Archive for Guest Written

Capturing Urban Decay

Rarely do cities come more alive then when they are dying - or at least, that's what the rather distinctive Urban Decay sub-genre of urban exploration photography is trying to prove. Graffiti, buildings falling apart, and Mother Nature reclaiming what was once rightfully hers all have a place in my heart - so it was pretty awesome that Roy Barker decided to approach me with an idea for an article on the topic - without further ado, Roy Barker's guide to photographing urban decay...

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Ambrotype photography

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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The world through a lens: Photo etiquette

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...

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Photography History III – The Digital Era

So far, we've covered the pre-film and the film era, so no prizes for guessing what today's history lesson is going to be about - yup, that's right, the digital era is upon us, and we're taking a look at history as it's happening all around us... Let's launch into the third and final installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Digital.

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Photography History II – The Film Era

Right, yesterday's post was all about how photography came about before film was invented. We had people printing on pewter and inventing the photographic negative, but we all know that the real fun began when we started losing our films down the back of sofas and ruining them when clumsily pressing the wrong button on the camera... So without further ado, the second installment in our 3-part series: The history of photography: The Era of Film.

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Photography History I – Before Film

A few weeks ago, I had a long and interesting discussion about the History of Photography with a friend of mine, and I discovered that while photography is incredibly close to my heart, I didn't really know all that much about everything that has happened in the past. Obviously, that had to change - I give you the first in a 3-part series entitled, without a shred of originality, History of Photography. This time around, we're having a look at what happened before they went ahead and invented film...

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TinEye.com photo search engine

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...

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Taking photos for the future

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..."

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The death of film photography

"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?

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A photograph isn’t art… it just is.

I good long while ago ago, I posted an article about Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida. At the time, one of my readers - Wigwam Jones - posted a rather awesome response, and I have been meaning to highlight it at some level - It's been a long time coming, but here we go - I bring to you, Basically, The lovely Wigwam's take on photography, Barthes, ad a bit of nihilistic arts theory thrown in for good measure.

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