Photocritic photography blog

If you’ve been following Photocritic for a while, you can’t have missed the fact that we’ve had some world-class Guest writers involved recently. RJ Davis’ article on paper negatives was very well read indeed, Anna’s introduction to portraiture went down a storm, and Alecu’s rally racing photography article was rather well received, too.
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Wow, I can’t believe it’s Christmas already. If you celebrate it, have a fabulous celebration, and if you don’t, have peaceful time anyway!

As for new year’s - I’m going to Edinburgh again this year, to celebrate Hogmanay. Knowing those nutty Scotts, it could get quite mental, but I’m looking forward to it lots.

Updates will probably be somewhat limited over the holiday season for various reasons, but I’ll be back stronger than ever in 2007!

I got a suggestion through from my dear friend Hilary, who suggested that I start doing photography critiques on a serious level. I.e, people submit a few photos to us, and we go through them with a fine-tooth comb, making suggestions for improvement: explaining which bits of the photos are good and why, and how they could be improved.

I don’t think it’s such a bad idea, actually. It’ll be quite a lot of work on my part, but I could get other photographers involved. What do you reckon? Vote below, and add a comment if you have more to say.

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Also, if you’re interested in getting some photos critiqued, why not consider sending me 3-4 of your photos, and I’ll pilot it with a few critiques, so people can find out what they can expect, and how well this works.

Please only send RGB JPEG files (any resolution is OK), and only use the hajejan+critique@gmail.com e-mail address, so I can keep it all in one place. I’m unlikely to ridicule anyone submitting photos, but can’t guarantee it :)

Feedback? Tell me about it!

I’m not one for lame internet acronyms, but I think OMG is in order in this case. Photocritic - also known as the very page you are reading right now - is about to celebrate its 1st birthday! Keep reading for statistics, tidbits, big thank-yous, and other soppyness.

Follow me, if you will, for a quick stroll in our archives, and note in particular the oldest entry, about Photo Matrices. The year was 2005, the month was November, and the date is a little bit fuzzy, because I have since imported all the posts into WordPress - the blog software powering Photocritic - but give or take a couple of days, Photocritic in its current inception was born a year ago today. Read the rest of the article »

When I first started out in photography, I used to love Foto.no. It had a strong community with photo critique etc. I used to be active on DPChallenge and on PhotoSIG, but they both seem to have grown out of control, and they were a veritable wild-west of people posting all sorts. I gave up on all of the above a long time ago, and I haven’t been able to find a good forum that’s worth going to.

So… Do any of you know of any good forums worth hanging out on? Or - and this is my real question, I guess - should I have a forum for my readers right here on Photocritic? Read the rest of the article »

Right, I’ve just added a page which shows you which polls we’ve run in the past. You can still vote on most of them, and you can see the results. Interesting, no? Of course it is, you little statistics geeks :)

Find our past polls here. If you’ve got a good idea for a poll, why not add it as a comment to that post?

Of course, I can’t have a post whoring out polls if I don’t add a poll to it…

As someone who has worked as a freelance photographer, I’ve talked the talk and walked the walk about running my own photography business. I managed to stay afloat for 2 years, and then I couldn’t hack it anymore, realising I was more of a writer than a photographer. Fair dinkum, I’m now a journalist again, and I’m happy - especially because part of being a journalist means I have lots of time to work on writing projects, including my book, and Photocritic. Read the rest of the article »

My jove, you lot are harsh critics. A couple of days ago, I launched a new design of Photocritic, and asked for comments. The whole design was instantly shot down.

Comments such as “It looks like a clown puked after eating too much candy. It’s hideous and amateur looking” made me think, and then even my designer friends started making fun of me. Hey, what can I say, I’m not a designer, all right? Read the rest of the article »

Don’t be alarmed, we haven’t been hacked, I’ve just finally gotten around to getting a decent design on the Photocritic site!

It takes a tiny little bit of getting used to, but I’m sure you’ll figure it all out soon enough - nothing has changed too drastically, the main difference is that the site doesn’t look nearly as crap as it used to :)

Hi, my lovelies!

Well, the contracts have been signed, and I’m working my arse off on the photography book I am writing. It’s a tremendous honour and a fantastic challenge to be asked to write a book, but next to my 10-to-12-hour-a-day day-job and spending the rest of the time writing my book, there isn’t a lot of time for other things, including eating, sleeping, communicating with friends, or updating my Photocritic blog.

It’s a damn shame, because I do love this blog (hell, it’s the reason why I was asked to write the book in the first place, so it’s actually invaluable to my status quo), but there just isn’t a lot of time.

My deepest apologies. I expect to start getting a little bit more time as the book starts taking shape. Stay tuned - we’ll soon return to our regular scheduled programming. Oh, and no doubt I’ll be whoring out my book as well - it’s due to hit the book-shops in spring 2007. All I need to do now is to write the damn thing :)

Much love,

Haje Jan Kamps