The PhotoZone

Moving day

2010-04-04T17:39:00.004+02:00

The PhotoZone here on Blogger is going into hibernation - permanently.

It won't vanish. I can't find any way of making it do that. But I will be posting no more here.

The posts I have made will continue to hang about in cyberspace until Google gets fed up with them and erases the lot.

But, don't despair. PhotoZone still lives.

I am moving the blog to a new and more sophisticated web server. PhotoZone has had a complete facelift and is now up and running at:

http://www.alscotts.com

Why not pop over and check it out? Let me know what you think. There are some completely new posts there, but I have also transferred the first two 'Great Photographs' posts in their entirety as I intend to continue posting examples, and commenting on them, on the new site. I would like the 'archive' to be complete.

A big thank you to all who have been faithfully following me here, and an extra thank you for all the great comments you have made. I hope to see you over on the new, improved PhotoZone.

Come on over. You'll be very welcome.

April Fool!

2010-04-01T11:02:00.006+02:00

This has got to be the Mother of all April Foolings ... a report on the spaghetti harvest in the Swiss Ticino (the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland) shown on BBC Television's current affairs programme 'Panorama' on April 1st 1957.

It fooled a lot of people - myself included (mind you, I was only 11 at the time).

Don't you love the plummy voice of Richard Dimbleby, prominent political commentator of his day?

There are more details about this beautiful joke, and how it was created, on the Museum of Hoaxes website. Amazingly, it was all done on a budget of £100.

He wasn't referring to police ...

2010-03-12T15:00:00.000+01:00

... when George Polya, a Hungarian professor of mathematics, once said:

"Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules.

To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry.

To apply a rule with natural ease, with judgment, noticing the cases where it fits, and without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery."

But I think it fits well with regard to the police 'interactions' with photographers.

How much is too much?

2010-03-08T19:09:00.004+01:00

Photographer Stepan Rudik, working for the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, took this photograph as part of a series on a Ukrainian street fighters in Kiev.

He then cropped it by something like 90%, converted the remains of his image to black and white, added an artificial grain effect (I'd guess using a Photoshop filter) burned in an artificial vignette, whammed up the contrast for a harsher feel, and cloned out the stray bit of foot (I think it is) belonging to the guy standing behind the fighter ...

The result was this ...

He then entered it for the 2010 World Press Photo Competition.

And it won 3rd prize in the 'Sports Features' category.

But not for long. Apparently the manipulation was brought to the attention of contest officials by the Ukrainian Photography Union and, shortly thereafter, anyone visiting the World Press Photo website to view the winners was presented with this page for 3rd Prize in Sports Features ...

Why the disqualification? On their website, World Press Photo states:

Following the announcement of the contest results, it came to the attention of World Press Photo that Rudik's story had violated a contest rule. After requesting RAW-files of the series from him, it became clear that an element had been removed from one of the original photographs.

(For the full statement see here)

So, it was the removal of the few hundred pixels of stray foot that did for Mr Rudik. The violent cropping, removal of colour, addition of grain, vignette and harsh contrast would seem to be acceptable practice.

I know what I think.

What about you?

Image credit: Photograph by Stepan Rudik

Great Photographs No. 2 – Fallen Republican Soldier, Spain, 1936

2010-02-23T18:25:00.007+01:00

“If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.”

Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

The truth of Robert Capa’s famous quote is borne out by his equally famous photograph. Capa was almost at the feet of this Republican soldier as the man fell during the Spanish Civil War. It is one of the most dramatic and iconic of all war photographs.

Photographers had been recording war ever since the invention of photography in the late 1830s. But, from the Crimean War through to the First World War, they had had to use cumbersome plate cameras that could only take one exposure at a time. This limited war photography to relatively static shots of assembled troops, captured prisoners, battlefield views and the like.

Capa was at the forefront of a revolution taking place – a revolution in photography. This was brought about by the invention of the 35mm rangefinder camera, with 36 exposures on its roll of film. For the first time photographers could move in amongst the troops, capturing spontaneous action and shooting sequences. For the first time photographers could get ‘close enough’ to record the death of an individual.

But this photograph has stirred a storm of controversy.

It was first published in a French magazine Vu in September 1936, followed by publication in Life and Picture Post. The editor of Picture Post called Capa “... the greatest war photographer in the world ...”.

Then in 1975 Philip Knightley, in his book ‘The First Casualty’ challenged the authenticity of this image. Based on the recollections of a reporter who worked alongside Capa, examination of other photographs from the same roll of film and the knowledge that photojournalists of the time did stage dramatic images, Knightley concluded, “... the famous photograph is almost certainly a fake – Capa posed it.”

Robert Capa/Magnum Photos

Another image from the same sequence

And the argument has raged ever since. A definitive answer will never be reached because Robert Capa died in 1954, and no negative of his iconic image is known to exist.

But does it matter how the photograph was obtained?

Even if it was set up, it could be argued that this photograph remains a powerful symbol of the Spanish Republican cause. Tens of thousands of Republican soldiers died, and symbols aren’t necessarily any the less powerful because they have been staged.

There are still deep scars left by that war, and Spain’s Culture Minister, the film director and screenwriter Ángeles González-Sinde, commented on the photograph at the opening of an exhibition of Capa’s work in Barcelona last year. “Art is always manipulation, from the moment you point a camera in one direction and not another,” she said.

That may be true, but it does matter to war photographers and other photojournalists who work in harrowing and dangerous situations. They know that their credibility depends on the trust that the viewing public has in them and their work. Photojournalists have been sacked for ‘manipulating’ their images – Brian Walski, for example.

Walski’s image of a British soldier in Iraq, motioning for a man carrying a child to get down, was Pulitzer Prize material ... except for the fact that it was shown to be a composite. (For an in-depth discussion of that image, see here)

However, whatever your opinion on Capa's photograph - whether you believe it is a fake and so worthless ... or staged but still great ... or true - what isn’t arguable is his courage.

Robert Capa died when, trying to get ‘close enough’, he stepped on a land mine in Vietnam. His camera was in his hand.

Grime Doesn't Pay - Part 3

2010-02-19T11:26:00.004+01:00

Digital cameras with interchangeable lenses suffer from grime problem that never affected film cameras ... dust on the sensor.

This is different from dust on the lens. The tiniest specks on the sensor will show up as spots in your photograph, especially on large areas of plain colour, such as the sky. And they become more visible if you are using small apertures such as ƒ16 or ƒ22.

The problem is being addressed by manufacturers and many cameras now have self-cleaning sensors that vibrate at very high speed to shake dust off. How well they work is debateable. But even if they work perfectly, the shaken-off dust is still somewhere inside the camera and could possibly end up on the sensor again

Do you dare check your sensor for dust?

Close your lens down to its absolute minimum aperture, point your camera at a patch of clear blue sky and take a photograph. Don’t worry about the shutter speed. It can be as slow as an arthritic snail and not matter. Dust is what you’re looking for, and it will be sitting in the camera, so shake doesn’t matter.

Having taken your sky photograph, load it into an image editing program and examine at 100% ... and be prepared. If you want a real fright, click on ‘Automatic Levels’. I guarantee, you will find dust specks, even if you have a sensor cleaning system. Even brand new cameras have dust.

Here's my sky photo, taken at f40, with just a few of the dust spots ringed.

Yours may be like that, or better, or worse, but sooner or later you will have to do (or have done) a bit of interior cleaning because you will take a photo like this ...

It's no big deal because you can easily clone out the spot just above and to the right of the balloon, using your image editing program. (You will probably want to clone out those annoying contrails, too). But you don't want to be doing that photograph after photograph. So, you go to your instruction book ... and find an Awful Warning about not doing-it-yourself.

Does that mean sending your camera off to a service lab?

No. In the words of the late, great Douglas Adams – DON’T PANIC.

It is perfectly possible to clean your sensor yourself, if you take a bit of care.

And ... incidentally ... what you are cleaning is not the sensor. It is something called the ‘optical low pass filter’, which is a little bit tougher than the manufacturers would have you believe. (Though this does not mean you can be rough with it.) I’ll call it the sensor, anyway. That’s easier than writing ‘optical low pass filter’ every time.

Although your ‘dust photo’ – the one of the sky – may show many specks, like mine, I wouldn’t advise cleaning unless they are regularly ruining photographs. If they’re not causing any problems, leave well alone.

Once you do decide to take the plunge, I’d advise a three-step process checking with a ‘sky photograph’ between each step. If, after any step, the dust has vanished, then stop ...

Step 1

Make sure your camera battery is fully-charged* and, working in a dust-free location (the bathroom is ideal for this), take the lens off and lock the mirror up. Then, holding the camera upside down above your head (so any dust will fall out) use your rocket blower to puff vigorously all over the sensor.

As you puff, take great care to ensure that the plastic nozzle of the blower does not strike the metal lens-mounting flange. I learned that lesson when, the first time I was cleaning, I found more and more particles of something coming from somewhere. Guess where?

Step 2

If all that blowing hasn’t shifted the dust, then use a special sensor-cleaning brush with very fine hairs. You spin this at high speed, using a little electric motor to charge the filaments with static electricity. Then draw it across the sensor once so the static attracts the dust particles.

Incidentally – make sure never to touch the brush hairs. No matter how clean your hands are, they are always slightly greasy. Your skin-grease will transfer itself to the brush hairs and thence on to your sensor. Then you will have problems.

Step 3

If some stubborn dust specks are still present then use a swab to shift them. You can buy packs of these, together with specially-formulated cleaning fluid, in photo shops. Make sure you specify the model of camera so that you buy the right size. Take one swab, moisten it with a drop of the fluid and draw it across the sensor once.

I have applied these 3 steps since I first got my camera and I have only ever had to use Step 3 once.

Finally, I repeat, DON’T PANIC. Unfortunately some photographers do, and become neurotic about dust. They spend an inordinate amount of time trying to avoid it when they should be photographing.

I have seen lens changing bags on sale in camera shops. The theory is that you put your camera and replacement lens into the bag and zip it up. Then you put your hands into sort of built-in gloves, change lenses inside the bag (honestly!) and then take the whole lot out again.

Laugh? I nearly died. Apart from the fact that, by the time you’ve completed that palaver, whatever you were going to photograph has long gone, the bag itself must act as a massive dust trap after a few uses. Unless you’re going to carefully vacuum clean the interior every evening, it’s a complete waste of money.

Dust in your camera is inevitable. For starters, the shutter is mechanical. Every time you take a photograph, it wears a fraction, releasing tiny particles. Then your zoom lens is like an air pump. Every time you zoom in and out you pump air in and out of the camera body, and that’s going to contain dust too.

Dust is everywhere. Live with it, and get on with making photographs.

* Be sure the battery is fully charged before you lock the mirror up because, if the battery dies with the mirror up ... I don’t know what happens. I don’t like to think about it.

Grime Doesn't Pay - Part 2

2010-02-09T21:45:00.010+01:00

Dirt on your lens matters ... but maybe not for the reason you think.

Many people believe that a spot of dust on the lens will cause a spot on the photograph.

It won’t. You can have a spot of dust on your lens the size of a small coin and you might not notice it.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the proof ...

These two photographs were taken one after the other, with my camera lying on its back pointing up at the ceiling in the hallway of my house.

I didn’t move the camera between shots. I didn’t change the exposure. Both were taken with the diaphragm fully open, at ƒ1.4. But in one of those photos there is a small Swiss 5 cent coin lying on the lens front element ...

Which photo was taken with the coin on the lens? (Answer in the comments section).

Even if you got it right, I think you’ll agree that it was a tough one to spot.

So, what’s the point of that demonstration? That it’s okay to let your lens get dirty? Even huge chunks of grot won’t make any difference?

No. The point is that dust on your lens has a much more insidious effect which may not be easy to see. A dirty lens lacks contrast and colours in the image are washed-out. The effects occur across the whole image and are impossible to correct with image editing software. Here’s a demonstration ...

So, if you want the crispest, sharpest photographs that your lens can give, with vibrant colours, keep it clean.

How?

Step 1. Make sure that you keep a cap on your lens whenever it is not in use. One will have been supplied with the lens when you bought it. Don’t throw the thing away. And if you have lost it, buy another. Most camera shops carry a selection.

Step 2. Blow any dust particles off with that big fat rubber blower that you used to clean the camera’s exterior. Don’t forget to blow out the inside the lens cap. Dust easily gathers there, too.

