Getty Images sold to the Carlyle Group for $3.3 billion

Print media might be in decline, but that hasn't meant a decline for the stock house, not necessarily. If they were bright enough to diversify and offer digital media such as music and video footage in addition to images, they'd build for themselves a relatively sound business model as digital media has taken off. Today's $3.3 billion acquisition of Getty Images by the Carlyle Group goes some way to supporting that.

Getty Images was bought by Hellman Friedman for $2.4 billion in 2008; earlier this year the private equity firm began to consider its options for the world's largest supplier of stock imagery and footage. When it came down to a choice between sale and flotation, sale won. The markets have been too volatile this year to risk and floatation and other investors were given a chance to get grubby paws on Getty.

It would probably be overstating it to describe the ensuing sale process as a bidding war. The Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners both made moves towards acquisition, but Carlyle's winning bid of $3.3 billion was less than Hellman Friedman had expected. The initial expectation had been for $4 billion and this was subsequently lowered to $3.6 billion. Still, publicly, Hellman Friedman is insisting its content with the price.

Carlyle does have the controlling stake in Getty, but Getty's founders, Mark Getty and Jonathan Klein, together with the Getty family, have rolled substantially all of their ownership interests into the purchase.

What then does this mean for the thousands of photographers with millions of images licensed through Getty? No mention was made of the building blocks of the business in the press release. Eliot Merril, Carlyle's Managing Director, did state that: 'We look forward to partnering with Mark Getty, Jonathan Klein and the talented Getty Images management team. We will harness Carlyle's financial resources and global network to help take Getty Images to the next stage of product innovation and global growth.' Carlyle's a private equity firm, its primary interest is towards its investors, it says so in big letters on its website. I doubt that it has very much interest in photography, photographers, or photographers' rights beyond the profit that it is able to lever from them.

Carlyle only has to maintain Getty's current balancing act of paying out miserable percentages to its contributing photographers on licences, but simultaneously retaining its reputation as the world's leading stock house to stay successful. Buyers go there because they get the range that they want; sellers stick with it because of potential sales, no matter if they only get a 20% cut on a royalty-free licence. As a photographer, if you don't have the guts or the means or the alternative to walk away from Getty, it leaves you in a very difficult position.

Getty Images might be selling media on behalf of its creators, but its allegiance isn't to them. It's to its investors. The sale of a stock house from one group of investors to another has done nothing other than to weaken the position of the photographer and strengthen that of the investor. It has demonstrated that stock houses can be regarded as a successful investment where the producers are of little concern to the investors, provided that they make a return on their outlay. Even if nothing changes for the photographer to her or his detriment, the move does not signify an improvement in their circumstances. No, it's all about the investor.

Photography: a great business if you're not a photographer.

The rise of the Fauxtographer

And now on Pixiq, in the latest installment of Dutton's Musings, photographer Gareth Dutton investigates the rise of a dangerous species of human frequently mistaken for an industry professional: the Fauxtographer. Readers are advised that this article contains strong language and should approached with a sense of humour.

Disclaimers

Now it’s important to throw in a few disclaimers and make some important distinctions here. I do not consider myself to be some kind of extreme photography super-being, moulded into human form by the very hands of the Gods of Photography: in fact I recently investigated the concept of self-critque and the need for evaluation and improvement. The kind of photography I admire is leagues and leagues ahead of anything I’ve ever produced, and is something I aspire to be able to match in terms of quality following many, many more years of hard work, effort and self-evaluation. With this in mind, this is not a column simply being used as a vehicle to look down on people with less talent than me (not that I consider myself of particularly exceptional talent).

This isn’t an article to disparage, condescend to, or discourage new photographers, either – everyone begins at the bottom and works their way up. I applaud anyone who has a love of photography and works hard to improve their craft. Finally, I like to think of myself as a photographer before anything else, but I still have respect for those to whom photography is a business first and an art from second, provided they back it up with a professional product / service and knowledge of their craft. This is an article to identify a menace that affects any photographer trying to make a living in the current environment.

The beast in question

With that clarified, I will now identify the creature known as 'The Fauxtographer' by its defining characteristics. The Fauxtographer is a parasitic creature of which there are many classes, but they all share common, easily identifiable traits: they are born when they notice a competent photographer making money from their images and conclude 'I can have a go at that.' Much like the common head louse, the incubation period of the Fauxtographer can often be as short as one to two weeks. Off they pop to buy a dSLR, whack the settings to auto, and carelessly snap away. They spend a ludicrous amount of time working on their bio and their marketing strategy to work out how they might sell the atrocious abomination of light they end up with. The Fauxtographer can often be found greviously abusing Adobe Photoshop and is genetically incapable of understanding the concept of subtlety. 

In fact, for the purposes of your elucidation and to help you spot a Fauxtographer in the wild, I have provided a handy example of the banner ad you might find emblazoned across the website of the specimen in question. Be warned, you might require sunglasses, a sickbag, or both:

More often than not, the Fauxtographer actually believes it is creating something with which it could approach a customer wearing a completely straight face. It’s not fully known whether the beast‘s astonishing lack of self-awareness is a universal trait or one exhibited by specific species of Fauxtographer. To dig deeper into the genetic makeup and behavioural traits of the Fauxtographer, we will initially focus on a particularly common and harmful breed, the Wedding Fauxtographer.

The Wedding Fauxtographer

Fortunately, we have a case study for you today, thanks to the magic of YouTube and the somewhat farcical television show Judge Joe Brown (oh America and your crazy TV – we’re secretly slightly jealous that something so ludicrous would never be commissioned this side of the Atlantic). It’s quite a long clip, so I will point you to the important moments.

• 3:20 – when asked what speed her lens is, the fauxtographer in question replies with 'I don’t know.'
• 4:43 – the horrible photos in question, to the amusement of the 'jury'. All the hallmarks of mind-breakingly ugly fauxtography are on show here – selective colouring, stupid filters, a cruddy cut and paste job situating the faces of the bride and groom in front of a background of flowers for some reason and, most importantly, a basic lack of technical and artistic understanding of how to take a photo. The Fauxtographer goes on to avoid the question 'What ƒ-stop did you use?' several times because the beast clearly had no idea what Joe was asking it.

The Wedding Fauxtographer is one of the most dangerous species of Fauxtographer currently known to entomologists, as their potential to damage their surrounding environment is arguably the greatest. First, the Wedding Fauxtographer manages to simultaneously ruin a significant moment in the lives of at least two people and likely their families, too, as well as charge them for the privilege. Furthermore, if family members in the wedding party had passed on since the event, this especially galling, even infuriating.

Second, the Wedding Fauxtographer (although this is applicable to any Fauxtographer) damages local business. In areas with a significant Fauxtographer infestation, the skilful, talented photographer charging a reasonable price for quality work is undercut by the Fauxtographer. This is due to the Fauxtographer charging peanuts for work that looks like it’s been conceived, photographed, and post-produced by a drunken monkey.

The unsuspecting victim is drawn in using marketing non-words and phoney titles the Fauxtographer has obtained from some worthless three day course, such as 'Supreme Explosive High Wizard of Photosmithery'. It sounds impressive but is, in fact, complete, unadulterated, purified, distilled toss.

Treatment and removal

So what can be done to eradicate this infestation? Sadly, it seems the rate of reproduction may be too rapid to make a significant impact on their numbers, but there is a way to improve the situation in your local area: ensure you charge a reasonable price for your photography. If there is a Fauxtographer near you peddling cheap twaddle, do not attempt to match its price. Instead, you must maintain your rates. This will help educate the typical customer and create a distinction between what you do and what the Fauxtographer is doing. In time, the old adage 'you get what you pay for' will ring true in their ears and customers will come to you for your images, your service and your prices. Not only that, it will alter the perception of what is considered a reasonable rate in the eyes of the customer.

Are they really that dangerous a creature?

Whilst it is undoubtedly entertaining and amusing to spend an hour perusing the worst of the worst output created by these horrific hominids, it is my belief that they are a genuine pest, requiring fumigation. I’m mostly speaking metaphorically, there. Mostly.

Putting the silly, painfully extended metaphor aside, people who saturate the market with poor quality images and carefully crafted marketing nonsense to dupe customers into buying into their product are utterly loathsome: it gives photography a bad name and puts us in a bad light. Any photographer worth their salt would rather create something they can be proud of and value it accordingly than to peddle cheap and nasty wares to the uninitiated: the customer relies on us and trusts us to do a good job.

Once, when I was particularly struggling for money, I accepted a wedding reception photobooth gig: it was an easy job for an easy paycheque. However, when I got there, the business owners didn’t know a damn thing about photography or what equipment they had, except that it was the cheapest they could get away with. When I started adjusting the aperture and shutter speed, they nearly had heart attacks and shrieked: 'Don't touch the settings! Our mate has them set just right.'

I had landed in the Fauxtographer’s den and was assisting in propagating their species – these were people who were posing as professionals to make an easy buck out of the uninitiated.

