Photocritic photography blog

You’re a keen photographer, and you find yourself in a city where the world’s biggest art festival sneaks up on you. It’d be rude not to do anything, really… But what?

Katie Cooke, a long-term friend of mine, who might be more known in the photography world as the queen of pinhole photography, decided to set up a little market stall in the middle of the mayhem, and take photos of people who felt like being photographed. Using a classic Toyp 45CF field camera loaded with Ilford HP5+, she decided to show the Fringe from an unusual angle… We’ve caught up with her to find out how and why. Read the rest of the article »

Movie audiences of the world are vastly and completely amazed by the beauty of the new movie 300. With its extremely distinctive style, quick-moving plot and — like Sin City, another of my favourites — relatively closely based on one of Frank Miller’s graphical novels, it’s got it goin’ on.

If you’ve seen the film, you can’t have failed to notice the amazing quality of the artwork involved: The CGI is amazing, of course, but even the live-action bits of the film is nothing short of stunning. So, how, exactly, can you recreate the effects? We interviewed graphic artist Jason Niedle to find out more… Read the rest of the article »

Okay, so don’t throw it away, that’d be a pointless waste, really. But you could consider throwing it around a little, and let gravity, inertia and other physics help you with your abstract photography.

The idea is to trip the shutter and then lob your camera through the air. The first couple of times you’ll have adrenaline coming out of your ears, but then the endorfines kick in as you realise what sort of results you are getting.

It all sounds rather dangerous, doesn’t it, but don’t worry too much, there’s a Flickr Pool of camera toss photos that contains over 2,000 photos, and rather few reports of smashed cameras. Read the rest of the article »

Abstract photography is nothing new, and people constantly come up with new — or re-invent old — versions of photography techniques. One of the ones that is going like wild-fire (excuse the pun) around the interwebs at the moment is the art of photographing coloured smoke.

The trend started with the highly talented Graham Jefferey, of Sensitive Light fame, whose phenomenal photographs went around the world via blogs,

We’ve managed to talk to Graham, and find out how he does his smoke photos… Read the rest of the article »

There’s a lot to be said for how the accessibility of affordable digital cameras has improved the level of photography overall, and I’m strongly in favour of the idea that digital photography is a good thing.

The downside of digital photography is that we are seeing a whole generation of people who never saw a frame of film as something precious. There are thousands upon thousands of photographers out there who only started thinking about photography when they weren’t limited to 24 or 36 frames before bringing the film to the local shop, and then wait for hours for the results. Read the rest of the article »

One of the first things I started doing when I started shooting digital images, was thinking of ways of doing digital double exposures - adding one part of an image to another - for a greater impact of my digital shots. It turned out to be relatively simple, but carrying high impact. All it takes is suitable photos, photoshop, and a bucket full of time…

Have you made any cool images using this method? Post them somewhere on the internet - your blog, perhaps - and add a link to the comments, so we can admire the photos! Read the rest of the article »

Back when I was still working as a photographer, I had a Vespa. Arguably, it was one of the best travel photography tools I ever owned: It is slow, so you have time to take in the scenery around you. It is open-topped, so you have plenty of good views. You can stop at any time to take photos, and be on your way again within seconds.

When I heard about the Rickshaw Run, nostalgia enveloped me. 2,000 miles in a rickshaw through India? Think about all the possibilities… Read the rest of the article »

As some of you might have cottoned on to, I work in automotive publishing*. As such, I wade my way through thousands of press releases. Most of them are completely pointless, some of them are interesting, and others again spark my interest. There is a lot of amazing photography that happens when trying to show cars from their best angles, for example.

When the World Cup was raging at its hardest a couple of months ago, I saw a photo something quite unlike the others. Basically, it was a single photo, taken from the air, of 400 Toyota Yaris cars (you may know them as Toyota Vitz or Belta, depending on where you live) parked in the shape of a St George’s cross.

Today, I stumbled across the blog of the photographer who did the photos… Read the rest of the article »

The other day, I received a question from one of my readers: “As an employee, if I took photos of the factory I work in, can I use them or publish them on a web-site?”

The answer depends on a lot of different things, but the short version of the answer would be “Maybe, but not without asking first” Read the rest of the article »

In theme with our recent posts about what makes a photograph controversial, and what photography is in the first place, my Canadian friend Cory Johnson shares some thoughts about why he takes photos…

When we see an image, what moves us? Why do we feel what we do?

Trying to analyze that is opening a whole Pandora’s box of issues.

Photographers are visual artists. We “see” things just a little bit differerently. Why we see differently, and how we see, well, who knows….. We have our own “personal filters” as it were :) Read the rest of the article »