Get terrific with two-tone for July's competition

Green and red! (Picture by Haje)

Okey-dokey! It's July. We've been wracking our brains for a competition theme that'll get you thinking and taking photos. So after a bit of this and a bit of that, we decided that two-tone was the way to go. We want photos that feature two colours. Red and green, blue and orange, yellow and purple... Any shades, any tints, but two hues. (And black and white don't count.)

The competition runs from today, Thursday 5 July, until Thursday 26 July. As ever, it's one entry per person, and the person whose image captivates us the most will win for her or himself a gorgeous 12 inch Fracture.

All your beautiful pictures need to be placed in the Small Aperture Flickr pool. I'm always happy to answer any questions, ping me an email (it's over there →) or leave a comment. Otherwise, good luck! (And justincase, The Rules have been reproduced for you.)

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• 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 Pixiq.
• 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.

If you've any questions, please just ask!

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Fabulously fun – our June photo competition winner

Tana Gandhi's Fun!

June's competition theme was fun. We were in search of photos that evoked a sense of playfulness and enjoyment. Lots of the entries featured children–given that they are the aficionados of fun, it was hardly surprising–and water was also a prominent theme. But when it came to selecting our winner one entry leapt out a mile and raised huge grins. For us, it was the perfect representation of fun.

Many congratulations to Tana Gandhi for her composition simply called Fun! You absolutely nailed it, Tana, with those wonderful colours, the balloons rising upwards, and its overall sense of positivity. You've won a 12 inch Fracture.

I'll be putting up the theme for July's competition within hours, so look out for that. Meanwhile, thank you all for entering!

An itty-bitty problem with the itty-bitty Canon S100

Canon's S100: gorgeous and very capable, but some models currently have a sticking point

It's not exactly ideal when the retractable lens of your compact camera stops retracting and is left fully extended if it gets a bit too hot or sticky outside. Unfortunately this is the precise scenario that's been afflicting a handful of Canon S100s. Apparently an internal connection fails in some of the cameras if the temperature or humidity levels get too high.

I can't see that happening in these parts right now, it's just too cold. But it'd be a different matter entirely in Florida.

It's only cameras with serial numbers that begin with the digits 29 through to 41 that are affected. (So the serial number would read 29xxxxxxxxxx, or 35xxxxxxxxxx, or 41xxxxxxxxxx, for example.) Canon is offering a free repair if yours happens to be one of the unfortunate ones. It doesn't matter if it's out of warranty, and there are rumours of refunds if you had it repaired independently, too.

Get in touch with Canon Customer Support wherever you are, and they'll help you out if you have an affected camera.

HDR: Making impossible shots possible

If you've ever been faced with photography situations with extreme contrasts, you know that basically, you're out of luck. Say, for example, you are taking a photo out of the door of a building.

You have to make a hard choice; are you going to expose for the outdoors? If so, you end up with something like this:

... And your indoors are completely useless and dark.

Alternatively, you can decide to expose for the light inside the building:

But clearly, that's hardly going to do much good either.

The solution is HDR photography, where you combine a series of exposures:

Into one single exposure:

Okay, so I'm more than happy to admit that this quick example (shot with the Triggertrap Mobile Long Exposure HDR mode using my iPhone to control my Canon EOS 550D - that was what I was testing when I did this one) is hardly the finest example of creative HDR ever created - in fact, it's a distinctly rubbish picture. Nonetheless, it reminded me how powerful HDR can be, and how it completely changes the game for what is possible in photography.

Time for a week-end project?

So, If you've never given it a go before, make it your week-end project: You can easily do a manual HDR set by changing the settings on your camera between each shot; or use the Automatic Bracketing feature built into most cameras to get a 3-shot bracketed set.

And if that isn't enough for you (for example, if you're instead itching to do a 13-exposure HDR for some crazy reason), there are automated solutions that'll do the exposures for you, including Triggertrap Mobile or Promote.

For an in-depth guide on HDR photography, check out the Pixiq Ultimate Guide to HDR Photography!

Nutty Photo Project: Locks on Toilets

For the past five years or so (with variable amounts of passion – usually low-level, when-I-can-be-bothered. When I bought an iPhone, more often), I’ve been doing an odd little photography projects titled ‘Locks on Toilets’. What is it? Well, it does precisely what it says on the tin: It’s a relatively large collection of photographs of devices that lock the toilet door so nobody can barge in on you while you’re attending to your business.

It’s an odd little project, which I came up with when I was hideously drunk one night – like all great ideas, in other words, and I just sort of continued doing it. Of course, it’s a lot more fun if it’s a collaborative project, so I hereby invite you to join in the slightly odd fun…  

So, what is this all about?

I could spin you a line about how the one thing that all humans have in common is the need to relieve themselves, and how that’s a beautiful thing. Of course, it’d be a complete load of shite (if you’ll forgive my contextually-appropriate french).

