The HTC One (M8) is announced, with refocusing technology among other photographic toys

HTC's replacement for its HTC One wasn't exactly a well-guarded secret with most of the speculation centred on what exactly it'd be called. But now that the HTC One (M8) is here, it looks as if it has a very interesting camera function that I'm intrigued to try out. What, then, does it have to offer? First, HTC has stuck to its ultrapixel guns, with the emphasis being on the size of the pixels on the sensor, not how many there are to service the 28mm ƒ/2.0 lens. Gone is the 2013 image stabilisation technology, replaced by a smart stabilisation function that works with the ultrapixels. And added is the rear-facing second sensor that allows for better depth detection and Lytro-like control by taking two shots simultaneously with the UFocus function. But there's also Foregrounder, so that you can add effects and play with the background; Copy & Paste, a compositing feature that lets you copy and paste people appearing in one photo into a different image; and Dimension Plus, which allows you to alter the angle of your image by tilting your screen.

Similar to the flash in the iPhone 5S, the 2014-One has a dual flash that is designed to render better skin tones and a slow-motion video function, as well. And there're manual options for ISO and the like, giving you better control over your exposure.

For all that HTC isn't interested in the megapixel wars, it has bumped up the front-facing camera's megapixellage from 2.1 to 5, though.

The phone's 2.3Ghz Snapdragon 801 processor should be capable of whipping through your edits and if 16GB or 32GB of storage is insufficient for your archive of images, you can always make use of the micro-SD card slot.

The 2014 vintage One has taken cues from Apple, Samsung, and Nokia as well as going its own way when it comes to megapixels and fun and games. But however good the camera is on it, does HTC have the firepower to make it a go-to smartphone?

What could you buy for the price of a moon-walking Hasselblad?

By now we all probably know that a Hasselblad 500 that made it to the moon as part of the 1971 Apollo 15 mission, and came back again, has sold for €660,000 (after auction fees) to Terukazu Fujisawa, founder of Japanese retail chain Yodobashi Camera. So that's equivalent to £550,000, US$910,000, or AU$997,000, give or take. This got me wondering, what else could I buy for £550,000, photographic or otherwise?

Let's start with a Hasselblad, to put things into context. I've found a Hasselblad H5D-50, with either a 24mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm or 50-110mm lens retailing for £25,500. You could buy 21-and-half of those for what it cost to get the Hasselblad 500 that went to the moon.

Or, if you're looking for a top flight Nikon, the new D4S is £5,200. You could buy almost 106 of those for one moon-jaunting Hasselblad. Pair a D4S with an 800mm lens that costs about £14,000 and you've spent £19,200. That's a 28:1 ratio. (Or 39 800mm lenses alone.) If you're looking for something more entry level, a Canon 700D with a 50mm ƒ/1.8 costs in the region of £580. So that's 948 of those. Or it's 611 Fujifilm X100S.

Away from cameras, the average price of a yearling at Tattersalls' October 2013 was 207,501 guineas. What with a guinea being £1.05, you're looking at just about two baby race horses there. If you need somewhere to train your racehorses, there's a 14-box yard with a trainer's house selling for £550,000 in Newmarket right now. Or you could go for a one-bedroomed flat in central London.

At a recent auction of Impressionist paintings at Sotherby's in London, quite a few lots went for sums in the region of £550,000, so you could always try looking for a Bonnard or a Sisley if they take your fancy.

There's plenty of things you can spend your £550,000 on if you missed out on the moon-walking Hasselblad.

Scandal and drama at the Youth World Photography Awards as a winner is disqualified

Here's a life lesson: if you think that you can get away with submitting an image to an age-restricted photography competition, a competition in which you're subsequently named as a winner, when you're actually older than you're supposed to be, you should probably think again. The chances are that you'll be found out. Then you'll be stripped of your prize and you'll be plastered across the Intergoogles for all the wrong reasons. This is precisely what happened to Borhan Mardani, who was named as the winner of the Culture category of the Youth Sony World Photography Awards on Tuesday.