They asked me back for further gigs, I turned them down. Some of you might find that insane, given that I was struggling with my bills, but that wasn’t photography to me, and it wasn’t the reason I pick up a camera every day and take photos.

I am not a Fauxtographer, and I never will be. If I am ever in dire need of extra cash, I‘ll do something more honest, like go door to door selling vulnerable old people insurance policies they don’t need.

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Illustration by the very talented James of Sweet Meats Illustration.

It's a cannibal meat market

The camera market is a complicated place: technologically fast-moving, ubiquitous but hierarchical, and with blurred lines between professional and amateur. It has to fulfil a variety of different needs and market itself across a broad spectrum of consumers. This is no easy feat, and right now, I'm not convinced that the manufacturers are getting it right. Some consumers are falling through the cracks, manufacturers are trying too hard in some areas but seem to be oblivious of their strengths in others. It's time for a consolidated camera market fit for the 21st century.

The smartphone battle has been lost...

It's a truth, perhaps sad but definitely undeniable, that camera manufacturers have lost their battle to prevent a certain chunk of picture-takers defecting from compact cameras to smartphones. It is also a truth, probably even more sad and still undeniable, that they are refusing to acknowledge their defeat. You only have to look at the vast range of gimmicks that are being bolted on the constantly refreshed, garishly coloured swathe of compact cameras being churned out by everyone from Nikon to Panasonic to see that they are desperately scrabbling around for something, anything, that will convince the Smartphone-istas that a compact camera is what they need.

But for people who record their every coffee and croissant and subsequent pee and burp on Facebook, their smartphone is just what they need. They don't need a bright pink point-and-shoot with 12 filters and a dodgy wi-fi connection. Instagram is enough.

They've flown and they're not coming back. Get over it and move on, because trust me, there are people out there who really do want compact cameras.

... but there remains a market for compact cameras

So who are these mythical individuals still in the market for compact cameras? Well, they're not necessarily as trendy and it is likely that they're smaller than the share lost to Apple, Nokia, and Samsung, but they are real. So if you're listening Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Sony, et alios, give over, and go where you're wanted and needed.

As I see it, there are three primary consumers for compact cameras. I've written about this before, but indulge me with a recapitulation. First, there are people like me (and probably quite a few of you, too). My primary camera is a dSLR. However, I dislike being without a camera at all, so I want something little to live in my bag, and there are occasions when a dSLR is just too conspicuous, too cumbersome, or too illicit to use. In which case, I want a smaller, lighter, less obviously expensive alternative that enjoys full manual control and a good lens. I have a Canon S95 for this very purpose; other people prefer the Olympus XZ-1, and the Sony RX100 looks a hot new option. These are cameras that help to complete people's photographic arsenals. They are not insignificant.

Second, for people who enjoy recording their exploits up mountains, in deserts, and underwater, a rugged compact is an ideal companion. Tough compacts used to be the laughing stock of the photographic trade; they were cumbersome, badly specced, and resembled something designed for a toddler to teeth on rather than to take photos. Recently, however, manufacturers have been upping their game here and producing cameras capable of taking a decent image in sub-zero temperatures. The advent of the Sony TX200V, a well-specced compact camera that was casually all-weather, has opened up a new direction for compacts, too. You're sniffing at the possibilities here, manufacturers: you'd best run with them.

Finally, there are the people who want a camera that isn't in a phone. People like my parents who enjoy taking photos, who don't need something with interchangeable lenses, but haven't got smartphones and aren't likely to own one, either. People who are learning about photography, especially chidren, who need a dedicated camera, but one that is simple to use and inexpensive. Not everyone wants to use their phone, you see.

I told you, the market might not be as glamourous as the cocktail-sipping Twitterati, but it's definitely there, and it needs to be serviced.

If you want EVIL cameras to be taken seriously, treat them seriously

When I wrote my particularly scathing announcement article for Nikon's J2, one of my Twitter followers asked me why camera consumers aren't taking EVIL cameras seriously. Although the Japanese have embraced EVIL technology (sales of EVIL cameras amount to approximately 40% of the market) sales are much smaller in Europe and the US and might even be stagnating. Why? I'd posit that there are two branches of the same trunk governing this phenomenon: because camera manufacturers don't treat EVIL cameras seriously.

When so much R&D is devoted to EVIL cameras and they are being regarded as the breakthrough technology in photography, this might appear a contrary statement, so allow me to expand.

First, EVIL cameras are marketed poorly. The pace of change in the development of their technology does mean that new iterations are to be expected frequently, but this doesn't always give a great deal of incentive to consumers to purchase a new camera if it is going to be obsolete within six months. If tech lust gets the better of you, perhaps you will upgrade regularly, but when people are laying down in the area of £600 for a camera, they want to be assured that they're getting value for money. If manufacturers were to hold off on the 'release early and release often' principle favoured by coders, and instead release models with significant upgrades at less frequent intervals, consumers might be more tempted to bite. This is a far more sustainable model, economically and environmentally.

Furthermore, this constantly iterative process aligns EVIL cameras more closely with compact cameras, with their fast product cycling and large release numbers, than with flagship dSLR cameras. The product lifecycle for a dSLR is far slower than it is for a compact camera. This lends it gravitas: consumers recognise the research dedicated to developing it, and getting it right, and regard it as an investment rather than something more disposable, more like a compact camera.

At present, Olympus has six PEN models on the market, each with the same Micro Four Thirds, 12 megapixel sensor. I've argued for the benefit of choice quite passionately before now, but choice needs to be meaningful and not present for its own sake. When there is so little to discern the EP3 from the EPM1 or EPL2, it does nothing to suggest that these are carefully considered, designed, developed, and manufactured products. If manufacturers want us to take EVIL cameras seriously, they need to be cycled and marketed on a par with their other 'serious' cameras.

Second: the concept behind EVIL cameras can be overwhelmingly weak. If an EVIL camera is meant to be a serious alternative to a dSLR, fit it with a dSLR-sized sensor. Using a compact camera-sized sensor makes it nothing more than a glorified point-and-shoot; why would I spend £500 on a Nikon J2 or a Pentax Q when I can get similar results from a Canon S100 at £350?

Has Canon cracked it?

When you study the industrial revolution, one the key learning points is how, in the long term, the pioneers of change often suffered for being at the forefront of development. With the majority of their resources devoted to the initial breakthrough technology, the ability to adapt and to adopt refined versions was highly restricted. Sometimes this was a financial limitation, but occassionally, it was an emotional restriction, too: they didn't want to be seen to admit their mistakes or abandon their original technology.

The pace of change meant that second and third generation inventors and adopters often fared much better by biding their time and building on the platforms developed by the pioneers. They had the benefit of a bigger picture, working models, and a lack of emotional investment. *

A version of this model could be applied to the EVIL camera market, and in the words of one of Small Aperture's Twitter followers, it's why Canon has cracked it.

Just over a year ago, I argued that Canon's primary interest is in the video market, not the EVIL one. As a consequence, if it had any desire to play in the EVIL sandpit at all, it would only be if it could rock up and be reigning monarch. Canon had no interest in being seen as a pioneer there, those resources could be better devoted to video, it just needed to produce something good.

By biding its time and watching the constant iterations of EVIL cameras churned out by Olympus, Sony, and Samsung, Canon has been able to hone and refine its product. The result is the EOS M - a camera that is essentially a scaled-down version of the 650D. In terms of concept, what more perfect embodiment of an EVIL camera could you want?

We still love our dSLRs

Will the number of dSLR sales decrease noticeably? In the long run, probably, especially if the manufacturers get the EVIL product right and market it right. There are, after all, only so many photographers to go around. It doesn't mean that demand will disappear to nothing, it just means that camera manufacturers need to be aware of the different groups of people buying their products with different aims in mind. They need to produce to their different needs and market to them appropriately.

As a writer, you are always told to know your audience. Manufacturers need to know their consumer base.

Choice needs to be meaningful; the market must be sustainable

How and why people take photographs has changed; camera manufacturers cannot retroactively influence this by trying to convince the social media crowd that a compact is just what they need when they've found that their smartphone fits the bill. They can't assume that people will flock to EVIL cameras just because they have interchangeable lenses when their tiny sensors don't offer any significant advantage over cheaper and more portable compact cameras. They need to assess where the market is now and project why people will be buying cameras in the future. They need to consolidate their ranges whilst retaining the options that consumers want. They need to start thinking a lot smarter.

As it stands, camera manufacturers are succeeding in cannibalising their own market. Consumers want and need choice, but it has to be meaningful. When it is overwhelming, it serves best to deter people rather than convince them of the benefits of owning both a dSLR and a high-end compact; or an EVIL and to make more use of their smartphone camera. The current approach to R&D and marketing isn't sustainable. It's time for a rethink.

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* This is an argument usually applied on a micro level to mill owners, but it can be transfered to a macro level, too.