Thing is, I don’t have any idea why I’m running this project – I just know I’m having fun doing something that’s so completely and utterly pointless that it becomes awesome.

Show me some examples!

Well of course I will:

Train

Boeing 777 somewhere over Russia

Locked with a padlock!

London Paddington

Portmellon, Cornwall

The no-lock lock in a pub in Bath

Puzzlewood in Forest of Dean

How can I get involved?

First off, you may wish to join the Locks on Toilets group on Flickr – there’s currently nearly 450 entries there, but there’s always space for more! In the group, look at some of the submissions, and submit your own if you fancy it. The group will accept any and all submissions, but it’s cool if you, in the title, add the name and place of the establishment, and it’s cooler than a penguin’s plums if you also geo-tag the photos, so I can eventually do a mash-up plotting all the photos on a map.

Now, I can totally understand if you can’t be bothered using your main pride-and-joy flickr account to do this – I don’t do that either. My main account on Flickr – Photocritic – I keep for stuff I’m actually proud of in some capacity, and I use my alternate account – isharq for stuff which I’m not too fussed about, including this account, so if you fancy it, you can set up a second account.

Go on, it’s all just a bit of fun!

Tell me about your nutty projects

I’ve written about other weird projects before, but I’m curious… What floats your boat?

Have you got any crazy ideas / projects / things you do when you think photography is in danger of getting just a little bit too serious? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear about ‘em!

Hardware hacking: Fixing your X100 charger

Without the easy-to-lose piece of plastic, your FujiFilm charger is useless. Let's go DIY on its ass...

I've had a FujiFilm X100 for a while now, and I still don't completely know how I am getting on with it. Sure, I have taken some rather fabulous photos with it, like these ones:

The FujiFilm X100 battery charger problem

But it is not without its niggles. One of the small but incredibly annoying problems with the X100 is that the battery doesn't fit in the battery charger that comes with it. I know, it sounds completely inane, but it's true: To use the X100's battery in the charger, you have to use a tiny piece of plastic in the charger. Without it, the battery fails to make a connection, and won't charge properly. FujiFilm, if you're reading this: That was a complete bonehead move, and you really ought to be ashamed of yourself.

However, as a DIY photographer, I figured this was my chance to make my own life better. I lost the little piece of plastic nearly immediately, and was using toothpicks to hold the battery in place, but when my good friend Sarah told me about Sugru (by the way, Sugru, if you are reading this you should totally hire Sarah. She is awesome. Also, if you aren't reading this, then you obviously need a new community manager. Which brings me back to my original point: Hire Sarah.), I immediately saw a great use for it: Finally, a way of fixing my X100 charger, permanently and once and for all.

Let's get busy!

So here, offered as a deliciously simply to follow step by step guide: How to fix your FujiFilm x100 charger, by the power of Sugru:

1) Make sure you clean your charger properly; The Sugru is pretty hardy stuff, but if it's dusty or greasy, you're going to get less of a bond:

2) Take two small balls of Sugru (this was about 1/8th of a 5g packet of Sugru - or a grand total of £0.17 / $0.26 worth), and shape them into, er, balls.

3) Insert the battery into the charger, to make an imprint into the Sugru. Push it into the Sugru ever so slightly, and then remove the battery. The material will keep the shape you've just made, and harden over the next 24 hours.

4) Use a wet finger to gently brush off any excess material. Sure, this is an optional step, but if you're going to hack your own camera equipment, you may as well make it look reasonably good.

5) re-insert the battery to make sure it still fits properly, then remove it again

6) Leave it to harden for 24 hours

Congratulations! You've spent pennies on fixing a problem that FujiFilm really should have done right in the first place. More importantly, you can now use your well-earned bragging rights down in the pub, telling everyone that you've improved a piece of your own photography gear!

Pentax invites you to Meet Britain

Reggie Yates encourages you to Meet Britain on behalf of Pentax

Pentax UK wants to know: what makes Britain great? It's inviting people to submit images reflecting what they believe is iconic about the UK. It doesn't necessarily make Britain great, but the rain is definitely iconic. You could get plenty of photos of that. There are five categories for submissions: celebrations (in the rain), summer holidays (and that would be which summer, precisely?), friends and family (soggy), Great British culture (damp), and the Great British outdoors (flooded).

Encouraging people to get on board with this quest for icons are singer and actress Sarah Harding and DJ and TV presenter Reggie Yates. They'll be submitting their own sets of images conveying what they think is great about Britain.

For anyone who wants to enter, you do so via the Meet Britain app on the Pentax UK Facebook page, until 3 September 2012.

If your entry is judged the best in its category, you'll win a shiny new weather-sealed Pentax K-30, perfect for the climate. The person who's talented enough to be judged the over all winner will pick up £1,000, too.

Worth a try, hey?

Copyright Infringement: Ignorance is no excuse.

"Hey", I see you think. "That Copyright Notice Looks Familiar..."