Mardani, it turns out, wasn't 19 when he took his 'winning' image, as he stated in his written declaration. Now that he's been found out, his prize has been removed from him and instead awarded to 19 year old Anastasia Zhetvina, from Russia, for her image Young talents.

Anastasia will now join Paulina Metzscher and Turjoy Chowdhury, the two other Youth finalists, in winning a Sony A5000 and the chance to be named Youth Photographer of the Year and flown to London to celebrate at the Sony World Photography Awards' party at the end of April.

Stretcher Prints: making art from old plastic bottles

What can you make from 140,000 already used plastic bottles? I have a pencil that once upon was a plastic bottle. (It says so on it.) Probably quite a few of those. Or a gajillion combs. They seem to be popular recycled products. Headphones, too. They can be manufactured from recycled plastic bottles. But what about pictures? Apparently, yes. Co2nscience, a UK-based start-up wants to transform 140,000 bottles into enough felt-like canvas material suitable for photographic reproductions to cover a football pitch. (A European football pitch, not an American one.) That's 10,851 prints measuring 960mm by 710mm. Co2nscience is looking for £12,000 in Kickstarter funding get their Stretcher Prints project out of the ground and onto people's walls.

Stretcher Prints aren't framed; as the name suggests, they stretch over your wall and are secured through eyelets. Without a frame and because of the flexibility of the material, they're not restricted to flat walls but can decorate spiral staircases, for example. Oh, and they can go in the washing machine.

There are four different sized stretcher prints on offer, the cheapest starting at £49 if you want to have your own image printed on it. There are off-the-shelf prints available, too, but I'm guessing that you'd prefer to see your own pictures on one!

Co2nscience's Kickstarter runs until 10 April and they need another £9,000, or thereabouts, to make it happen. Who knew that a plastic bottle could become something so pretty? And it's so much better than going to landfill.

Unpicking Snapseed's Ambiance slider

If you use Snapseed to edit your smartphone photos, you might have noticed the 'Ambiance' slider under the 'Tune Image' settings. Ambiance? Isn't that the mood or feeling you get at a party, not a photographic term? Yes, exactly, and that's why I avoided it for quite a while. I just couldn't figure out how to apply it effectively to my photos. And Google, which owns Snapseed, was hardly helpful. The Google help page ambiance explanation reads:

The Ambiance control is a special type of contrast that controls the balance of light in a photo. It can be used to balance backlit photos or to accentuate contrasts throughout your photo. Swipe right for photos where the subject is darker than the background. Swipe left to increase the contrast of dark objects and create a slight glow around darker objects. This is especially helpful in photos that are slightly flat.

I wasn't aware that there was a 'special type of contrast' available to photographers, just the plain old difference between light and dark, so that was surprising. And it's all very well telling us to 'swipe right for photos where the subject is darker than the background,' but what effect will it have?

As with just about everything associated with photography, the best way to understand it is to use it. So that's how I've come to write this and present you with some compare-and-contrast examples where I have swept the slider both left and right on a series of photos and analysed its impact.

In order to create examples that are clear enough for illustrative purposes, all of the ambiance settings, whether positive or negative, have been exaggerated. Subtlety and demonstration aren't natural bedfellows; that's for the real thing.

Dried berries

Let's start with this image of some dried berries. I've adjusted the white balance to correct for a light temperature that was out by several thousand Kelvin and cropped it marginally, but that's all. It's a good base.

By increasing the ambiance setting by 60 points, you can see that the image has taken on a more reddish tone. The background has also been lightened, but the highlights—say those on the bottom right of the centre berry—haven't become overwhelming, as you might otherwise expect from an increase in contrast. The definition of the berries has improved, but not at expense of the highlights.

When I swiped the slider to the left and dropped the ambiance by 60 points, you can see that the background became darker, the red tone has diminished, and the berries have become softer looking and less defined. A negative ambiance setting has given the photo a softer, more muted look.

Eva

This is my niece, Eva. She's three. She's being spun (by me) on an upright-spinny-device in the park. I've adjusted the original image to correct the white balance, but that's it.

