Archive for Guest Written

Beginnings in street photography

Sometimes, I learn more about photography when I teach about photography, than when I learn about photography. Bear with me, it does make sense, honest. I have one friend - Daniela - who is a n00b at this whole photography things. Some of the questions she asks, and some of the comments she makes, sound like stupidity in my ears. 'Of course not', I want to burst out... And yet... that's a learning moment for me. What is 'obvious' to me isn't necessarily obvious to others - especially if you're just trying to come to terms with photography and how it all fits together. Anyway, Daniela was recently in Belgium, and had a go at some street photography. I've written about Street Photography many times before: A shot at Street photography, Katie Cooke's The return of Street Photography, Brad's Street Photography and the Law, Street Photography in Montreal, Prime Lenses, and why you need one, Oi You! no Pictures! and it's also mentioned in my article about insuring your photography gear. What I had never stopped to think, however, is how a beginning photographer looks at street photography. Daniela offered some insights...

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How to organise your own photo exhibit

A year ago, the Oxford Flickr Group, a group of slightly geeky amateur photographers, were sitting around a table in a pub somewhere in Oxford. This is not at all unusual, but the difference was that, on this occasion, they decided that it'd be a marvelous idea to hold an exhibition. None of them had had any real experience of organising or taking part in an exhibition but hell, why not give it a go? Jump ahead to the present day, a year later, and their exhibition is about to open. So how they get this far? How on earth do you go about organising this sort of thing from scratch? Anna Badley explains... The Big idea We hold regular photo meets and pub social meets in Oxford, and at one of these meets it turned out we'd missed the deadline for the annual Artweeks event that takes place locally – so we decided that we'd go it alone. We're quite an active social group, there are probably 40 or so people who turn up to the meet ups so we thought it might be worth a go. That was about 12 months ago. The first step was finding out where we might be able to stage the exhibition as that would determine the space, how many pictures people could hang and how much that might cost per person. We found a helpful bar/restaurant/gallery that suited our informal group better than a very formal space, and worked out that we could hang 30 fairly large pictures in the space they had – so, 30 exhibitors. The next step was to find out who in the Group might be interested in exhibiting. There are around 1,500 members at the moment and we had no idea how many of those might be actually located in Oxford and interested in putting in a picture. We thought we'd get loads of people expressing an interest who would then drop out things really got going, but that didn't happen. Also rather surprising was that quite a few of the final 30 had never been along to any of the meet ups and we had no idea who they were – we'd never met them. This did make us a little nervous at first; what if they didn't pay up? What if they didn't turn up with a picture? The plan takes shape [caption id="attachment_2360" align="alignright" width="212" caption="The poster for the Flickr exhibit in Oxford (click on the image to see it full-size)"][/caption] By the end of March this year we were pretty much set on what we were doing, we'd got our 30 exhibitors, and 5 organisers (not quite sure how they were elected, it just sort of happened). We had a bit of a break in early Summer then got the money in from the majority of the exhibitors during July and August. That was far less of a hassle than we'd imagined it might be, but apart from putting the money down on the venue not a lot else happened over the Summer months. The exhibitors had a theme to work to; we wanted to show a different side of Oxford to the one the tourists see when they visit. So we'd asked everyone to try and show their own perspective on the city, and tried to give them as much freedom as possible. Oh my God it's only 8 weeks away, how did that happen? With only 2 months left before opening night, there was a sudden flurry of activity. A summit was held with the five organisers and a horribly large task list of things that needed checking, fixing, chasing, designing and printing – the whole lot. By the time the summit had finished, we'd divided up the tasks; collecting the high res jpg files to put in the accompanying book, keeping in touch with the venue, writing the press release, designing the map for the photos to be placed on and setting up the email address were some of the more major ones. Somewhere along the line the exhibition also got a title – Made In Oxford – and suddenly we were almost ready to go! One of the group also had a tame graphic designer who immediately set to work on making us a fantastic poster. It was definitely worth having someone professional do this because as soon as we saw how good it looked it was pretty clear none of us had the design skills to even get close to that. Final tweaks [caption id="attachment_2361" align="alignleft" width="258" caption="The Made in Oxford book is available to purchase via Photobox for £21"][/caption] Finally, we arranged a meet up (mainly as we were really intrigued as to who our mystery exhibitors were) and had a frankly scary meet-up that felt more like a board meeting than a group of photographers! Thankfully we managed to fix that problem later in the evening with a few ales, once all the important information had been dished out. The book was proof-read by three of us (not taking any chances there) and is now available to buy from Photobox! When we first looked at all the pictures together it became apparent that the majority of photos had nobody, or just a lone figure, in them. Many were taken at night or very early in the morning. Even the usual tourist traps and colleges look deserted which is not something you ever see during the day. It was really exciting seeing a completely different side to the city and we were happy that the theme we'd chosen had actually been okay to work with. So we're currently four days before opening night. We've had plenty of local press interest and the posters are starting to appear round town. We have 29 pictures ready to go and the last one is almost there so it looks like everything is ready to roll. Once all the pictures are safely hanging on the wall in the venue we're intending to get the beers in and sit back to enjoy what's been achieved, and maybe even start thinking about next year's theme – well, maybe not quite yet. The exhibition is open 7 days a week to the general public from 3rd-31st October 09, at the Jam Factory, Hollybush Row, Oxford, UK OX1 1HU (map). Hang on a minute. What on earth is the Oxford Flickr Group? We're an offshoot of the online photo-sharing site, flickr.com. We love taking photos, finding interesting things to shoot here where we live and welcoming new people to our city. There is normally a degree of photographic geekery happening but it's certainly not a pre-requisite for joining in; we don't care if you use your iPhone, a dinky little point-and-shoot camera or a fancy-pants film SLR with all the lenses. We certainly don't compare mega pixels (okay, most of us don't do that). There's no charge for joining and we're a friendly bunch so if you're interested in saying hello, come and find us on Flickr! Oh, and of course if you're not in Oxford, UK, there are loads of other local Flickr groups all over the world. If there isn't one where you are, nothing's stopping you from starting your own - get busy! This article was written by the inimitable Anna Badley (Flickr / website), who in the past has written the Beginning in Portraiture article here on Photocritic. If you would like to get involved and write a guest article, drop me an e-mail!