This morning, I caught a blogger who rather brazenly had 'borrowed' some of my articles. It isn't the first time this has happened, of course, but in this particular instance, I was particularly insulted; the blogger in question was running a thriving photography business, and had happily stuck his own copyright notice on my article.

This is part 4 in my series of articles about copyright. If you want to start at the beginning, start with What is copyright, and how do infringements harm you, then skip along to Protecting your copyright in a digital world. If you can still stand more of this sort of thing, part three in the series is Just because it's in my RSS feed, doesn’t mean you get to steal it.

Got all that? Great - let's continue with part 4 then...

In this particular case, it was even more impressive than usual - this particular blogger has a whole section on their website on copyright, which includes choice phrases like "All information and material posted on this Website are subject to copyrights" and "use (...) is expressly prohibited, unless prior written permission has been granted."

In quite a few of the recent cases of infringement I've dealt with, the 'defence' has been "I didn't know it was not allowed", or "This is for my own personal use only". I've got to say, I do feel a little bit bad about going in all guns-a-blazing, when I'm met with 'I didn't know'. On the other hand, that's not really how things work. If you are driving a car, you are expected to keep on top of changes in traffic law. If you're a doctor, you're expected to keep an eye out for which drugs you can prescribe for something. If you're a sailor, you have to learn the laws of the water. If you're in advertising, there are certain things you can't say or do to promote your product. If you're a teacher... If you're a football player... You see where I'm going with this.

As a blogger, you are a publisher.

What many people don't seem to understand fully, is that blogging is publishing. Sure, it might be that hardly anybody reads your blog. It's possible that you have your site mostly for your own use only. And it is very, very easy to remove or edit a piece of writing from a blog if anybody takes offence. Nonetheless; the activity of making something publicly available on a web site is still publishing; as the site's publisher, you're responsible for all and any content that goes live on the site.

If you're a publisher, you are liable for any laws you break in the course of your publishing activities. Including copyright infringement.

There are some edge cases here, of course. For example; a forum owner technically 'publishes' all content on a forum, but isn't necessarily legally responsible for everything posted by their members. However; if a member is consistently posting copies of articles to the forum, they might still be on rocky ground. There is at least one large forum run by police-officers, for example, that flaunts copyright law as if there is no tomorrow... Which doesn't mean that that particular forum couldn't get a particularly nasty surprise at some point in the future.

Ignorance is no excuse

The point is; if you participate in any activity, you're expected to know the laws and rules relevant to the activity you're participating in. If you don't, then - I hate to say this - tough luck. Ignorance is no excuse.

It is a shame, really; to drive a car, you have to take a licence; if you buy a house, you have to take some legal advice. On the internet, however, nobody tells you what is appropriate behaviour - and what isn't. It's extremely easy to pirate music (in fact, the embarrassing truth is that it only very recently became as easy to buy as to pirate music online - and services like Rhapsody, Spotify, Pandora and iTunes have a lot to do with that), it's still often easier to obtain movies without paying for them than to get them legally, and if you run a blog, it's very simple to get a lot of high quality content by simply taking it from other websites - like this one.

I've had enough of it, though. I'm not spending most of my life creating content that I think people will like, just to have someone else nick it and publish it on their own websites. If that's you, then the next time I find you, expect an invoice in the post.

Because ignorance is no excuse.

Disclaimer

I have rudimentary legal training in UK media law, but my training is several years old, and you’d be insane to take legal advice from some random bloke off the internet anyway. Nothing in this post is meant as actual legal advice – talk to your solicitor, that’s what they are there for!

Further Reading

This is part of a 4-story series:

1. What is copyright, and how do infringements harm you?
2. Protecting your copyright in a Digital World
3. Just because it's in my RSS feed, doesn't mean you get to steal it
4. Ignorance is no excuse

In addition, you might enjoy Police Fail: Copyright, what is that? and Even Schools Don't Care About Copyright...

How to keep your photos safe: Backup routines!

As photographers, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to take the most beautiful photos ever. Do you spend enough time keeping them safe?

How often do you back up your photos? If you have to think for more than a fraction of a second to answer that question, the real answer is 'not often enough'

There are a few important steps to creating a backup strategy.

Choose what to back up

This is the easiest bit. Think about this: What do you want to back up? The answer, here, is probably either 'my photos', or 'my photos and lots of other stuff'.

I do both - but I go out of my way to take better, more frequent, and more redundant backups of my photos, because they're more valuable and important to me.

Choose how to back it up

Automatic back-up at home - Until recently, I was using an Apple Time Capsule; but I've had two of the damn things fail on me within a year (and I've written a separate rant about that elsewhere). So I've upgraded to a Drobo FS instead (Amazon US / UK) - Firewire 800 and fully-redundant RAID means that even if one of the drives kick the bucket, I don't lose any of my precious files.