When I increased the ambiance, pushing it to +60 made Eva look as if she's been on a sunbed every day of her life since birth. It was awful. So I went for +30 instead. She still looks comically rosy-cheeked, but not horrifically so. Her coat is an unattractively bright shade of pink, her wellies are deeply saturated, but the grass looks good.

Decreasing the ambiance to -30 had a rather pleasing effect, though. Her skin became more milky and the darker background helped her to gain even prominance in the image. I reckon that decreasing it even further could make for an even better look.

Me

Having tried increasing ambiance in Eva's portrait to unpleasant effect, I didn't even bother trying it with my self-portrait. Decreasing the ambiance, this time to -100, was effective, though. I'm not sure if I prefer the original (again, slightly cropped and heavily adjusted for white balance) image or the edited one, but it's a good demonstration of the tool and shows how it gives a more muted feel to your photos.

Having a swipe and swish with the ambiance slider is definitely something to be considered when you're fiddling with your smartphone photos. The general rule seems to be that left is great for portraits and go right a bit for still lifes. But every photo's different. And maybe 'ambiance' isn't such a terrible descriptor, either. One way is more lively and bouncy and the other more muted and moody. Just like the atmosphere can be at a party.

Making a Pringles Can Obscura

I spent Saturday at the Cambridge Festival of Science and Royal Photographic Society's photography day, listening to talks on megapixels and watching videos of caesium react with water in slow-motion. It was mostly a fun and informative experience, but apart from the caesium videos, the best bit was sitting inside Fotonow's Camper Obscura. That, just as its name suggests, is a camper van that has been transformed into a camera obscura. A camera obscura is the basis of any photographic camera, from a pinhole to a dSLR. A camera obscura is literally a dark (obscura) room (camera) with a hole poked into it, through which light can pass to create an image of the outside world on a screen. There are room-sized camerae obscurae in Bristol and Edinburgh, but they don't have to be walk-in activities. It's easy enough to scale them down and make something portable. I was aiming for something more along these lines when I decided to devise my own.

Of course, if you replace the screen with photo-sensitive paper you have a pinhole camera and by steadily improving the light-gathering and focusing abilities of the hole, with lenses, you end up with a camera more akin to those we use every day. But that's another project for another day.

Undeterred, I looked around for some DIY camera obscura instructions and found the perfect example on Exploratorium, which used a Pringles can. Seeing as Haje has already used a Pringles can to create a cheap macro extension tube, it seemed entirely appropriate to transform the snack container into a portable camera obscura. A Pringles Can Obscura.

1. Take one Pringles can

After securing a can of Pringles either from a nearby shop or your pantry, you'll need to divest it of its contents—whether you eat them all or transfer them to a new container is up to you—and then wipe it clean and keep the lid.

Draw a line around the tube, about 6cm or 2½" up from the base. Using a craft knife, or in my case, a bread knife, cut through the tube so that you're left with two pieces. The shorter section will be from the bottom of the can, and the longer section from the top.

2. Make a screen

You need to make a screen onto which your image will be projected inside the can. The cheapest and most readily available means to make one is from tracing paper.

Place the lid of the Pringles can on a sheet of tracing paper, draw around it, and then cut it out. Secure the tracing paper on to the top of the tube using the lid.

3. Put the can back together

Rather than reconstruct the can with the two cut ends meeting again, you want the cut end from the bottom section of the can meeting the lidded, tracing-papered end from the upper section. Secure them in place using gaffer tape or electrical tape. No light should be able to pass through the join.

I got so carried away sticking it together that I forgot to take a photo. I'm sorry.

4. Pierce a hole

In order for the light to pass into the can and create an image, pierce a hole using a drawing pin in the base of the can.

5. Finish off your Pringles Can Obscura

To make sure that you don't end up with spurs of cardboard poking into your face when you hold your Pringles Can Obscura to your eye, tape up the cut surface with some electrical tape. And if you don't want it to resemble a Pringles can that you've hacked up, wrap some coloured paper around it.