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Photoshop Makeovers

So there you are, taking rather fantastic photos, and then, one day, you realise that everyone else seems to be getting better results. Unfair? Possibly. Or perhaps they're just handier in Photoshop. Like my old friend Maxwell. I recently came across three of his photo-shopped portraiture sessions (one, two, three), and was rather impressed. For the purpose of this article, let's shelve any reservations you might have about the ethics of photoshopping the hell out of a portrait or fashion image (you've all seen this video, right?), and have a look at how it can be done. As a wise old man once told me, only if you have the skills to do something do you have the skills to choose not to do it... Maxwell graciously accepted the challenge to talk us through how he edits his portraits, and is using a photo of himself to go through the process... Take it away Max!

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Nude self portraiture

Taking photos of yourself has a certain under-tone of intimacy about it at the very least; but choosing to shed your clothes and do the same thing adds a whole new dimension to the experience. One of my long-time readers, Brigitte, told me her approach to nude photography; She doesn't share her photos with anyone, but decided to take them for her own sake. It made me think; I know that my blog is quite strongly in favour in sharing all your photos with the whole world, but perhaps that misses a little bit of the point; Who are we, in fact taking photos for? Anyway - that's a topic for another post... Today, it's Brigitte's turn...

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Publishing your own photo book

A while ago, I was talking with my good friend Randy Kruzan, who told me he had self-published a book - or, as he likes to put it - how he made the transition from "being a fool with a camera to being a fool with a book". There's a lot of things that go into creating your own book (I should know, I've helped friends and clients self-publish things in the past, and I've been published with my own stuff) - but the interesting thing is that a lot of the things that take time aren't the things you'd think... I managed to talk Randy into writing a guest article for me here on Photocritic, explaining how his book came about, and what you should do if you want your photos to end up as a coffee-table book yourself.

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The 25 best of urban decay

I've got a guilty pleasure which I'd like to share with you guys - I love urban decay photography; I can spend hours on end browsing Flickr galleries tagged with Urban Decay... Brilliant stuff. I was talking about this particular style/subgenre of photography with my good friend Dave Feltenberger a few months ago, and he was enthused about collecting some of his favourite photographers and sites. So, if you're still left wondering what this whole 'urban decay' thing is all about... Here's your chance to be flabberghasted!

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Why is wedding photography so expensive?

I'm often asked about how much people charge for photography, and then frequently in the context of wedding photography. Honest truth? I don't really know, but the persistent feeling out there is that wedding photography is really, really expensive. This is, in fact, true - it ain't cheap to get your wedding photographed - but have you ever thought about why that might be? I decided to find out, and spoke to Randolph Quan, a London-based wedding photograher.

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Photographing dancers

A couple of months ago, I had to eat my pride after my first foray into dance photography went terribly awry. Since, I've spoken to Laurie, who is a friend, Ruby on Rails coder, dancer, and fellow photographer, who offered to write me an article explaining how to get dance photography done The Right Way™. His top tip: Learning about dancing makes you a better dance photographer!

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Street photography and the law

A lot is said and written about photography and the law - and to be honest, you'd be mad to get involved in the fray. Of course, I am that mad, which is why the Rights vs Respect in Photography ended up published here on the site. Now, the other day, one of my readers, Brad, posted a rather fantastic and soberingly clear comment about what the law actually means to photographers. It was written from an US point of view, but frankly, the law is similar in much of the world. Beyond the law, however, you should be looking for a helping of 'common sense'. This 'common sense' thing isn't as common as its name would indicate, so hereby; a healthy dose of common sense and a quick refresher of what you can and can't do when you're out and about with your camera...

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Peter Yang: A Powerhouse of Portraits

A regular contributor to Rolling Stone, Wired, and ESPN Magazine, young photographer Peter Yang emerged out of the Austin journalism world and hit the ground running full-force with his masterfully lit, intimate portraits of political figures, actors, rock stars and cowboys. Peter chats with PICTURE in his cozy Brooklyn workspace about his roundabout path towards editorial success, and shares some tips on the dos and don’ts of photography.

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