Nikon 1 J2: a lot of fluff and not very much substance

Nikon released its 1 series cameras, the J1 and V1, to a great deal of fanfare last year, insisting that they were game-changers in the world of mirror-less camera technology. The press release managed a sentence as gushingly hyperbolic as: 'These cameras don’t just manipulate light – they redefine photography by manipulating time…' But whilst the PR gurus wanted us to imagine that we were living in some kind of Sci-Fi fantasy with these cameras, the reality was slightly less fantastic. The general consensus was that they didn't offer enough control for people who wanted it, they were fiddly to use, the sensor was far too small, and they were expensive. Anyone wanting a mirror-less camera was better off looking elsewhere.

Eleven months on, and Nikon has announced the J1's cunningly named successor, the J2. Is this the camera that could make Nikon a serious force in the mirror-less camera market?

Ehm, no. Sorry to be so blunt this early in the morning. After wading through the general guff of the PR, you're looking at the same basic camera with the addition of some new toys and a cosmetic upgrade. It has the same 10 megapixel CMOS sensor; same EXPEED 3 processor; same sensitivity of ISO 100 to 3,200 (extendable to 6,400); same–admittedly very impressive–73 point phase-detection autofocusing; it even has the same Smart Photo Selector tool that automagically selects the five best shots from a run of 20 and presents them to you for your delectation.

So what is new? Presuming that there is actually something new and Nikon hasn't managed to send out the same press release 11 months later?

Well, they've added a Creative Mode to the dial, so that you can stitch panoramas or miniaturise or soft focus or selectively colour or take night landscapes or night portraits or backlight your images more easily.

The chassis is now made of metal, and comes in six (black, white, silver, red, pink, or orange) colours.

And the resolution of the LCD screen has been increased.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is about that. I've read the press release several times looking for something glaring that I've missed, but seriously, that's it. I'm beginning to think that J might stand for 'Joke'.

Oh, actually, I did miss something. The price has been dropped. With a 10-30mm kit lens, you're looking at $550. Yes, that's right, $550 for a camera that is essentially a glorified point-and-shoot. (Nikon UK was a bit slow off the mark with its PR, but UK pricing has just come through at £500; €605 in the Eurozone.)

Nikon, if you paid people to upgrade the J1 and they came up with this, then more fool you. This isn't an upgrade; this is the equivalent of a five year old sitting at her mother's dressing table and smearing lipstick over her mouth and jabbing a mascara wand into her eye. But the difference is that the five year old is cute and endearing; the J2 is an embarrassing joke.

Backing up your work - a cautionary tale

1TB hard drive, currently available for about £75 in the UK or $85 in the US

I'm not sure how many virtual column inches here at Pixiq have been devoted to our exhortations that you should implement a proper backup policy for your images, music, and other precious electronic files, but it is not insignificant. There are guides to establishing a workable routine, reviews of different pieces of hardware and software, advice for keeping your data safe when travelling, and now I'm going to throw personal experience into the mix.

Before anyone starts to gaffaw, no, I haven't just lost thousands of images in one catastrophic swoop. This is something that happened to someone else, but has had an impact on me. And still please don't gaffaw.

Over the past few months I've been working on a project that's a collaboration between me and a heap of other photographers. I've been in charge of curating it, which has been an exercise in military-grade planning. If I were to tell you about the number of spreadsheets I have, covering the most miniscule of details, and the different documents that I've going out and coming in, you'd die of boredom, but it has all been a necessary part of the process.

For the most part, my excessive attention to organisational minutiae has proved successful. But still, somewhere, despite colour-coded spreadsheets and meticulous filing, I slipped up. One of my collaborators wriggled through one of my barrage of checks and hadn't sent me a high-res JPEG of one of his images.

I sent him a quick email asking him to deposit the image in question in the Dropbox we'd been using for the project. When I read his response to my request, my heart sank like a stone. He couldn't send me the high-res version because he'd suffered a hard drive failure and he'd lost his images. They weren't backed up. Poof! All gone.

For the project, this is a bit of a disappointment, but it is in no way catastrophic. For the photographer, on the other hand, this is a huge collection of images that he's lost because he didn't have copies floating in the cloud or secreted away on another hard drive or two, or preferably both. I don't even want to think about how devastated he must feel.

If he'd have sent me the JPEG when I'd originally requested it, or if I'd noticed that I didn't have it initially, at least I would have had a copy. But it wouldn't have saved the rest of his images on his hard drive.

There are a bundle of different means of keeping your data safe. They don't necessarily cost the earth, either. Please don't be one of these people who loses important data because you don't have a backup plan in place.

Biography Buzzword Bingo!

Earlier this week I had the terrible misfortune to follow a link on Twitter that took me through to a photography-oriented q&a column. Someone posed a question and the readers chimed in with answers in the comments section. Of course, a q&a column in and of itself isn't a gruesome thing, and in fact neither was the question. A young photographer was querying the importance of a biography and an artist's statement; she'd never written one before, she didn't know exactly how significant they were, and because she didn't really write she wasn't sure how to approach it. That's pretty straightforward, but Eurynome on a unicycle, the answers left me gagging.

The adage that you should never read the bottom half of the Intergoogles held good here–and given that the article was entirely incomplete without the bottom half, was somewhat unfortunate–because it would seem that there's a shutter of photographers out there who take themselves far too seriously. No, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't take a bio or an artist's statement seriously; they're how your audience or your potential clients connect to you as an individual. What it means is that they need to be honest, approachable, and a reflection of who you are.

Your biography shouldn't be so vomit-inducing or cringe-worthy that people can't make it past the first sentence, or so esoteric or unbelievable that people have no idea what you're going on about or think that you're off your rocker. You're a photographer, you take photos; it is highly unlikely that you're capable of changing the world through the medium of your art. If you truly are one those handful of photographers who is able to influence the way that the global community sees the world, the chances are you don't have time to write about it in your bio. And what the hell are are doing reading this?

After I'd restrained the urge to scratch out my eyeballs as a result of the sheer vulgarity of what I'd read, I showed it to Gareth. Thankfully, he had a slightly different reaction: he fell about laughing. When he'd regained his composure (it took a while) he came up with some far superior advice for the young photographer struggling to construct her biography. Here, then, speaks the voice of experience.

Gareth Dutton (Bsc, MA, Ph.D, RGB, ABS, NBA, NBC, HBO, ROFL, LMAO, OMGWTFBBQ) is a hyper-dynamic, dangerously powerful photo-leopard and the proud owner of the title Impossibly Powerful Light Lord of the Entire Photoverse, which is a prestigious title given only to those who undertake a seven day course where you are assigned to photograph a graveyard to learn about black and white conversion: a course run by the prestigious Dr. FraudGob McUntrustworthy-Smyth.

Gareth doesn't just create photographs, though; he visually transcribes the art waves that he detects and accumulates in his emotional core to create powerful, tear-inducing art-tographs. The “Dutton Experience” is one that his clients talk about long after they leave the studio, when returning to their imaginary homes, whilst wearing their imaginary clothes that cover their imaginary bodies.

Seriously, you expect anyone to believe that hurtling ball of imaginary nonsense? Does it say anything at all about the photographer? Does it distinguish his work from any other photographer's? And this is where far too many photographers get it wrong: it's the difference between a bio written by a photographer and bio written by a salesperson.

For a long time, I had no bio on my website, because I just couldn't think of something that didn't sound awful. I had a go at one, looked at it a week later and cringed so hard I burst the blood vessels in my forehead and inadvertently pierced both my ears with my shoulder blades. A few rewrites later and I felt much better, massive haemorrhaging notwithstanding. So why is it so hard to write a bio? The problem lies in avoiding the buzzword trap.

Think about it; how many times have you read these lines?

• 'I love to capture a moment in time before it is lost forever.' That translates as 'I love to take photos.'

• 'Gareth's timeless images push the boundaries / are at the cutting edge of photography / display his completely innovative style'. Really? Unless you really are that influential, writing this makes you look silly.
• 'Clients come away knowing that they've experienced a Gareth Dutton shoot.'  Oh please! Nobody is going to walk away from a photoshoot going 'I really feel like I've just experienced a Gareth Dutton shoot.' Admittedly, this does sometimes happen with me, but that feeling they have is a sense of terrible unease and creeping dread.

Essentially, you want to avoid making your bio sound like a press release: a procession of vague half-lies, presented in the form of sterilised, buzzword-heavy non-sentences. As a result, I was wracking my brain, wondering what I could write about myself that wasn't clichéd and embarrassing. Eventually, I realised I should probably just be honest and show a little personality. I just wrote about what I do, the type of photography I undertake and added the tiniest sprinkling of humour, or 'humour', depending on your standpoint.

It's a bit like taking a self-portrait: you can set up some studio lights, get your face all chiaroscuro'd up, look moody and interesting and then clone out all those blackheads in Photoshop, but is it a portrait of you anymore? Step away from the word processor, forget about writing a bio, and just say something out loud about yourself, to yourself. Don't worry, no one else can hear you, so you don't sound like a prize prat.

Now write it down.

Tiresome ramblings aside, the important thing is to write honestly. Why do you take photographs? What do you like about photography (apart from 'capturing a moment forever')? Anyone you admire specifically? Is there an area of photography you specialise in, or undertake more frequently than others? What are your hobbies? What gets you going creatively, emotionally, aside from photography? These are all good starting points for a more interesting, more personalised bio.

