a dahlia. I think it looks as if it came from outer space
Edited by Krome, and far more vibrant than I expected:
Far more vibrant than I would have expected
Edited by me, and more muted:
A muted version of the alien dahlia
The thumbs-up
Some photos came back looking almost identical to my edited versions of them. I couldn’t really ask for better than that.
Original:
This is Incy Wincy. She took up residence by the dining room of the Small Aperture mansion in the autumn.
Edited by Krome:
Incy Wincy, edited by Krome
Edited by me:
Incy Wincy, me-style
The verdict?
For me, editing photos is part of the package of practising the craft of photography. Sometimes it frustrates me, sometimes it delights me, sometimes I surprise myself with it. But it is an important part of my creative enterprise, of me making my photos look as I think they should look. So Krome isn’t for me.
But, I reckon that Krome could supply a service for people who don’t really know what they’re doing with editing tools, and perhaps aren’t really that bothered, they just want their photos to look better. It’s pretty simple to use – although you do have to download a special image uploader, which struck me a little odd – and if you don’t like the edits made to a picture, you can send it back.
If you’re not convinced about people outsourcing their editing, think of this way: I pay people to do jobs that I can’t do well, or can’t be bothered doing. For some people, the job that they can’t be bothered to do, or aren’t very good at, is editing photos. So there’s Krome.
You must think that I’m somehow obsessed with astrophotography. The truth is that I’ve never had a go at it, but I do find it fascinating and I adore star-gazing. This means I did let out a small ‘Squee!’ when I saw that the largest ever colour image of the whole sky has just been released. It comprises seven million images, each one made of 125 million pixels. That’s a lot of pixels. (More than a trillion, in fact.)
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey has been compiling data using a now-retired telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico since 1998. This week, they released the humungous picture at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
Bottom left is the northern hemisphere of our galaxy; bottom right the southern hemisphere. Image: M. Blanton and SDSS-III
The image provides astronomers and astrophysicists with massive amounts of information to explore everything from yawning black holes to the tiniest stars.
To have a look at more images from the project, take a wander over here, whilst there’s a visualisation of it all on YouTube.
Tourist snaps like these are what I think of when I think digital compacts
My very first digital compact camera - back in the late 1990s - had an astonishingly powerful manual mode: You could change the ISO, the shutter speed, the aperture. These days, you're lucky if you get a compact where you get to change anything at all. On the ubiquitous Canon ELPH/IXUS cameras, you do get a 'manual' mode - but the things you are allowed control over are laughable. You can turn your flash on and off, adjust your exposure bias, and you can change your ISO. Ansel Adams is spinning in his grave as I'm typing this, I'm sure. Ladies and gentlemen: That is not manual control over your photography.
Lack of manual control - A Bad Thing
Now, you can take the most amazing photos with the simplest of cameras, including a camera as laughably simple as the Apple iPhone - Here's how, and I collected 100 examples of lovely photos, too. I firmly believe that the biggest bottle-neck to taking great photos is the photographer, not the camera. It's what I always tell my students. But, there is a whole world of photography you're missing out on with just a point-and-shoot.
For some photographers, this access to easy-picture-making-machines and the lack of manual control is a Very Bad Thing. It really bothers them. In fact, some experts even think that so much automation is actually damaging to photography as an art, a point eloquently argued by my fellow Pixiq writer Jose Antunes in his article Compact Cameras limit your creativity.
Antunes' article got me thinking. On one level, I completely see where he is coming from. The lack of manual settings on a digital camera could cause people to give up on photograpy too early: it installs a 'glass ceiling' in how far you can get with your digital photography. But on another level, I have to disagree. Let me explain.
Lack of manual control - A Good Thing?
The (sad) truth is that many people who buy compacts simply have no interest in photography as an art form: They want to take photos to stick on Facebook. To remember the festival they went to, perhaps. To have a record of their children growing up. For them, manual control isn't important. Being able to take a picture is. Honestly, I think that is fair enough.
A friend of mine recently bought his wife a compact camera. Now, my friend is an avid photographer, so he bought her a compact that he'd be happy to use. The problem is that every time he plays with its settings (i.e. leaves the ISO setting on 80 instead of 'auto', or has played with the exposure compensation), his wife is unable to take photos until he 'repairs' her camera. Some of you reading this will probably sneer in derision at my friend's wife - how can she be so stupid?