Along the same trait is Automatic back-up over the internet - In addition to my Drobo, I use a service called Mozy, which is an online backup service (for more about why, see 'store the backup' below). It's pretty clever, actually, for about $5 per month you get unlimited storage, and it takes backups in the background, all over the internet. By having your back-ups off-site, your stuff is still safe even if someone steals everything in your house, there is a fire, or similar horribleness. I signed up for a 2-year subscription, set it up, and haven't looked at it since (apart from checking if it's still backing up every now and then. It is. I'm impressed.)

If you don't like Mozy - or if you're looking beyond just backups - there's always Dropbox, which is a bloody good solution, too; very well integrated, includes some clever sharing features, and is tightly integrated with your computer OS - you can even use it to keep folders synced between your different computers, and they have a clever online file browser, too.

Right: That's 50,000 photographs just waiting to be destroyed because someone opened the hard drive enclosure to take a photo...

Consider RAID...

... Over a network: RAID solutions can work in many different ways - you can do them over a network (Check out 'Network Attached Storage' on Amazon (.co.uk or .com)).

... Hooked up directly to your PC or Mac: As far as stand-alone RAID goes, you can buy ready-built solutions (Like the G-Tech G-Raid 3TB FireWire 800 / Hi-Speed USB solution available from Amazon.com, or the WD MyBook 2GB solution from Amazon.co.uk) - but there are loads of other options available, too.

If you're feeling thrifty and a bit DIY-tastic, you can build your own RAID solution by getting two big harddisks. I'm rather fond of Western Digital Caviar Green drives; they are reliable, quiet, and cheap-tastic: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com. In addition, you'll need an enclosure. The Drobo seems to be the gold standard, but you don't have to spend that much money; Look for Firewire 800 enclosures if your computer supports it - if not, USB2 or FireWire should do the trick.

Check your backup integrity

I was kicking myself when I thought I might have lost this photo - turns out that I did have a backup of it, despite deleting the folder by accident. Phew! Click for bigger version on Flickr

Remember that you have to be sure that what you are backing up is actually working: There's no good in taking a backup of a corrupted file. Obviously, you can't check every file for integrity every time, but what you can do is to ensure that you keep older backups, too.

Only recently, I discovered that I had deleted a folder of pictures by accident several months ago. If I had only kept a recent snapshot of my pictures folder (as it were, pun fully intended), I'd have been buggered. Luckily (or rather: due to having a sane backup strategy), I was able to dig out an older backup of my photos folder, which still contained the deleted folder, and I was able to restore my photos. Phew!

For important shoots, I immediately burn them to DVD - that way, I know I have a backup somewhere which isn't being touched.

Think about where you store your backups

Okay, so perhaps this bank vault is a bit over-kill, but if your photos are valuable to you (say, if you're a commercial photographer, or if you can't stand the thought of losing them), you might want to consider renting a deposit box, and keep a backup of your photos on an external harddrive there. You only need a tiny bank box, so it shouldn't cost the world.

It's important to think about how you are storing your backups. Remember that you're backing up for all sorts of reasons: If your computer breaks, and external harddrive is handy. But what if someone breaks into your house? It's no good having a full set of backups on external harddrives if the thieves can just take them with them, too. House fires, floods, etc - there are lots of reasons why keeping your backups in your house is a good idea (they're easily available), but there are risks, too.

If you do have to keep your backup harddrive in your house, you can't do much better than ioSafe's brand new Solo G3 backup solutions. They are fire and water-proof (so likely to survive a house fire, and subsequent fire department rescue operation. They aren't exactly good for travelling (the unit sitting under my desk weighs approximately a billion tonnes), but the flipside of that is that they're also practically bullet-proof. In the beforementioned housefire, that's a very good thing: If you can find your ioSafe Solo in the remaining rubble, it's probably there, hugging your data gently.

Personally, I keep the harddrive connected to the network hidden away in the attic. That way, a casual thief is unlikely to run off with it, so even if my computer is stolen, I don't lose my photos.

In addition, I keep a backup on an external drive which I leave at my parent's house - it's low-tech, and the backups are generally about 2 months old every time I swap the drive over, but it's better than not having it handy.

Finally, I have the Mozy backups - although they would be a pain int he arse to restore: I'd have to download hundreds of GB of data. There's an alternative way, too: ordering DVDs or an external harddrive with your data, but that, too, is a pain... In short, Mozy is my absolute last resort.

And finally... Try recovering the backup

The best thing that might happen to you is that you go your entire life without ever having to restore a back-up. Nonetheless, it is an extremely good idea to try it anyway.

If you're unable to restore your backups (perhaps there's a problem with the backups? Maybe the restore feature of your favourite backup package isn't working?), you may as well not bother with the hassle of backups at all: they're only useful if you can use them if the worst happens.

The bank vault and harddrive photos are from iStockPhoto.

At last... Triggertrap v1 is shipping!