In my opinion, the golden rule is to read a sentence out loud and then imagine yourself saying it to another human being in a bar. If this imaginary scene ends with the human being in question quietly downing their drink, placing the glass down on the bar and saying 'Excuse me, but I need to go and talk to... well, someone who isn't you,' then it's probably a sentence you should edit or remove.

It's that time again, my elegant photo-beasts and beastettes – homework time. Your homework is to have a look at your bio and remove anything that sounds like it belongs in an intro for the Managing Director of a Global Logistics Solutions company (whatever one of those is) and rewrite it.

Then, when you've rewritten your bio so that you don't sound as if you've been processed by a Z-list celebrity agent, we've a treat for you: Bio Buzzword Bingo! You can download your very own word search and seek out the collection of marketing-tastic words that really shouldn't be anywhere else than hidden away in a grid of otherwise incomprehensible letters.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find out whether 'synergy' can still be used in a sentence or if it's been ruined forever.

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The gorgeous illustration, by the way, was drawn by the highly talented James Park of Sweetmeats Illustration.

August is a metallic month

Hello lovely people! If you haven't guessed from my Twitter stream, I'm utterly glued to the Olympics at the moment. Apart from it producing some fantastic photography, it's also par-for-the-course because as anyone who knows me will confirm, I'll watch, or listen to, just about any sport going and I've been known to participate a bit, too. I get very excited and jump up and down and scream and shout. And I'll admit that I can cry on occasion.

Anyway, all of that is my rather round-about preamble to announcing our tenuously Olympic-themed competition. Think of all those glorious gold, silver, and bronze medals made out of shiny, shiny metal. Mmm shiny! Yes, we're looking for metallic images throughout August. From antique jewellery to modern art installations that you don't quite understand, we'll take it all. It just has to be metal.

The glinting entry to catch our eyes will win a 12" Fracture.

Entries can be submitted to the Small Aperture Flickr pool from today (Friday 3 August) until Friday 31 August 2012. That gives you four weeks. But please remember that it's one entry per person, so pick your best.

I've had a couple queries about what we look for when we're selecting the winners. Both Haje and I have written on the subject of winning photography competitions, so you might want to look at those articles. It's probably also worth knowing that for both us, the story in your image is key. Haje's a stickler for good lighting, I'm hot on composition, and if Gareth joins the party he'll always comment on sharpness.

For reference, I shall reproduce the rules, but all that remains is for me to wish you good luck and tell you how much I'm looking forward to your entries!

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!

A tremendous two-tone competition winner in July

We asked for two-tone images in July. Maybe red against yellow; perhaps purple shot with green; how about orange sidled up against pink; or in the case of our delightful winner, Dim the lights: blue contrasting with green.

So why did we choose this cracker by Hooker771, apart from the juxtaposition of the blue and the green that so perfectly encapsulated the theme? The lighting is beautiful. We loved the story. The lines are fantastic. And it made us smile.

That's bagged him a 12" Fracture.

We'll be announcing August's competition tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled, both here and on Twitter, for the details.

The Ultimate Guide to HDR Photography

Haunting, surreal, and quite possibly the first major way in which digital photography does something which film photography can’t emulate – or even come near. HDR – or High Dynamic Range – photography is nothing new, but as new tools and techniques make the artform more available, HDR photography is taking off in a big way.

If you’ve never had a go… and especially if you don’t even know what I’m on about – you’re in for a real treat…

What is HDR Photography?

High Dynamic Range photography or HDR photography is an advanced set of photography techniques that play on image’s dynamic range in exposures. HDR Photography allows photographers to capture a greater range of tonal detail than any camera could capture thru a single photo.

While many imaging experts regard HDR photography as the future of digital photography, the discipline has long been in existence.

HDR photography is present in many pictures taken through modern day digital cameras. The truth is, if you are a real photography enthusiast then there is a great chance that you have taken at least one photo exemplifying HDR photography.

The real functions or even executions of HDR photography may be debatable. But no matter which website or source you consult they will always say it is a technique that employs the great use of exposure range to get distinct values between light and dark areas of the image. Its real intention is to create an image that accurately characterizes the intensity levels found in natural scenes. If you ever wondered why the picture you took was different from the scenery you actually saw, then maybe it’s time for you to learn HDR photography.

HDR Photography is the technique used to capture and represent the full (as possible) DR found in a scene with high perceptual accuracy and precision. To remember things better, think of the 3S: sunlight, shadows and subjects. These are the things that make an ordinary picture an HDR image.

The history of HDR Photography

While the technique is more commonly used now to create astounding images of art, fashion and landscape photography, HDR photography’s humble beginning is ironically designed to capture a rather fearing, shocking and destructive image – nuclear explosion.

Charles Wyckoff (the same guy who inspired Computational Photography) developed HDR photography in 1930s to 1940s. He is genius who took the 1940s Life magazine cover of nuclear explosions – an image that would later change the world. Of course the technique didn’t have the acronym HDR before, but the principles remained the same.

A deeper and perhaps more scientific understanding of HDR photography and imaging was first introduced in 1993. This was done by playing on two established photography elements: tone mapping and bracketing. A complex mathematical theory regarding differently exposed images of the same subject matter was then released two years after. Paul Debevec, a computer graphic researcher, applied this theory and combined several differently exposed images to produce a single HDR image was accomplished. Talk about putting a lot of science and even math to discipline.

Today, things are a lot easier. Thanks to the wide selection of portable and digital cameras as well as easy-to-use software, HDR is no longer limited to people studying nuclear explosion and computer graphics technology. But the technology on image capture, storage, editing and printing devices still has some limitations. And since each of these elements affect the DR of image; we need to study them if we want to get an HDR image with superb quality.

Theory Behind HDR photography

There are two theories behind HDR photography. And as the technology around HDR photography evolves so is the discipline itself. But if one wants to take HDR imagery seriously then he must first understand the concepts and theories that make up this discipline.

The most fundamental of all HDR photography theories is to take multiple shots at varying exposure levels of a particular subject. A special computer program will then combine the images together into a single image. This is just an incarnation of the original theory during the time when there are no digital cameras and advanced computers and programs were nothing more than a work of science-fiction.

The second theory is the one that capitalizes on the RAW processing software to create various exposure levels of the same image. Modern Digital SLR camera and a lot of the Point and Shoot models allow photographers to capture RAW images. A RAW image or file is the data captured by your Camera’s sensor that is not processed yet and therefore does have color information. You can manipulate this file, adjust its color, lighting or while balance.

How to gather data for HDR photographs

Taking the images is the first stage in HDR photography. You can use a simple point and shoot camera or a fully configurable digital SLR camera camera.

In both techniques you will need a camera with configurable exposure settings. All DSLRs and most point and shoot cameras have this. Certain SLR cameras have bracketing function which makes it easier for photographers to change exposure settings.

For starters, you can use the following setting: ISO 200 and Aperture Priority Mode. And as they say good things come in threes, you can take picture with three different exposure settings: EV 0, EV -2 and EV +2. You can experiment more on these but generally speaking, the more exposure versions you can have, the better your final image will be.

If you want to take more exposures as part of your HDR photos - up to 19, in fact - it's worth taking a closer look at Triggertrap Mobile, a mobile phone app that hooks up to your SLR camera. At $20 for the hardware and $10 for the software, it's an absolute bargain.

Oh, and obviously, It is recommended to use a tripod when taking HDR photo. This is because tripod stabilizes the camera and you need to get the clearest image you can get since you are experimenting on exposure values. The best way to do this is to use a shutter remote or if your camera doesn’t have one, just make sure you press the shutter button lightly.

Post-processing

Incredibly, the above photo is an Infra-Red HDR photo. Awesome, eh?

Post processing is the last stage in HDR photography that you can really control. This is where technical skills merge with creative sensibility. And with the introduction of advanced digital cameras and photo editing software, HDR image post-processing is made a lot easier.

However, this does not guarantee that having an excellent HDR image will be as easy as clicking the shutter button. There may be times that the three or more images you took with varying exposure values are simply not enough. With this, the only chance you are left with is to do a post-processing of the image.

Post-processing generally involves color correction, saturation, contrast and brightness and darkness adjustment and other image element manipulation. But in HDR photography we need to concentrate on contrast and brightness and darkness adjustment. Brightness and darkness adjustment is the direct digital translation of exposure manipulation in the picture taking stage. If in the camera you adjust exposure settings, in the post-processing stage you will adjust the brightness.

The main advantage of process is surpassing the limitation of actually configuring your camera in different exposure levels. While some cameras may have eight exposure settings and therefore 8 different images, post-processing can simply give you a limitless number.

After the shoot, transfer the images to your computer. There is a merge to HDR feature in many photo editing software including Adobe Photoshop and above, Photomatix Pro, Dynamic Photo HDR and others.

Post-processing software also allows you to blend photographs with different exposures. This clearly increases the dynamic range of the final output photo. There is also tone mapping which reveals highlight and shadow details in an HDR image made from multiple exposures.

