| 28.07.2010 | 14:55 BST | Developing a new course |
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| Several months ago I had a conversation with a man called Tom Hill who runs a private journalism school called Up To Speed Journalism in my home town of Bournemouth. We were looking at the options of expanding the range of courses on offer to include one for news photographers. A few weeks ago we started looking very seriously at the idea and Tom has now decided to start accepting applications for the first course which runs from January 2011. I am delighted to have been involved in the development of the course and I will be teaching some of the elements of the course. The big tasks now are to attract the right students and to make sure that we bring the industry along with us at a time when there are very few jobs out there for new entrants to the profession. The idea is simple: to give those who come on the course the information, skills and techniques that they will need to start out on their careers as news photographers. It's all very exciting and if you want to know more, go to the Up To Speed website where there is quite a bit of information and where you can ask questions about the course. |
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| 21.07.2010 | 13:53 BST | Just got back from Memory Lane... |
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I've been a bit quiet over the last few days and I decided to do some work on my website. The first thing that needed some attention was my main folio which used a Flash based slideshow. It only took one client failing to access my work on their iPad to convince me that I needed a simpler solution, which I now have.
Following on from that I had a look at my old technique pages. Between January 2000 and June 2008 I posted a large number of examples taken from my daily work to show how I used light in an era where digital cameras were pretty poor at ISOs over 800 or even 400 in the case of the venerable Kodak DCS520. These days flash is a creative choice rather than a technical necessity but the techniques still stand up - even if some of the samples might not feel quite so current. The picture above was shot in 1999 on an old 1.9 megapixel Kodak DCS520 and it was the very first technique that ever posted. I was intending to quickly update the page styles of 53 samples but I ended up reading most of them! |
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| 28.06.2010 | 14:39 BST | Whole day workshop near Manchester |
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Anyone who fancies coming along to a whole day location lighting workshop near Manchester on Wednesday 14th July should have a look at the web page of my hosts for the day - the north-west region of the BIPP British Institute of Professional Photography) and book a place. There are a limited number of places and the day should appeal to editorial, commercial and social photographers alike. You can find the website here and I look forward to meeting some of you there.
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| 21.06.2010 | 12:33 BST | Colour calibrating digital camera bodies |
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| EOS5D MkII - red strap |
EOS5D MkII - yellow strap |
EOS7D - blue strap |
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When you work with one camera and you shoot RAW all of the time it really doesn't matter if that camera has a tendency towards magenta, yellow or cyan - the shift will be consistent and you can cope with it very easily in post-production. If, on the other hand, you work with more than one camera and each of them has a subtle shift in a different direction then your workflow can be slowed down when you have to constantly colour correct images shot under identical lighting in different directions. Like all things in photography, there is more than one way to solve this problem...
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| 23.05.2010 | 12:03 BST | Thoughts on my new Macbook Pro |
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My old Apple Macbook Pro arrived in my hands a little over three years ago when I was shooting pictures using the 8 megapixel EOS1D MkII camera bodies. The 2Gb of RAM that it had, coupled with a decent sized hard drive meant that it handled those files quickly and without any drama. When I went freelance, I bought that laptop off of my employer and it carried on working pretty well until I started shooting commercial jobs using the Canon EOS5D MkII bodies with the far larger files generated by their 21 megapixel chips. Trying to work with a hundred or more Canon RAW files tested the hard drive, the amount of RAM installed and, in the end, my patience. I put the money aside for a new machine and waited for Apple to bring the right one to the market.
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| 10.05.2010 | 12:40 BST | National Photography Symposium 2 |
Having attended last year's NPS in Manchester I was excited about being invited to go again this year and to chair a debate about the future of copyright and orphan works. This debate was just one of a number of sessions over the weekend in Derby. As always, one of the great joys of going to these events is meeting some interesting, passionate and exciting people from within our industry and NPS2 in Derby was certainly no exception.