It's been an absolute rollercoaster of a ride, from inception, to smashing its Kickstarter funding goal, to testing, to production set-backs, to PayPal's crushing inefficiency and potentially disastrous unilateral decision-making, to yet more production delays, through nerves, excitement, terror, frustration, and finally elation: Triggertrap v1 is shipping.

Today, the first batch of universal camera triggers were dispatched from the factory in China to their eagerly-waiting recipients.

If you've followed the story from the beginning, you'll know that Haje and the Triggertrap team have lived and breathed every moment of its development. It's been an enlightening process, watching a product take shape from idea to reality, through all of its ups and downs. These guys' tenacity and determination has been inspiring. Congratulations! I hope that you're enjoying a few beers this evening.

Now I'm waiting for mine to drop through my letterbox.

May's beautiful competition winner

There were a host of cracking entries for May's competition; choosing a winner took a great deal of back-and-forth discussion to work out just which one we thought deserved to walk away with the victory spoils. The victory spoils being an entry into the Small Aperture Hall of Fame and a wonderful 12 inch Fracture.

Eventually, we settled on Prairie_Girl76's wonderful Pulsatilla Seed Head. We thought that the composition was spot-on, that the depth-of-field gave it plenty of interest, and that it was beautifully exposed. Well done!

However, we'd also like to give a couple of honourable mentions, too. We don't do this very often, but it illustrates precisely how highly we thought of the entries.

Joakim Jalden's Seeds was a very close second:

Previous winner Hooker771's Curly Q Refraction is just fabulous:

We also enjoyed the concept behind Tana Gandhi's Rose Petals Organised Neatly.

You made it really hard for us: thank you!

June's competition is still rocking and rolling and we're looking for photos of fun. So get going with pictures of snowball fights, celebrating taking wickets, and playing with the dog. We want to feel the fun oozing out of them when we judge them!

Who's afraid of a nine-year-old with a camera?

Martha's lunch on Tuesday 15 May, 2012.

If you're in the UK, and provided that you've not been living beneath a rock, you've almost certainly heard about nine year old Martha Payne today.

Martha's a Scottish schoolgirl who took to them there Intergoogles to document her adventures in school dinners on her blog, Never Seconds. She'd take a photo of whatever was presented to her by her school's kitchen staff, count how many mouthfuls it took her to eat it (unless she burned her mouth on soup, that made things tricky) and then comment on it in the refreshingly disarming and charming tone that nine year olds do. She'd mark it out of ten for its tastiness and give it a healthiness quotient, and she'd also check for stray hairs. Just in case.

People loved her. And who could blame them? She was bright and funny and honest. Carrot and corriander soup was her favourite but somedays she didn't think that what she was served would see her through the afternoon. For some children, their school meal is their only meal of the day and seeing what they really get to eat was illuminating.

Readers from across the globe would send in photos of their school dinners; there were felafel from Israel, Schupfnudeln from Germany, sausage and veggie soup from Finland, pork and rice from China, and tacos from the USA. Meanwhile, Martha decided to put her new-found fame to good use and started to raise money for Mary's Meals, a charity that helps to establish school feeding programmes in resource-poor communities.

Martha got to meet Nick Nairn, she received Jamie Oliver's seal of approval, and for what it's worth, I thought that she was fantastic.

But that was all until yesterday when Argyll and Bute Council, where Martha goes to school, had her head teacher haul her out of her maths class and tell her that she wasn't allowed to take photos of her school dinners any more. Yes, really.

Argyll and Bute, the last time that I checked, Martha and I both lived in a country that upholds the principle of freedom of expression, taking a photo of your dinner isn't a crime, and our flag does not feature any hammers and sickles.

If you're that ashamed of the meals that you're serving to the school children in your care, improve them. You don't suppress the voice of someone who's commenting on your provision, sometimes critically and sometimes not, and at the same time stifle a nine year old's creativity, freedom of expression, and social enterprise. All that Argyll and Bute Council has done is show themselves to be brutish bullies who are afraid of being criticised by an individual with a camera and a sense of humour who is a great deal smaller than they are, quite literally.

Shame on you, Argyll and Bute. Shame on you.

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Update!

Argyll and Bute rescinded their ridiculous decree this afternoon. Apparently, they had sought to protect their staff from unwarranted threats and from Martha's misrepresentative blogging. Misrepresentative? To photograph and discuss what she ate, a bit like a restaurant critic would? Mehtinks that they were a little over-sensitive and over-reactionary. But at least someone saw sense, most likely nudged in the right direction by the media fire storm whipped up by everyone from the BBC to the inimitable Fleet Street Fox.

Amah's day off: or how to shoot your story

A great many column inches across the Intergoogles are devoted to the notion that photography is not a crime and to the rights of photographers to be able to shoot what they want to, where they want to, when they want to. This is something about which I have been vocal in the past and until that heaven-sent day when officious security guards without an understanding of the law and with an over-inflated sense of ego get their acts together, I will be continue to be, too. I spend what seems an absurb amount of time explaining to the non-photographic public that, yes, actually, when they are in a public place I do have every right to take their photograph. The term is 'no reasonable expectation of privacy.'