Further exploration

Whether you are an HDR photography amateur, hobbyists or a professional these websites will surely give you something to focus on.

HDR 101

The site claims that it is the first and most visited HDR tutorial on the web. It offers easy to understand tutorials as well as Photomatix software walkthrough. But we think HDR101′s best content is the monthly favorite Flickr.com HDR photos.

HDRSoft’s Resources

HDRSoft, maker of one of the most popular HDR software Photomatix gathered tutorials, DVDs and videos as well as mailing list subscriptions for all HDR photography enthusiasts.

CambridgeInColour

CambridgeInColour offers photography tutorials and forum where photography professionals and enthusiasts like you can discuss anything about photography.

Flickr’s HDR Group

This HDR group has 30,000 members and counting. Share your passion and be inspired with HDR images on different subjects taken by photographers from all over the world.

SmashingMagazine’s 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures

One of the most popular blogs combined “35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures” on different subjects and execution.

Visual Photo Guide

Camera, equipment and photography software reviews and video tutorials on HDR photography all in one place.

HDR Crème

HDRcreme is the first HDR photo gallery that lets you share photos, explore and learn about High dynamic range imaging.

Tutorial Blog’s Collection

A Single link to many great HDR Photography resources.

Photo credits

The photos in this article are from Flickr, licenced under CC/Attribution licence. See the full-size photos of Pasargad Bank Branch by Hamed Saber, Moon on Mars by Extranoise, Tour Eiffel by Al Ianni, Toronto City Hall by Paul Bica, San Isidro IR HDR Panorama and HDR 01 by CodyR on Flickr.

Top tip: a Flickr search for ‘HDR’ filtered by ‘most interesting’ is a great way to get some awesome inspiration.

Enjoy!

The ugly truth behind our beautiful cameras

I seem to be doing okay with my current camera. Do I really need a new one?

Rampant consumerism; it's well, rampant. Apple releases a new iPhone every year; in January, Fujifilm announced 27 new compact cameras (yes, 27, go check it out if you like, I'll be waiting when you get back); we've lost track of the numbers in the Lumix G-series; and if Canon doesn't come up with a 70D in time for Photokina, I'll be a bit surprised. (I could be wrong, though, so don't lay money on it on my account.) New products are the bread-and-butter of my writing on Pixiq, and don't for one moment get me wrong; I'm fascinated by the advances that we've made in camera technology and I cannot wait to see where we get next. However, an email that I received today, alerting me to Canon's announcement of its corporate social responsibility plan, got me thinking.

Every camera that rolls off of the production line has a huge impact on the environment, and in fact on communities far from where it was made or where it will eventually end up. They comprise thousands of parts made from hundreds of different materials. But have you ever considered where they come from, how they're made, and what happens to them when we decide that they're obsolete - something that happens far too quickly? You've probably heard of conflict minerals, but do you know how many are in your camera? Any idea what a rare earth element is? Do you know anything about the major manufacturers' dedication, or lack of it, to their corporate social responsibilities?

Put it this way, it is admirable that Canon has published a document that holds it to some kind of standard, but I don't think it went far enough. There's more to being environmentally aware than agreeing to reduce your carbon dioxide emissions, as necessary as that is; and social responsibility goes a heck of a lot further than being able to further the artisitic endeavours of the people who buy their products.

For the record, none of this is about wanting to hold back development or somehow artificially suppress the advance of technology. My phone today can do things that I could scarcely dream of when I picked up my first one 16 years ago, and that's truly marvellous; I sit awestruck at the advances I've seen in camera technology since I switched from analogue to digital. But somehow, we need to make our hunger for gadgets and the relentless cycle of new products sustainable, because right now, it isn't. This is more than just a mentality of buying something new rather than repairing it, and whilst it encompasses the desire to always be in possession of the most up-to-date gadgets available, it goes deeper than that. This one really is about life and death, and not just death from embarrassment because you still use an iPhone 3G.

If you've never thought about what goes into your camera and where it comes from, sit down, take a deep breath, and read on. It might not be pretty, but I hope it's thought provoking.

Rare earth elements

First of all, we should clear up the misnomer around 'rare earth', because this group of 17 metallic elements aren't that rare at all. Cerium's more common than copper. It's just a name that they happened to end up with after the discovery of yttrium in 1787 by a Swedish military officer. They're lightweight, unusually strong, and magnetic, qualities that make indispensable in electronic gadgetry.

It's not just europium and terbium that are used in the screens on our cameras, the samarium-cobalt magnets that control our shutters, or the bundle of others that are melted into circuit boards, though. Lanthanum oxide is used in lens production to help prevent distortion, too. In minuscule quantities, our cameras are riddled with rare earth elements.

So what's the problem with the rare earths? Whilst they might not be rare in general, they are rare in large concentrations. When they are found in concentration, it is usually in proximity to radioactive elements uranium and thorium, making them dangerous and expensive to mine.

At the end of 2011, roughly 50% of the world's rare earth concentrations were in China, and China produces nigh-on 97% of the world's supply of rare earth elements. Not only do you have a single country responsible for the overwhelming production of a group of elements vital to just about any electronic gadget in current production, but this country also has a terrible record of human rights abuses. Mining; radioactive materials; near-monopoly; you join the dots.

Now add to this the prediction that China's own demand for rare earths will outstrip its potential supply within the next five years and you can see that there's a bit of a problem. As far as the UN is concerned we have to start recycling our rare earth elements more.

Conflict minerals

There's no misnomer to clear up here, conflict minerals are just that: minerals mined under conditions of conflict. Primarily this concerns mines in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, some of them under the control of the Congolese National Army, others rebel militias. It's isn't just that the profits from the mines are ploughed back into a continued and bloody war that's destroying a country and that there are the inevitable battles over the mines themselves, but that the mines exploit the local population mercilessly. Think forced labour, coercion, extortion, violence, and rape.

Coltan, or columbite-tantalite, is the ore from which tantalum is extracted. You'll find tantalum used in the manufacture of capacitors, whilst tantalum oxide is used to produce high refractive index glass. That, of course, is used in lenses.

Circuit boards are put together with solder, solder is made using tin, tin comes from cassiterite, and cassiterite is a conflict mineral.

Wolframite is a tungsten-bearing ore, with tungsten carbide being used in some electronic devices, but predominantly in drill bits and the milling process, because it's stupidly hard.

Finally, we get to the G of 3TG, as conflict minerals are sometimes known, gold. It's an excellent conductor, very ductile, has low toxicity, and is hard to corrode. You'll find it used in electrical contacts.

Thankfully, unlike rare earth elements, deposits of conflict minerals aren't limited to war-ravaged central Africa. There are extensive tantalum deposits in Australia, tin is found world-wide, tungsten has huge deposits in China, but can be mined elsewhere, and gold isn't exactly ubiquitous, but it's found in plenty more places than central Africa. The problem is how conflict minerals secrete their way into the market–you're dealing with warlords here, after all–and the inability, perhaps even the unwillingness, of buyers to attempt to trace the origins of their raw materials. It's a case of asking no questions and being told no lies. But that doesn't really help the DRC.

And everything else

Rare earth elements and potential conflict minerals comprise just a fraction of any camera or lens. There's also the plastics, the glass, the other metals, and the rubber, not forgetting the waste products like carbon dioxide. After they've been packaged and shipped, we charge them up with electricity and heaven knows how far we drive or fly to use them.

So what to do?

Without wanting to sound too much like the tree-huggy liberal that I am, it's something for which we all have to take responsibility: you, me, and the guys who run Olympus. As consumers, it's easy for us to say that we need manufacturers to do more–which, yes, they absolutely must do–but we need to take action ourselves. Manufacturers, if you happen to be listening, don't abrogate yourselves of responsibility by blaming consumers for their wanton desires and penny-pinching ways. You're people, too, and you live in this world. 

I'm not nearly virtuous enough to say that I'm never going to buy another electronic device unless it comes with a certificate of guarantee that it's conflict mineral-free. At the moment, there just isn't a programme in place that can guarantee this. Besides, when you say something like that, you set yourself up for a monumental fall. I mean, I try never to eat Nestle products, but I'm sure that I must've slipped up at some point in the past 15 years or so. And I won't hold you guys to a higher standard than I can hold myself, either. I can, however, look out for producers that make more of an effort, and all of them can start asking more questions of their suppliers.

But the disused iPod, the broken down iBook, the drawer full of obsolete mobile phones dating back to 1996, and the heaven-knows how many cameras that I keep 'just in case' could all be recycled.

I've been contemplating a new dSLR for a while now, but do I really need one? How much of my desire for more megapixels, for faster frames per second, for increased sensitivity is driven by tech lust, and not because I actually need these things and my current model is, in fact, adequate? How much of this is going to have a discernible impact on my photography, as opposed to me reading more, shooting more, and evaluating better? For any photograph, the photographer is the critical factor and not the camera. Upgrading your kit won't make you a better photographer or make you take better images; that's down to your skill and talent not your camera's spec.