Step 3. Gently wipe the surface of the lens. No, not with your shirt-tail, handkerchief or a piece of toilet paper. (You’d be surprised how many people use these things.) With your microfibre cloth. But make sure that the cloth is spotlessly clean. A tiny piece of grit trapped in its folds will play havoc with your coated lens surface. If you want to be really particular, have one cloth for the camera body and another entirely different on for the lens. Or buy some lens-cleaning tissue. Packs of it are very cheap and, unlike toilet paper or paper handkerchiefs, lens-cleaning tissue does not shed fibres. You can also use a drop of optical cleaning fluid to help the process.

Step 4. Finally, give the lens a few hefty puffs with the blower to evaporate any cleaning fluid left or remove any stubborn specks of dust.

Next on 'Grime Doesn't Pay' - Cleaning your Sensor

Footnote:

Incidentally, I didn’t actually let my lens get dirty for the photo above. I used an old skylight filter – one of those clear ones – and coated it with fine dust. The effect is the same. Then I took one photo with the filter off and one with it on and split them down the middle to make a comparison.

Grime Doesn't Pay - Part 1

2010-02-02T13:14:00.008+01:00

Fact: if you use your camera, it’s going to get dirty. And if you’re using it seriously it is going to get even more dirty. Photographing interiors? They’re dusty. Beaches are gritty. Flowers shed pollen.

But even if you keep your precious camera carefully wrapped up in cotton wool, the cotton wool itself is made of fibres.

There's more. Your camera is a machine, with moving parts. The shutter, just opening and closing, is going to wear releasing microscopic particles of plastic, metal, or whatever the shutter mechanism is made of.

Grime is grim, wherever it’s found. So, you wash the car, dust the house and brush the dog. But how often do you clean your camera and associated gear?

“Clean the camera myself?” you say. “No way! I’m going to end up with a massive repair bill.”

Not necessarily. Here’s a personal experience. A few years ago I took my camera to have its sensor cleaned by an authorised dealer in the UK (who, because I don’t want to get sued, shall remain nameless). The ‘cleaning’ cost me 30 quid and the camera came out worse than it went in. Since then I’ve done the sensor cleaning myself, in a three-stage process that I’ll describe later in this series.

But first, start out by cleaning the exterior. You can’t hope to get it spotless inside if the outside is dusty. This process is simple. Brush ... blow ... wipe. And here's the equipment you nedd to do the job ...

Cleaning equipment: microfibre cloth, blower, soft brush (this is a man's shaving brush), optical cleaning fluid, cotton bud.

Brush. You can get a dedicated camera brush for this, but you’ll probably pay extra for it. A large, soft make-up brush, or a man’s shaving brush (both of them unused, of course!) will do the job just as well, if not better. And will cost less. Give your camera a good brushing all over to remove surface grit and grot. Then ...

Blow. No, not with your mouth. There are two ways of doing this. Either buy a big fat bulb-type blower, that looks like a hand grenade with a pipe sticking out of the end, or use a can of compressed air. Don’t bother with those diddly little puffer and brushes combined. They’re close to useless. Use a big ‘un. Puff liberally all over the camera body and front element of the lens to shift any particles that have not been removed by brushing. Blow out the inside the lens cap too, as dust can gather there. If you’re using a can of compressed gas be a bit careful. This can spurt liquid propellant if you hold it the wrong way (like upside down). Finally ...

Wipe – using a microfibre cloth. This is a special type of tightly-woven cleaning cloth that has a unique, silky feel to it. You can buy these cloths in photo shops and or at opticians. Get a big one. You could use a well-washed piece of cotton, but cotton tends to shed fibres. In addition, microfibre cloths are good at removing greasy marks, and they prevent scratching. Just remember, you need to keep the cloth clean, too. So give it an occasional wash.

If there are stubborn greasy patches that won’t shift – and let’s be honest, your nose against the viewing screen can leave hard-to-shift marks – then use a dab of optical cleaning fluid. These liquids have been specially formulated to ensure that they don’t damage glass, plastic or coated surfaces, and they evaporate away harmlessly. But, even so, always read the instructions first. Never ever use other solvents like white spirit. Then you may well have a massive repair bill.

Clean the eyepiece of the viewfinder too. This is usually recessed and is a wonderful dust trap. A cotton bud, moistened with some optical cleaning fluid will do the job well. And, while you’re at it, check the dioptre adjustment - the little wheel or lever that sets the viewfinder to your individual vision. It can get knocked out of place during use, or your vision may have altered slightly since you last set the viewfinder. You can’t hope to take sharp photographs if you can’t view them clearly.

Cleaning the eyepiece. Check the dioptre seting at the same time.

Finally, don’t forget your camera bag. It’s no good putting your lovely clean gear back into a bag that’s been gathering dust all year. Empty it out completely, remove all the interior partitions and vacuum clean it. Make sure to get the nozzle into all the nooks and crannies, and suck dust out of the various pockets, too.

Next time round – cleaning your lenses.

Seeing straight

2010-01-27T17:29:00.003+01:00

As you get older your vision ... the all-important sense to a photographer ... can change. But these changes can happen so slowly that you are unaware of them.

I'll never forget stepping out into the street, wearing my first pair of spectacles. I was in primary school at the time - still not very old - but even so, my eyes had been changing. And they'd been changing so slowly that I hadn't noticed anything amiss.

But, fortunately, my mother had been keeping tabs on me, and had dragged me kicking and screaming (figuratively, that is) to the opticians for an eye test. No way did I want to wear glasses. The other kids at school called you names if you wore glasses, and they made you look 'swotty'. I didn't think I needed glasses ...

... until I stepped out into the street wearing them.

What a revelation! Everything was so sharp it was as if the town had been trimmed with a diamond-tipped saw. I could read the roadsigns. The trees had individual leaves instead of a blur of green. The clouds were sculpted and textured. Old peoples' faces had wrinkles and young kids smiled with gleaming white teeth. It was unbelievable. And the moment has stuck with me to this day.

Your vision can change at any time, and it's worth keeping a check on it. One way of doing this is to use an Amsler grid which may show changes that you wouldn't notice otherwise. You could print it, and stick it up somewhere in your kitchen so you'll remember to look at it ...

To use it:

Wear your glasses if you need them and hold the grid 12 to 15 inches away from your face in good light
Cover one eye
Look directly at the centre dot with the uncovered eye
Keep your eye on the the centre dot and note whether all lines of the grid are straight or if any areas are distorted, blurred or dark
Repeat this procedure with the other eye
If any area of the grid looks wavy, blurred or dark, contact your ophthalmologist immediately

This is not a substitute for a regular eye check by a qualified practioner, but it could pick up problems before they become too serious.

Vision is vital to a photographer.

Megapixel mania mashed

2010-01-18T11:40:00.004+01:00

Here's an interesting development. The Canon Powershot G10, a top-of-the-range compact camera, has recently been superseded by the Canon Powershot G11.

"And what's so special about that?" do I hear you ask? "Manufacturers are upgrading their models all the time."

Yes, but get this. The G10 had a 14 megapixel sensor. The G11 has only 10. In other words, Canon's 'development' is to reduce the number of megapixels in their upgrade.

It just goes to show that the widespread belief - much touted by salespeople - that the more megapixels the better, may not necessarily be the whole truth.

The megapixel rating of a camera does one thing, and one thing only. It tells you how big a print you can make at a certain resolution. That's all.

It tells you nothing about the quality of the image - the sharpness, the amount of 'noise' (random speckles), the colour differentiation - nothing.

Why? What is a megapixel? how does it work?

The rectangular sensor in your digital camera is made of rows and rows and rows of tiny light-sensitive dots called pixels (short for 'picture elements'). A megapixel is simply a million of these. The number is calculated in exactly the same way as you calculate the area of a rectangle, length x width.

So, if the sensor of your camera is 2000 pixels by 3000 pixels, that is 2000x3000 = 6'000'000 pixels = 6 million = 6 megapixels. Simple.

Camera sensors are different sizes. And it's pretty obvious that an ultra-compact pocketable camera is going to have a much smaller sensor that a digital single lens reflex. Here are a few sensor sizes, drawn to scale ...

It's not exactly rocket science to work out that 10 million pixels crammed into the ultra compact camera's sensor (green) are going to be squished together a whole lot more tightly than 8 million in the DSLR sensor (red).

And when pixels are squished together so tightly they begin to interfere with each other. Electronic 'noise' (not the same as sound noise), static charges, all sorts of interference, can spill over from one pixel to the next. We're talking ultra-microscopic dimensions here. As with you and me ... well, me, anyway ... given a bit more breathing space, pixels perform much better.

In other words, more pixels don't mean better. They can simply mean a worse photograph made of more dots.

And what about that bit "... megapixels tell you how big a print you can make ...".

That's right. You have to do a little bit of maths, but it's not difficult.

When you print one of your photographs, or display it on a screen, each pixel is represented by a tiny dot of colour. Look closely at a photograph in a magazine, and you'll see what I mean. The number of these pixels/dots that are squeezed into an inch (the old imperial system of measurements is still used here) determines the quality of the final image.

High-quality printed photographs use a resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi). Computer monitors have a lower resolution, at 72ppi.

Lets go back to our camera sensor which was 2000 pixels by 3000 pixels - 6 megapixels. In this case each pixel translates to a dot of colour when printed. So, if you're printing at 300 pixels per inch then the biggest photograph you can get is:

2000 ÷ 300 = 6.7 inches, and 3000 ÷ 300 = 10 inches.

In other words, if you go larger than 6.7 by 10 inches the image quality will start to degrade.

Is the maths making your head hurt? Don't despair. Here's a handy chart. And, notice, underneath it the authors describe several ways of 'cheating' to get larger images.

So that's why Canon dropped the megapixel rating of their latest top-of-the-range compact camera. To get a higher quality image. They ain't daft. They know that more megapixels aren't necessarily better.

Let it snow!

2010-01-13T12:12:00.003+01:00

It's been snowing here. Masses of it.

I love the snow, it transforms everything and, for a while, makes a new world of otherwise familiar surroundings.

It also gives lots of opportunities for photography.

Mundane scenes, such as a garden rake lying against a flight of steps, become interesting graphic compositions:

Everyday scenes, such as this Swiss postman on his rounds, take on a new dimension:

Without the snow, this scene would be boring and dull. The postman, on his delivery bike, would hardly stand out against the grey of the road and background. With the snow it becomes a tiny story.

And you can get action shots, almost isolated on white. In any event, in the snow there is lots of opportunity for getting shots with minimal background distraction.

Just remember a few points when taking shots of snow scenes:

Set your exposure compensation to over-expose at between 0.7 - 1.0 stop ... possibly even more. The reason is that your camera is not very clever. It is expecting you to take photographs of scenes containing a whole range of tones from black to white, and so averages out the exposure setting. If you average out the exposure for a scene with a lot of bright tones in it, such as snow or beach, and you'll get the white coming out as a dirty grey.
Make sure your sensor is clean. Snow being bright, will often require small apertures and, at small apertures, every speck of dust on your sensor shows. This is made worse by the fact that snow scenes tend to have a lot of plain colours against which dust shows up.
When you've finished photographing snow and you go back indoors, don't be tempted to transfer all those brilliant images to your computer immediately. Keep your camera securely zipped up in its bag/case for several hours until it has warmed up to room temperature. Condensation will form on a cold camera in a warm house and, whilst condensation on the outside of the camera is pretty harmless, if moisture condenses between the lens elements, actually within the lens, you could have a big problem on your hands.

Let it snow!

Frozen Britain

2010-01-08T13:24:00.002+01:00

One of my personal photographic mantras is 'always look for a different viewpoint'.

Which is why I'm sometimes to be seen lying on the ground with my camera, or climbing up fire escapes.

But, seeing as I can't yet afford the millions that it takes to be a space tourist, this is a viewpoint I'll never achieve ...

Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response

Great Photographs - No. 1 "Boulevard du Temple, Paris, eight in the morning"

2010-01-04T18:42:00.009+01:00

This astonishing image has to rank amongst the 100 greatest photographs of all time ...

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, eight in the morning (1838?)

by Louis-Jacques Daguerre
(Click on the image to see it larger)

It is a daguerrotype, an image recorded on a sheet of copper coated with silver and developed by mercury fumes. Ironically the hour at which it was taken is known, but the year is not. It was either 1838 or 1839.

At first glance this may seem like a rather ordinary ... even boring ... subject. And it's badly scratched too. Aren't I saying its so great, simply because its so old?

No. Look carefully to the bottom left. There you will see two human figures, a customer having his shoes polished by a bootblack. These two unknown characters were the first humans to be photographed. Their simple, everyday transaction has made them immortal.

How come there is no one else in the image? Weren't the streets of Paris busy at that time?

