Photocritic photography blog

Whenever I travel, I have a very loose approach to packing my stuff. Mostly, I pack in less than 20 minutes - regardless if I’m going away for a night or three weeks. There are four checks: Passport, tickets, credit card, and camera.

It’s just the way it goes, you can’t get by without either of those items (except perhaps tickets, if you are travelling with an airline who has embraced eTickets). If your journey is especially designed for photography, however, the task may be slightly different. Read the rest of the article »

So you’ve finally graduated from taking photos with a compact, and have your grubby little paws on a fantastic digital single-lens reflex. All good and well, but why don’t your pictures come out as fantastic as some of the ones you see on Flickr? Surely, they’re using the same camera as you - where are you going wrong?

That was essentially what Pieter asked me about this week. So, without further ado, 8 ways to make your photos jump off the screen. Read the rest of the article »

Tripods are cheap as chips nowadays, but the cheaper ones have a few flaws. Most importantly, they are too light, and too unstable. So what do you do when you are working on macro stuff, and your tripod won’t stop vibrating, or the high winds are trying to disturb your photographic peace? 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 »

Portraiture is one of the most exhilarating forms of photography. It’s rewarding, exciting, challenging, and a lot of fun. But people have a way of hiding from the camera: Clothes. Nude photography is essentially portraiture sans clothing, which is what makes it such a fun topic to explore and develop as a photographer. Personally, I’m completely convinced that a photographer who starts developing their nudes also becomes a better portrait photographer.

One of the things people frequently e-mail me about is how to get started in nude photography - some of you want to make a living out of it, many just want to have a go and experiment, but don’t know how to begin.

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Of course, Photocritic already has a series of articles on the topic already, including an introduction, and an interview with acclaimed nude photographer photographer Renoux.

Well, today you’re all in for a phenomenal treat, as my good friend Tammy guest-writes an article on taking the first steps into nude photography, by inviting your girlfriend to model for you.

Needless to say, depending on what you do for a living, this article may not be ’safe for work’. Read the rest of the article »

The modeling industry is very competitive. Every photo-shoot is a chance for a model to show herself at her best, and any model is only as good as their last shoot - so there’s a strong incentive to make each photo-shoot count towards

This article highlights some recommendations that a model may want to review in order to prepare him or herself for a photo-shoot. While digital photo processing software such as Photoshop can work miracles, neither a model nor a photographer will take as much pride in highly photoshopped pictures. If you take the time to prepare well in advance of your photo-shoot, you will feel more confident and as a result, look better. Read the rest of the article »

Most of us have been unpleasantly surprised (OK, startled) when we’ve looked at photos of ourselves. Everyone says the camera doesn’t lie, but where did that extra chin come from? Why do my arms look so fat? Is my nose really that long? And when did my knees become so… substantial?

It’s enough to make a person terminally camera-shy-which is pretty tricky when another camera may be as near as the closest cell phone, but don’t worry, it’s actually pretty easy to look good on camera - and when you know how to look good, it becomes a lot easier to photograph others so they look good! Read the rest of the article »

We’ve all seen the seductive photos of vividly colorful fresh vegetables, sumptuous cherry pies, and golden-brown roasted turkeys. These pictures, often found in glossy cookbooks and magazines, make us believe that if we follow the recipe we, too, can create such delectable dishes. And many of us can. Well, almost.

A peek behind the kitchen door would reveal the sometimes bizarre tools of the food photography trade that transform fresh baked brownies and juicy crown roasts into science fair projects masquerading as culinary delights. Food is among the more difficult of subjects for photographers. The laws of nature guarantee it: Hot foods cool, moist foods dry out, frozen foods melt especially fast under hot lights, vegetables wilt, and fruit turns brown. But determined food photographers rise to these challenges with their extraordinarily inventive bag of tricks.

And yes, that includes motor oil, spray deodorant and and brown shoe polish… 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 »

When you’re inside a city, getting high up is easy, but you do have to suffer taking photos through windows. It isn’t that difficult, but you do have to do it right.

Your biggest enemy when trying to catch photographs through windows is reflections, but if you know how to get rid of them, you’re laughing.

With a bit of practice, you can make your cityscapes look as if they’ve been taken from a helicopter - like the photograph to the right, which is an impressive city-scape of Chicago! Read the rest of the article »