If and when the time comes for me to upgrade, what will I do with my old camera? There are better options than leaving it in my store in the studio. It's perfectly saleable on the secondhand market.

Wouldn't it be great if manufacturers gave more consideration to product cycling, and provided easy means to recycle their products, too? 'Here, Canon, I'd quite like to upgrade my S90 to an S100. Why don't you give me some money towards the new one, and strip the old one for parts?' Everyone wins there, me, Canon, and the kids in the eastern DRC.

We need to ask more questions, and not pretend that these are problems that don't exist; we need to be more discerning; and, yes, we all need to be a little less greedy: consumers for the latest bit of tech and corporations for the last penny of profit. It won't hurt, I promise.

---

I used heaps of sources in writing this, most influential amongst them:

• Conflict minerals company rankings, from Raise Hope for Congo

• Conflict minerals: the truth underlying the systemic looting of the Congo, from Conflict Minerals

• Getting to Conflict Free, from the Enough Project
• Rare Earths - Materials for the 21st Century, from the Human Touch of Chemistry
• Rare Earth Elements, from Avalon Rare Metals
• Shopping guide to digital cameras, from Ethical Consumer

You are bad at photography: Improving your work whilst managing self-confidence

Flipping Nora Madcakes - this is proper rubbish!

After a manic six weeks, I'm finally taking a day off. It will involve Olympics-watching, novel-reading, and cake-baking. Whilst I'm lounging on the sofa, I shall leave you in Gareth's capable hands to tell you that you're a bad photographer, but it isn't as terrible and soul-crushing as you might think.

You'll be glad to hear that I'm not here to shamelessly plug something, or big myself up (I think that phrase went out of fashion in the mid-nineties), or to give you the bottom line on how to use a particular lens, or how you should photograph faces, or plants, or the sky, or... anything, actually. I'm not here to shove a project in your face, either (the next edition of that will be in a couple of weeks or so, I imagine).

I'm here to tell you that you are bad at photography.

You are a bad, bad photo person. Yes, I know that shot you posted got favourited twenty times on Flickr and you were invited to add your image to the group called "Baffling HDRs of Random Nonsense!", but you are bad at photography. I know that portait session with your friend was a lot of fun, and she loved all the images, and she put them up on Facebook where they got dozens of likes, but you are bad at photography.

You are bad at photography and so am I. Why do I say this? To be honest, I mainly say it to get a reaction out of you so you actually bother reading my nonsense (it's known as "The Tabloid Tactic"). Manipulative, I know. I imagine you are currently puce with pure, unbridled photo-rage, clawing and scratching at the screen with your bare hands, fingernails now bleeding, in the (utterly insane) belief that you can physically harm me via The Internet: you're shouting "I think you'll find I came third in The Guardian's Photo Competition last week, you ingrate! The theme was 'tranquility'! TRANQUILITY!", before breaking down and sobbing into your brunch. Which you just took an Instagram photo of. Tear-sodden Eggs Benedict.

Calm down, this is not a personal attack, I promise. What I'm really trying to say, or rather ask, is, what do we gain from considering ourselves "good" photographers? What use is there in looking at an image you've taken and thinking 'Yep. Maximum art achieved. I have mastered the art of photography, right there. Nothing left for me to learn'?

Here's where I get serious for a whole three sentences: I think "good" is a dangerous word in photography, because it lets you settle. You snuggle up in that comfy 'I'm good now' seat and you remain at that skill level; in short, you stagnate creatively.

I know it's not nice, but it's necessary: critique, both self and from others, is what improves our images. If there's one thing you should do to every photograph that you take, it's to evaluate it. It should be noted, however, that it is very possible to go too far the other way: maintaining a healthy balance is the key. Instead of saying 'This photo is great,' I tend to go with 'I'm happy with this shot.' Similarly, it's better to identify what you could have done better with a photo you're not happy with, as opposed to sitting, head in hands, wailing uncontrollably because your subject isn't quite on the rule of thirds. Not that I've ever done this. Nope.

So where the piggles do I get such critique, I hear you collectively ask? Well, I happen to know that Daniela is turning her attentions to this very question in the not-too-distant future, but until then, one place to get some useful feedback is on DPChallenge. It's a good place to begin, but my personal advice would be to take critiques with a pinch of salt – the members of DPChallenge tend to be very focused on technical elements of critique. This certainly isn't an awful thing to focus on, but there will come a time where you are much more comfortable with the technical basics and you want to experiment with rule breaking. It all depends on your current skill level, really, but you'll definitely learn a thing or two, regardless of experience.

Immerse yourself in as much critique as possible – look at images that you really like on the site, images that you think are stunning and you feel a million miles away from, ability-wise. Now have a look at the critiques and what people think the photographer could have done better. The more critique you read, the better you will get at critiquing images yourself, including your own. Hey, look: you're getting better! Soon you'll be looking at work you create six months ago and thinking 'I can't believe all the mistakes there are in that photo – what a load of rubbish!' You see that? That's progress.

Here's your homework, then: get some proper, constructive feedback and critique on your work and learn something from the experience. It's daunting at first, but take it on the chin and keep working at getting better. Not "good", not "great", just better.

Fujifilm's F800EXR, trying to win back the smartphone crowd with wi-fi

With all the focus on Fujifilm's gloriously stylish range of premium cameras, it's easy to forget that they've a range of competent compacts, too. Yesterday, they added one more to the line-up, ready to convince the social media savvy cool kids that they really do want a compact in addition to their smartphones.

This is the F800EXR, successor to the F770EXR. This makes it a little bit more than your average point-and-shoot that's a mania of megapixels and frenzy of filters packaged in garish pink. It's Fujifilm's flagship compact camera, with full manual control and Raw capability. 

It comes with a 16 megapixel back side illuminated EXR-CMOS sensor (the EXR sensor is Fujifilm's proprietary technology that enables the sensor to switch between three modes–high sensitivity/low noise, dynamic range, and high resolution–depending on conditions, for optimal results), 20× optical zoom, and when you deploy the intelligent digital zoom function, you can bump that up to 40×. In auto mode, it can select between 103 patterns to get the best results for an image.

The press release is very cleverly worded to make it seem as if the F800EXR has a faster start-up, shot-to-shot, and auto-focusing speed than its predecessor. However, looking back at the F770EXR's spec, they remain at 1.5 seconds, 0.8 seconds, and a minumum of 0.16 seonds (at the shortest focal distance), respectively. 

But the focus is on making it connected and trendy, so what's the deal? First, you can transfer photos to a tablet or smartphone that has Fuji's Photo Receiver app installed. Up to 30 photos can beam their way from camera to device in one go, wirelessly, and password free.

Second, with the Fuji Camera app, you can send your camera's location back to itself, via your tablet or smartphone. And via that, your camera can also act as your tour guide for wherever you happen to be. Somehow, that seems needlessly complicated to me, with far too much backwardsing and forwardsing between devices. And really, why not just use your iPhone or your iPad to locate your nearest landmarks and points of interest? There's even an app to pinpoint the closest public convenience, and your camera can't do that.

Like any good camera, it has its filters, so that you can flip between pop colour, high-key, toy camera, miniature, dynamic tone, and partial colour, at the touch of a button. And of course you can make full HD video (1920x1080 pixels).

You can create 360º panoramas and there's a multiple exposure mode, too.

When it comes out (I've heard rumours of August in the US, September in Europe, and prices around $350 or £280), it'll be available in black, red, or white.

The question is, is all of this enough to convince those who are deserting compacts and heading off towards the bright horizon of the smartphone? I don't think so. If you want convenience and immediate Facebookableness, you'll still use your smartphone. If you want a gamut of impossible filters, then you'll stick with your smartphone, too.

If you want a compact camera because of the benefits of having a compact, the wifi gimmicks probably won't make much difference. I've a compact for situations when my dSLR is inappropriate or inconvenient, but I still want the control it affords. I'm hardly going to edit my Raw images on an iPhone, am I? And transfering them wirelessly sounds murderous. My parents use a compact camera because they don't have a smartphone, which makes the F800's connectivity a joke for them. We'll buy compact cameras because of their performance, not because of their corresponding iPhone apps.

I remain convinced that there's a place for compact cameras in the market; I think that camera manufacturers need to work out where it is and concentrate on that.

Hello personal project! Hello Games!

For readers who've followed me here from Small Aperture, you might have been wondering what happened to my trusty side-kick Gareth. Well, apart from becoming Daddy to his adorable little girl in December, he's embarked on a project to document a year in the life of a videogame company. This is his mid-term report, showing how he settled upon the project, the insane fears that initially overwhelmed him, and how he thinks he's doing so far.

Welcome back, Gareth...

When we think of great photography, to many, it's the idea of that one, iconic image: the one that sums up a whole story, an attitude, a way of thinking, an era, in one shot. These images should form imprints on our minds, be burned into our retinas as significant, moving pieces of imagery that make waves, make things happen, raise awareness, engender change.