They were. But Daguerre would have had to use an exposure of 10-15 minutes to get this image. So all the other Parisians, bustling back and forth, have not come out.

All the commentaries on this photograph that I have read speculate that these two were probably unaware that they were being recorded. And they say that Daguerre knew neither of them. One photo-historian writes, "He (Daguerre) quite possibly didn't notice them as he focused his camera, but his plate remained true to nature, and one can imagine his delight when the mercury fumes revealed their presence during development."

I wonder.

Daguerre would have known that people moving about would not record on his plate and I have a sneaking suspicion he planted these two. Apart from anything else, who has one shoe polished for 10 to 15 minutes? Then it's a slightly odd place for a bootblack to set up business, right on a corner, close to the kerb, and directly in the path of people walking up and down the road.

Finally, these two are very conveniently placed close to the classic compositional 'thirds' position.

I think that it has been set up ... not that this detracts from the image in any way. Those two make the picture. I'm guessing that Daguerre knew a thing or two about composition as well as developing plates with mercury fumes. He knew that a 'heartbeat' would improve his image. But he couldn't just have a person or two standing motionless on the street corner. Apart from the fact that it would look odd to passers-by, it would also look odd on the image. So, get them to do something, and what more natural than a shoe shine?

In a further bizarre twist of fate, this image has been saved for us by an invention of Daguerre's rival, William Henry Fox Talbot. Fox Talbot invented the calotype which was the precursor of modern film photography. (Film photography replaced the daguerrotype process and made it obsolete.)

Whilst this daguerrotype was display in a museum in Munich, in 1937, an eminent photo-historian, Beaumont Newhall commissioned a very high-quality photograph of it ... using photographic film of course.

Subsequently, Daguerre's picture survived the bombings of Munich in 1940 but, shortly after the war, an over-zealous museum curator attempted to clean it. The mercury amalgamated to the silver was incredibly fragile - likened to the powdery scales on a butterfly's wings - and the hapless curator wiped the whole thing clean.

But Beaumont Newhall's photograph of it survived. And a replica daguerrotype could be made.

An amazing story around a truly great photograph.

Would you Adam and Eve it?

2010-01-02T09:09:00.001+01:00

Inspiration strikes in the strangest places.

There I was last winter, soaking in a steaming hot bath, gazing at my toes and meditating on the State of the World when, out of nowhere, it struck me. Taps ... tub ... and toes peeping out of the water. What a great angle for a photograph!

I won't say I cried "Eureka!" and dashed naked through the house looking for my camera. But the the next day I took another bath (no sarcastic comments please), setting it up carefully, with plenty of foam, a loofah, and a strategically-placed bathy sort of bottle. Then I placed my camera on a stool beside the tub, climbed into the water and lay down.

Gingerly picking up my camera, and holding it very tight, I shot away, with the flash pointed up at the ceiling. Bathrooms are beautiful places for photography. They generally have a lot of white in them, with plenty of reflective surfaces too. The light bounces all over the place and fills in shadows giving a very balanced effect. (They're excellent for portraits too. But that's another story.)

It's an odd feeling, to be lying in a hot bath taking photographs.

Cut to this Christmas.

When I got back from my jaunt to UK through a snowy France and a blocked Channel Tunnel, I found an e-mail waiting from a group called Elf Cottage Music (yes, that's their name ... I kid you not) telling me that they bought one of my photographs to illustrate a seasonal song of theirs called A Stay at Home Quiet Christmas. And the video of it could be seen on YouTube.

What image of mine could they have used? A Christmas tree in the snow? A sprig of holly isolated on white? Skiers swooping down a wintry mountain? It surely had to be something Christmassy.

Watch carefully at 1m30s ...

To say I was gobsmacked is an understatement.

Still ... for once it's nice to know where one of my photos has been used. Thanks Elf Cottage Music.

And always be on the lookout for new angles for your photographs.

Happy New Year.

What do you get a photographer for Christmas?

2009-12-18T14:43:00.001+01:00

No, this isn’t a joke. The last shopping weekend before Christmas is on us and maybe you're panicking. Photography is so technical these days that trying to find Christmas presents for a photographer is no laughing matter.

Here are a few straightforward ideas, suitable for photographers of all levels ...

A polarizing filter

These things don’t come cheap, but a they’re a great accessory. A polarizing filter screws on to the front of a lens and cuts reflections from water, glass and other shiny surfaces. It also makes the sky a deeper blue, can cut haze in landscapes and generally enriches colours.

The points to watch out for when buying one are:

Make sure your photographer can use one. Most compact cameras can’t take them because polarising filters screw in to a shallow thread at the very front of the lens, and compacts don’t have this. On the other hand, almost all interchangeable lenses – the sort used in DSLRs – do.
Make sure you get the right size. Look inside the lens cap and you will probably see a marking giving the diameter of the lens (in millimetres). If not, measure it. Remember, different lenses have different diameters so, even if your photographer already has a polarizing filter, he/she may appreciate another for a different lens.
If your photographer owns a digital camera make sure you get a circular polarizing filter. No, this does no refer to the shape – they are all circular – but the type. (The other type is ‘linear’). The one you want should be marked ‘Circular Polariser’, or bear the abbreviation Cir, PL Cir, or CPL. If in doubt, ask an assistant.

This photo of the famous Jet d'Eau in Geneva, Switzerland, was taken
using a polarizing filter to make the water stand out against the sky.

An extra memory card

Photographers, particularly the serious ones, can never have too much memory. And with Christmas celebrations offering photo opportunities galore, your photographer will appreciate some extra storage.

The only question is, what sort of card? There are a number of types on the market, SD (Secure Digital), SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity), MMC (MultiMedia Card), XD (eXtreme Digital), CF (CompactFlash) and Micro SD. So check before you buy.

A second battery.

A camera is totally dependent on its battery. And, as a photographer, nothing is more frustrating than have it go flat just as a brilliant photo opportunity unfolds in front of the lens. By the time the battery has charged again the opportunity has long gone.

With a spare battery your photographer has no problems. Slot it into place and carry on shooting whilst the first battery is re-charging.

A tripod

Any photographer can use a tripod, just so long as his/her camera has a socket to take it. Look underneath the camera to find out. There should be a threaded hole on the base-plate.

You can get tripods in all sizes, from little tiny ones that fit in your pocket to hulking great things that weigh a ton. Choose appropriately. A compact camera looks a bit daft on a tripod built like the Eiffel Tower.

The great thing about tripods is that they let you take photographs that would otherwise be impossible – long exposures, self portraits, close-ups, slow shutter speed images. A professional photographer I knew used to say the first thing you should do with a new camera is to weld it to a tripod – they’re that useful.

Camera cleaning equipment.

Dust is the photographer’s Number One Enemy. It gets on the lens and degrades the quality of the image ...

This is what too much dust on the surface of a lens does.

... and it gets on to the sensor inside the camera and causes unsightly spots (see here).

For dealing with dust on the lens you can get your photographer a microfibre lens-cleaning cloth, a soft brush or a blower. Just don’t bother with those diddly little blower-and-brush-combined jobbies. They’re not worth it. Buy a big one that looks like a hand-grenade with a point sticking out of the top. They’re the business.

The big blower can also be used for puffing dust off sensors. In addition, for sensor cleaning, you can get special static-charged brush sets (the brush is whirled around to charge it and then lightly brushed across the sensor to pick up the dust). Finally, for really stubborn dust, a swab set is useful. It comes with a number of specially shaped swabs and bottle of cleaning fluid. make sure you get the right size swab for your photographer’s camera (ask the assistant).

A camera bag

As with memory cards, a photographer can never have too many bags. A backpack for treks in the hills, a shoulder bag for town work, an individual camera case – all photographers need bags, not only to carry the camera, but also all the spare memory cards, batteries and filters they just got for Christmas.

Last but not least ...

... one of my books will make a great gift for the photographer in your life.

If you’ve got time The Greatest Photography Tips in the World can be bought from any good bookseller, or online through Amazon.

If it’s a last-minute present then my ‘LowDown Guide to Family Photography’ is an E-book and is available to download instantly from here and will give loads of good advice.

And if you’re a photographer, and this has given you some ideas, you may want to leave hints around the house, or direct your loved ones to this page.

Happy Christmas.

Now's the time for family photos

2009-12-17T13:05:00.006+01:00

Statistics show that more family photographs get taken between December 24th and January 2nd than at any other comparable time of year.

Source?

Me.

Okay, so I made that one up. But it sounds good, doesn't it? And I suspect that it's true. After all, Christmas is a family time, when people travel thousands of kilometres to be together with their family. And being together they naturally want to take photos of the occasion. On top of that, many people get a camera as a Christmas present - and what better way to try it out on than than to take family photographs.

That's what prompted me to write my latest book ...

In it I cover pretty well all you need to know to get great family photographs including:

Photographing family groups in a variety of different ways, from formal groups to candid photography
Portraiture
Self portraits (because who photographs the photographer of the family?)
Children
Pets (because they're part of the family too)
Lighting techniques
Getting sharp, well-exposed shots (with trouble-shooting examples to help you identify what may have gone wrong with a shot)

... and much more.

You can find out more, and take a peek inside the book, here. (Please note: this is an E-book, in the form of a PDF file, which you either read on your computer or print out at whatever size you want and put into a conventional, stationery-type file.)

And, as a special Christmas gift to my faithful followers (all 24 of you) I'd like to offer you a copy free of charge. Just shoot me an e-mail, or leave a comment requesting your freebie.

Happy Christmas, and here's to getting some truly great family photographs that will be heirlooms in 50 years time.

Breaking the rules

2009-12-13T12:54:00.014+01:00

As we approached the jetty a crowd of kids converged and hung about in that nervous, expectant way that kids have when they're about to do something they suspect may be naughty.

It was last summer. I was standing at the stern of a Swiss lake steamer, cruising up the Lac de Neuchâtel. The sky was filled with fluffy white clouds. The scenery was breathtaking. I had my camera out, and was looking for photo opportunities.

But billions of photos have been taken of that Swiss lake with its azure waters, and the clouds, and the sky, and the mountains, and the quaint little chalets and churches.

Even as we came to a halt alongside the jetty and mooring ropes were thrown, cameras were raised to eyes and several hundred more photos of mountains and clouds and chalets and quaint little churches were taken. Was there anything different to photograph?

Maybe.

The kids. What were they up to? I tried to read their minds, and flicked my camera setting to 'burst mode', where it fires off like a machine gun. Normally I don't like this setting as using it often means that you miss the peak of the action. I still believe that human reactions and the human brain are quicker and more intelligent than any camera, so I have a personal rule not to use 'burst mode'. But sometimes you need to break your rules.

I was right. As the steamer pulled away the kids leaped up on on the mooring bollards and, with shrieks of joy, hurled themselves off into the roiling, foaming water that the boat left in its wake.

I fired away - Pow! Pow! Pow!

Then, disappointment. I looked at the images on the small screen (yes, I 'chimp' with the best of them) and they were all out of focus. The shutter had been quick enough but the autofocus hadn't. Damn! I was about to erase them all to save memory space when something stopped me.

When I got back home and was gazing at the sequence on my computer screen, still annoyed that I hadn't thought to switch off the autofocus and pre-focus by hand, it occurred to me that they may ... actually ... just possibly ... work.

It's another personal rule of mine: one part of any photograph, at least, must be in focus. Photos that are all out of focus look like mistakes.

But, as I was breaking rules ... what if I put a sequence of 4 together as one image (what's a triptych when you have 4 images?). It might work.

So I did. What do you think?

Protecting our precious liberties

2009-12-07T14:47:00.016+01:00

Steve Bell in the UK's Guardian newspaper:

Copyright Steve Bell, The Guardian, UK

Be careful. Be very careful.

2009-12-01T21:17:00.004+01:00

I'm sitting here in a cold sweat. Boy, oh boy, have I been lucky.

I bought my Nikon D3 about a year and a half ago and, after an initial 'scoot' through the manual, I haven't really looked at the little booklet since. But this evening I dug it out to find a specific bit of information.

As I flicked through it I suddenly noticed the 'For Your Safety' warnings, written prominently at the beginning. The third one states:

Using the viewfinder diopter control
When operating the viewfinder diopter control with your eye to the viewfinder, care should be taken not to put your finger in your eye accidentally.

Sheeeeesh! I didn't read that when I got the camera. Glad I haven't poked my eye out.

Got targets to meet?

2009-12-01T10:45:00.010+01:00

Plod's still at it.

A few days ago BBC News photographer Jeff Overs was stopped and questioned by the police for taking photographs of a sunset over St Paul's Cathedral in London.