6. Head out into the light

The brighter the day, the better the image you'll be able to render on your screen. Just remember that everything will appear upside down. And then it will be a case of moving nearer and farther away from your subject to get it in focus.

It's a great tool to remind you just how simple the principles of photography are, and to get you back in touch with moving subjects into and out of focus.

(And don't go getting any ideas about the gorgeous image of the tree. That's obviously, from the Camper Obscura.)

BBC Wildlife Magazine's Camera-trap Photo of the Year competition is open

Anyone who uses camera-traps to create images of wild animals, or uses camera-traps as part of their research into wild animals, the BBC, its Wildlife Magazine, and sponsors Lowepro, have a competition for you. It's the 2014 BBC Wildlife Magazine Camera-trap Photo of the Year competition.

The competition has been designed with both field researchers and amateurs in mind. It's split into two divisions: Camera-trap Research Project of the Year and Camera-trap Photo of the Year, each with three categories. It's rather pleasing to see photography as a tool, as well as the gorgeous images that it's capable of creating, being honoured simultaneously.

Camera-trap Research Project of the Year

This division is open exclusively to research projects that make use of camera-traps. Images can be submitted to one of three categories:

• New behaviour: Images taken during the course of research that show behaviour never before recorded
• New reach: Images taken during research that show a species never photographed before outside its known range
• Rare species: Images taken during research that show a species that is rarely seen or never photographed in the wild

The winners of each of these categories will go forward to be judged for the title of Camera-trap Research Project of the Year and a £3,000 prize.

The judges will be selecting their winner based on the quality of the research and the importance of the images to the piece of research.

Camera-trap Photo of the Year

If you're not trying to track rare species of frog in South America or look for socialisation traits in South East Asian primates, but just like photographing the badgers in your garden, you've still a chance to put your images up for judging into one of these three categories:

• Animal portraits: like any good portrait, images should capture the character or spirit of their subject
• Animal Behaviour: A compelling image that shows interesting or unusual behaviour
• British Wildlife: Amazing images that capture the spirit and behaviour of British wildlife

The winners of these categories will see their images published in the December 2014 issue of BBC Wildlife Magazine and on the BBC Wildlife Magazine website, www.discoverwildlife.com and will receive a Lowepro Flipside Sport 15L camera pack, worth £122. Then they'll go on to compete for the title Camera-trap Photographer of the Year.

The closing date for entries is 30 June 2014, and all photos must be submitted online. As always, please do read the rules and terms and conditions before submitting any photos. You can find those, together with entry details, on the Discover Wildlife website.

A flare issue in the Fujifilm X-T1

If your new Fujifilm X-T1 carries a serial number lower than 41M07801, you are being advised to contact Fujifilm's customer service team (0844 553 2322 in the UK). This is to arrange for your camera to be inspected and, if necessary, adjusted to remedy a flare issue that some units from early in the production run are experiencing.

A manufacturing fault means that if the connector port cover happens to be open while images are being shot and strong sunlight is shining into the port at a certain angle, the light can be reflected within the camera body and be recorded on the images. These aberrant rays of light render as a flare effect for those photographers who've seen it. As the connector cover is usually closed and the light has to be at a particular angle, it's a relatively rare occurrence. Still, best to have it checked and, if necessary, repaired.

Fujifilm will carry out this service free of charge.

Sony World Photography Awards' Youth competition winners announced

Update! 17:28, Thursday 20 March 2014: Bohran Mardani, who was originally named as the winner of the Youth Culture category, was found not to be 19 nineteen years old when he took his image, as he claimed. He has subequently been disqualified and Anastasia Zhetvina, 19 years old and from Russia, named as winner for her image Young talents. This post has been updated to reflect this. The Sony World Photography Awards' Youth competition is open to anyone under the age of 20. There are three categories to which they can submit their photos—culture, environment, and portraiture—and one winner is selected from each. Those three talented young people are each presented with a Sony A5000 as a prize, and one of them will be named as the Youth Photographer of the Year. She or he will be flown to London, to the awards ceremony, to receive the award and see their image exhibited at Somerset House. And this year's winners?