It's hard to pick out highlights but having met David Burnett two weeks ago I was delighted to meet the other half of the Contact Press Images founding team Robert Pledge over the weekend. Knowledgeable, charming, humble and dedicated to photography are all things that immediately come to mind and I am very happy to have met him. There were plenty of other excellent speakers on topics ranging from climate change through police powers to others simply showing their own work and talking about it.
I also met Christian Payne who is a photographer, filmmaker, journalist, social media guru and all round renaissance man. Check out Christian's web site and prepare to marvel at his versatility. He tweets using the name documentally and also has an iPad, so I'm jealous!
Apart from the copyright session I was most keen to go to the one about photography education in the UK. I am so glad that I did because I have made a lot of new contacts and friends amongst photography educators and the one thing that we all agree on is that we can work together to make improvements to the way young photographers and those interested in studying the subject are educated.
Thanks to the Format Festival and Redeye for putting the event on. Next year NPS3 will be in Liverpool as part of their international photography festival. I would urge anyone who is passionate about photography to book up as soon as tickets go on sale. |
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| 05.05.2010 | 11:34 BST | NPAC Photojournalism 2010 |
Just as the flight bans over Europe were lifted I arrived at Heathrow airport, breezed through security and went to the annual conference of the News Photographers Association of Canada. They had very kindly invited me to go and deliver a talk about my work and how I approach commissions - especially when using flash. Anyone who has read this site cover to cover will have heard it all before but I was pleased with how I distilled it down to just under one and a half hours and very pleased with the reaction from the enthusiastic Canadian audience.
The whole event was really great fun and very well put together. It started with folio reviews for young photographers by the visiting speakers (then three of them reviewed my folio!) and then went through two days of inspirational work and talks with the Canadian Press Pictures of The Year awards being made on the second evening. The other speakers included David Burnett, Kenny Irby, Darrin Sayewich, Tyler Anderson, Peter Power, Adrian Wyld, Andrea Bruce, Shiho Fukada and Philip Blenkinsop - a stellar line-up if ever there was one.
Thanks to everyone at NPAC for allowing me to be a small part of the event and congratulations to the winners of the NPOY. |
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| 05.05.2010 | 11:34 BST | Modified beauty dish |
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A couple of years ago I bought a slightly used 14" beauty dish with a fitting that I couldn't identify. I used it a couple of times with my old Lumedyne kit and kept meaning to make an adapter so that it was easy to attach and detach without looking like a "bodger". I never got around to it - largely because the work that I was doing didn't really call for that kind of light. A couple of months ago I came across the dish and decided to adapt it for use with my Elinchrom Ranger Quadras.
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| 05.05.2010 | 10:44 BST | Professionalism 101 |
Several months ago I wrote this article for a web site called 'Pro-Shooter'. It was the second thing that I did for them and I thought that it deserved another airing here. Just in case you have already read it on the other site, I have added a couple of new paragraphs at the end!
The hardest part of the transition from good photographer to professional photographer is in understanding the difference between the two. I once wrote that the best definition of “professional” is someone who gets the shot 99.9% of the time and has a damned good excuse for the rest. Still true, but professionalism has another side to it - one that can be learned pretty easily. Clients are used to dealing with professionals: Slick presentation, questions being answered before they are asked and great customer service. These are all things that we expect as consumers and in business we expect even more. As a professional, you are in a market place and you have to compete.
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| 02.05.2010 | 21:23 BST | Photography Monthly podcast now on line |
| Grant Scott, the Editor of Photography Monthly magazine did an interview with me over the phone a while ago in which he asked me about my use of lighting. The resulting podcast is now on line. Be warned - it's nearly half an hour long and I say "for sure" way too many times!!! |
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| 15.04.2010 | 14:17 BST | Teachers TV - a video appearance from me |
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Several weeks ago I helped an old colleague who is a producer for Teachers TV here in the UK out by appearing in a short "made for web" video designed to help teachers to use digital cameras better in their schools. The resulting short video is quite funny and it marks my very first appearance in something like this. If you are interested, or just curious you can still see it on the TTV website.
