Book: Put another dime in the jukeboxSome of you have caught on to the fact that I’m sort of fond of this whole concert photography thing – and I’ve written about it at length here on Photocritic, and I’ve got a big(ish) portfolio of concert photos over on Flickr. One thing I’ve been meaning to do for a while, though, is [...]Choosing your first dSLRIt’s nearly December again, which means that the retailers are rubbing their money-grabbing little paws in glee, in anticipation of making a killing over the holiday season. Be that as it may, fact remains that there’s a lot of choice out there, and whether you’re buying your first camera, or whether you’re out shopping for [...]How to hand-colour your photosI 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 [...]The quest for perfect dropletsOne of the strengths of photography has always been its ability to freeze time. Before the advent of photography, it was impossible to see how a hummingbird moves its wings, how a tennis ball deforms as it is served, or what it looks like when a bullet hits an apple at the speed of sound. [...]Colour illusionHave you ever wished that you could make it look as if your black and white photos were in colour? Well, through the magical powers of chromatic adaptation, you can!
Someone posted a really cool optical illusion on Reddit today, and one of the commenters was wondering how it is done.
As it turns out, [...]7 weird and wonderful photo collectionsYou know what the best thing is about photography? It’s not capturing slices of the world for all eternity, freezing your fingers off trying to get that perfect landscape portrait for which you have to get up at 3am and walk two hours to the top of a mountain, or even the hours and hours [...]Beginnings in street photographySometimes, I learn more about photography when I teach about photography, than when I learn about photography. Bear with me, it does make sense, honest.
I have one friend – Daniela – who is a n00b at this whole photography things. Some of the questions she asks, and some of the comments she makes, sound [...]Get a photo critique!I have been doing Photo Critiques on this blog in the past, but it’s starting to dawn on me that perhaps a blog isn’t quite the right way of doing these, so instead I’d like to start doing them on Flickr.
If you would like me to critique your photographs, here’s how to get on [...]Recovering lost images from a memory cardThe biggest ‘Oh… Shit’ feeling I’ve ever had on a photo job was when I had a rush-job: Press deadline was at 5pm, and I had to photograph an event at 3pm. The event was meant to last until 4pm, which would give me half an hour journey time back to the office, half an [...]How to organise your own photo exhibitA year ago, the Oxford Flickr Group, a group of slightly geeky amateur photographers, were sitting around a table in a pub somewhere in Oxford. This is not at all unusual, but the difference was that, on this occasion, they decided that it’d be a marvelous idea to hold an exhibition. None of them had [...]Insure your camera stuff!Insurance for your camera equipment – I can barely think of a less exciting topic, to be honest. In fact, I highly recommend you skip this post, because it’s going to be hideously boring. Before you to, though, I’d like for you to think about one little thing:
“If your camera vanishes today, can you [...]Under-water photographyIf you thought photography out in the open air was tricky, you’ve got a surprise coming – Underwater photography represents one of the most challenging and specialized segments in the photography world. It’s fun, it’s creative, and it surrounds you with water, which only has one purpose: To ruin your expensive pride-and-joy photography equipment!
Two thirds [...]Photoshop MakeoversSo there you are, taking rather fantastic photos, and then, one day, you realise that everyone else seems to be getting better results. Unfair? Possibly. Or perhaps they’re just handier in Photoshop. Like my old friend Maxwell. I recently came across three of his photo-shopped portraiture sessions (one, two, three), and was rather impressed.
For [...]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 [...]The International ExhibitionThe internet has a funny way of erasing the feeling of the world being of any useful size at all – I regularly get visits from nearly 190 different countries, for example. In an exchange with the lovely (Swedish) Håkan Dahlström recently, I mentioned that his funky-looking photograph XAO wouldn’t have looked out of place [...]How to clean your dSLR sensorSo you have spent thousands on your camera and you’re wondering how to clean it? Well it’s a good question to ask; a dirty sensor will impact every single one of your images, as it is – quite literally – the focal point of all the camera’s technology. That’s right, your hard earned dollars [...]Computers for PhotographersIf you’ve dabbled in computing much, you’ve probably come across Moore’s law – basically; as Wikipedia so succinctly puts it, “Since the invention of the integrated circuit in 1958, the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit has increased exponentially, doubling approximately every two years”
All good and dandy, but recently [...]Nude self portraitureTaking photos of yourself has a certain under-tone of intimacy about it at the very least; but choosing to shed your clothes and do the same thing adds a whole new dimension to the experience.
One of my long-time readers, Brigitte, told me her approach to nude photography; She doesn’t share her photos with anyone, [...]Publishing your own photo bookA while ago, I was talking with my good friend Randy Kruzan, who told me he had self-published a book – or, as he likes to put it – how he made the transition from “being a fool with a camera to being a fool with a book”.
There’s a lot of things that go [...]Locks on ToiletsFor the past five years or so (with variable amounts of passion – usually low-level, when-I-can-be-bothered; recently, now that I have an iPhone 3GS which has a decent camera, more often), I’ve been doing an odd little photography projects titled ‘Locks on Toilets’. What is it? Well, it does precisely what it says on the [...]The 1% club of amazing photosToday, it’s exactly 1,000 days ago since my good friend Will started a little website called Earth Shots. Its concept is pretty simple; invite people to submit some of the best photos in the world, and let them stand as a glowing beacon of inspiration for other photographers to aspire to, one image per day. [...]Self-Portrait FridayI’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 [...]Laser-engraving my MacBookThose of you who follow my Flickr feed will have seen a couple of photos of my Black Macbook (affectionally known as BlackBook the Second), as it’s going through the process of getting the Photocritic.org URL engraved on the back – WITH LASERS! Obviously, everything to do with lasers has to be in all caps. [...]The 25 best of urban decayI’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 [...]The best camera is one you actually useThose of you who are following @photocritic on Twitter (or, in fact, if you were paying attention to the RSS feed), can’t have failed to notice that I was out on the road. If you’re making a particularly good job of stalking me, you’ll also have noted a load of photos posted to my Flickr [...]Where does digital noise come from?‘Bollocks, it’s dark out here’, you think, and scratch your head. ‘I’d better up the ISO a little bit, to ensure that I can use a decent shutter time’. The downside of using a higher ISO, of course, is that you introduce digital noise. But where does this noise come from? Why does your image [...]King of the Road!As some of you will have caught via Twitter or Facebook, I’ve recently left my job as a Senior Producer at Channel Five, and am about to set up on my own, as an editorial consultant. Sounds posh, means very little indeed, beyond the fact that I’ll be spending a lot of time writing books, [...]Abolish automatic settings!If you look at the top of your SLR camera, you’ll probably find a little round dial, which has a whole load of different settings on them. Some of them are automatic settings (like the green square), some of them are ‘creative automatic’ settings (like the little runner), and others are the modes that let [...]Photographers on Twitter DatabaseSorry about the twitter-focussed posts as of late; I have been very busy with work (I have to wrap a lot of things up before I’m leaving there to look after Photocritic and being a writer), and I haven’t had much time or energy to do a lot of photography writing.
On the bright side, [...]Why is wedding photography so expensive?I’m often asked about how much people charge for photography, and then frequently in the context of wedding photography. Honest truth? I don’t really know, but the persistent feeling out there is that wedding photography is really, really expensive.
This is, in fact, true – it ain’t cheap to get your wedding photographed – but [...]
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