These are our rights.

However, if the obverse of our photographic coin are our rights, the reverse is our responsibility. Anyone who practises the craft of photography has a responsibility to their story and to their subject. We're privileged to be able to record the world around us, to be able to slice moments out of time and make pictorial records of them, and to be able to show people another life, a different way. Unless we're prepared to do this with sensitivity and respect, there's no point in doing it all. What's the point of telling the story if we're going to ride rough-shod over the subject?

We have a responsibility to tell stories honestly and with compassion, protecting and respecting our subjects as necessary.

This was rammed home to me today as I went to catch the ferry from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon.

Sunday is the day off for Hong Kong's great tribe of amahs. In years gone by, amahs were housekeeper-cum-nursemaid spinsters who became a part of the family for whom they cared. They'd watch one generation grow up and help to raise the next, a constant presence in the family. Nowadays, amahs are imported domestic help for Hong Kong's more affluent residents. They cook, they clean, they care for the children, and they walk the dog.

The majority of amahs come from the Phillipines, but there are plenty from Malaysia and Indonesia, too. As they are live-in employees, they have nowhere to socialise other than in public. On Sundays, then, they gather in their thousands to worship, to chatter, to do their hair and nails, to play cards, to eat, to drink, and to be merry. The entire area around Central station on Hong Kong Island is a fantastic cacophony of cackling laughter, raucous gossip, and 80s music. (There might well be other music, but I only heard reminders of my childhood.)

Everywhere I looked, there were incredible photo opportunities.

Every time that I raised my camera to my face I was met by resolute head-shaking. None of these women were in the least content having their photos taken.

So what to do? I could I have stood there explaining that I didn't care whether or not they were happy with me taking their photos, they were in public, and dammit I can. But these are pretty feisty ladies, and I didn't much fancy having a few thousand of them chasing me through the streets and across the aerial walkways of Hong Kong. I'm not the protagonist in a martial arts film, thankyouverymuch. And obviously something was bothering them. It would have been easy to walk away and leave it. But, there was more to this than met the eye. They were women, I'm a woman: I approached them.

It transpires that many of these women are working here illegally. They are terrified that if their images are splashed all over the intergoogles or over newspapers and magazines, the wrong person might see it and they can be deported. They don't know who I am or what I'm going to do with their pictures, so they'd much prefer their collective anonymity and safety in immense numbers.

Even worse, some of these women are abused by their employers. The majority of maltreatment is verbal, but there's physical and probably sexual abuse, too. They don't want to rock any boats and they don't want to get into trouble, so no pictures, please.

What, then, if I took their photos so that they couldn't be identified? Shots of hands and feet with no faces at all? What would I do with the photos, they asked. Tell your story, I said.

Okay.

I have my pictures, the world has a story, and for one two-hundredth of a second, these Filipina amahs have the respect that they deserve.

Vimeo Awards 2012: The Winners!

If you are doing anything with video on the internet these days, you can't have failed to notice Vimeo. So when my favourite video-sharing site for creatives is showing off the finest videos of 2012, you'd better believe I pay attention!

You could do a lot worse this lovely Friday, than spending a couple of hours with a beer or a few cups of coffee, and looking through this list...

Category winners are

1. Action Sports: Dark Side of the Lens
2. Advertising: K-Swiss Kenny Powers - MFCEO
3. Animation: Umbra
4. Captured: Sweatshoppe Video Painting Europe
5. Documentary: Amar (All Great Achievements Require Time)
6. Experimental: Prie Dieu
7. Fashion: Skirt
8. Lyrical: Symmetry (also winner of the Grand Prize)
9. Motion Graphics: A History of the Title Sequence
10. Music Video: Manchester Orchestra: Simple Math
11. Narrative: BLINKY™
12. Series: Often Awesome The Series
13. Remix: Rear Window Timelapse

Grand Prize Winner

Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo.

Filmmaking team Everynone submitted the winning film, “Symmetry,” to the Lyrical category, which is new this year.  The Lyrical category was created to showcase creative videos of the natural world or personal experiences.

Congratulations, everybody, you're an inspiration to us all!

Photographing fun - June's photo competition

It's June. June's rammed with some of my favourite events and the weather is supposed to be 'flaming'. Whether or not it will be is another matter, but there's meant to be a whole heap of fun happening. So that's your challenge this month: fun in a photograph. From flying kites on a beach to getting all dressed up for Royal Ascot or covered in strawberry juice, capture a moment of people utterly enjoying themselves.

I bet you can come up with some crackers.

If it's your photo of fun that rocks our world, you'll win yourself a fabulous 12 inch Fracture, thanks to the super people there.

As ever, entries go in the Small Aperture Flickr pool, between today (Thurday 7 June) and Thursday 28 June 2012. Remember: one entry per person, please.