LifePrint, a wireless, social photo printer is looking for a Kickstarter start

Portable printers, wireless printers, and smartphone-connected printers aren't anything new, but LifePrint is looking to bring something new to the market. It's seeking Kickstarter funding for its portable, wireless, instant, and socially networked printer that'll be both iOS- and Android-compatible.

We get the portable, wireless, and instant bits; but what do they mean by social? It means that LifePrint isn't just a printer, but there's an app, too. This will allow you to follow your family and friends and be followed by them in turn, wherever you all are in the world. Anyone you follow can send an image to your printer that you can choose to print, or not. Likewise, you can send your images to your followers' printers, if you're so inclined. Grandmother in Italy should be able to print images of grandchildren in the UK without a hitch. Not that you have to acquire followers if you don't want to; you can remain an undiscoverable recluse if you prefer.

Provided that you have a connection to the Internet, it doesn't matter where in the world your phone is and your printer is. They can be thousands of miles apart, but once you click 'Print' your image should be ready in about 60 seconds.

You can print any photo on your camera roll, and use the LifePrint app's editing tools before you print if you want. It's got the usual filters and borders, as well as speech bubbles and picture-stitching. Once you've printed, you can share your photo to the social media of your choice from the app, too.

All of this is, however, a long way off. LifePrint needs to raise $200,000 before 25 April 2014 to reach its Kickstarter goal, with Earlybird rewards starting at $99. If and when it reaches its funding, the projected shipping dates for printer units is January 2015 for iOS and mid-April 2015 for Android-compatible devices.

Will it make it? Well, according to Kicktraq, if pledges continue at the current rate, it'll get there.

And then the hard work for the LifePrint team really will begin. They have an app to develop and hardware to finalise, manufacture, and ship. If you like what you see, you know what to do over on Kickstarter.

Winners - the Sony World Photography Awards Open Competition

In the run-up to the gala awards ceremony in London at the end of April, the ten category winners of the Sony World Photography Awards Open division have been announced, selected from over 70,000 entries made by amateur photographers. Each of them wins a new Sony A6000 camera and they're up with a chance of winning the $5,000 prize that accompanies the title Overall Open Photographer of the Year.

• Architecture – Holger Schmidtke, Germany
• Arts and Culture – Valerie Prudon, Australia
• Enhanced – Kylli Sparre, Estonia
• Low Light - Vlad Eftenie, Romania
• Nature & Wildlife – Gert van den Bosch, Netherlands
• Panoramic – Ivan Pedretti, Italy
• People - Arup Ghosh, India
• Smile - Alpay Erdem, Turkey
• Split Second - Hairul Azizi Harun, Malaysia
• Travel - Li Chen, China

As well as their new cameras, all of them will have their images exhibited at Somerset House, London between 1 and 18 May 2014, and the winner of the Overall Open Photographer of the Year title will be flown to London to collect her or his prize at the ceremony.

Nigel Atherton, the jury chair commented: 'Nigel Atherton, Jury Chair, comments: 'Photography is a language that transcends national borders and cultures, race, gender and social background....No two of this year’s Open category winners are from the same country but all share the ability to visually interpret the world around them in a unique and captivating way. The winning and shortlisted images demonstrate this gift with aplomb.'

Burrard-Lucas is back with a better BeetleCam

We've been following the evolution of the BeetleCam here on Photocritic since the brothers Burrard-Lucas, tinkerers and wildlife photographers extraordinaire, constructed a camera on a buggy in a case that could be used to get up close with animals that you wouldn't necessarily want to photograph from point blank range. The prototype BeetleCam went on Safari in Tanzania in 2009, an improved version was taken to the Masai Mara in 2011, and in 2012 BeetleCams went on sale to anyone who wanted to try remote wildlife photography. In 2014, Will Burrard-Lucas is back with the BeetleCam Hybrid. The BeetleCam Hybrid combines a traditional BeetleCam base with a stabilised camera gimbal. The gimbal keeps the camera level when the BeetleCam is beetling around over uneven ground. And the operator can pan and tilt the camera without having to move the base. Want to check out the BeetleCam Hybrid in action?