To you and me - photography nuts with a passion for the art of photography - it seems obscene that a camera should 'stop working' over something as trivial as an ISO setting that's set too high or too low. We might take a photo or two with the wrong settings (we've all been there), but then we'd figure out something was awry, and we'd set it right. However, not every person using a camera is a photography nerd like you and me.
The dark art of product design
Product design is a complicated dark art. The main problem is that, in the past, engineers were building cameras that they would like to use, ignoring the fact that photography is no longer an enclave reserved to us photo nerds. As I'm sitting here right now, I can't think of a single person I know who doesn't have a digital camera - but I guarantee that not a lot of them call themselves 'photographers' - and that is where the key difference comes in, I believe.
There is an amazing book written by Donald Norman, called the Design of Everyday Things. It was first published many years ago - well before digital cameras started surfacing - but Norman has a great idea at the core of his book: User-centred design. Norman has a lot of very good ideas, but the key point he keeps coming back to is that a product designer is designing something for his or her users. If the users are doing something wrong (or even: If the product is designed in such a way that the users are able to do something wrong), the product is not designed well enough.
I am an avid motorcyclist and a bit of a car nut, but my approach to both cars and motorcycles comes from two sides: My every-day car must start. Every time. It has to be able to keep running until it runs out of fuel. That's the level of maintenance I want, because honestly, that's what my everyday car is for: Bringing me where I need to go. Give me a Honda or a Toyota with bullet-proof reliability any day. At the same time, I have a passion for motoring. One of my favourite cars ever was an original Mini Cooper 1275cc - and it was so simple that I could take it apart and put it back together again myself - but nobody else was able to drive it because it had so many quirks.
If the automotive simile doesn't flow your boat, think about computers: About 10 years ago, you needed to know a lot about computers to be able to do anything. These days you can buy laptop computers that are so easy to use that even my grandmother can connect to the internet. But if you really want to get persnickety, there's always Linux...
I'm starting to think that a lot of us photographers are 'Mini drivers' or 'Linux users'. We love being able to 'get under the hood', and we are perfectly happy with the fact that our cars might not work properly unless you have set the carburettor just right. We're comfortable with the fact that, if you drive through a big enough puddle, that the engine will stall. "You shouldn't have driven through that big a puddle, then, shouldn't you?" Or - in photography speak - You shouldn't have set your camera to 'M' and started fiddling with the shutter speeds. Of course you can't take pictures indoors at 1/2000 second shutter speed and ISO 100. Du'h!
But every time I hear that argument, I can't help but feel a little bit sad. There is a huge number of people out there who don't give two hoots about ISO. They just want a car that starts the first time, every time. Not only do they don't know how it works: They don't care.
In a way, it's great that camera manufacturers are cranking out compact cameras that are 'dumb'. From a product point of view, there is something wrong with a product that gives people a load of buttons they don't want, need, or know what to do with.
Being spoiled for choice is a good thing
Aspiring creative photographers have never had it this good. You can buy the Canon Powershot S95, a sub-compact camera with full manual controls, RAW file formats, and a nice, bright lens. You can buy slightly larger cameras like the Canon G12 that have all that, with even better lenses and the ability to use external flashguns. Entry-level dSLR cameras are higher quality and lower priced than ever before. The hybrid cameras that fall between the G12 and the SLR models are on their way.
For all those people who want to take photos to stick on Facebook, to remember the festival they went to, and to have a record of their children growing up, there are basic entry-level compacts that just take pictures. And why shouldn't they have the best possible tools to take impressive photos at the press of a button? If for no other reason, it'll mean that I'll get fewer daft phonecalls from people like my friend's wife whose camera 'isn't working' because the settings have been altered so I can spend more time teaching people who really are interested in photography.
I know where all of our time is better spent.
A huge thanks to Daniela Bowker of Small Aperture fame for helping articulate some of the finer points in this article.
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Getty Images launched a brand new version of photos.com today. It might’ve been going since 2003, but the big bosses decided that it needed a bit of an overhaul. There are now 2.5 million royalty-free images available for download on the site. So that’s just a few, then.
