Photocritic photography blog

I’ve got a rather long history of rambling on about all sorts of awesome stuff on this blog - and I’ve prided myself on being able to pull off most types of photography with more or less success. I’ve photographed a fair share of concerts, I’ve got a post lined up about wedding photography (although my post on event photography covers some of it).

Anyway, all of this goes only to illustrate that I am relatively handy with a camera - so when I was talking to my good friend Laurie about him being in a dance competition, I arrogantly proclaimed ‘how difficult can it be?’. Well… As it turns out, it’s pretty damn tricky. Read the rest of the article »

Have you ever noticed how most photographers tend to develop a very specific photography style? It’s a great way to create a very distinctive appearance, of course, but it may also cause you to stagnate as a photographer.

Long-term reader of my blog Cristian Galletti posted a comment on my ‘loosen up your portraiture style‘ post a while ago, where he shows off how he manages to use half a dozen completely different photography styles. The quirk? Well, the photos are all of the same model. Read the rest of the article »

It can often be incredibly tempting to try and fit more information into a photograph. Understandably so - wherever you turn, you find a barrage of information. Minimalism truly is a lost art in photography, and you’d be surprised to find that it’s actually quite difficult to get right.

In this photo critique, I am doing things in a slightly new way, and I’m cherrypicking some of the best photos that have been submitted to me over the past couple of months. Together, we’ll explore photographic minimalism, and how you can make hellastrong photos with less. 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 »

Just after we run our ‘photography with rules’ article, Popular Photography magazine comes along and beats us to it with an even better idea, by declaring January 21st as ‘international shooting-all-the-time’ day!

The concept? Take a photo at least every 5 mintutes for 15 hours of the day. But surely, that is complete and utter madness? Well, no — much for the same reasons that stream of consciousness helps writers getting in touch with their inner voice, and much like brain storming is a much-loved route to corporate grandeur, forcing yourself to keep photographing even when your shutter finger hurts and your ideas are drier than a nun’s hoo-hoo can be a way to develop as a photographer. Read the rest of the article »

As a kinda-sorta follow-up from my most recent critique, where several of the commenters mentioned that they felt that their photography got better when they imposed rules on themselves, I started thinking: Which other constraints can you put on photography?

First of all — why? Well, in a machoistic kind of way, making rules about the way you take photos is a creative way to think about photography. Take this restraint, for example: For a day, only take photos that have a strong diagonal. It means you start thinking about framing your photographs in a completely different way than you would otherwise. Perhaps you don’t get home with a single photo that is actually worth using, but the lessons you learn from the experiment will come in very handy for later photography assignments. 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 »

Right, I don’t have a lot of time to do a post today, but I just thought out something pretty cool - You all know what I look like, but I have no idea what you all look like. So how about a square portrait challenge?

Rules: The picture has to be perfectly square, has to be in black and white, and has to feature yourself.

…. Go!

My entries, to serve as some inspiration, or something, are below. Take the photo, post it on Flickr, Deviantart or something, and then post a comment below! Read the rest of the article »