Here's an interview with him on The Andrew Marr Show, the programme for which he takes photographs.

Listen carefully. In the middle of the interview Overs quotes the policeman as telling him, "We've stopped lots of people along the South Bank this afternoon ..."

Aha! Sounds suspiciously like his guy's got targets to meet. He can go back to his station at the end of his shift and report that he's 'cautioned' (or whatever the term he uses) 'n' people that afternoon. Looks great on his record. What a busy bobby he's been.

But does stopping people photographing London's tourist attractions protect the city against terrorist attacks?

Or does it just make the police look daft and overbearing?

Note to any police officers reading this:

Please, please can you try to understand that, should a potential terrorist want to photograph a potential target (already a highly questionable assumption given the free availability of detailed maps, Google Earth, Street View, etc.) they're hardly going to stand in full view of everyone, pointing a bloody great camera at it.

Two footnotes:

Here (thanks to D-L Nelson, The Expat Writer) is a good article on this subject.

During 2008, in London, 170'000 people were Stopped and Searched. (S&S). To put that in perspective, that's 466 people every day. From news reports, posts on internet forums, etc., a number of these were photographers pursuing their hobby or business quite legally. As a result of these 170'000 S&S, 65 people were arrested. That's a success rate of 0.038%. Is it an effective method of controlling crime and terrorists? The Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and the Metropolitan Police were all unable to say whether anyone had successfully been charged or convicted for terror offences as a direct result these Stops and Searches.

(Incidentally, there is no data on how many of those arrested were subsequently convicted of an offence. But it will almost certainly be lower, making the success rate even more abysmal.) Source here.

It takes more than an hotel ...

2009-11-29T12:26:00.001+01:00

... to keep an elephant from its mangoes.

Mfuwe Lodge, in Zambia's magnificent Luangwa Valley National Park, is a popular tourist attraction. It was built next to a grove of wild mangoes that one family of elephants have always visited when the fruit ripens. The regular visits of the elephants during November's mango season thrilled the guests.

But the lodge management didn't realise just how set in their ways the elephant family were. One year, when the management decided to extend their accommodation facilities, they unwittingly built the new lodge right across the herd's path to their beloved trees.

So, when the elephants, led by their matriarch nicknamed 'Wonky Tusk', returned for their annual feast they found a building in their way. What did they do? No problem. They walked straight through it:

And, over the years, the hotel staff, visitors and elephants have grown used to each other. The family group stays some four to six weeks and they gorge on the mangoes up to four times a day.

Andy Hogg, the lodge director, has lived in South Luangwa National Park since 1982. But in all his years there he has never seen such intimate interaction between humans and wild animals. "This is the only place in the world where elephants freely get so close to humans," he says.

According to Andy the elephants are not aggressive if they're just left to stroll through the lobby. "It's their choice to be here," he says. "There are other wild mango trees around, but they prefer ours. The lodge was unwittingly built in their path. It wasn't a design error, we just didn't know. They get reasonably close to the staff, as you can see in the pictures," Andy explains. "But we do not allow the guests to get that close. Guests can stand in the lounge but only as long as there is a barrier between them and the elephants. These are still wild and dangerous animals, so there must be enough time for people to get away."

A rare and magnificent sight, and an authentic one too, too. This is not faked. I visited and worked in the Luangwa Valley over a period of 20 years from 1970 to 1990. On a number of occasions, when sleeping in a thatched hut, I have woken in the middle of the night to the sound of a rustling-ripping coming from above. Peering out of the window revealed a pair of gigantic kneecaps, mere centimetres from my nose. An elephant was calmly eating the thatch.

Technical note:

If you ever meet an elephant, walking through your hotel lobby, it can be a tricky photographic subject. The difference between the bright outside light and the dim interior is huge. If you're not careful your camera will meter from the bright light and the elephant will come out as black mass. Not what you want. So use fill-in flash to give detail in the beast, as the photographer of these images has done. Most wild animals are not too bothered by camera flash. It is brief, soundless and scentless and I guess that they just take it as a flash of sunlight through the trees.

Oh ... and this advice also applies to situations that don't involve elephants. Use fill in flash whenever photographing situations where there is a huge difference between the light and dark parts of the scene, your subject is in the dark part and you want to bring out some detail.

Always check your gear ... and ...

2009-11-20T11:40:00.001+01:00

A well-known international magazine that specialises in amazing images of natural features wanted to show some of the heroic work of the fire fighters as they battled the wildfires in the western US last year.

A photographer was assigned to cover the story and, as well as having him work on the ground, the magazine also wanted him to take a selection of shots from the air to show the extent of the blaze. So a light aircraft was chartered to fly the guy over the area. He was told to report to a nearby airfield where the plane would be ready and waiting for him.

The photographer, running late, arrived at the airfield and saw a plane warming up. He jumped in with his bag and shouted, "Let's go!"

The pilot swung the little plane into the wind, and within minutes they were in the air. The photographer told the pilot, "Fly over the flames and make two or three low passes so I can take some pictures."

"Why?" asked the pilot.

"Because I am a photographer," the guy snapped. "And photographers take photographs."

The pilot was silent for a moment. Finally he stammered, "Y..y...y..you mean you're not the flight instructor?"

Another Ansel Adams

2009-11-14T22:46:00.015+01:00

Ansel Adams, one of the world's great photographers, is famed for his breathtaking photographs of American landscapes - Yosemite in particular. He was a man who loved the wilderness and nature, and that love shines through in his images.

But there was another side to him. What is less well known is that, during the Second World War, he took a stand against what he believed to be the unjust treatment of the Nisei, American citizens of Japanese descent who, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, were suddenly uprooted from their homes, farms, factories and businesses and placed in an internment camp at Manzanar.

Ansel Adams decided to use his skills to draw attention to their plight. He went to live in the camp which was, as he described it in his autobiography:

"... a dry plain on which appeared a flat rectangular layout of shacks, ringed with towering mountains. These shacks were not relieved by the entrance gate and its military guards."

View of Manzanar from a watchtower

He went on to describe how these camps came into being:

"With the military's advice President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. I am sure he had no realization of its tragic implications; thousands of loyal Japanese-American citizens were denied their basic civil rights. Unfortunately this decision had the support of a great number of Caucasian citizens throughout the West, who racially disliked the Japanese-Americans as social and economic competitors."

Adams recorded his experiences in Manzanar in the way he could best do it - through photographs ...

Roy Takeno (Editor) and group reading Manzanar paper

Nurse and patients in front of hospital.

Children in the orphanage

Despite what was happening to them, the Nisei remained patriotic

Mr. and Mrs. Henry J. Tsurutani and baby Bruce

Ansel Adams was profoundly moved by Manzanar. He wrote:

"As my work progressed I began to grasp the problem of relocation and the remarkable adjustment these people had made ... With admirable strength of spirit, the Nisei rose above despondency and made a life for themselves, a unique micro-civilisation under difficult conditions."

And, as he captured that life in his photographs you can see how his skill shines through - the choice of composition, the way in which he has used lines and diagonals, the way in which the human figures feature.

He went on to write:

"It was very disturbing to witness the arrival of the young army-uniformed Nisei when on leave for a visit to their families. It must have been most difficult for them to be confronted by their parents, incarcerated American citizens - a severe contradiction of the principles for which they were fighting the war."

After his stay at the camp, Adams wrote a book about the plight of these people. Entitled Born Free and Equal, it:

"... met with some distressing resistance and was rejected by many as disloyal. I could tolerate the narrow opinions expressed verbally or in the press, but it was painful to receive a few letters from families who had lost men in the conflict; they were bitter and incapable of making objective distinctions between the Nisei and Japanese nationals."

This was the image Ansel Adams used for the title page of his book:

We know, from notes written on the negative sleeve, that the young man's name is Tom Kobayashi. But we don't know any more about him.

Judging by his age and the cut of his shirt he may well have been one of young army-uniformed Nisei, on leave for a visit to his family.

Ansel Adams donated his images from Manzanar to the US Nation.
They are now in the public domain and the full collection can be seen here

UPDATE
I have just discovered that Ansel Adams's book about Manzanar - Born Free and Equal - can be read, in a full digitised version, by following the link on this page.

Are you a real photographer?

2009-11-08T21:13:00.001+01:00

Ask yourself these 10 questions

Do you roll your eyes in exasperation when you see a blizzard of tiny photo-flashes twinkling amongst the crowd at some humongous great sports stadium?
Do you know what ‘bokeh’ is?
Do you genuinely wince in pain when an elderly relative asks you if you’ve taken any good ‘snaps’ lately?
Do you always carry a spare battery? Charged?
Do your friends hand you their cameras when they want a good photo taken?
Do you own a tripod? Not one of those diddy little things that slip in your pocket. A real tripod. That weighs a ton.
And do you carry it about with you? And hang your backpack from it? And know why you’re hanging your backpack from it?
Has your spouse/partner given up groaning in exasperation when you climb out of bed at 4am on a frosty morning?
Did you start asking what shutter speed and aperture was used for a photograph ... and now given up asking?
Do people look at you as if you’re crazy when you point your camera at a chunk of rock or similar, apparently featureless object?

If you can answer yes to all these questions – congratulations.

You’re a real photographer.

Madeleine McCann

2009-11-03T05:04:00.000+01:00

Madeleine McCann, aged 4, disappeared without trace 2½ years ago whilst on holiday with her parents in Portugal.

Here's a message about her from the UK police.

She will be 6 now and their video gives information on what she may look like:

There is further information here.

Please spread the word as widely as you can ... e-mail friends, post this video on your blog, Tweet it, Digg it, Facebook ... use the 'viral' nature of the Internet to get this information to as many people as possible.

Someone, somewhere, may be able to help her.

Flipping heck!

2009-10-31T08:37:00.000+01:00

In her comment to my Bad weather,good photos post, Livia asks if it is " ... possible to get your fisherman on the left side."

Easy. Just flip horizontal in Photoshop (or similar).

But is it ethical?

And is it a better image?

I'm not sure. As, in our culture, we read from left to right I feel the photo is better with the man facing into the image from the left side. What do readers think?

"I will break your f*****g camera!"

2009-10-27T12:11:00.003+01:00

A couple of days ago, during their lunch break, Troy Holden and Stuart Dixon were taking a walk ... on public property ... through the financial district of San Francisco.

They stopped in front of number 555 California Street (formerly known as the Bank of America Center) to take some photographs. It's a pretty impressive building, being 52 storeys high and the second tallest building in the city.

What happened next, together with a photograph, is recounted by one of them, here.

Oh dearie me. What is it with police and security guards? This happens all over. It happened regularly to me, and to people I knew, when I was living in Zambia.

Are they lacking some critical part of their brain?

Or maybe they have an extra bit of brain that ordinary people don't have, making them honestly believe that any terrorist, before carrying out an attack, is going to stand in front of his/her target, in full view of everyone, get out a camera ... often a big one ... and sometimes a tripod too ... and take photographs. Take photographs in full view. Not hiding. Or anything.

Having an altered brain ... that sounds plausible.

I was reading yesterday about a parasite of cats called toxoplasmosis. It spends part of its life cycle in rats. But the problem it faces is that rats naturally fear and avoid cats. So the little parasitic beastie could have trouble in getting passed on. To overcome this it has evolved a strategy whereby it alters its host's brain, and infected rats lose their fear of cats. So they get caught, and the parasite moves on. Clever, huh?

Could a similar thing ... sort of in reverse ... be the case with police and security guards? Could something-or-other have happened to their brain making them dislike and fear photographers?

And that raises another question - does this whatever-it-is that changes their brain make them more prone to becoming police and security guards? In other words, does it happen before, and they gravitate towards those sorts of jobs? Or do they catch it as a result of taking up that particular profession?

Medical research is needed.

Bad Weather, Good Photos

2009-10-24T13:46:00.007+02:00

If, like me, you live in the Northern Hemisphere, then the bad weather’s a‘coming ... frigid winds ... driving rain ... mist ... snow.

Maybe it has already hit you.

And even if you live in the southern part of the world, with the days lengthening, you’re certain to get some bad weather in amongst it all.

So, when the mist rolls in off the moors, is it time to settle down with a good book in front of a blazing fire?

Definitely not.

Be brave. Get out there into the elements. Bad weather is a time when the vast majority of other photographers pack their equipment away and break out the beers. They don't know what they're missing - opportunities for beautiful and dramatic shots. An approaching storm, a bank of fog, a sudden rain squall, an unexpected rainbow, can all transform the most mundane scenery into something beautiful.

I’ve already blogged about photography in the rain, and ways of protecting your camera, here.