The target market is very much small businesses and individuals, and it caters to those who might need to lay their hands on an image in a hurry and not have to sell a kidney to pay for it. You can pay to download a single image, or a bundle of five, 10, 25, or 50 images over the course of a year. The larger the bundle, the cheaper each image. (A single image for print purposes costs £4.99, whereas one image works out at £1.80 if you buy a bundle of 50. The US equivalents are $7.99 and $2.70.)
Or there’s a subscription plan. Pay £649 (US$988) and be able to download 100 images every week for a year; £199 (US$299) covers three months and it’s £369 (US$549) for six months. The plans are tailored to a whole heap of different countries, too.
I can see this being heaven-sent for students completing their dissertations or small businesses looking for imagery to put in their marketing literature. Yeah, I had a poke about, which is ludicrously easy, and they had some suitably obscure pictures as well as less brain-wrackingly odd ones, from autoclaves to the Eiffel Tower.
Camera announcements at the Consumer Electronics Show are usually focused on developments in the world of compact cameras, and this year has been no exception. So amongst FujiFilm’s unveiling of 16 cameras, Polaroid’s live webcast announcement that featured Lady Gaga, and Sony pushing its make.believe concept (yes, it really is pronounced make dot believe), what were the photographic highlights of 2011?
I’ll start with Olympus. They unveiled a clutch of new cameras, but topping the list were probably the XZ-1 and the E-PL2. The XZ-1 looks every bit as if it means to take on Canon’s S95 at the high end of the compact camera market, with its sleek, neat body, pop-up flash, and control ring. Oh, and its 28-112mm lens with 4x optical zoom and 10 megapixels of resolution, RAW capability and movie mode gives it a similar spec. Will it compete?
Olympus XZ-1, giving the Canon S95 a run for its money?
The E-PL2 is an upgrade on the E-PL1, with faster shutter speeds, increased ISO range, an increased exposure bracketing range, and not forgetting its 22 different scene modes, as opposed to 19 in the E-PL1. It also has a Live Wheel, for controlling key functions. It’s looking like a fairly fearsome mirrorless offering.
Olympus E-PL2, an upgrade on the E-PL1
Casio’s Tryx is the camera equivalent of a contortionist. It sits in a frame, but can pop out of it and rotate, whilst the LCD touchscreen is on a swivel, too. It means that you can shoot left-handed, right-handed, or no-handed. Kinda useful, I suppose.
Canon didn’t release a whole lot, but what they did bring back was the optical viewfinder on a compact camera. You’ll find one on the PowerShot A1200. A while back I was talking to the audio visual team in a leading UK department store, who said that people frequently asked for an optical viewfinder on a compact camera and left disappointed. It seems as if Canon might’ve been listening.
Fuji let loose 16 different cameras in one go, from a 30x optical zoom-enabled bridge camera, to an upgraded Z70, which is now the Z90, and rugged go-anywhere, throw-anywhere, drop-anywhere camera. Take a look at Gareth’s low-down on that lot.
Sony did the unthinkable and put 3D cameras on the open market, which leaves me shuddering, quite frankly.
The TX10, one of five 3D-capable cameras from Sony. Also available in shades other than urine yellow.
And there was Polaroid and Lady Gaga, with their camera-sunglasses, digital instamatic, and portable bluetooth-equipped printer. The printer could prove useful, but I get the feeling the rest are just fashion statements for Lady Gaga fans.
Polaroid's GL20 sunglasses, for space invaders
So what’s the verdict on CES 2011? If you ask me, quite a lot of quirk but not a lot of substance. There’s nothing that has made me go ‘Wow!’ and nothing that has left me drooling in a state of envy, desperately trying to prise my credit card from my wallet. What the rest of 2011 holds, who knows. But for now, my bank manager is feeling relieved.
Most popular in 2010 I know I already did my 'best photos of 2010' (and there's also the "best picture by the Small Aperture crew" post), but I figured I'd also share with you what the most popular posts in the past year have been - if popularity is anything to go by, make sure you haven't missed these posts...
