Archive for Guest Written

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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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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