What about mist and fog? There’s a lot of it around here at this time of year, and certain scenes lend themselves particularly well to it. What would fishing be without a bit of fog on the river ...

This shot wasn't intended as 'artistic'. It's deliberately framed to be 'saleable' with space for text to the right. And I chose a position which included the two buoys in the background to give some depth. I used a 300mm telephoto, with the camera on a tripod. The telephoto has accentuated the effect by focussing in on the fog and the subject, causing detail and colours to soften.

Here’s another shot of mine, taken in the depths of winter, up in the Jura mountains behind where I live.

One difficulty with mist is that light levels are much lower so a tripod is essential. You also need to be careful with the white balance as fog can look unusually blue. Set it to ‘cloudy’ for a more natural effect. I feel that the bluish tone in the fishing shot enhances it. But had the tree shot been too blue it would have looked un-natural.

Finally, when photographing in mist and fog, check the front element of your lens regularly as water droplets can condense on it, ruining the clarity of your images.

When the weather turns bad don’t cower inside with your camera idle.

Get out there and get those great shots

Your camera could save a child’s life. A true story ...

2009-10-20T17:46:00.017+02:00

One Friday in 2007, Maria and Remo Pezzente were spending a quiet evening sorting through some photos of their children that they’d taken earlier. They were looking for good shots for the family album, and maybe some to send to grandparents.

As they flicked through the images they noticed, with a touch of annoyance, that they hadn’t been careful enough with the camera settings. They'd forgotten to switch to the 'red-eye reduction' mode and their kids were showing the annoying, devilish red glow in their eyes (see ‘What is red-eye?’ to the right).

But then they noticed something odd. Whilst their other children had this effect in both eyes, 4-month old baby Leo was different. His right eye was glowing red, his left came out milky white.

They examined him and, although they couldn’t see anything wrong, it was still slightly worrying.

So they did a quick search on the internet and found that this ‘white eye’ effect was called leukocoria. A further search on the word leukocoria brought up the possibility of a retinoblastoma – cancer of the eye.

Now they were really worried. The next morning they decided that this was too important to wait until Monday. They took baby Leo to hospital where he was examined by a paediatrician.

The paediatrician agreed that the photo was odd but, after examining Leo’s eye, couldn’t find anything amiss either. He suggested that perhaps something was wrong with the red-eye reduction feature on the camera. Nevertheless, he felt that it was worth getting a second opinion from an ophthalmologist.

To their shock, the ophthalmologist diagnosed a large malignant tumour in Leo's left eye. Retinoblastoma.

And by Monday morning, Leo had been checked in to the hospital for surgery.

The treatment was successful – the cancer had been caught in time. But that was not the end of Leo’s story. A short while later he lost his vision completely as a malignant brain tumour was found pressing on his optic nerve.

As a result of this Leo had to endure many cycles of chemotherapy. He even had a bone marrow transplant in the week after his first birthday.

But, through their vigilance, Maria and Remo had caught the problem early. The treatments that Leo had to undergo were successful. The tumour shrank away from his optic nerve, Leo regained his vision and is now a happy, energetic boy who is fast approaching his third birthday. (In the centre of this photo.)

And all this because Maria and Remo spotted something unusual in a family photograph.

So, be aware. If you are taking photographs of a child and one or both eyes come out abnormally white, it is worth a medical check-up. White-eye doesn’t necessarily mean a problem. But it could ... and it could be life-threatening.

Check it out. Your camera can save a child’s life.

Do NOT try this at home ...

2009-10-17T19:10:00.002+02:00

Nothing to do with photography ... other than the fact that a camera was used to make it ... but it's had me laughing all week.

And please don't try it for yourself. I want to keep my readers.

Eyes wide open

2009-10-12T13:21:00.004+02:00

I’ve had my eyes opened, and I’ve seen what lens designers are up against.

A few days ago I went to the ophthalmologist. She needed to peer deep inside my eyes so she put some magic drops in them. My pupils dilated ... wide ... wide ... and wider.

Because my eyes could no longer select a smaller aperture, the light became painfully bright. The pain was not helped by the fact that the good doctor had thoughtfully decorated her surgery all in white. Furnishings too – white leather – so stylish.

But as I tried to fight off the white, there was something else that puzzled me. Everything had a wide fuzzy halo around it, something like this:

Before the magic drops ...

... and after ...

Then, when, finally, I set off home, car headlights, shop displays, and other points of light had become indistinct starbursts. (I was on my bike, and finding my way was an interesting exercise.)

I knew that, with pupils wide open and I wouldn’t be able to control the amount of light entering my eyes. Hence the painful brightness. But why the halo and starburst effects?

Then it dawned on me. My eyes were working at full aperture and their lenses were showing up all their optical shortcomings. They obviously hadn’t been created by a particularly intelligent designer. There were quite a few faults – reduced resolution and chromatic aberration for starters.

The Japanese are better at it with their lens design computers.

A couple of hours later the effects of the drops had worn off and my pupils could open and close as normal. My vision returned to its usual hawk-like acuity ... well, clear and halo-less, anyway ... and I could move about without feeling I was in some sort of weird, over-lit fog.

The moral of this story?

The performance of lenses gets worse at full aperture. Lens designers go to huge lengths to overcome these faults and, with a good camera lens they are hardly noticeable (it’s a different matter with cheaper lenses).

But, even so, whatever lens you use, try to avoid shooting with it full open. The only reasons to shoot at maximum apertures are if you deliberately want a shallow depth of field, or if the light is so dim it’s the only option.

Outside those situations, shoot at around f8. Almost all lenses – including those in your eyes – give their best performance at middle-range apertures.

The RAW Truth - Part 3

2009-10-08T23:03:00.009+02:00

So, I’ve been singing the praises of RAW files. But ... come on ... there must be a downside.

Well ... yes ... I have to admit there is.

For starters, RAW files are larger than JPEG ones, sometimes much larger. As a result you’ll get fewer photos on your memory card. For example, I use a 4GB card. If I set the camera to take JPEG files at the highest quality I can get 375 images on it. If I take RAW photos I can only store 155. That’s fewer than half. A big difference.

But, set that off against the fact that spare memory cards are pretty cheap nowadays and it doesn’t look so bad. And you can buy little portable hard disks that will store photos. I have one, it’s smaller than a paperback book, runs off batteries and can store 40GB. So, when I’m travelling and likely to run out of memory in the camera I simply transfer my photos to the portable drive and wipe the memory card clean.

You could do the same using a laptop computer. In fact, I do both – transfer the photos from my card to my portable hard disk and on to a laptop. I do it every evening. I know it sounds like ‘belt and braces’ stuff, but it greatly reduces the chance of precious photos being lost or corrupted. I always have a backup.

It also stops my memory card in the camera getting too full, with the attendant danger of everything being corrupted (see todays’s PhotoTip).

The second disadvantage of RAW is that you have to work on the files to ‘develop’ the image. And you need some sort of specialised software to do this – Photoshop, Lightroom, a RAW converter supplied by your camera manufacturer, or something similar.

A RAW file is like a digital negative but, instead of working in a darkroom, with the stink of various nasty chemical solutions, you develop your digital image sitting in front of a computer.

And some of the work is quite easy (compared to darkroom work). For example, sometimes I forget to change my camera settings from a previous session and get some horrible results.

On one occasion I’d been taking photographs inside and had the White Balance set to incandescent light. When I stepped outside I forgot to change it ...

I took a whole lot like this before I realised what I'd done. No problem. When I was working on them back at the computer I simply clicked on the ‘White Balance’ tab on my RAW converter, switched it to ‘Daylight’, and hey presto ...

Ansel Adams once said, “The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.” If he’s been photographing today he would have said ‘RAW file’ instead of ‘negative’.

So ... to continue with his analogy ... what do you want to do? Turn the musical score into a performance by twiddling the handle of a barrel organ? Or would you rather learn to play it on the piano?

The RAW Truth - Part 2

2009-10-03T10:19:00.006+02:00

Interesting ...

I’ve just discovered a Flickr Group called “I Only Shoot In JPEG!!! 99% of the time Raw is Useless”

They have this as their 'credo':

“Raw is for amateurs! If you can't shoot the photo right the first time out of the camera, then your in the wrong game! ... AMEN!!! This group is for photographers that understand this. and only shoot In JPEG.” (sic)

Ah well ... each to their own I suppose. But would you buy a yacht and never raise the sails? Would you buy a sports car and never change into fifth gear? Would you buy a set of the finest sable paintbrushes for painting by numbers?

So why buy a camera that can shoot RAW images and not use the facility?

RAW files contain the data that has come straight from the sensor, without any processing at all – hence the name RAW. Something has to process, or 'develop' this RAW file into an image.

You can have your camera do this immediately. It will probably use the manufacturer's settings for things such as sharpening and noise reduction. These will have been incorporated into the camera software. Sometimes you can control them a bit, but not much. Then you will get a JPEG file. If you want to make any further changes back at home in front of your computer, such as exposure compensation, you'll have to do it to this already-altered file. A pretty destructive process.

Alternatively you can process the RAW file on your computer, using a conversion program. There you will have complete control over aspects such as sharpening, colour temperature, noise reduction, exposure compensation and so on. What's more, no matter what you do to the file - even if you save it in between - you can always go back to the original.

In the past the RAW-haters had a point. The files were not terribly user-friendly. For example, image viewing programs couldn’t handle them. As a result, most cameras had a setting so that a photo was saved as two different files, one RAW and the other JPEG. The JPEG files enabled you to sort and select the images with your image-viewing program, but the RAW file was the one you ‘developed’ to get the final image.

And ‘development’ is a good analogy. RAW files are digital ‘negatives’. You develop your final image from them ... but not in a darkroom. You do your development in front of a computer.

Back in the days of film I don’t recall anyone shouting, “Negatives are for amateurs! If you can't shoot the photo right the first time out of the camera, then you’re in the wrong game! This group is for photographers who understand this and only shoot Polaroids.”

The RAW truth - Part 1

2009-09-23T21:47:00.015+02:00

Will your camera save files in RAW format?

Is RAW worth using?

Not if you listen to some people. Consider the photo expert whom Ralf quoted in his comment to my last post. "Use JPG format,” that so-called ‘expert’ wrote, “because RAW needs more memory and is rarely useful”.

Of course RAW needs more memory. That’s because the files contain more information.

JPG is a ‘lossy’ compression format – which means it discards information in order to make the files smaller. And, once information is discarded, you can’t get it back.

This doesn’t always affect the look of your photos, I agree. And if you’re just photographing for your album or to e-mail photos to family and friends you probably won’t notice any difference.

But sometimes that extra information makes all the difference.

Let me give you an extreme example.

Last Saturday I was photographing the launch of a literary review – Offshoots 10 – at the Geneva Press Club. And my flash batteries died …

Looks a hopeless case, doesn’t it? And it would have been, if I’d been following the advice of the ‘expert’. But I had my camera set to record both RAW and JPG versions of an image (I’ll explain why I do this in another post.)

This is the best I could do trying to recover something from the JPG version of the image …

Whilst this is the best I could do at recovery from the RAW file …

A side-by-side comparison of both images shows significant differences (click on it to see an enlarged version) ...

Neither image is brilliant. I’d be the first to admit that. But anyone would agree that the RAW file has given a better result, with more subtle gradations of colour and tone.

The limited information in the JPG version has caused the pixels to go ‘blocky’ (Look at the cover of the book she's holding, near the top, or her fingers). The pixels have had to go to either one state or the other with nothing in between.

All right. So I had spare flash batteries, the event went on for some time, and I was able to get lots of other photos. (You can see them here.) No big deal that I screwed up on one.

But what if this had been a one-off incident, so brief there’d been no time to take any more photos? Then I would have thanked my lucky stars that I was using RAW.

Is RAW for you?

That's impossible to say. Only you can decide that. But in my next post I'll discuss what it is, and its advantages and disadvantages.

Don't write off RAW because you think it's too complicated or the files are too big.

Wow! Am I chuffed.

2009-09-22T21:48:00.008+02:00

I've just come across a wonderful review of The Greatest Photography Tips in the World - from Jacqui Marie Photography, a professional in the UK.

Jacqui-Marie says such nice things that I'm going to reproduce her review in its entirety ...

"This little book punches so much above its weight. It is a little A5-sized hardback and is less than 200 pages, but Alistair Scott is so economic with his words every page is packed with vital tips.

When I first saw the book I thought it was just another how-to-do-everything book for the person who has just gone out and bought themselves an expensive camera, but this is so much more.