I admit it, I was intrigued. I couldn’t resist having a look at Polaroid’s live stream from CES, to see what they and Lady Gaga had up their sleeves. (By the way, Lady Gaga didn’t look as outlandish as you might’ve anticipated. She was in all black. Admittedly her skirt was floor-length and she was wearing a veil, but she wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Victorian high street. Except maybe for the bleached-blonde hair with pink bits.) Right, you weren’t here for a fashion commentary. Onward to the announcement.
First of all came the sunglasses. Sunglasses that can capture images and store them, or share them by the miracle of technology in real time. I said that I wasn’t here to talk about fashion, but how can I ignore it in this instance? As they look right now, I shan’t be buying them in a hurry. If I were to wear them someone might mistake me for an extra from a low-budget sci-fi film. That can’t be a good look.
GL20 sunglasses, for space invaders
The instant mobile printer will be available from May this year costing around US$150. The idea behind it is to be able to print off your pictures from your mobile phone, which you send to the printer by Bluetooth. (But at the moment it isn’t iPhone compatible. They might be missing a trick here.) It also prints from computer via USB cable, or direct from any Pictbrdge-enabled camera.
Polaroid GL10 instant printer
Finally, the instamatic camera meets the digital age. It’s a classic Polaroid camera, but being all digital, it allows you to select from an LCD swivel screen the images that you want to print in 3×4 inch format. It’s a pretty big, retro-looking beast. It’s definitely Polaroid.
Polaroid GL30 instant digital camera
Was it worth staying up for the announcement? Ehm. Well, I was up anyway. I don’t anticipate any of it changing my life, or yours for that matter. Still, it did make me giggle to see Polaroid giving free publicity to Canon. Their booths are next to each other at CES, and a few panning shots emblazoned Canon logos across the screen.
It might not be as impressive as the 16 new cameras that FujiFilm unleashed at CES, but Sony has brought 11 new cameras to the party, along with three Bloggie cameras, and not forgetting its range of TVs, computers, and BluRay players. That’s quite a bit of shininess that they’re hoping will tempt us to part with some, okay, quite a lot, of our hard-earned pennies. Shall we see how tempting it all is?
Starting things off are the three new cameras in the W-series: W510, W530, and W570. They’re designed to be lightweight and easy-to-use, with intelligent automode and an in-camera guide to help the user along. They’ve also Sony’s new Sweep Panorama technology, which all the new cameras have. It creates a panorama by automatically stitching together a series of images made by holding down the shutter and sweeping the camera across the scene.
Sony Cyber-shot W570
Next up is the new T110. The swish-looking one. It has a 16 megapixel sensor, can take 720p HD movies, and has a touch screen.
T110
Onwards to the H70. It has the same 16 megapixel sensor and movie-making capabilities as the T110, but it also has a 25mm wide angle lens with a 10x optical zoom.
H70
And then there’s the J10. It also has a 16 megapixel sensor (enough with the megapixels already?), but it’s piece-de-resistence is its integral USB arm that is stowed away inside the camera. How cute!
Sony Cyber-shot J10 with a retractable USB cable.
Then, heaven help us, come the cameras with 3D capability. I know, you can hear me groaning. There are five of them available: DSC-TX100V, DSC-TX10, DSC-HX7V, DSC-WX10 and DSC-WX7. Whoever decided on that naming convention needs some help, but perhaps not as much as my eyes will. Yep, five cameras that can take 3D stills at 16 megapixel resolution.
The TX10, one of five 3D-capable cameras from Sony
This is my Tech Editor face. If you see it, you're in trouble.
I am quite in demand as a technical editor for photography books, as you can see from the list of books I have listed on my 'company' web site, But what does a tech editor do? And what is the difference between a good and a bad tech editor?
When the books I wrote went through the technical editor mill, I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed - Sure, I was incredibly grateful for getting feedback on my writing, but the 'feedback' was limited to only actual technical errors. I figured 'damn, here's a fantastic opportunity to get some insights from a fellow photography author, but all I am getting is "This picture appears to be taken with a larger aperture than indicated. Please confirm".
When that happened, I figured that I could do a better job than that, and contacted my publishers to see if I could help out. It turns out it isn't very well paid - I mean, the pay isn't horrible, but it's nowhere near my normal freelance / consulting rates. So why do I bother?