There's also an improved version of the original-style BeetleCam, with a strong but lightweight carapace and the ability to record video and stills simultaneously.

If keeping your camera on the ground is a little too mundane for you, there's also a quiet, remote-controlled copter for aerial photography. Will took this to the Serengeti recently and achieved some stunning footage of wildebeest migrating.

All of these remote-controlled devices are available to purchase from Camtraptions. There's a range of specifications—with ot without a carapace, or copters designed for GoPros, mirror-less cameras, or dSLRS—but if you can't find what you're looking for, a bespoke build is an option.

Now, when will I be able to go to Africa?

RoundFlash: a new light modifier from Inspired Photo Gear

Inspired Photo Gear is steadily augmenting its range of photography accessories, adding two new lighting modifiers to its Faith lighting stands and Lollipod multi-use supports. As well as stocking the Lightblaster, which we looked at and loved a few months ago, it's now selling the RoundFlash modifier, too. The RoundFlash is a lightweight (230g) and portable collapsible ring light and soft box that can be used either on- or off-camera. On-camera, you fit it around your lens with your hotshoe-mounted flash feeding into it. Off-camera, you mount your flash on a lighting stand and then attach the RoundFlash to it.

The RoundFlash modifier fits around lenses with diameters upto 10cm and is perfect with lenses designed for portraiture (it is a ring light, after all) for example Canon's 85mm. If you've an especially small lens, try adding a lenshood to create more stability.

There's even a video demonstrating just how fast it is to set up:

The RoundFlash is available from Inspired Photo Gear for a special introductory price of £92.95. If you don't want to spend on a ring light when you already have a set of speedlights, it might be worth a look.

London photographers, take extra care of your kit

There have been reports of people acting suspiciously in the vicinity of photographers in central London over the past few days. On Saturday, Luke Robinson noticed someone keeping vulture-like eyes on photographers around Waterloo Bridge and the Southbank. The person in question was holding an SLR lens, but no body, bag, or other kit. Robinson spotted the 'dodgy chap' as he headed towards him, but swerved out of the way at the last minute.

Today, AFP photographer Leon Neal reported seeing 'two masked men riding a black scooter with taped-up number plates, doing laps of Westminster Magistrates court, checking out gear.' The motocyclists aborted their third pass when Neal and his colleagues made it clear they had been noticed. However, there are now reports that both Sky and BBC news crews have been targeted, with cars broken into and gear stolen.

Please be extra vigilant, report suspect behaviour, and don't place yourself in unnecessary danger. Remember: you're worth more than your kit.

'Social Photography' now available to download!

If you can't wait until next month* to lay your hands on a paper copy of my newest and shiniest book, Social Photography, it's available right this very moment for download as an e-book from the Ilex Instant site!

It'll cost you £5.99 and comes in PDF, so that you can read it on your desktop, laptop, or tablet of any flavour, and there are more formats on their way.

Of course, if you'd prefer to wait for a hard copy, you can always put in a pre-order now. It'll be £9.99 in the UK and $16 in the US.

Naturally, I'm incredibly biased, but it is a terribly handsome book and if you're looking to get more out of your smartphone and your social networks, a fabulous companion!

* Oh the excitement! A very large order of copies of Social Photography has been placed by a well-known US retailer, to go on sale by the end of April. The UK release is being delayed a little to cover this, but it should be on these shores by the end of May. If you can't wait that long, you know what to do!

'Experts' blame selfie culture for a rise in cosmetic surgery

Early this morning* I was perusing the BBC website, as I am wont to do every morning, when my eye fell upon the regular round-up of the newspapers and a headline in the Metro. Now, I am not accustomed to reading the Metro—it's aimed at metropolitan commuters and I, therefore, do not fall within its target demographic—but this headline had me rushing to its website.

