Photocritic photography blog

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 »

When I was about seven, I became seriously aware of photography, and I wish someone had started teaching me things back then. Of course, digital photography didn’t quite exist, so that makes it a lot more difficult (and expensive) to learn by trial and error, so things have changed a lot. I was on the train the other day, thinking about how I would teach photography to a young’un with the current technology available.

I discovered I couldn’t think of how to do it - so I got in touch with one of my friends who is a teacher, and she got so stoked up about the idea that she went ahead and wrote up a phenomenal article for Photocritic… Read the rest of the article »

If you want to get extremely close to insects, you may have to convince them to stop moving somehow.

Sadly I have yet to come across tranquilliser darts for bumblebees (if you know of any, post a comment!), so killing them is the only way to persuade them to sit still.

It sounds terribly barbaric, but it isn’t, really: If you make one of these jars correctly, you can kill insects quickly and painlessly. If you feel bad about it afterwards, you can always bury it in a tiny grave and sing it a song - make sure you get photos first, though! Read the rest of the article »

I was recently asked to be one of the judges in a photography contest run by Crestock. (more about the competition in one of my previous posts). It’s a pretty high-profile affair: The prizes are very good, and there’s a lot of judges on the panel, including some esteemed bloggers, experienced writers, and successful stock photographers.

When it comes to this competition, it works like this: As one of the judges, I choose the 10 photographs I like best. For round 1, that meant choosing 10 out of 491 photographs. In other words, for every 50 photos, I can only choose one. Words can’t describe quite how difficult that is: A lot of talent and creativity goes into competition entries, and a lot can be said about.

I won’t lie to you - while I am a moderately successful blogger (hey, you’re reading my blog right now, aren’t you?), a soon-to-be-published author (my book goes on sale in about a month and a half) and a washed-up freelance / stock photographer who decided that I could only do photography as a hobby, because doing it for the money was soul-destroying - I have never actually judged a competition before. While the guys at Crestock were quite helpful in offering guidelines and ideas as to what I should be looking for, it got me a-thinking: What can you, as a photographer, do to maximise your chances in the battle of shutter times and lighting, against the rest of the pack? Read the rest of the article »

A few months ago, I ran a story on how the UK government was trying to restrict public photography. It seems as if they’re now playing the back-pedalling game in a big kind of way. Once the petition hit 60,000 signatures, the Prime Minister’s office issued a statement which can be summarised into ‘uh, no, we never intended these kinds of changes to be made’.

What I really want to know: Do you have any stories of instances where people tried to stop you from taking photos? Leave a comment! 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 »

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 »

The main problem of taking photos free-hand is that your hands aren’t particularly sturdy. Myself, I find using a heavier camera makes it a lot easier (the inertia of the camera means it is reluctant to move, so up to a point, a heavy camera is easier to hold still for the duration of a photographic exposure than a very light camera.), but what about lighter cameras?

The obvious answer is a tripod or a monopod, but these devices can be terribly heavy, and they are not particularly portable. One solution is to hold the camera against a surface (a tree, a building, or a signpost), but that doesn’t always work either, and none of these items offer an awful lot of flexibility. Read the rest of the article »

We’ve talked about how photo licencing works before, but it seems as if people are just not learning their lessons. So, as the newest instalment in our Photography Business article series, an important reminder…

The newest horror story comes from a website called UK Expert. If you sign up to their website, and click ‘ok’ on the terms as conditions (Let’s face it - when did you last read the terms and conditions to anything), they are trying to get you to sign over the copyright to your photos. Yikes!

The lesson today? Read the terms and conditions before you upload any photos. Seriously. Read the rest of the article »

It’s old advice, but it certainly hits the spot…

Since the dawn of the commercial web we have been warned to not be suckered by “too good to be true” online deals. Keep your friends close and your credit card closer. Over and over scummy retailers are exposed but a quick name-change are back online trading their crap, fake or purely imaginary goods. Read the rest of the article »