What I get out of technical editing
Between you and me, I get a lot more out of tech editing than just the money. It is exciting to be involved in the production of new books, for one thing. It is also very interesting to see manuscripts in their raw form, and to realise that authors differ wildly in lots of different ways. Some authors write their books very tightly integrated (i.e. the photos illustrating points are key to each individual chapter, and it seems as if the chapters are written around a set of illustration images), others are less integrated.
Some authors can barely string a sentence together (which is fine - that's where the copy-editors come in. The important part is the content, after all), whilst others deliver flowing prose that verges on poetry. And, as you might imagine, there are a lot of people that are teetering somewhere in-between. I'm quite happy to admit that I've learned a lot from tech-editing other author's books - and there can be little doubt about that I'm a better writer for it myself.
Of course, I also get the fuzzy feeling of knowing that someone else's book is a tiny little bit more accurate, more complete, and a smidgeon better because I was involved.
What does the technical editor add to the manuscript?
I can only speak about what I do myself, really, but it's a pretty thorough process:
Check all factual information in the manuscript - That includes names mentioned (Is it the right person? Is their name spelled correctly?), dates listed (do the dates make sense? Do they match the EXIF data of the images being used as examples?), any photographic equipment used (are they still on sale? Does the equipment do what the author claims it does?), etc.
Look at every photo in detail, at 100% magnification - Are they sharp and in focus? Do they need further post-processing to look good in print? Is the white balance correct? How do the images look in context with other photos in the same chapter?
Check the EXIF data of every image - You'd be amazed how easy it is to get the camera data muddled up in captions: A 1/160 second shutter speed turns into a 1/60 second shutter speed, for example, or the author writes that they were shooting wide-open with a 17mm lens whilst the EXIF data seems to think we are talking about different equipment. It isn't the end of the world, of course, but if a publisher is going to go through the trouble of hiring a technical editor, we may as well get it perfect - especially if people are going to try to use the exposure settings as starting points for their own photographs.
Query any inconsistencies - Some times, you look at a photo and think "There is no way this image was taken in the way the photographer says". Perhaps the lighting is off; maybe there's some reflection that shows that they used another piece of equipment, etc.
Finally, I will go through and see if I can think of any key pieces of information or advice that have been missed out. Do I know of any great tips, alternative ways of doing things, or faster methods to accomplish the same result? If so, it goes into my tech editing notes.
What happens with the tech editing notes?
The tech editor's notes go back to the author of the book - who then gets to decide whether to do anything with the advice. Some times, they might decide to rewrite a section, they may just update the text or caption based on my comments - or they might decide that they disagree with my comments, and simply move along and leave it as-is.
Not changing anything based on the technical editor's comments or suggestions is okay, of course - the author is the boss. Personally, I find that sometimes the technical editor has misunderstood my point, that there wasn't a factual issue, but that the explanation was too poor, and that that led to confusion.
So how can I hire a tech editor?
There are a lot of good photography tech editors out there, and a quick google search should help you on your way. Or you could just point your browser at my site, and see if I can't help you out, of course :)
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
Lady Gaga, debatable style icon and Twitter Queen, together with iconic manufacturers of instamatic cameras, Polaroid, are up to something. What, it isn’t quite certain, except that it’s called Grey Label. Honestly, you’d think that they’d settle on a slightly more inspiring or exciting name than that, wouldn’t you? It’s hardly as if Lady Gaga isn’t on the spectacular side of spectacular, is it?
Anyway. Come 15:30 PST (that’s 18:30 EST and 23:30 GMT) today, all will be revealed on a live webcast from CES. Whether you’re a closet Lady Gaga fan who hangs on her every word and fashion-forward move or just fancy having an oggle, you can do so by logging on to the Polaroid website. You might even find out what this whole Grey Label business is, too.
I might manage to stay awake to have a peek, as well. Just.
Seeing as we have just revealed the winner of our December photo competition, it makes it time to announce the details of the January competition. We’ve had a lot of black and white entries over the past few months. It’s hardly surprising, given the themes were disposed to black and white, so this month we thought that we’d go for all out colour. But this is colour with a twist.