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| 15.04.2010 | 13:44 BST | Five levels of image manipulation |
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| The Curve section of the EPUK website has always been a great source of information for photographers already working in editorial markets and for those who would like to do so in the future. I have written a few pieces for them over the years and my latest piece is about five different levels of image manipulation and how they should be used in newspapers and magazines. |
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| 15.04.2010 | 13:32 BST | New location lighting workshop date at Photofusion added |
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| Now that the better weather is with us again I am delighted to announce that I'm going to be back at Photofusion in Brixton to do another location lighting workshop on Saturday 22nd May. I have done three of these before and the format remains the same - meet up at Photofusion in Brixton, a short classroom discussion of some basic techniques followed by a short walk to a local open space where the small group works with a model provided by the organisers to try out some of the ten location lighting styles that we will have discussed in the classroom. I cannot think of a better way to teach the kinds of skills that I use on a daily basis and so I hope that anyone who is interested goes to the Photofusion website and checks out the details. |
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| 09.04.2010 | 16:42 BST | Photography Monthly - third article |
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The May 2010 issue of Photography Monthly features another one of my pieces about lighting. This time I was asked to take the old concepts of high key and low key and give them a bit of a re-working for the digital age. On the basis that you should never try to improve on a classic I have called my techniques minimum shadow and minimum highlight and the magazine has a detailed description of each.
When we were discussing the article we decided that I should avoid using expensive lighting kit and so I did the whole shoot with two Canon Speedlights, a couple of stands, some bits of gel, a reflector, a Honl snoot and some cheap light modifiers.
After I had submitted the pictures and the words the editor of Photography Monthly recorded an interview with me for their next podcast which should go online later this month. I will blog again about the podcast when it goes live but the conversation revolved around my attitudes to light, lighting and digital photography in general. I'm pretty sure that I didn't say anything too contentious but I'm still quite keen to hear it! |
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| 09.04.2010 | 16:25 BST | Section 43 - defeated by photographers |
It's not often that photographers get to celebrate anything in these changing and economically challenged times but here in the UK the Champagne corks were popping while we all stayed up and watched live television coverage of Parliament. Our government was trying to rush a bill called The Digital Economy Bill through before the general election. This involves less scrutiny, more dodgy deals and a vastly increased risk of bad law making onto the statute books. Section 43 of the bill sought to deal with the thorny subject of "orphan works" which are defined as "a copyright work where it is difficult or impossible to contact the copyright holder". Nobody doubts that they exist but all too many of them are photographs where the metadata has been stripped and where commercial organisations would use the lack of metadata to justify not paying for their use.
We managed to get enough Members of Parliament to support our cause to get Section 43 dropped before the bill became law. The campaign was coordinated by EPUK and backed by the vast majority of organisations representing professional photographers in the UK today. We won thanks to the efforts of a small band of dedicated photographers who published the Copyright Action and Stop43 websites whilst working tirelessly themselves and who were backed by an army of texters, tweeters, emailers and bloggers. This was 21st century protest at it's best and I want to put on record here just how much I admire the leaders of the fight and how much I appreciate the work that everyone put into the fight.
This is a huge victory for copyright owners around the world not just in the UK. It also represents the start of a new process in which we will have to confront the same issues over again and work with whatever new government is formed after the general election to develop a fair and equitable law on copyright, licensing and moral rights that fits with the digital age. |
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| 16.03.2010 | 14:55 GMT | Litepanels Micropro on test |
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A couple of months ago the nice folks at Photography Monthly magazine asked me to shoot some portraits using the Litepanels Micropro LED light. It was designed for video use and sticks out a fair bit of white light when it has a fresh set of 6 AA batteries. I haven't blogged about it until now because the pictures were for an article that I was writing for the magazine which came out in their March 2010 edition. Here are some thoughts about the panel and how it works when shooting stills.