Well I'm here to say knockers to that, because I'm doing the exact opposite – a long term photo project that will, once it's done, have taken me over a year to complete. Although it's true that everyone loves an iconic image, it's also true that everyone loves a good photobook, or a photo story. Yes, everyone. Yes, no, I can see your hand raised there, I'm going to ignore it. You DO enjoy a photobook, now put your hand down. All the way down. And don't sulk. I can see that, too, so stop it. Thank you.

This is, essentially, my first, proper, long term, large-scale personal project. The first thing that smacked me in my big, beardy face was the difference between a project like this and a single commission. Imagine taking the visualisation you have in your head of a shoot lasting four or five hours. Now try and do that for a year.

How am I supposed to imagine where this will be in a year's time? What if we have hovercars by then? Should I incorporate that into my plan? Maybe cameras will be installed directly into our eyes and I will have become redundant as a photographer. Maybe, just maybe, cameras will have become sentient, like those Terminator films, and they'll be walking around, Gorillapods for legs, photographing us and uploading the images to Flickr where their other camera friends will comment on how good the shot is, even if it's not that good: 'Sony Cybershot #432 says "great shot, love the tones on that human, lol"'. We'll all be rendered artistically obsolete, and all the Canon EOS 1Ds will have MySpace profiles where they photograph themselves from a high angle to make their bodies look thinner.

Admittedly, I may have panicked a bit too much about it, but with these incredibly likely future events looming on the horizon, I wondered whether I was too casually getting into a project of a scale far larger than I was used to.

As one of my main hobbies is videogames and I have a bulk of editorial portraiture work I have undertaken for videogame publications, I decided to approach a small, independent games company with the prospect of documenting their day-to-day lives as they developed a videogame. I decided on this project for three, simple, extremely important reasons:

1. My heart would be in it, as it's a subject I'm passionate about.
2. It is a subject that I have not seen covered before anywhere else, so it is unique and fresh.
3. Arguably the most important reason, it is about the people involved and a document about how much they love and care about what they are doing.

Keeping these reasons in mind simultaneously boosted my confidence and raised the stakes. These people had seen my quite-nice-portraits of industry figures they recognised and loved: they had been taken in by those images. As far as they were concerned, I would definitely do a good job of documenting their lives and the images would all come out as absolute classics to rival Neil Leifer's shot of Muhammad Ali standing over a downed Sonny Liston. Except instead of it being in a boxing ring in front of a couple of thousand people in Lewiston, Maine, I was to create the same, timeless images in a small, converted office that houses ten people in Guildford, Surrey.

The whole team are so nice and we get on so well that I would constantly (and still do, to some extent) have this enormous fear that I would let them down, that the work would not measure up to what they were expecting. My first piece of advice to anyone undertaking a large project would be to get a mock up put together as soon as you can. I spent a good six months looking at the images I had been taking in isolation, but once we did a mock up or put them in context in some way, I felt so much better about them. Similarly, when the article recently went live on Eurogamer (a popular gaming news and features website) and I could see the images in context, with an accompanying story, it made so much more sense.

Essentially, I'm learning as I go: it's incredibly fun, if a little stressful, and I am soon to spend an entire week with them in the attempt to capture some more natural shots of the more nervous members of the team, by sheer virtue of battering them into submission by constantly being there.

So to summarise this wall of insane, yet honest, writing, I'll tell you what I've learned about photo projects:

1. Make sure you give a damn about the subject you're covering. If your heart's not in it, you won't produce interesting, emotional results.
2. It's about the story and the people, and not necessarily about whether everyone in the shot is on the rule of thirds or exposed perfectly (although don't use this as an excuse for sloppy images)
3. Get the shots in context in some way as soon as you can. Seriously, it will stop you from going insane.

Once the intensive week is complete (and I get a second to myself), I will bring you another update, documenting my ups, downs, and ultimately what I have learned from the experience. Basically, you'll be my collective, silent psychiatrist.

A tiltpod? What's a tiltpod?

When I was first asked if I'd test-drive a tiltpod, I shrugged my shoulders and thought 'Why not?' A portable, tiltable compact camera or iPhone securing device? There are worse things I could be asked to do, even if I weren't quite sure how I'd end up using them.

About a month on, I love my iPhone tiltpod and I can see the benefit of the compact camera version.

Tiltpods come with a lightweight, magnetic base that's set with a small socket, and a corresponding magnetic ball joint that either screws into the tripod mount of your compact camera or has a slot for your iPhone 4 or 4S. The ball sits in the socket, is held there by the marvel that is magnetism, and being a ball-and-socket, rotates. Rather than being tripods, they're more like gastropods, I suppose.

The camera version's base attaches to your camera via a lanyard and the ball joint is unobtrusive enough to live permanently in the tripod mount. (If you've an off-centred tripod mount, there is a sticky ball joint, instead.) It's a clever bit of design: the chances of losing one bit or the other have been diminished whilst the possibility of actually using it is increased by virtue of it always being there. As for the iPhone version, it can dangle most comfortably from your keyring.

Now that the ergonomics have been covered, what about using the things? Quite serendipitously, a project that is currently consuming just about all of my waking moments has demanded a heap of iPhoneography recently. The tiltpod has proved its mettle here, especially when it came to self-portraits. Find a flat surface, set the angle, use your self-timer function of choice, and away you go. Even if you don't need to be quite so artistically-inclined as my endeavours, a tiltpod is still ideal for grabbing photos of you and your beloveds, instead of pictures with oddly angled arms or devoid of one of your party.

Or you could just use it for Facetiming, if that's more your thing.

As for the camera version, it's pretty much the same deal. Find your surface, set it up, off you go. I've not had any issues with wobble, slide, or slip, and positioning it has been a question of how daring I've felt.

Tiltpods aren't without their limitations, though. Unless you magnetically attach the base to a radiator, lamppost, or railing, you're restricted to taking landscape oriented photos with the camera version. Whether or not you've the stomach to dangle your P310 from a balustrade via a magnet is up to you. I mean, I tried it, in the interests in writing a review, but I don't know if I'd be prepared to step beyond catching distance of my camera lest gravity get the better of it. (The tiltpod team does point out you can always attach the sticky ball joint to your camera to facilitate vertically-oriented shooting, but if you're already using the sticky foot, you can't. And you might not want to stick a sticky foot to your camera, either.)

If you precision-angle your iPhone, you can stand it vertically in its tiltpod. This set up does, however, feel a little precarious for my comfort. I would have apreciated just a little more depth and width in the base, so that I could use it to take portraits and not have to worry about my iPhone tumbling into oblivion, or have my iPhone standing up on my desk without fear of it toppling over should a door slam. Still, it hasn't stopped me from using the tiltpod to cradle my phone on my desk horizontally.

Finally, they do need to sit on a surface: a wall, a shelf, a nest of tables that I stacked one of top of another to gain sufficient height for one particular photo. But the problem itself isn't insurmountable (although my furniture obstacle course might have been) and it's the trade-off for their significant advantage over other camera-stabilising devices: they are emininetly portable.

The camera version stays attached to your camera, so it goes with you (and your camera) automatically. The iPhone version attaches to your keyring. They're designed to be used, not left languishing in a drawer or at the bottom of a bag.

At a smidge under $15 each, a tiltpod doesn't break the bank, although I'll admit that I probably wouldn't have gone out and bought one for myself. I am, though, very happy to have them in my possession. If you do lots of iPhoneography (or Facetime frequently), the iPhone version is worth it. And I reckon that they make pretty nifty presents, too.

Tiltpods are available from Gomite's webstore, costing $14.95 each.

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Disclaimer: Gomite did send me two unsolicited review models. I didn't pay for them and I have been allowed to keep them.

Wave goodbye to your Fujichrome Velvia 100F and 50

Bye-bye Fujichrome Velvia 100F

They're not the first to go, and they most certainly won't be the last, but Fujifilm has today announced that it is ceasing production of Fujichrome Velvia 100F in 35mm, 120, and 4”×5” formats, and Velvia 50 in 4”×5” and 8”×10”. The last shipments of these films are due to arrive in the UK in December 2012.

There's no real surprise that some varieties of film are being discontinued. Demand is falling, prices are increasing, and as a consequence, demand will fall some more. Yes, there's still a vibrant community of film-based photographers out there, and Fujifilm will continue to cater for them. But they'll just have a slightly smaller selection of film available to them from next year.

As Gabriel Da Costa–who product manages professional film for Fujifilm–put it: 'It is an unfortunate consequence of digital capture, that some of the slower selling silver-halide lines will drop off the radar.'

So it goes. If you're especially attached to any of these films, I suggest you buy a freezer and start stocking piling.

Get learning with Leica

Who's up for a weekend away with Leica, then? The Leica Akademie has announced its US 2012 to 2012 programme of one-day specials and week-long adventures. Thirty-six different programmes will pass thorugh 16 different cities between the end of August 2012 and 24 May 2013, with the aim of inspiring photographers and developing their skills.

Whether you're a beginner or more experienced, you'll find something that suits, provided that you can pay for it, of course. You'll be in small classes, led by experienced Leica instructors, and shooting environments that should bring out the best in you.