At first I thought the title might have over-sold it, but these tips really are top-notch. The page that sold it for me was the one that told you to include a "heartbeat" in every shot when possible. By that Alistair means a human or an animal - whatever the size. To illustrate the point he has two identical shots of a great landscape, one with a tiny silhouetted man and one without. The one with was so much more powerful.

Understand why more mega-pixels isn't the whole story. Get great tips on composition, landscapes, portraits, sports, looking after your kit and making money from your photography.

Enjoy! This is a great little book for all levels. There's top stuff in here."

And these are words from a professional photographer too. I'm chuffed to bits.

Temptation

2009-09-12T22:34:00.004+02:00

It’s been a great summer for the fruit growers. The apple trees round here are groaning with fruit. Time to get a few photographs them before they’re picked.

But … hang on … photographs of apples ain’t all that interesting.

No they’re not.

So if you’re going to photograph the mundane, try to get a different angle on it.

I photograph apples on trees because there’s a market for such images. Not a huge one, admittedly, but magazines, brochures, books and guides sometimes want them. And the buyers are always on the lookout for fresh angles.

So I’ve been trying to oblige. I found a photogenically curved and laden branch, fitted a wide angle lens and got down for a low viewpoint. I also angled my camera slightly to get the branch swooping into the image, and include a little bit of the rest of the orchard in the background to give context …

Another approach is to make a story out of the image. Here it’s my hand in the picture. I had the camera on a tripod, reached up to pick the apple and fired the shutter with a remote release. And, no, the sky hasn’t been ‘Photoshopped’. I used a polarizing filter to make a deeper blue ...

Further technical note – Both photographs were made in bright sunlight. But that’s a very harsh light source. So I used on-camera flash in both images to fill in the shadows.

Photographic morality.

2009-09-07T21:52:00.007+02:00

Sometimes it's a tough call being a photographer.

Frank Hurley was the official photographer on Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole. When Shackleton's ship sank, crushed by the Antarctic icepack, the crew set off towards the open sea, hauling lifeboats over the ice. It was their only way out, but immensely difficult and dangerous.

As they laboured towards safety, some of them cursed Hurley as he took photographs. Why wasn't he lending his weight with the hauling?

Why? Because he was doing his job. He had been hired as the expedition photographer and, if he'd turned to hauling with the rest we would never have known what trials these men went through. We would never have had images like these. We may not have fully appreciated how remarkable Shackleton's achievement was - getting everyone home alive.

Now fast-forward to 14 August 2009 and an even more thorny problem. In Afghanistan an Associated Press photographer, Julie Jacobsen, is crouched behind a mud wall and under fire. She takes a photograph of a US Marine, dying in agony.

That's her job.

But ... then ... when she's done her job, and filed the photo, should it be published?

Apparently the young Marine's family did not want this, though they were not specifically asked.

The US Government did not want the image published either, but their reasons for this may well have been different from those of the family.

Of course, the family's wishes carry huge weight. But war is a violent, bloody, terrifying, messy, brutal affair. It has been all too easy for it to be sanitised from a distance (Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori).

The publication of this photograph presents a harsh and uncompromising truth about war. It will make some people realise exactly what it means - there's no glory. It is not sweet and fitting to die for one's country, and never has been.

Should that - bringing home the truth - override the wishes of the family?

And is this Marine's tragic death given more meaning by the fact that, through the photograph, it will touch tens of thousands of people rather than just his comrades, family and friends?

Should the photograph have been published?

It's a tough call.

Sign of the times

2009-09-06T19:41:00.005+02:00

Today I spotted this scene in a Lausanne industrial area ...

Okay - just an old factory being knocked down.

But I still found it a bit sad.

Rolls and rolls and rolls of my film have been processed in that building, back in the days when Kodachrome was the name of the game.

Darkrooms ain't dead

2009-09-03T22:09:00.006+02:00

Time was when photographers spent a significant amount of their time in darkrooms, working in the gloom, bent over trays of foul-smelling chemicals, developing and printing their photographs.

Now, with digital cameras, those days are gone ... or are they?

Look at the image above.

The pink and the orange stripes on both sides are the same two colours. Yes?

Of course.

But what about the other stripes? Left and right, are they the same colour?

Scroll down for the answer ...

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Yes. They're the same colour.

If you don't believe me, here's the same image with the pinks and oranges removed:

So, what's that astonishing illusion got to do with darkrooms?

It shows how your eye can be completely fooled. If you're at home of an evening, editing your day's photographs with the room light on, and you make some colour tweaks - a bit of enhancement, boosting the saturation a little, whatever - you're in danger of getting things wrong.

It doesn't matter if it's broad daylight outside, when you edit your photographs, do it in subdued light, or even darkness. To the puzzlement of family and neighbours, I work on my images with the blinds drawn.

It's ironic, isn't it? Photographers work with light. But a good half of the time they need to work in the dark - even in these digital days.

This is a bit steep

2009-08-26T22:10:00.007+02:00

Swiss railways are legendary. Not only do the trains run to the minute ... the second, even ... but the Swiss have built their punctual lines in the most impossible places.

I've just got back from a train ride up to the very top of Mount Pilatus, a 2'132 metre high peak in central Switzerland. I wouldn't have believed it was possible to build a railway line all the way up there - but it's been done. In places the track seems to be ascending at an angle that is closer to vertical than horizontal.

And this is no modern technological marvel. The original railway was built in 1889 and was operated by steam engines. That must have been a hair-raising ride. Now it's all electrified, but still exciting.

Little boy stuff ... When the barriers opened I raced to get a seat at the front, just behind the driver and was able to look over his shoulder:

As a photographer, you sometimes have to do that 'little boy stuff' if you want to get the best images.

I used a 17mm wide-angle lens to get in both driver and scenery, and he very obligingly kept his hand on the wheel. (Actually, I think he needed to do that to stop the train careering out of control back down the track.)

Although it was grey and misty outside, and the light looks dim, there was still a huge difference between that and the light inside the carriage. So I used flash to illuminate the inside of the cab, pointing it upwards to bounce off the carriage roof. Without it the difference in light levels would have been so great that the driver would have come out as a silhouette and the controls would have been lost in the darkness.

And, by bouncing it, I avoided unsightly shadows, or a burned out flare of reflection from the windscreen.

The driver, fortunately, seemed unperturbed by all the flash action going on behind him. I dread to think what might have happened if he'd been startled and taken his hand of that wheel.

I've got to speak out

2009-08-16T13:29:00.010+02:00

This is not photography (again), I know, but I've got to speak out ...

I'm a Brit and I'm not particularly proud of my country at the moment. We've not had a lot to be proud about over these past few years - becoming embroiled in wars that we should have stayed out of, electing a self-serving, duplicitous Prime Minister who took us into these wars despite massive public resistance, and a swathe of British politicians have had their greedy little noses in the trough. Britain also has a transport system that is a shambles.

But one thing I am proud of is the British National Health Service. Of course, it's not without its problems. What health service is perfect? But it provides high-quality health care to anyone who needs it, regardless of their age or ability to pay.

My 89-year old disabled father lives alone in an isolated cottage in the Welsh countryside ...

He gets house visits from his doctor if needed, and his medicines are delivered to his door within hours of him phoning for them, at no cost to himself.

So I am shocked and disgusted to hear of the blatant lies and distortions that are being fed to the American people about the NHS.

Some of these distortions are outrageous - gutter journalism at its worst - and offensive to us Brits ...

I find it vile to suggest, on a major US news channel, that the UK's National Health Service is a 'breeding ground' for terrorism.

Who will believe nonsense like this? Could it be the people who would benefit most from some form of fair and equitable health service?

Redscale

2009-07-18T11:32:00.015+02:00

I thought I knew pretty well every technique there is in photography ... bleach bypass, solarization, lomography, cross processing, HDR ...

I was wrong.

I've just stumbled across 'redscale' photography (also known as 'redbird', apparently).

This is a technique used in film cameras, where the film is exposed the wrong way around. In other words, it is used inside out.

For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with it, photographic film consists of a light-sensitive emulsion bonded to an acetate base. Normally the film is wound through the camera with the emulsion on the side of the film facing the lens, so that the light falls directly on to it.

In redscale photography the film is reversed - a bit of a complicated procedure - so that the emulsion is on the side away from the lens and the light only reaches it after passing through the acetate base.

Because of the way in which the different colour-sensitive layers of the emulsion are arranged, this causes a very strong red-shift.

The result is ...

Why on earth would anyone want to do this?

It's all part of the lo-fi photography movement, which is a reaction to the apparent ease of taking technically perfect images nowadays. With modern cameras you can get an exact representation of a scene - pin-sharp, colour perfect, undistorted - with the push of a button.

Reversing the film, using old Russian cameras such as the LOMO (a camera that smelt strongly of machine oil), altering or omitting steps in the film processing, or replacing your expensive lens with a piece of pierced cooking foil, all give unexpected, unusual and sometimes highly graphic results.

It's one of the reasons why I dabble in pinhole photography.

Of course, you could do all this stuff digitally if you wanted.

But that's not really the point, is it?

A word in your ear

2009-07-04T19:16:00.007+02:00

Usually I don't like photographs where the majority of the image is out of focus - they just look like mistakes.

But every now and again one works.

I was experimenting, trying to set up an image which said something like couch potato when I caught this one:

It doesn't say 'couch potato' to me, but it says something else. I'm intrigued by the way the kid on the television seems to be speaking into my ear, as if asking me not to turn him off.

If there's one thing I regret about the image, it's that the background on the TV is dark. It would have worked much better had it been a lighter shade. As it is, there is not enough contrast between the zapper and its background.

However, the upside is that it seems to the sort of image you have to look at for a moment to work out what's going on. It doesn't immediately reveal its meaning to the viewer like a chocolate-boxy landscape, bundle of cute kittens or a bouquet of flowers does (do they have 'meaning'?).

Incidentally, I use myself as a model a lot. It's much cheaper and less hassles with model releases. I just need to be creative with remote releases or the delayed-action timer.

Extreme Sheepherding

2009-06-28T15:21:00.006+02:00

Okay ... so this has nothing whatsoever to do with photography, other than the fact that a video camera was used to make it.

But as a Border Collie fan - and owner of this blog - I'm gonna pull rank.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Baa-Studs present

Extreme Sheepherding ...

They couldn't have done it without the dogs.

Border Collies forever!

Fruit Shoot? Shoot!

2009-06-27T19:08:00.005+02:00

The California Rare Fruit Growers Association (CRFG) is running a photographic competition for images of rare fruit. They call it their Fruit Shoot 2009. First prize is $100, and the total prize money is $375.

But if you're thinking of entering, consider the rules very carefully. One section states:

All entries to this contest become CRFG property, and the contestant relinquishes all rights except the right of attribution.

In other words, whether you win or not, by merely entering you are giving away the copyright to your image(s).

Bear in mind that the vast majority of people enter their very best images for a competition.

That means, for a mere $375, the CRFG will be getting a selected photo library of rare fruit.

I guess that's a bargain from their point of view.

It's less of a bargain from the photographer's perspective. You may be able to sell a good shot of some rare fruit to an advertising agency (for example) for rather more than $100.

At risk of being boring I say again ... read the rules of any photographic competition carefully. There are far too many like this.

Spectacular sunset season

2009-06-26T18:24:00.003+02:00

Watch out for spectacular sunsets over the next few days, and some wonderful photo opportunities.

Why now?

Because on June 12th the Sarychev Peak Volcano, in Russia, erupted and belched an enormous plume of sulphur dioxide and dust into the stratosphere.

(Copyright NASA)

This plume is now drifting around the world at northern latitudes.

It has already crossed North America and, at the moment, it is drifting across the North Atlantic. It will probably reach Europe over the next 48 hours.

When it does, if experience from other volcanic eruptions is anything to go by, the skies could show some astonishing colours at sunset.

Purple and violet are some of the colours you might see. They're caused by fine volcanic aerosols that scatter blue light. Other signs to look for include a bright yellow "twilight arch" and long sun-rays and shadows - all great opportunities for photographers.

So keep your eye on the sky!

(More details, and photographs, here.)

First Impression? Good!

2009-06-23T18:36:00.009+02:00

Do you suffer from those computer programs that have every bell and whistle you could possibly imagine ... and then some?

How many of the bells and whistles do you use?

Here's a really neat program - a free image viewer that's so stripped down you've probably never seen anything like it. It's called First Impression.

No bells.

No whistles.

Not even a user interface, menu bar or toolbar.

In fact, no anything on display. Just the image. Here's a screenshot from my computer. I'm looking at a photograph of sunflowers that I took last year ...