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| 16.03.2010 | 14:40 GMT | The copyright symbol |
I'm a Mac user and I have been for the last sixteen years. They make some great tools and some amazing gadgets but the bets thing about Macs is that they seem to be made for people like me. I was having this conversation with a student on one of the excellent photographic courses at the Arts University College at Bournemouth and I realised that my preference for Apple computers can be summed up by the fact that the copyright symbol is just there - alt+g - whereas on a Windows machine you have to hunt for it. I have just Googled "how to find the copyright symbol on a Windows computer" and had to laugh out loud at the first website that came up:
"Hold down the Alt key and type 0169 if you have separate numeric keys on your keyboard. Alternatively you can go to prgrammes, accessories and select "character map" which allows you to assign a short cut to any symbol that you choose. Unfortunately not every copy of Windows has this loaded and you may need to reload it from your system discs".
Does this seem long-winded to you? Shouldn't a symbol as important as the copyright one just be there? I know that the option of using (c) is there and almost everyone recognises it but the correct symbol should be much easier to find than it is on most Windows machines. |
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| 25.02.2010 | 13:35 GMT | The story behind the set... |
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A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog piece about my new folio which is a photo book brilliantly printed by Loxleys of Glasgow. As part of the post I talked a little about the cover image and how it came about and a reader got back to me asking to hear the story behind some of the other images in my folio. For years I have been posting technique pages about how I shot certain pictures so now I'm going to do an occasional "the story behind the picture pieces". I'm going to start with my 1998 portrait of Professor John Bayley and his wife Dame Iris Murdoch in their Oxford garden.
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| 16.02.2010 | 11:38 GMT | My new portfolio |
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In the seventeen months since going freelance again I have been out with my folio quite a few times. Until now that has meant taking my laptop with a slide show pre-loaded but the last couple of times I used this technique the people who were looking at my pictures wanted to see something more and something that gave them a break from staring at pixels on a screen. I asked quite a few fellow photographers what they were doing and got quite a few different answers. I have been to a few photographic equipment shows in the last couple of years and have always been tempted by the photo books on show from people like Asuka, Blurb and Photobooks and so I decided to go down that route for my new folio.
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| 08.02.2010 | 14:47 GMT | Surfers in the sun |
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| Sometimes you wait for people to arrive and they are late. It's one of those things that happens in life and it seems to happen a lot when you are a working photographer. There's no sense in getting angry or upset (even when it could be costing you money). I always feel that you have two or three options: check your kit again, have a quick look at Twitter or Facebook on your mobile phone or shoot some stock pictures. Last Saturday I was photographing an aspiring politician on the beach and while I was waiting the sun came out and the surfers were getting pretty active. I only shot twenty or so frames but I hope that one or two might make me enough cash over the next few years as stock images to make the wait worthwhile! |
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| 29.01.2010 | 11:40 GMT | The iPad |
The world and his wife have already posted about the new Apple wonder product - the iPad and I'm not going to add to the anal analysis of it's features, it's shortcomings and it's triumphs. What I do want to do is to talk about how I see myself relating to it and what impact it might have on my professional life. In short, is it going to herald a new phase in my career...
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| 20.01.2010 | 11:33 GMT | NPAC Conference in Toronto |
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| Exciting news... I've been invited to be a speaker at Photojournalism 2010, the annual convention of the News Photographers Association of Canada. This years event will be taking place in Toronto from the 23rd of April and I am really looking forward to being there and meeting a lot of Canadian colleagues. I will be doing a session on creative location lighting as well as some portfolio reviews and a whole lot of socialising. If you are going to be there, please come and say hello... |
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| 20.01.2010 | 11:18 GMT | Photography Monthly... again... |
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Following hot on the heels of the piece that I wrote for Photography Monthly magazine in November I have just done a second creative lighting piece. This one is called "Man At Work" and it is about a young plasterer going about his job. The idea behind this self-set brief was to re-visit one of the most difficult things to shoot well - someone doing their job in dirty, cramped and camera-unfriendly conditions. Many years ago I photographed a plasterer in black and white and had to be very creative with light to make pictures of a man covered in brown dirt against a brown background with brown dust in the air work. This time I was determined to make the action shots work along with some atmospheric location portraits.
