Archive for Inspiration
365 project
For the longest time, I've thought that I wouldn't have it in me to do a 356 project - i.e. a photo per day for a whole year. If I think about the past five years, for example, there has never been a whole year where I would have been consistently able to post a photo per day. I mean, hell, my whole Flickr stream dates back to August 2006 and only 728 photos in it. That's an average of 0.6 photos per day or so. I'm not even sure if I want to subject the world to a project like that. I don't really like posting photos to Flickr that I'm not reasonably happy with (even though I, too, have a load of junk in my Flickr stream, of course)... Could I really get 365 photos together over the course of a year?
Read all of 365 project (33 comments so far)
Learning by example
Some people learn best when they start at the basics: This is a camera. Press this button to make it go 'click', and it takes a picture. Change the aperture to... etc. Me, I like to work the other way around - I learned a long time ago that photography - like computers, cars, etc - is interesting mostly for its results, rather than for its technology. Who cares if your camera can do 1/4,000 second or 1/12,000 second shutter times... Unless, of course, you need the faster shutter time to achieve something.
Read all of Learning by example (8 comments so far)
How to hand-colour your photos
I recently had a conversation with Bob Keefer - a talented photographer who has decided to hang on to some traditional techniques in a world which is accelerating at full speed toward better, faster, stronger... His party trick is impressive: Take a black-and-white photograph, and colour them. By hand. Creating gorgeous, real-yet-unreal photo-based art which redefines how you'll think about photography and digital retouching? Obviously, I had to catch up with Bob to see what, how - and perhaps, most importantly - why...
Read all of How to hand-colour your photos (12 comments so far)
The man behind the blog.
The other day, I received an e-mail Stephan D, one of my readers, with a load of questions about me and my photography career. I occasionally get questions about who I am and why I run Photocritic, so I figured that I might just do a post about the man behind the blog, as it were. What photographer(s) inspires you to create images? There are a lot of photographers out there who really do it for me. I'm particularly fond of Philip of Lithium Picnic fame, and Ilyssa (isky on dA) also has a beautiful portfolio of photos. I love collecting my fave photos on Flickr (as you can see in the side-bar of this post). To be honest, I take inspiration from lots of different photographers. The 'best of' or 'most popular' images on Flickr and DeviantArt are always a good place to star the flow of creative juices. Of course, Earthshots is also a great starting point...
Read all of The man behind the blog. (9 comments so far)
Self-Portrait Friday
I'll be perfectly honest with you: I feel a bit sad. Here I am, a world-famous blogger (well, I can't but hope. And my sister lives in Vietnam at the moment, so between London and Hanoi, that covers most of the world, right?), but I haven't yet created any internet memes, so I figured I'd start one right now, along with a cause I get behind fully. It's simple: 1) Take a photo of yourself. A good one. 2) Post a link to it on Twitter, using the #selfportraitfriday hash-tag. Apart from making me super-famous (which is, believe it or not, not my chief objective with this project), getting into the rhythm of taking at least one self-portrait every week is great practice. But why should you bother with self portraits, and why am I so strongly in favour of 'em? Read on, fellow shutter-soldier, for my 10 tips to better self portraits, along with the whats, whens and wherefores of onanistic photography fun.
Read all of Self-Portrait Friday (9 comments so far)
The 25 best of urban decay
I've got a guilty pleasure which I'd like to share with you guys - I love urban decay photography; I can spend hours on end browsing Flickr galleries tagged with Urban Decay... Brilliant stuff. I was talking about this particular style/subgenre of photography with my good friend Dave Feltenberger a few months ago, and he was enthused about collecting some of his favourite photographers and sites. So, if you're still left wondering what this whole 'urban decay' thing is all about... Here's your chance to be flabberghasted!
Read all of The 25 best of urban decay (27 comments so far)
Photographing dancers
A couple of months ago, I had to eat my pride after my first foray into dance photography went terribly awry. Since, I've spoken to Laurie, who is a friend, Ruby on Rails coder, dancer, and fellow photographer, who offered to write me an article explaining how to get dance photography done The Right Way™. His top tip: Learning about dancing makes you a better dance photographer!
Read all of Photographing dancers (11 comments so far)
Taking fantastic photos with an iPhone
Back when I was doing my Top 100 amazing iPhone photographs, a few photographers' names kept returning again and again - one of them was the amazing Sion Fullana, whose Flickr photography stream is full of absolutely fantastic street photography; mostly in New York, all taken by iPhone. After gawping at his photos in incomprehension, I just had to ask him if I could interview him about his technique, and see if I could get some tricks of the trade out of him - luckily, Sion was happy to oblige. So, if you have an iPhone and want to learn how to put its camera to good use, or if you just want to find out how you can take incredibly moving photographs even with inferior equipment, you're in for a proper treat...
Read all of Taking fantastic photos with an iPhone (22 comments so far)
Painting with light
You've probably seen the effect of camera blur (moving your camera, giving a fuzzy, streaky effect), zoom blur (by zooming during an exposure, I have a modest example here), and motion blur (something moving on camera). But what do you reckon would happen if your scene isn't moving, your camera is firmly locked down on a tripod, but your light-source moves? Well, if you can imagine such a thing, you've just imagined the bright art of painting with light. I've spoken to my good friend Brent Pearson who is 'a bit good' at this light painting malarkey, in the same way that Pele is a bit handy with a Football, and Antonio Lucio Vivaldi knew a thing or two about chord progressions.
Read all of Painting with light (16 comments so far)
Making an epic collage
When I moved from Liverpool to Bristol a few years ago, the first couple of weeks in my new house, I didn't have an internet connection. I felt rather lonely, and decided to look through some images of my old friends. I grew to realise that I had an incredible amount of them. So many, in fact, that I figured I might as well turn them into a piece of art...
Read all of Making an epic collage (4 comments so far)
My day job, if it can be called that, is being a writer. I've got one book out there so far and it's awesome, so go ahead and buy a copy! It's available from 
In front of you, five hyperactive men with guitars, drums, and microphones. Behind you, five thousand fans. In your hands, a camera... You're going to need more than just a little bit of good luck to pull this one off. That's where this book comes in.
Take a Canon EOS 450D. Attach a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens. Hit the streets of London. See what happens.