If you've any questions, please get in touch. Otherwise, I leave you with The Rules for your edification.

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• 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 Pixiq.
• 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.

If you've any questions, please just ask!

Facebook: Photo sharing and premium accounts

The IPO is only one of the many things that are changing rapidly on Facebook. People are starting to point out that there's a huge problem at the very core of Facebook: It's an ad-driven site. And like all ad-driven sites, it has an enormous problem: People are so ridiculously blind to online advertising, that even with the incredible possibilities of putting your adverts right in front of the people who would, in theory, be interested in them, you're barking up the wrong tree. Online advertising, quite simply, is working less and less, and eventually the advertisers are going to realise this, and take their advertising spend and using it differently.

Facebook knows this. They are run by clever people, and post-IPO Facebook has plenty of money to hire more clever people. They've seen this one coming for a long time. And they're nearly ready with their response.

Premium accounts & photo sharing

In parallel with the bottom falling out of the advertising market, there are a few sites that are positively thriving; and many of them are photo- and video related. Vimeo, Flickr and 500px have all gone the free-then-premium-account route, and are making quite a lot of money in the process.

So, premium memberships are one of the potentially incredibly lucrative things that Facebook could offer - but what can they offer, that people haven't yet been used to getting for free?

The core service of Facebook will always remain free: Status updates, events and invitations, and the ever-embarrassing stream of breakups and social drama will continue as it has.

Making sense of Instagram

The big shift is what has been starting to show up on Facebook in other avenues: That change will be premium accounts, and it's going to happen within the end of the year.

The brand new Facebook Camera and the recent Instagram acquisition simply don't make any sense in the larger context of Facebook... Unless there is also another change coming.

Instagram, especially, is one of the apps that has attracted a very large user base of mostly casual photographers. Not only that; but casual photographers who are willing to spend money. A perfect place to start building the brand new service, in other words.

Facebook, with only minor changes to their platform, will be a huge competitor to the Vimeo, Flickr and 500px platforms of the worlds; perhaps not for high-end photographers, but certainly for serious amateurs and semi-professionals who want a solid platform to show off their photography.

The benefit is obvious: When Facebook makes this leap, photographers and video-makers no longer have to invite their audiences to a separate site to view their work: You could simply invite your friends directly, from within the familiar walled garden that is Facebook.

April's vitreous victor!

Well done to John Cavan for his Smooth Curves Ahead

First things first: we apologise for the delay in announcing April's winner. Haje and I both think that it's important to discuss the entries and the winner, and between me visiting the back of beyond and Haje being insanely busy, we just haven't had the chance to do so. Rather than leave you guys languishing, Gareth very kindly stepped in as Haje's stunt-double, and we thrashed out a winner between us.

Without further ado, then, we'd like to name John Cavan as April's winner, for his Smooth Curves Ahead. Gareth loved the 'insanely literal interpretation of the theme'. And I liked it for being so dark and brooding when glass is usually so sparkly and reflective and bright.

John has won himself a 12 inch Fracture from the lovely Fracture and a place in the Small Aperture hall of photo fame.

May's competition theme is 'flora'; it closes on Friday 26 May, so get cracking! And don't forget that you can keep up to date with all our competition news and plenty of other crazy shenanigans from the photography world by following @SmallAperture on Flickr!

Gumroad: selling images easily

For the majority of people who take photos, it isn't nearly about money; it's just something that we enjoy. Wouldn't it be cool, though, if there were an easy way to sell the odd photo here and there to make some pin-money without having the hassle of online stores and distribution and any other potential source of headache related to selling something? Turns out, there is. It's called Gumroad.

Gumroad's a simple idea with a simple execution: create a link to your work so that people who want to buy it, can. You don't have to set up your own store, you don't have to worry about processing payments, and unless you're selling a physical item–for example a t-shirt, something for which Gumroad does cater–you don't have to concern yourself with getting the product to the consumer.

Say that you have photos on your website that you'd like to sell. You create links to the individual images on Gumroad and set a fee; then you upload the images to Gumroad (it allows people actually download them, rather useful); finally you embed the links on your website along with huge 'For Sale' signs and wait for people to saunter by and think to themselves: 'Golly! I'd quite like a copy of that rather idyllic looking beach photo. Well, well, I can purchase it for $5!' They click the link that takes them to Gumroad, part with their pennies in exchange for your stunning creation, and Bob's your uncle. (Okay, Bob might not be your uncle; insert appropriately named male relative here.)

Gumroad takes a 5% cut of the sales price plus a ¢25 fee of every sale; sell something for $10 and $9.25 is deposited in your account. You can set prices between $1 and $1,000, or have them in Sterling, Yen, or Euros.

You don't have to embed the link on a website and Gumroad isn't just about photos, though. Your link could be for a video you shot or a Photoshop preset that's kinda-interesting but one you rarely use, and it could go out in an email or on Twitter. Gumroad is a simple mechanism to sell anything for which there might be a market; just think of all that latent money in your harddrive!

