Photocritic photography blog

The ambrotype process is a photographic process that creates a positive photographic image on a sheet of glass using the wet plate collodion process. It was invented by Frederick Scott Archer in the early 1850s, then patented in 1854 by James Ambrose Cutting of Boston, in the United States.

This time, it’s your turn…

My good Katie Cooke (who I’ve featured on Photocritic before, and who might be familiar to you as the author of Slowlight - a fantastic resource on pinhole photography) wrote up a 20-step guide on the mysterious world of ambrotype photography.

Arguably, it’s not a very useful skill to learn (as opposed to, say, learning black and white, and subsequently colour developing in a darkroom), but we’re all photography geeks for a reason, dammit, so let’s start the new year by geeking out like it’s 1859!

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As all photographers know, travel photography can be about more than safeguarding memories. Holidays are the perfect time to discover new cultures and customs, be outside of one’s comfort zone, eat new food, and, of course, really get stuck into the different lenses and ISO numbers. Coming home with that perfect picture of something or someone that fascinated you makes the enjoyment of the getaway last that much longer.

The way the local population expects you as a photographer to behave with your camera may be very different in countries other than your own. This Photo Etiquette may, however, not be easy to understand or adhere to, especially when it comes to photographing people as a subject, so we decided to have a closer look at what you might encounter… Read the rest of the article »

A couple of weeks ago, we did a guide on how to set up your own photo blog (and, of course, how to make Google love your photography site from a few months back). What struck me, however, is that while having a photo blog is a good start - what should you do to take it from a merely funky collection of photos to a fantastic, highly successful blog?

I decided to have a chat to my friend John Cassimatis, who runs a very popular, very successful, and a near-award-winning blog over at johncassimatis.com… Read the rest of the article »

You know how it goes - you want to find a photo of the Mona Lisa, so you go onto Google Images, you type in Mona Lisa, and you get hundreds of results. But what if you have an image, and you want to find out what it is of? Or what if you want to find out where else on the world wide interwebs this image is used? Cue Idee’s Tineye.com, an image search engine.

We decide to take it for a spin… Read the rest of the article »

A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail from a reader, who was eager to show off some of her photographs. I was intrigued by her Flickr nickname, and as it turns out, the lady has some pretty exciting ideas about what a photograph should be. If you’re looking for puppies, rainbows and ‘moose in sunset’ type clichés, you’re in the wrong place - but for that very reason, Lisa caught my attention.

I asked her if she wouldn’t please let me interview her, to find out what you can do as a photographer to break the mould, and develop a unique photography style. Luckily, she was happy to help… Read the rest of the article »

A photo from 100 years ago is quaint, mysterious, and informative - partially because there aren’t that many of them. Today, everyone has a camera, and everyone is taking photos - In the pub a few months ago, I was talking to a historian about photography, and about what photos taken today would mean to historians of the future.

We’ve all got a string of iconic photos in our heads. The ones that capture a particular time, place, or event - for example the VJ Day celebrations in London that marked the end of the Second World War or the fall of the Berlin Wall. But have you ever considered what it is that makes a photograph historically valuable, or what you might need to do to take one of those photos?

Says Daniela: “Haje and I were talking about this a while ago, and seeing as I’m a historian to whom he’s taught an awful lot about photography, he thought I might have something to say about it. Turns out, I do…” Read the rest of the article »

“When I was given my first digital camera, I thanked the giver politely and set it on a shelf—where it sat, growing dust, for two years. I simply had no use for it.”, recalls John, a long-time Photocritic reader, who decided to share some of his thoughts about his (at first painful) transition from film to megapixels.

Take it away John…

Now, I have nothing against photography. Photos are great when you’re eager to relive that once-in-a-lifetime trip to Thailand, or when the sight of the neighbour’s bawling infant recalls you to the time your son crawled into your mother-in-law’s lap with his nappy falling off his bum. But film cameras immortalise such special occasions just fine, so why bother with digital? Read the rest of the article »

Combine a good old-fashioned team-based treasure hunt with a photography competition, and you’ve got a recipe for success, right?

Well, that’s what I thought too, when I signed up to attend Shoot London, an event based out of the Tate gallery, organised by Shoot Experience, a company who organises these kind of events for public and corporate events.

Sadly, it turns out that I’ll probably give future Shoot Experience events a miss - to find out why, I spoke to another participant of the event… Read the rest of the article »

Or: The economics behind Microstock.

I make little secret of my dislike for microstock, as re-iterated in my ‘The Problem with Microstock‘ article a few weeks back. The curse of having a relatively high-profile blog, however, is that people tend to disagree with you. Well, that’s not really the curse, that’s a fact of life. The curse, specifically, is that you frequently get incredibly eloquent people disagreeing with you - people who disagree passionately enough to write their side of the story.

Seeing as how I’m not a politician, I’m fully entitled to change my mind about things, including Microstock. And while I still feel that the premise of Microstock is wrong for all the reasons described in that other post, I wouldn’t be much of an Economist subscriber if I didn’t see that there was a flipside to the proverbial coin as well - in this case, expressed by Willie Thomas, a man who makes his living with stock photography.

I caught up with him to find out how he does it… Read the rest of the article »

Imagine, for a second, that you are a young person with a camera. There are other cameras in the world around you, and there are people who use those cameras, too, but nobody really knows what they are doing, nobody can teach you anything you don’t already know, and the only tool you have in the world is the internet. All hope is lost … Or is it?

I was recently speaking to Elisa Longhitano, who found herself in the same situation. As she was telling me about how she was teaching herself photography, I found myself smiling, and wishing I had access to the internet back when I was learning. Either way, Elisa’s story is a lovely reminder of the fact that all you need to do to learn the dark (well, technically, the perfectly gradient) art of photography, is to be curious, and just that little bit inventive… Read the rest of the article »