Selfies blamed for plastic surgery rise

According to 'experts', the Metro doesn't care to enlighten us whom these experts are, 'The relentless rise of the mobile phone pictures, coupled with a fixation on celebrity culture, creates unrealistic expectations.' Furthermore, one-in-three US plastic surgeons has reported an increase in requests for plastic surgery from patients whose desire for intervention is based on looks-aware social media. One-in-seven US facial plastic surgeons has reported 'selfie pressure' as a common trend that had grown in the past year.

This trend is similarly noticable in the UK. The Metro cites Marc Pacifico, from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, who claims that young people feel under 'incessant pressure' to conform to idealised images of beauty and compare themselves to celebrity images and those that have been digitally enhanced.

Apparently, there has been a ten per cent rise in nose jobs and seven per cent increase in the number of hair transplants over the past year.

Pacifico is of the opinion that if the current trend to take selfies continues it will result in people who are unaccepting of normal variations in appearance.

Shall we just put the brakes on this runaway train of an idea for the moment? While self-portraits might be making people increasingly aware of their appearance, and perchance more critical of it when their photos spread far and wide via Facebook and Twitter and can be compared to perfectly primped and preened personalities, to lay the blame squarely at their shutters for an increase in requests for cosmetic surgery fails to look at the big picture. (Pun shamelessly intended.)

Our appearances have been under scrutiny for millennia, and there have been mirrors and looking glasses to aid in self-scrutiny for just as long. As a consequence we've been comparing our appearances with other people, and going to ridiculous lengths to preserve them, for generations. Elizabethan lead skin whitener, anyone? Or the obsession with the Vidal Sassoon-Mary Quant assymmetric cut in the 1960s? This is not new, but our visually intensive culture does mean that we are subject to unrealistic presentations of perfection and our own short-comings.

Selfies aren't the direct cause of people feeling inadequate in their bodies; they're one of the many vehicles that transport people to a skewed confrontation with their appearances.

Herein is the real issue. It's the expectation of perfection and the inability to separate everyday reality from Hollywood fantasy that leaves people feeling as if they aren't, somehow, perfect as they are. Just I have argued concerning the use of Photoshop and image manipulation in magazines, the key to better body confidence is in education. It's about an understanding that we're all different and that none of us is perfect. Not one.

But do you know what I find even more disturbing than the insinuation that it's the selfie that can be blamed for an increase in the desire for cosmetic surgery? It's the frequency with which cosmetic surgery is presented as an accessible and normal solution for problems that exist in people's heads. When a doctor who wishes to bring affordable cosmetic surgery to the masses wins the BBC primetime TV show The Apprentice and when cosmetic surgery clinics and procedures are advertised on daytime television, it makes me think that people's emotions are manipulated more than their images are.

So instead of lamenting Pacifico's comments on the threat of the selfie to people's tolerance of normal variation in appearance, shouldn't we be using the selfie to celebrate that we're different? To revel in hair that's dark or blonde; curly or straight. To appreciate tall people and short people. To wonder in amazement at different skin tones. To actually take stock that we're all different and that's rather amazing.

(The BBC and the Metro)

* It's now yesterday morning, but nevermind.

Easy macro smartphone photography with Easy-Macro

Sometime in September last year I pledged a modest sum of money to Easy-Macro's Kickstarter project. I'd heard about Easy-Macro before then—a magnifying lens set into a rubber band that wraps around your smartphone and sits over its lens—but the new and improved 4× magnication factor in the Kickstarter-funded project made it seem like a great bet. Some 4,106 other people agreed with me and Easy-Macro surpassed its goal with plenty in hand. For me, the appeal of the Easy-Macro wasn't just that it was a fun addition to my smartphone, or that it was cheap, but that it meshed with the ideals of smartphone photography: discreet and easy. It sits my wallet and can be placed around any phone. I don't have to worry about it getting crushed or dropped in a bag and it won't become obsolete if I upgrade my device.