... with Windows Explorer in the background (that's what all the junk surrounding it is). The image - nothing else - just sits in front of whatever other program you're using.

So, if there are no menus or toolbars, how do you do anything useful with it?

Everything is behind the scenes. You can move from image to image using the spacebar and backspace keys. And if you want to do something more exotic, like rotate, resize, or resample the image, all you do is right-click and a make your choice from the menu that pops up.

Without the bells and whistles it's very quick, and the program file is tiny - just 234KB. So it’s ideal if you're using a netbook that may be a bit short on memory. What's more, you don't need to install it, nor does it make any registry changes or add DLL files to your computer. It runs directly from an executable file, so you can carry it around on a USB stick if you wish.

Less is more!

You can download First Impression from here. I recommend it.

To Burst or not to Burst ?

2009-06-21T13:10:00.009+02:00

Is 'burst mode' - when you set your camera to continuous shooting - the best way of catching high-speed action?

I'm not so sure.

Last weekend a big motor-racing championship race came to the tiny town where I live.

No, it wasn't Formula 1 (even though Michael Schumacher and Alain Prost live just down the road from here).

It was the 2009 European radio-controlled Buggy Racing Championships and, naturally, I went along to get some action shots.

The 'cars' were only about 40cm long. Their 'drivers' were in a stand beside the track. But, nevertheless, the racing was fast and furious. The buggies streaked down straights, skidded around corners, rattled over 'washboards' and leaped great jumps.

Now, the difficulty with any motor-racing photography, whatever the size of the vehicles, is getting a sense of action. Use too high a shutter speed and the cars will come out looking as if they're parked. Use too low a shutter speed and everything will be a blur. You want the shutter speed to be just fast enough to give some motion blur, but not too much.

Location is important too. A shot on the straight is generally pretty boring. To get an idea of the action you want to capture tyres skidding, smoke swirling ... something to give a sense of speed and drama.

I positioned myself where the buggies roared off a ramp an into a sand-pit. I wanted to catch the moment of landing at high speed, the sand flying.

I switched to 'burst mode', which gives me 9 shots per second with my camera (a Nikon D3), panned around to follow a selected buggy as it came into view, and operated the shutter button at the crucial instant.

This is the sort of thing I got, time and time again ...

Well, maybe my reactions aren't quick enough.

But also, I was panning with the car, then pressing and holding down the shutter button when I thought the action was about to begin.

Immediately my vision through the viewfinder flickered on and off as the shutter operated so it was more difficult to follow the buggy.

On top of that, do the maths. Let's be generous (and make the maths easier) by saying that my camera could take 10 pictures a second. That's one picture every 10th of a second. If the crucial moment of action lasts 1/100th of a second (which is not an unreasonable assumption) I only have a 1 in 10 chance of catching it.

Of course, I didn't calculate all that at the time. But looking at the images I was getting I could see I was doing something wrong.

So I changed tactics.

I switched off 'burst mode' watched where the cars tended to land and focussed on that spot. Then I still panned round smoothly with a selected buggy that was approaching, but only operated the shutter once, as close to the instant of landing as possible.

This is what I got ...

Now, I'm not saying that every shot thereafter was like that. I got a lorryload of duds. But I began to catch many more dramatic ones.

The human eye and human reflexes are still a match for modern technology.

The plot thickens.

2009-06-15T19:06:00.005+02:00

I've been thinking about the 'Be Careful Out There' story I posted yesterday. It raises a number of issues.

First - who's been ripped off? As I see it, there are two parties here, the photographer, Gina Kelly, and the Smith family.

The photographer owns the copyright to the image, and appears (but see below) to have had it infringed. As a photographer you own the copyright to whatever photo you take, no matter who or what it is of.

The Smith family have no legal rights to the image (unless the photographer has ceded these) but they do have rights over their likeness being used for commercial purposes. This is why photographers ask for a signed model release if, for example, they intend to sell an image of someone through a stock agency. The release grants the photographer, and anyone assigned by the photographer, the right to use the model's image commercially.

But there is another puzzling aspect to this story.

The image on the store-front is huge, well over life-size:

To get a half-way decent image this size you've got to start off with something which is already pretty big. Most major agencies that can provide the material for adverts like this deal with images that are 45-50MB. What's more, the the background has been expertly removed from the original photograph to create the advertising version.

So where did the photo for the advertisement come from?

The majority of blogging and social networking sites don't allow large images to be posted. The maximum size here on Blogger is 8MB. On Facebook it's smaller. Even putting a large original photograph on your personal web site is pretty impractical. It can be done, but it will take a while to upload and then will slow down the page enormously.

Did the photographer submit the image to a stock agency without the family's permission? Danielle Smith assures us that she did not.

Did someone, somehow, manage to steal the original from the photographer, remove the background and submit it as a stock image? Seems highly unlikely (though not entirely impossible).

Did it genuinely come off the web? If so, how did they do it?

Or is there another possibility?

One thing we can be sure of - the shopkeeper didn't commission that poster in his window. The shop is part of the Grazie Company which is a big Italian food conglomerate. I'd lay good money that this same image appears on shops all over the Czech Republic. Maybe even further afield.

So, whilst you have to admire the Smith family for not reaching immediately for the bludgeon of litigation, there are a few unanswered questions here.

It would be interesting to hear from both the photographer and the Grazie Company in order too get to the bottom of this mystery - where did the photograph really come from?

Image theft is becoming more and more common these days. It wouldn't be a bad idea if a few salutary examples were made.

Be careful out there.

2009-06-14T21:09:00.007+02:00

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - if you're posting your photographs on the web do not use high-resolution images.

The Wild ~~West~~ ... sorry, Web ... is full of cowboys and outlaws. Post a high resolution image and you have no idea where it may end up. You may even be in for a surprise, like the Smith family of Missouri.

For Christmas they had a photo taken by Gina Kelly, a professional photographer friend. The Smiths were so pleased with the result ...

... that that Danielle Smith posted it on her blog, and on Facebook, amongst other places.

A little while later a college friend e-mailed them from the Czech Republic. He'd seen their photo smiling out from an advertisement for the home-delivery service of Grazie, a grocery store in Prague ...

After she had recovered from her surprise, Danielle wrote:

I take FULL responsibillity for posting this picture with the incorrect resolution (read: too high) ... Now I know. And, for the record, I will not stop using pictures of my family on my site - I will however, change the format.

Right on!

Remember, if you post a high resolution image on the web you're asking for trouble. Make sure any images you put out there are small (absolute maximum 1000 pixels the longest side) and are in the form of a JPG file saved at medium to low resolution. At that level the photo will still look good on a monitor but will be quite useless for printing at any reasonable size.

And the guy who was mis-using the photograph? Mario Bertuccio, owner of the Grazie store in Prague, said he found the image on the internet and used it in good faith. He has promised to remove it and says he will e-mail an apology to the Smiths.

The true culprit in this tale of copyright theft will probably remain unknown. It could well be one of the many web outlaws who steal suitable photographs and sell them through stock agencies. There are a lot of them about and they're getting bolder.

If you're worried about the theft of any of your images, you can run a check on them by using Tin Eye. Through their excellent search engine (the Google of images) I have found a few of mine that were being misused and, for the most part, have got them removed with an apology.

Be careful out there.

Move and bounce

2009-06-12T07:56:00.009+02:00

When photographing, don't be content to stay in one place. Move around - find a new spot with a different perspective ... lower down ... higher up ... an angle from which the light is better.

Never be satisfied with the first spot you have chosen. It may turn out to be the best place to shoot from ... but it probably won't.

My first photographs of Pettina Gappah addressing the Geneva Writers' Group gave an impression of the location and what was going on but, as I discussed in my last blog, shooting from a distance through a doorway gave problems with the light. I was using my new 50mm f1.4 prime lens with no zoom, so I needed to get physically closer.

I shifted position around to the other side. You can move around discreetly, even when someone is addressing an audience. I did it by creeping through a corridor at the back and popping out on the other side of the room.

But the problem with the light was worse in my new position. Look at those huge windows behind ... and Pettina with her back to them.

I pushed things in Photoshop here. And you can see it. Over-exposed panels and side of the man's face behind her, and noise on the dark area of her dress.

I knew, as I was taking the photograph, that it was going to give problems with that light, so I got out my flash. I don't like using flash so close to a speaker, with it going off 'POW!' in their face. But, from where I was, I could bounce it off the ceiling ...

Beautiful! Pettina being thanked by Susan Tiberghien at the end of her presentation. The bounce flash worked well, casting just enough light on their faces to eliminate the shadows, whilst the background is not over-exposed.

I feel this photo shows a wonderful expression of friendship and support. But that's what the Geneva Writers' Group is all about.

I'm glad I caught it.

Swings and roundabouts

2009-06-07T16:56:00.011+02:00

Sometimes it's a tough call for a photographer - use the natural light (also called 'available light') or get out the flash?

Natural light is best of course. After all, it's natural. But sometimes it's not particularly bright. Or it's coming from the wrong direction.

You may be able to compensate for the lack of brightness by opening up the aperture or using a slower shutter speed. But these options have their limits. Use too slow a shutter speed, for example, and you'll get a blurry picture, either because you can't hold the camera steady enough or because your subject is moving.

You can also increase the ISO rating - in other words, increase the sensitivity of the chip. But then you'll start getting 'noise' speckling your image.

I faced that problem yesterday. Friend and writer Pettina Gappah (author of the best-selling 'An Elegy for Easterly') gave a reading to the Geneva Writers Group.

When Pettina had finished reading and was fielding questions I got out my camera to record the event. It was a difficult situation. The meeting was being held in a room with large glass windows behind the speaker and the mid-day light was streaming in through them.

I gave it a go using the natural light ...

Then I tried using flash ...

Which works best?

The flash version certainly gives more even lighting (look at the figures in the background) but it has also brought out the 'junk' in the picture - the assorted audio equipment behind Pettina's head, for example. And it's thrown a shadow of her face on the wall behind her.

But ... why didn't I use 'bounce flash', i.e aiming the flash to reflect off the ceiling?

That would have solved the problem, but I couldn't. I was standing in a neighbouring room, behind some other members of the audience, and shooting through a doorway. If you're sitting near a door look at the way it is built into the wall and (unless the door goes all the way up to the ceiling) you'll see why bouncing the flash would not have worked.

The natural light option gives a better picture (in my opinion), It's the way the background is more muted, bringing out the subject, Pettina.

But it's a 'noisy' image. Here's an enlarged section of the door and wall from the background ...

So, there you go. It's 'swings and roundabouts (from a British saying - "What you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts". In other words, it has as many advantages as disadvantages).

What would you have done? Which option do you think is best?

Sometimes it works.

2009-05-26T22:08:00.005+02:00

Yes. If enough people protest they can have an effect.

At the end of last month I wrote about a 'rights-grabbing' photographic competition being run by a UK charity, The National Trust. See here.

There was a storm of protest from photographers big and small, amateur and professional. One renowned UK photographer, Simon Norfolk, even pulled out of a major project with the National Trust in disgust. (See here.)

And what happened?

The National Trust changed the terms.

Before, they read:

"If you submit any material to us, you agree to grant The National Trust a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use your contribution in all media. This includes the right to copy, edit, publish, grant sub-licences and exercise all other copyright and publicity rights over the material."

This means that, just by entering the competition you give all rights to your photograph to The National Trust to use as it wishes, and even sell on without any further reference to you.

Now the terms have been amended to read:

"Entrants will retain copyright and moral rights in their submitted images however, by entering, all entrants grant the National Trust in Northern Ireland, non-exclusive rights to use the images to promote the competition the images were submitted to, to use in regional publications and advertising campaigns, or for similar future use within a five year period of the winners being announced for the competition that the images concerned were submitted to.

The National Trust in Northern Ireland will contact image owners before using any images, to seek permission where it is deemed necessary for any other use. We will not use any images without the owners consent."

Not perfect as they still take certain rights to all entries. But a whole lot better.

So, enough people making enough noise can make a difference.

If you see a photo competition that takes 'all rights' to 'all entries', don't enter. Submit the image I gave in my previous post, instead. Let Copyright Action know, too. And spread the word elsewhere. Tell me, too, and I'll post on here.

It's time big companies stopped taking photographers for a ride.

An Evening of Good Things

2009-05-17T11:52:00.008+02:00

Last night, deep in the ancient cellars ... or were they dungeons? ... under the castle in the Swiss town of Nyon, we members of the Leman Poetry Workshop held an evening of readings and music.