The magazine lent me a new toy to play with as well - the Light Panel Micro Pro, which is a very interesting LED light mainly used for video. I tried to use it for some of the shots on this job as a test of its usefulness for stills photography. You are going to have to wait for the magazine in early February to find out exactly what I thought but, as a taster, the portrait above was made with it. |
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| 20.01.2010 | 11:00 GMT | Bad weather and batteries |
| OK, so I forgot to post and say "happy new year". I'm trying to make my blog posts count and my new year's blog resolution is to be "relevant, regular and interesting". The first thing that I want to do is to heap praise on the batteries used in the Elinchrom Ranger Quadra system. The weather in the UK over Christmas was pretty cold and in Perthshire, where we spent Christmas, it was very cold indeed. I had my Ranger Quadra kit in the car boot for well over a week of sub-zero temperatures and the batteries still worked perfectly. The same cannot be said for the Quantum turbo that was also there. I know that this might seem a small point to most of you but the ability of batteries to keep their charge in cold weather is a big selling point for professional gear. Obviously this wasn't a scientifically controlled experiment but I am really pleased to know that the gear seems to have this very welcome durability. |
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| 21.12.2009 | 12:52 GMT | Merry Christmas |
I just wanted to say merry Christmas to everyone who has taken the time to read some of this blog over the last twelve months. It's been a tough time for photographers and we have all been affected by the downturn in the world economy and the problems in the publishing industry. Who knows where we will all be in twelve months time - I'm looking at a few new ideas to grow my freelance career and the article in Photography Monthly magazine's January issue is one of them. I'd like to say that I don't miss working for newspapers, but I do. It's been several months since I've done a commission for a paper and that makes me sad. On the up side I love the way that magazines use pictures and that helps to compensate for the lack of newspaper work.
Earlier in the year I did a video editing course and, apart from one two minute segment in a corporate video, I haven't had to use my newfound skills in anger yet. I hope that 2010 brings some new clients, some new challenges and even some new income sources! I'm off for a well-earned (?) break with the family and so I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that all of your Christmas pictures are keepers and that Santa brings you all of the toys you wanted - just as long as you've been good. |
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| 21.12.2009 | 12:48 GMT | Photography Monthly magazine |
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A few months ago I was contacted by Photography Monthly magazine and asked if I wanted to join their team of "Masters" to contribute some technique examples to their re-vamped publication. Of course I said "yes" and then promptly forgot all about it until the deputy editor rang me and asked for my first contribution. This was about a month before the deadline and I hatched a plan to do a picture that I had been thinking of for quite a while.
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| 11.12.2009 | 09:23 GMT | Magical camera and lens combinations |
For no apparent reason certain combinations of camera bodies and lenses have a magical element when combined. When I first started getting serious about photography my favourite combo was the Olympus OM1 body with the Zuiko 100mm f2.8 lens. There was a certain quality to the pictures that I made with this outfit (usually shooting wide open) that made me smile and that made it into my earliest portfolio. There have been many other pairings that have had the same effect on me and my work over the years and, as a quick jaunt down memory lane, here are a few of them:
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| 07.12.2009 | 15:57 GMT | Test shooting |
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Advertising photographers have a long a virtuous tradition of doing test shoots so that their folios are full of images that they really like rather than those that someone else has asked them to do. Things were looking a bit quiet a couple of weeks back when a former colleague contacted me through Linkedin to ask if I would do some head shots for him. I was happy to oblige and we did a deal were I got to shoot some pictures that I might want to use and he got his head shots a lot cheaper than he would otherwise have done.