We want a picture that is dominated by one shade. It doesn’t matter which particular colour you choose, but the image should be about that colour; a riot of red, a preponderance of purple, a glut of green. (If you’re not quite sure what I mean, the picture illustrating this post should give you an idea.)
You’ve from today (Wednesday 5 January 2011) until Wednesday 26 January 2011 to submit your entries to the Small Aperture Flickr pool. And yes, we’ve a delicious photo book lined up for the talented winner.
For your reference, I’ve reproduced the rules. But go forth, take beautiful photos, and good luck!
The Rules
If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.
Christmas might’ve been and gone, and New Year possibly passed in a haze, but there is yet more celebrating to be done as we announce the winner of our December photo competition. Throughout December, we were looking for a portrait that made us go ‘Ooh!’ You rose to the challenge admirably, and as the entries began to roll in, we began to wonder how we would ever choose a winner.
I’m not sure that either of us has recovered yet from the exertion that was required in judging. There was a lot of uhm-ing, ahh-ing, and ooh-ing. We did, however, manage to select a winning photograph.
Untitled, by Patrick Lecuyer
Many congratulations! It was the eyes that did it for me. Please do get in touch with me Patrick so that I can arrange delivery of your prize.
Please do take a look at all the entries, which are here, and we look forward to lots of entries in January’s competition, which we’ll announce shortly.
As I walked in the door this evening, I was met with the effusive strains of my brother telling me that I just had to look at these pictures. He’d been watching Stargazing Live on the BBC, you see. The pictures in question are the rather excellent shots taken by the Herschel and XMM-Newton space telescopes, which show the birth and death of stars in the galaxy next door to ours, Andromeda.
Herschel captures images of all things cold, such as gas and dust, which gather when stars form. It’s an infrared sensor.
XMM-Newton, on the other hand, captures x-rays of things that are hot. So its shots are of stars as they meet their fiery ends.
Combine the two sets of images and you have a glorious composite picture of the life cycle of stars in a galaxy.
At 3.5 metres in diameter (that’s two-and-bit of me), the mirror in the Herschel observatory is the largest ever sent into space. And in this case, the resolution really is crucial. Without its monstrous size, it wouldn’t be able to capture long wavelength light, or far-infrared. The human eye alone can’t detect it. Without the mirror, we wouldn’t be able to see the infrared images of the galaxy so clearly.
And they’re pretty stunning.
(Pictures from European Space Agency via BBC, and headsup to my brother, of course.)
Have you ever noticed how you learn a lot faster when you're under some serious peer pressure? Wouldn't it be great if, when you've decided to learn a new photography technique, your social network on Facebook ramps up and tries their best to help you reach your goals?
My good friend Laurie has done just that. Combine it with the tips from my Breaking Photographer's Block article, and you're destined to learn faster than a kid the first day at school.
The trick behind HabitualApp is that you set yourself a goal: Do something for 30 days on the trot. If you miss a day, you go back to 'start', until what you are trying to do becomes part of your life - whether it is exercising every day, keeping your to-do list items low, or remembering to take a photo every day, it can help you along. Check it out on HabitualApp.
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
The lovely Philip Bloom has a super-powerful HP laptop up for grabs, going to the young and talented film-maker who rises to the challenge he’s just posted – in a video, of course – on his blog.
You need to be under 18 and you have to have a passion for film-making. More than that, you have to express your passion for film-making, and why you deserve to be the new owner of the HP EliteBook, in a video. Well, Philip is one of the leading dSLR film-makers, so what did you expect?
Entries need to be posted to the competition’s Vimeo group by 22 January 2011, after when they’ll be judged by Philip and a panel of, ehm, judges.
A realy fun photo shoot outside a public swimming pool
One of the great things about a new year is that it gives you a bit of time to breathe and consider what has happened over the past 12 months. Myself, I like going back over the photos I've taken over the past year, and have a look at what I've learned.
I'm just going to throw this gallery out there - have a poke around (and follow me on Flickr if you're interested in keeping up to scratch with what I'm up to, photographically), and have a dip into your own archives. Who knows what lovely memories it brings up!
Stay awesome, keep snapping, and have a well-exposed 2011!
~ Haje
Do you enjoy a smattering of random photography links? Well, squire, I welcome thee to join me on Twitter - Follow @Photocritic