Leica M Monochrom: The Future of Black-And-White Photography

• Designed around the Leica M Monochrom, the only 35mm camera dedicated to black-and-white
• All about visualising scenes and gaining a better understanding of lighting, texture, contrast and tonal gradation
• $249 fee, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

Leica Destinations: All-Inclusive Multi-Day Photography Experiences

• Acadia & Mount Desert Island, ME: 7 to 11 October, 2012 ($1,899)
• Preserving Patagonia: 23 to 30 March, 2013 ($7,725)
• Big Sur & Monterey, CA: 23 to 27 April, 2013 ($2,499)
• Santa Fe & Taos, NM, In the Footsteps of Ansel Adams: 19 to 23 May, 2013 ($2,999)

The Truth About Photographs: Developing a Distinctive Visual Style

• Aimed at intermediate to advanced M System photographers
• Multi-day workshop
• Focused onthe creative process behind capturing an image
• $599 fee, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

Better Pictures with Leica Compact Cameras: Digital Basics

• Aimed at point-and-shoot photographers who prefer to use auto or Programme mode
• Designed to explore and overcome the obstacles to capturing great images
• $149

Better Pictures with Leica Compact Cameras: Advanced

• Aimed at owners of cameras such as the X1, X2, D-Lux5, and V-Lux3
• About learning tips and tricks, and exploring the flexibility of these cameras when taken off Programme mode
• $149

Leica S-System Experience

• One day workshop based around the S2 system
• Includes landscape opportunities and studio sessions
• Class size limit of eight students
• $299 fee, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M or S brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

Leica Weekends

• Led by a Leica instructor and Leica featured photographer
• From rangefinder basics to advanced techniques, tailored to the host city
• $499 fee, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

The Leica M9 Owners Workshop: A Practical Session Designed for Owners of the Leica M9

• Practical shooting and useful editing skills
• For M9 users, obviously
• $199, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

Leica Street Photography: Two Day Workshop

• Ideal for M System owners
• Encourages exploration of new techniques
• $349, with a $150 voucher redeemable against a Leica M brand product purchased new from a North American dealer

For more information, including cities, dates, and sign-up forms, head to the Leica Akademie website. You can address questions to the Akademie@leicacamerausa.com email.

Crazy or sensible? A full-frame sensor in a smaller-sized body.

Same-same-but-different? How about the 5D MkIII's sensor, in a smaller body?

Sometime yesterday, a couple of articles on a rumoured smaller-sized Canon camera with a full-frame sensor popped into my news feed. Most of yesterday was spent writing, not reading, and I didn't get the chance to pay much attention to them until this morning.

The gory details of the camera are themselves interesting: it would be smaller and lighter than a 5D MkIII, with a mostly plastic construction and possibly a pop-up flash. It'd have a 19 point auto-focus system, a sensitivity range of ISO 100 to 51,200, and 22 megapixel full-frame sensor.

But what actually interested me more was F-Stoppers' reaction to this potential new camera:

Canon Rumors has said that an entry level full frame doesn’t make sense, and though affordable access to the 5D MKIII sensor is tantalizing, I kind of agree. A full frame sensor isn’t really necessary for most of the photographers out there and may just be an attempt to move emphasis away from megapixel count and grab a few more of those consumer dollars that drive the company.

Really? You reckon that there are photographers out there who wouldn't be seriously interested in a camera that has a full-frame sensor, but is smaller and lighter than a 5D MkIII. Sure, Canon would have to get this camera absolutely right, but hell, I'd love a full-frame sensor in a body that I didn't need a small trailer to transport.

You see, I like this idea of having choice. My reasons for choosing to use a camera that isn't classically categorised as 'Pro' or 'Prosumer' aren't necessarily dictated by whether or not I'm scared of all the knobs and levers on one, or whether or not I think I need to be able to shoot lots and lots of frames per second, or whether or not I'm wooed by all those extra megapixels. One of them is size and weight. The other is cost. There are certain elements in a camera that I'm prepared to sacrifice for others, but if I'm offered a camera that closer meets my wish-list, then so much the better.

Ideally, I'd like some kind of identi-kit camera, where I could pick and choose the elements that are most important to me. The progressive scale where you have more of everything in each iteration doesn't necessarily meet my needs. Of course, in some respects, it goes with the territory; increase one factor and it automatically increases another. Still, wouldn't it be great to have a camera that meets your specifications? If that's even a possibility, it's a long way off. But until then, Canon offering a variation on a theme is a good thing, in my opinion.

More manufacturing woes for Canon; this time with the 650D

Watch those rubber grips, Ladies and Gentlemen

It's been a sticky few days for Canon. They've recalled some S100s because under certain atmospheric conditions the lens can get stuck, delivery of the EF 24-70mm has been delayed for a second time, and now there's a problem with the grip on the 650D (that's the T4i, if you're across the Pond from me).

Between 31 May and 15 June 2012, whoever was adding the rubber accelerator to the pot slipped and added a bit too much. This excess accelerator can react with 'other substances' (nothing more descriptive than that from Canon), particularly in high temperature and humidity conditions, to create zinc bis, which'll turn the grip white.

Apart from the newly-whitened grip ruining the aesthetic of the camera, it's possible that some people might experience an allergic skin reaction to the zinc bis. If they rub their eyes with it on their hands, they might go red and sore, too. Canon is advising people to seek medical attention if they're experiencing any allergic symptoms.

Meanwhile, how do you know if your bright shiny new 650D is affected? Check the serial number. If the sixth digit of the serial number is 2 or higher, you're safe. Got a 1 - get in touch with Canon. Alternatively, you could just enter the serial number into their handy-dandy checker, which'll spew out an answer in seconds. That's found here.

Canon UK has requested that anyone with an affected camera get in touch with an authorised service facility. There will be a free repair service in place after 17 July. Until then, wash your hands after touching your camera, especially if the grip has turned white. For affected Canon customers elsewhere, get in touch with your local support team.

To mis-quote Oscar Wilde, to have one product recall is misfortunate; two have two is carelessness. If I were an owner of an 650D or an S100, I wouldn't be feeling too confident in Canon's manufacturing processes right now. Should I own both, which isn't exactly an outlandish combination, I'd be far from impressed. I'm pretty much tied into Canon products now, but if I were just starting out, this is the sort of harries-up that'd make me consider a different manufacturer.

You can, and need to, do better than this, Canon.

To protect your camera equipment, fly with a pistol...

I was in the pub the other day, and got to talking with a camera-man who does seriously high-end video stuff. He travels with a lot of equipment all the time, including some ridiculously expensive high-speed video equipment. Of course, everything he owns is fully insured, but insurance isn't everything: He is on the road around 300 days every year, and if something gets stolen or breaks, you have a big problem: It's extremely hard to get a replacement part for a Phantom Flex if you're standing on a mountain-top in Tibet somewhere.

So, he shared a little secret with me: He found the perfect way of protecting his £140,000 ($210,000) worth of equipment he travels with: He travels with a pistol.

Now, of course, there are lots of flights that won't let you check ammunition, but most will allow you to travel with an unloaded fire-arm. On top of that, a starting pistol costs as little as $50.

So... Why does this work? Well, a starting pistol is classed as a firearm, but it isn't actually illegal anywhere. In addition, since you aren't bringing any ammunition, you're basically just packing a small toy gun that isn't good for anyone. However, the airlines are über-paranoid about losing a firearm: Doing so, would cause tremendous amounts of problems for everybody concerned, and so, any luggage containing a 'firearm' is especially tagged and tracked through the luggage systems.

"Of course", my new-found friend said, sipping from his gin and tonic, "It does take me longer to check my bags, but there's no way they'll take the risk of losing them - and so when I travel to very important jobs, my starter pistol comes with me..."

I've never tried it myself, and I haven't looked into the rules, but it does sound like a pretty elegant (if ridiculously extreme) solution to the fear of losing your camera equipment whilst on the move...

Photo (cc) by Mr Smashy

Adobe UK kicks off its Creative Week

Adobe UK launched a week-long celebration of all things creative at lunchtime today. Creatively, they've named it Creative Week. It brings together Adobe staff and specialists, leading professionals, and industry movers-and-shakers to participate in debates, run workshops, and host show-and-tell sessions. And all of this is being broadcast over the Intergoogles, so wherever you are with a connection, you can get involved.

If you're reading this, the chances are that you'll be most interested in Friday's sessions, which are photography-focused. Timothy Allen, Erin Moroney, and Glyn Dewis will be live debating. Adobe Evangelist (awesome job title) Julianne Kost will be divulging some of Photoshop CS6's secrets. And Allan Jenkins will be running a show-and-tell on producing Victorian-era Cyanotype prints. There are more sessions on Photoshop and Lightroom, too, in case that wasn't enough.

Wednesday is Film and Video day; Tuesday looks at design and publishing; and Thursday is dedicated to web and mobile.

You can get the full agenda from Adobe UK's blog, and sign-up to watch sessions on the Adobe Create website.

Have fun!