Photocritic photography blog

A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail from a reader, who was eager to show off some of her photographs. I was intrigued by her Flickr nickname, and as it turns out, the lady has some pretty exciting ideas about what a photograph should be. If you’re looking for puppies, rainbows and ‘moose in sunset’ type clichés, you’re in the wrong place - but for that very reason, Lisa caught my attention.

I asked her if she wouldn’t please let me interview her, to find out what you can do as a photographer to break the mould, and develop a unique photography style. Luckily, she was happy to help… Read the rest of the article »

It is relatively self-explanatory that doing a photo critique is quite difficult. What few people stop to think about, however, is that receiving a photo critique can be as difficult - if not more difficult: When you move beyond mere snapshots and start putting more of yourself into your photographs, you are a lot more intimately involved with the work you are putting out there.

Putting your photos up for criticism - whether it is at your local photography club, via a site such as DeviantArt, or even when asking a good friend to give some feed-back - is like putting your own head in the guillotine and taking a chance.

Nonetheless, it’s one of the best ways to improve as a photographer, and one of the best lessons you’ll learn is to discover how to deal with negative photo critiques… Read the rest of the article »

It can often be incredibly tempting to try and fit more information into a photograph. Understandably so - wherever you turn, you find a barrage of information. Minimalism truly is a lost art in photography, and you’d be surprised to find that it’s actually quite difficult to get right.

In this photo critique, I am doing things in a slightly new way, and I’m cherrypicking some of the best photos that have been submitted to me over the past couple of months. Together, we’ll explore photographic minimalism, and how you can make hellastrong photos with less. Read the rest of the article »

A few years ago, I was part of a creative arts project in Arizona and southern Utah, where we did a lot of work with Native American people — a ‘world through our eyes’ type thing. One of the things that was brought up when we were dealing with more traditional tribes, was that we weren’t to take any photos. Perhaps surprisingly, some people believe that when you take photos of them, you steal a part of their soul.

Religions and superstitions aside, I think it’s a good way to look at portraiture. Stealing souls is a bit harsh, but if your photographs don’t at least borrow a little bit of soul from your subjects, I believe you may have failed as a photographer.

For this article, I’ve chosen to do a critique some of the photos submitted to me by Isaac - an USC film student with a passion for photography. His images illustrate very well how adding a touch of feel (or soul, if you will) can lift your portraiture. Read the rest of the article »

In our newest instalment of the photo critique series, I’m taking a look at a series of black and white photographs taken by Kevin Bost. In the process, I’ll be exploring why Black and White photography still has a valid place in today’s colourful society… 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 »

So, you’ve got your exposures down pat, and your framing is getting better by the day. Excellent. What is next? Well, the lovely Andrew Ferguson, who I know via LiveJournal, submitted a couple of photos for critique that illustrate the next logical step forward: Using shallow depth of field in a creative context. Read the rest of the article »

For this issue of the Photocritic Photo Critique, we’re going far afield! Joel Legassie is a Canadian who is currently living in Japan, and is an avid photographer. His photos are sharp, stylish, and striking… So can we offer him any advice? Read the rest of the article »

Today’s topic came about after I was sent some fabulous images from Ben Darfler, as part of our photo critique series. He sent me four excellent photos, and I picked two that illustrate a common theme: How to expose a photo correctly.

You would think that exposing a photograph correctly would be easy - you just point the camera at what you want to take a picture of, and let the machinery take over from there, right? Well, most of the time, that will give pretty good results, but if you have ambitions of developing as a photographer, manual exposure is where it’s at.

The way you choose your exposure is one of the biggest differences between film and digital photography. When photographing with film, you want your shadows to be drawn as well as possible; because of this, my high-school photography teacher would drone on about “Expose for the shadows; develop for the highlights.” Well, digital changed all that… Read the rest of the article »

Right, I figured that the best way to illustrate the proposed new feature on Photocritic - proper photo critiques - would be to show off what I was planning to do with the feature. First up is a long-term reader of Photocritic, who submitted two photos. Read the rest of the article »