Of course what someone does with a photo (or anything kind of intellectual property) after you've sold it to them is down to good faith, but the Gumroad team have built in some safeguards to help prevent people from downloading multiple times from one link, or redistributing the link after they've paid for it. It's interesting to note, though, that people trying to cadge the system hasn't been a terrible problem for the Gumroaders. If it's easy to buy something, people will spend their money.

As for the Gumroaders, they're based in San Francisco and are headed up by one of Pinterest's early designers, Sahil Lavingia. For them, Gumroad–which only lanched in February this year–is about empowering creative types to sell and distribute their work online, simply and easily. It's worth checking out.

tl;dr? Here's a video:

An introduction to Gumroad. from Gumroad on Vimeo.

MiMedia, letting you access your media, wherever you are

MiMedia's web log in page. Fairly standard!

When Google Drive launched a couple of weeks ago, everything was cool and groovy until some eagle-eyed types noticed that the permissions clauses weren't altogether straight forward. It turned out that unless you did some fastidious box-ticking, your images stored there could, theoretically, wind-up spearheading Google Drive's advertising campaign. That wasn't exactly blowing back everyone's hair, and some bigger names in online storage donned their halos and smiled angelically, convincing consumers that they were the safest and surest guardians of our online content.

That's all very well and groovy, but cloud storage isn't necessarily just about backing up your content and falling asleep relaxed in the knowledge that what's on your external hard drive is also in two different clouds and on a disc at your Ma's. What about if you want to actually use your media, and not just store it? Step forward MiMedia.

Based in Portchester, New York, MiMedia was founded by Erik Zamkoff and Chris Giordano in 2009. The idea behind it isn't just that you use it to back up your photos, your music, and your films, but that it's a cloud-based personal media platform. Wherever you are with an internet connection, so are your favourite playlists in an easy-to-access format.

MiMedia's aim is to provide consumers with a great experience every time that they want to look at their photos from their latest holiday, share a video of baby's first steps via email, or post snaps from Grandma's 80th birthday party to Facebook. It's this focus on being personal and user-friendly that makes MiMedia believe it's different from other cloud storage options.

Every subscriber receives their first 7GB of data storage free; after that you can pay $49 for 100GB of data for a year and there're a range options, right up to a terabyte plan, if you've loads of stuff. If you're a Windows user, you can download the client that will allow you to store and synch your data easily in the cloud. No such luck for Mac users yet–we're still consigned to using the web interface–but Zamkoff told me that Mac-compatible desktop software should be available later this year. But there are iPhone and iPad apps, all the same.

Even without the desktop software, it's still an easy-to-use interface. As soon as you log in, you have your photos, videos, and music laid out in front of you. You can choose to stream music immediately, or upload something. Head into your photo folder and your images are organised in galleries and by date. The music-streaming function is at the top of your screen, so some tunes can accompany your picture-perusing, too.

Hit the 'Share' button and you can email a photo straight to your Dad, or unleash it directly Facebook, Twitter, or 14 other social media operations. You can look at them in a slideshow, or download them if you need to. Once you've uploaded your media you can also organise them into folders. This is useful, but I found it tedious because there wasn't a drag-and-drop mechanism for doing so, and they had to be moved individually. Still, it was all self-explanatory, and there's online and phone support if you need it, too.

It doesn't matter how many different locations you have designated for media storage, you still want to know that the cloud storage companies you employ are doing their best to make sure your photos, music, and videos are safe. MiMedia's system resides in multiple tier one data centres, with redundancy, so you should always be able to access your favourite Meatloaf album for those moments when only Bat Out of Hell will do.

Right now, when I'm suffering from hellishly slow connections, that's if I have one at all, and without a specific Mac client, MiMedia isn't quite what I'm looking for. But the more storage options there are, the better, and this is a neat and tidy operation giving super value for money. It's definitely worth a look.

Get floral for May's photo competition!

It's May; so spring is springing in the northern hemisphere and autumn is falling in the southern hemisphere. Sprouts are sprouting, shoots are shooting, and blossom is blooming one side; head the other and trees are turning to flame. It's an excellent time to photograph plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Your monthly photo mission, therefore (should you choose to accept it), is flora.

The wonderful people at Fracture are supplying the prize for the talented winner.

As usual, entries need to go in the Small Aperture Flickr pool and you've from today (Friday 4 May) until Friday 26 May to submit your entries. Remember, please that it's one submission per person, though.

Any questions? Ah yes, last month's winner. Well, between Haje launching Triggertrap Mobile and me being up to my eyeballs in various projects, we're running behind. We apologise; we haven't forgotten and we'll get there. We promise.

Otherwise, here are the rules, in case you need them.

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• 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 Pixiq.
• 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.

If you've any questions, please just ask!