Photocritic photography blog

If you’ve been reading Photocritic for a while, you’ll have seen my post on how to make a killing jar (and the dozens of comments to the effect that it was mean to kill insects) and the backlash which was ‘why kill ‘em, when taking live photos of insects is far better?’

With that, I expected it all to be over and done with, but I did get a comment which I think deserves a post all of its own. You’ll never guess how this reader suggests to stun insects before photographing them… Read the rest of the article »

I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve got a new favourite website: instructables! It uses a flickr-style, very web 2.0 approach to doing ‘do it yourself’ guides: Hover-over-image items for descriptions of what you are looking at, and many of the instructables available guide you through projects baby-step by baby-step.

There are a lot of them available already, mostly for geek projects. Luckily, there are some wicked photography DIY projects as well - well worth a peek! Read the rest of the article »

One of the advantages of having a camera with a small sensor is that it’s cheap and easy to make lenses that focus to very close distances.

Combined with the increased depth of field that the very wide lenses have (and the slower shutter speeds mean you can handhold them), the result is that that they are really good for macro-style shots. Can you think of any camera that might fit these descriptions? That’s right — webcams and mobile telephones! 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 »

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 »

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at portraits over the last couple of days for various reasons I shan’t get into in details, but there’s one pet peeve I’m afraid I’m going to have to share with you…

Why are people always so damn serious when they are being taken photos of? Does nobody understand the art of portraiture anymore? Read the rest of the article »

Geekery and science meets photography: Cross-polarization is a fantastic little technique that exploits a quirk in the way polarizers work.

Think of light as wooden ice-cream sticks that are flying towards a set of bars. The bars will only let the sticks that happen to be aligned with the bars through, and absorbs all the other sticks. Before the filter, the light is moving in lots of different polarizations. After it has passed through the filter, all the light is moving in the same linear polarization. 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 »

So, you fancy yourself a bit of a photographer, do you? Awesome, that makes two of us. Or, judging by the number of people regularly visiting his blog, a few thousand of us. If you’ve ever played around with pinhole photography (and if you haven’t, you totally should), you’ll have stumbled across Paper Negatives - or the idea of using photosensitive paper rather than film - to make photos.

My good friend R. James Davis (check out his website, his photograhy rocks) recently wrote a wicked little piece about what Paper negatives are, what they are, and how (and why) they are used. Read the rest of the article »

It’s so simple, yet so effective - grab a burning torch, use a tripod, set to a long shutter time, and write in the air. What more could you possibly want? It’s FIRE!

Now go outside and play!

Read the rest of the article »