All I needed was for it to be any good. Well, just before Christmas my bright blue band arrived and I'm happy to say that I've been having fun with it ever since.

You use the Easy Macro just as would manually focus a lens set to infinity: by getting as close as you feasibly can to your subject and then moving your smartphone steadily backwards until your subject comes into sharp focus. It does require patience and a steady hand—remember, keep your elbows pushed into your sides to help stabilise yourself—but I've been pleased with the results so far.

Of course it is never going to compete with my 100mm macro on my Canon 6D, but it's not meant to. For a $15 gadget that I can keep in my wallet, what's not to like?

If you missed out on the Kickstarter campaign but are tempted by one, fear not, because you can pick up an Easy-Macro from the Easy-Macro website.

Calumet Photographic closes its US doors

In a largely unexpected turn of events, the 75 year old photography stalwart Calumet Photographic has ceased trading in the US. With no prior notice to staff, a defunct website, a closed Twitter account, and only a Facebook announcement to go on, what do we know about Calumet US' shut-down?

• All 14 stores across the US have not opened on Thursday 13 March.
• The company filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which enables company liquidation, on Wednesday 12 March. This usually follows a failed attempt at re-organisation after Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• According to papers filed with the courts, Calumet listed only $50,000 assets against liabilities estimated to be in excess of $1,000,000. It has 585 debtors.
• Calumet stores in Europe will continue to trade - although they share the same name, they are separate business entities

According to comments left beneath the Facebook announcement, staff were only informed of the loss of their jobs when they arrived for work this morning. The situation doesn't look good for them, and neither does it look good for any customers with products on order or any kind of credit with the company.

(Headsup to Amateur Photographer and additional information from Photo Business Forum)

Art Storefronts: a complete website solution for photographers?

We all know that any photographer worth her or his salt has a website that's handsome, easy to navigate, easy to maintain and customise, and offers potential customers a feel for a photographer's style. As a consequence, there are plenty of companies that provide just these sorts of websites for photographers. They're easy to personalise, they show off photos beautifully, and they provide photographers with a web-presence that doesn't demand too much thought, time, or energy. And to help photographers make more money from their photos, some of them include print and product fulfilment, too. Now there's a new one on the scene that is aiming to take on the likes of SmugMug and Zenfolio, giving photographers print and product ordering facilities in addition to giving them a website that shows off their images and gives them a professional front. This one is called Art Storefronts.

Art Storefronts offers all of the portfolio website features that you would expect: a library of customisable responsive designs, easy social sharing functionality, and access to analytics.

What Art Storefronts believes sets it apart from other sites offering portfolio hosting and product sales is the interactive buying experience it offers your customers. Visitors can 'test drive' a wide variety of different options with dynamic live previews, and complete their purchase with a simple checkout process.

If you don't want Art Storefronts to fulfil your orders, you can take control of that yourself. Should you prefer Art Storefronts to handle print orders, you set the markup on your products and receive 100% of it.

Price-wise, you can expect to pay $19 per month for a basic package; $29 per month for the middle-of-the-road option; or $49 per month for the all-singing, all-dancing variety. It's certainly worth checking out if you're interested in selling prints direct your website.

Take a peek inside other photographers' bags with InMyBag

When I was growing up, I was taught that it was rude to go ferreting around in a lady's handbag. Yes, your mother might have a handkerchief in there, but no you don't fish it out for yourself. It's a principle that applies to any bag, including camera bags. But don't you ever wonder what other photographers schlep around with them? If you are a bit of a nosey-parker, InMyBag is inviting photographers to open up their bags to public scrutiny so that you can take a look. You can see what a wedding photographer uses compared to a wildlife photographer against a sports photographer versus a portraiture photographer.

More than just having a look at the kit people use, participating photographers also share their favourite images and words of advice. The aim is to build an entertaining, inspiring, educational, and fascinating insight into photography.

Anyone who wants to share their photographic philosophy, their favourite photo, and a shot of the contents of their camera bags can sign up to do so. There's a goodly selection of kit there already, but the more the merrier!