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| 07.12.2009 | 12:47 GMT | Canon EOS7D - my thoughts so far |
About two weeks ago I bought a Canon EOS7D body. I'd been to the launch and knew that I liked the idea of the 7D and I needed to get another camera to supplement the pair of EOS5D MkIIs that I was already using. Jacobs were offering a good deal on the 7D and so I picked one up from their New Oxford Street store. This isn't going to be an in-depth review - as I always say, other people do that far better than me and the information at DP Review is hard to beat. These are my impressions of the camera having used it on real jobs and shooting pictures of friends and family over the last ten days. I am used to using quite a few different Canon digital SLRs and I am going to confine my comparisons to the 5D MkII and the 50D which appear either side of the 7D in Canon's line-up.
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| 16.11.2009 | 12:44 GMT | The Digital Journalist |
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| The Digital Journalist website has been on line for longer than I have been using the internet. From my first attempt at surfing the web in pursuit of good information about the industry that I love and work in I have had the site bookmarked. It has showcased amazing work, hosted informed contributions from those that know about how the world we work in is changing and has sponsored workshops in multimedia storytelling. Their principal sponsor has recently withdrawn and brought forward a re-organisation of the site. Bluntly, they need money to do it. This is a website worth giving money to and I'd love readers of this website to go along and contribute. |
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| 16.11.2009 | 12:35 GMT | More about teaching |
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Quite a few of my recent blog posts have been about the seminars, workshops and other teaching that I have been doing. I have worked with individual photographers, small groups and up to twenty students at a time but the one thing that all of these sessions have in common is that they make me analyse how I do things and they remind me of the basics. I was asked by two photographers to do a half day session on light-metering and, as part of my preparation for it I dug out an old (and very much loved) Sekonic flash and ambient meter (an L328 for those who need to know the details, no longer available but the 308 is very similar and still on sale) and I enjoyed using it so much that it has regained a place in my day to day working kit.
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| 22.10.2009 | 20:15 BST | My kit wishlist |
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I was watching televisions just now and the commercial break was full of Christmas adverts. One of them featured a child making a "wish list" to send to Santa Claus with a long list of toys that they would like to see under their tree on December 25th. This made me think about my photo equipment wish list - Santa, now is the time to read my blog!
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| 15.10.2990 | 14:24 BST | I finally joined Twitter... |
| I have been putting it off for a few months but I have finally got myself a Twitter account and I hope that some of you will enjoy following the irregular snippets that I intend to post. More importantly, The BPPA also has a Twitter account which is there to keep anyone interested in UK news photography up to date with what's happening. |
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| 08.10.2009 | 14:19 BST | A favourite technique page revisited |
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Whilst preparing for a lecture the other day I was going through some old technique pages trying to find a new way to say some old things. Like most photographers I have favourite images and unlike most I have images that are very useful as teaching tools. I like this picture very much simply because it helps me make a number of useful points and allows me to ask those attending the seminar questions about how they might have approached the same situation. I decided to reproduce it here so that it gets another airing.
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| 08.10.2009 | 14:16 BST | Self-critique |
One of the best things about studying photography at college was having so many of your peers around to help critique your work on a daily basis. It often hurt at the time and more than once I decided to ignore the advice of my friends and forge ahead with my own style. After college there was always the darkroom or the lab where you would talk to other photographers and get some feedback on what you were doing. Then there were a few years when we were hand processing film wherever we happened to be and scanning it, quickly followed by the early digital era. That brief period between the darkroom and the almost universal uptake of the internet and adoption of digital was a tough time for those of us who liked to talk about our work with other photographers.
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| 07.10.2009 | 13:03 BST | Teaching and learning - one-to-one |
I have always enjoyed doing a few seminars here and there and visiting colleges to teach students about how professional photography works but, since I went freelance in August 2008, I have now done a few one-to-one sessions with other photographers and this has to be the most fulfilling way to teach that there is. The way that you can target specific needs and take the time to make sure that they understand what you are saying is great. With a group you can get a good idea how the lesson is going but with just one person it's better. The best thing of all about working this way is that it helps you to think about exactly how you work yourself in a far more focused way and, by acting as a teacher, you really help yourself too.
I wrote earlier in the year about going to get some one-to-one training on video editing using Final Cut Express and I am convinced that I learned way more in one day with a good teacher all to myself than I would have done in two or three as part of a group. |
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| 16.09.2009 | 10:31 BST | The nightmare of shooting PR in an editorial style |
Many moons ago I wrote an opinion piece about the relationship between the photographer, their subject and their client. The basic idea was that I preferred to work for newspapers and magazines where I was being paid by and had to impress them rather than being paid by and having to impress the person in front of the camera. Editorial photography usually has three parties and it's a great way to create good images.
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| 03.09.2009 | 15:48 BST | New Photofusion course date |
I promised to keep everyone informed about when my next location lighting workshop at Photofusion is and I have just agreed with them to do it on Saturday, October 31st. This will be after the end of British Summer Time which should mean that by the end of the day we will have some interesting evening light to contend and play with. For more information and to book go to Photofusion's website. |
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| 03.09.2009 | 10:52 BST | Hands on with the Canon EOS7D |
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I can't remember what my colleague Dillon Bryden said to make me laugh here but we were conscious of the queue of people waiting to have a play with the new kit whilst we were having our own, impromptu, photo session. New cameras don't often make me laugh. I'm grateful to Canon UK for kindly inviting me and a couple of colleagues along with a number of other guests to see their new kit and get a brief "hands-on" with it. The star of the show was the new EOS7D body but there were also cameo appearances by the S90 and G11 compacts and the new lenses were also there, led by the much anticipated 100mm f2.8L IS Macro.
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| 25.08.2009 | 16:10 BST | I want one of those |
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| When I write the newsletter that goes with this pre-blog I usually add a few bits that don't go on the website. It's a blatant attempt to get people to subscribe and it sort of works. This time I found myself wandering off into a wish list of new bits of gear that I'd quite like and the more I think about it, the more I would love to get one of the new Canon G11 compacts when they come out in a couple of months. I have a G9 already and I used to have various previous G series cameras, many of which had a swivel LCD screen. I have always liked the idea of swivel LCDs and the re-introduction of them on the G11 gets a thumbs-up from me. The most impressive idea on the G11 is that they have reduced the pixel count so that the low light capabilities of the camera should be better and I'm really going to want one. If that's not enough, I am also interested to see if Apple are going to get their much rumoured mini-tablet onto the market. I have no idea if it will be suitable for processing and sending pictures but I still have the feeling that the old "gadget envy" will overcome me! |
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| 25.08.2009 | 09:55 BST | Photofusion workshop |
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I had a great day out at Photofusion in Brixton this weekend, working with eight photographers on a location lighting workshop. I have lead quite a few of these kind of sessions over the years but yesterday was definitely one of the most enjoyable. Photofusion is a wonderful resource for photographers and their courses have an enviable reputation. The great thing about location lighting in the UK is that you can never rely on the weather doing what you want it to...
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| 24.08.2009 | 18:33 BST | Dusk pictures |
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| Anyone who knows me or who has ever looked at my folio will know just how much I like being by the sea and that the beach is my single favourite location. I'm a lucky guy and I live on the south coast of England - in the same town in which I was born, Unimaginative, I know - but it's a great place to live and take pictures. Shooting portraits against the background of a mean and moody sky at dusk is one of my favourite things to do and shooting those skies without people is almost as much of a joy. |
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| 05.08.2009 | 11:40 BST | Headley Court |
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When I left the staff at The Times Educational Supplement last year I imagined that I would spend very little time doing news photography, let alone real documentary photography and photojournalism. I am delighted to say that my imagination failed me and I have shot quite a few stories for news and specialist magazines that have taken me to some of those places that make doing my job as much a privilege as it is a vocation. Headley Court in Surrey is one such place.
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