It was in celebration of our new website, the publication of our latest anthology Up To Now and a homage to Brian Hughes, an acclaimed poet, founder of the Workshop, and our much-missed mentor.

As well as reading some of my poetry, I took photographs.

Reading your work in front of an expectant audience is a tough challenge but the photography was a tougher. Light levels were very low and, in such a gathering, you can't use flash. The burst of blinding light is too distracting for reader and audience alike.

So, it was a good opportunity to try out the new Nikon 50mm f1.4 prime lens I've just bought.

The lens worked like a dream. With it wide open and the camera speed racked up to ISO 1000 I could hand-hold in the available light:

And, with an aperture of f1.4, the depth of field was shallow, enabling me to focus on one performer whilst showing others, in a non-distracting way, in the background.

The light, though dim, was also beautiful down there and occasionally I got lucky with it highlighting a performer whilst leaving the audience in shadow ...

My one regret with this last photograph is the background line through the performer's head. Could I have avoided it?

I always seem to ask myself questions like that afterwards.

To travel hopefully ...

2009-05-14T10:07:00.006+02:00

How about this as an innovative project?

For her finals, UK art student Hannah Hughes wanted to get as many people as she could to take a photograph of the sky at exactly the same time, on exactly the same day, from wherever they were the world. The photos she received would then be published in a book.

Amazingly simple in concept, this is just the sort of thing the internet can do so well. So she posted her request on Facebook, (amongst other places).

I saw it and thought, "Why not?" All I'd have to do would be to go outside at the time Hanna had set - 3pm - point my camera upwards and press the button.

No framing. No composition. Just 'snap!'

The trouble was, at 3pm in Gland, Switzerland, the sky was covered from horizon to horizon by featureless grey stratus cloud. Not a break or ripple in sight. No sign of the sun. No blue. No anything. It's the sort of cloud cover that we can get for days on end down here in the valley of Lac Léman.

"Ah well," I thought. "Too bad. You're going to get a completely blank image from me, Hanna. But you asked for it."

I pointed my camera upwards and ...

Amazing! This was taken at 27 seconds past the hour and at that instant I caught three old and much-loved African friends in my photograph of the sky - a Black Kite and two Barn Swallows.

Sometimes, when you travel hopefully, you arrive at a place you were not expecting.

Test your colour vision

2009-05-11T22:28:00.002+02:00

Apparently 1 out of 255 women and 1 out of 12 men have some form of colour vision deficiency.

That's not good news if you're a photographer, you're processing the photos you've just taken and you're trying to get them looking right on the monitor.

But you can test your colour vision here.

On the screen you are presented with 4 rows of coloured tiles, all mixed up, and you have to sort them in to the correct colour order by dragging and dropping, up and down each row.

It's not as easy as it seems! It's best done in a darkened room - which is also the way you should work on your photographs if you're really serious about getting them to look their best.

Why men should have a far higher level of colour vision deficiency than women I don't know. Maybe that's why we men tend to be less concerned about the colour of a car and more interested in its performance.

Rain starts play

2009-05-04T10:46:00.006+02:00

When it rains, most photographers pack up their gear and head for shelter.

Don't.

Rain provides lots of opportunities to get different and unusual shots. There are reflections from wet streets, colourful umbrellas and rain gear, people pelting for shelter, or landmarks with a sheen you've never seen before. Rain changes everything.

If you don't want to get your camera wet you can take photographs from inside, through a wet window ...

But get outside too. Most cameras are a little more waterproof than we realise. If the rain is only a light drizzle you can keep your camera dry under your coat and bring it out to take the shots. A few spots of rain on it won't do any harm.

But if it's really pouring down you can waterproof your camera very effectively with nothing more complex than a clear plastic bag and an elastic band. Put the camera in the bag with the lens poking out through the opening and secure the bag around the lens barrel with the elastic band.

It won't look very elegant ...

... and the view through the viewfinder will be a little blurry. But it's a simple, cheap and effective method. If you use this set-up in conjunction with a good lens hood too, the front element of the lens will be well- protected.

And it's the photos you want ...

A challenge

2009-04-29T10:53:00.021+02:00

The other day I overheard a kid - I'll call him Jack - who was eagerly awaiting the delivery of a new camera. It was an entry-level DSLR. And he said:

"I hate my friend right now. He says I won't be successful in photography with my D40. It's too small."

Oh dear. Listen kid. It's not your camera that's important. It's your eyes and brain behind the lens. Take a look at this ...

... three photographs taken using a tripod from exactly the same spot. They were taken one after the other, within the space of a few minutes, using three different cameras:

A 7-year old, 3 megapixel Point and Shoot: Pentax Optio 330
A medium-level 6-megapixel DSLR: Nikon D70s
A top-of-the-range, 12-megapixel DSLR: Nikon D3

Can you tell which camera took which photograph? (Warning. The photographs are not necessarily in the same order as the list.)

The answers are in the comments section.

Did you get them right? Even if you did, I think you'll agree that it was pretty difficult. You had to look closely.

In other words, if you want to take photographs for your family album (though statistics show that 77% of photographers never print their images), photos to to e-mail to friends, photos to put on your website or on Flickr, even photographs to hang on your wall or use as wallpaper for your computer, almost any digital camera will give you excellent results. The images above prove that.

But, if that's the case, why does anyone buy an expensive camera (apart from wanting to impress friends)?

Because there is a difference in image quality, though you have to look hard.

If you are taking photographs for your own pleasure, most cameras will do a great job. But if you're intending to sell them they have to be the best possible quality. Whilst image taken with a 3mp point-and-shoot may look fine on your computer screen, it won't look so good if blown up to fit an A3 poster.

Here is a section from each image blown up to 100%. They're arranged in order of quality now, the 3mp point-and-shoot at the top, and the Nikon D3 at the bottom (I'd like to put them side by side, but can't seem to do it on Blogger):

See the difference? It's not huge, but it's significant.

So, Jack, don't worry what your friend says. He's a dweeb. Get out there with your D40 (a great camera, by the way) and take some stunning pictures. You're the key to beautiful images.

A little Tweet

2009-04-28T09:40:00.005+02:00

I'm now 'Tweeting' about things photographic (and some that are not) on Twitter, under the name of PhotoZone.

If that means nothing to you, don't worry about it.

But if you want to follow me on Twitter, I'm here.

Or you can read my latest 'Tweet' at the bottom of the page.

Tweet. Tweet.

Beware

2009-04-27T09:44:00.006+02:00

Why not enter a photographic competition?

Entering a competition sets you a challenge
It can expand your photographic horizons
The process makes you think about what you want to achieve or to say with a photograph
You can compare your work to other entries
You could win an amazing prize
Not to mention the glory
And something good for your CV.

But, be careful. Read the rules and conditions very carefully. A surprising number of photographic competitions take 'all rights' to all entries.

Here's an example from the rules of the 'PictureYourself' competition, currently being run by the UK's National Trust:

"If you submit any material to us, you agree to grant The National Trust a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, non-exclusive licence to use your contribution in all media. This includes the right to copy, edit, publish, grant sub-licences and exercise all other copyright and publicity rights over the material."

(Full terms and conditions here)

What this means is that, by simply entering, you give your photograph, to the National Trust. Effectively they own it.

Now, if you win first prize (which in this case is a camera worth £230) you could could argue that you've been paid for your image. Fair enough ... although that's a very low price for selling the copyright to a high-quality image.

But in this case, as in far too many other competitions, the National Trust take all the rights to all entries.

In other words, if you have a magnificent photograph - and doesn't everyone submit their best? - which doesn't win, the NT gets it for nothing.

Is that fair or reasonable?

Look at the quality of some of the images that head the competition page. They're pretty good photos.

If you think the terms of a photo competition are not fair or reasonable, here's an image you can submit:

The original is available from the Pro Imaging web site here. This web site also has further information on suspect competitions and how to spot them.

And, by the way, no need to submit this to the National Trust Competition. It's already been done. At least twice.

Be careful out there and, if you're tempted to enter a photographic competition by some fabulous prizes, read competition rules carefully before you submit anything.

I'm stuck at home ...

2009-04-26T22:33:00.007+02:00

... with a broken leg, darn it.

But I still managed to produce some images for World Pinhole Day.

With its soft, ethereal feel, gigantic depth of field, wide angle of view and massive exposure times, the pinhole technique is well-suited to subjects such as landscapes, deserted places, misty woodlands and the like.

There can be an eerie, dislocated feel to pinhole photographs. If people appear at all they are either ghostly waifs, or they have to stand very still for the length of the exposure. Clouds and moving leaves melt into each other. Water becomes soft and dreamy.

Check some of the marvellous images that are now being posted in the World Pinhole Day 2009 gallery.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck at home with a broken leg. No chance of setting off into the countryside to find a suitable scene. I am somewhat immobile.

Even so, there are still opportunities. Some just a bit odd ...

And others eerie ...

Even though World Pinhole Day is over, you can still experiment with the technique. Here's how I made my pinhole camera at almost no cost at all.

Why not give it a go?

And here's the world's largest ...

2009-04-23T09:12:00.002+02:00

... pinhole camera.

An entire aircraft hangar.

It produced a photographic print nearly 33m wide and 26m high.

Makes my efforts look puny.

Who needs a lens?

2009-04-21T17:47:00.007+02:00

Or even a camera?

World Pinhole Photography Day is fast approaching, and all over the world photographers are eagerly preparing their equipment in readiness.

Last year I tried using a beer can fixed to my digital camera body. It turned out to be a bit of a disaster as it was a strong telephoto lens but, with so little light coming through the pinhole, I couldn't see what the camera was pointing at. And, when I did take a photograph I had horrendous problems with internal reflections from the silvered inside of the can.

Did someone get inspiration from me?

(Copyright paradefotos)

I hope so.

Or maybe we were just thinking in parallel. Almost anything can be used to make a lens.

And anything can be used to make a camera ...

(Copyright CK)

... or should I say a Spamera?

By comparison, my equipment efforts are tame this year. Here's how made my pinhole camera for next Sunday.

Why don't you take part too?

Fairies at the bottom of ...?

2009-04-17T22:08:00.009+02:00

Once upon a time, two young girls - Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths - found themselves in big trouble. Despite the fact that they had been told not to play in the Cottingley Beck, a stream near their house, they had come home late, with Frances soaking wet.

Their excuse? They said that they had been playing with the fairies.

Elsie’s mother wasn’t fooled. She packed both girls up to the attic bedroom they shared, and they could well have gone without supper that evening (though this isn’t recorded).

Elsie, in an attempt to cheer up her younger cousin, suggested that they take a picture of the fairies. So, the next day, she persuaded her father to lend them his 'state of the art' camera,. As this was 1917 'state of the art' was a model called the ‘Midg’ that used photographic plates ...
And, thinking that this would put an end to the affair, her dad agreed.

Little did he know. To his astonishment the girls came back with a photograph of the fairies ...

He immediately dismissed the image as a fake, and the matter probably would have ended there except for the fact that, two years later, the photograph fell into the hands of someone from the Theosophical Society.

Theosophy was a fashionable theory in those days. It held that ‘nature spirits’ existed, and the photograph taken by these girls appeared to be concrete proof of this.

The photograph got passed up through the ranks of the Theosophical Society and the original glass plate was examined by a photographic expert called Harold Snelling.

Snelling peered at it closely and concluded that, “This plate is a single exposure. These dancing figures are not made of paper nor any fabric; they are not painted on a photographic background.” But what seems to have convinced him most of all was that the fairy figures were blurred. “What gets me most,” Snelling continued, “is that all these figures have moved during the exposure.”

In other words ... motion blur.

And on that evidence Snelling pronounced the photograph as real.

This added impetus to the story. It grew and grew until, finally, it reached the ears of none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of that famous detective, Sherlock Holmes.

Sir Arthur was a bit more credulous than his astute fictional hero. He believed in fairies.

He took the photo to be proof of their existence and even went so far as to use the image in an article he was writing about fairies for The Strand Magazine (Doyle, Arthur Conan. "Fairies Photographed. An Epoch-Making Event." The Strand Magazine, Dec. 1920)

He also suggested that more photographs be taken. The girls - now young women - obliged and made more bizarre photographs of fairies and gnomes ...

After this, the story refused to die. In fact, it wasn’t until 1982, when both ladies had been tracked down by an investigative journalist, that Elsie finally admitted that the photographs were fakes.

But, even so, a small, mystery remains. The Midg was quite a crude camera by today’s standards, and the closest it could focus was 4 feet (about 1.3 metres). On top of that it had a maximum shutter speed of 1/25th sec.

So, the two girls managed to create their models without being seen, smuggle them out of the house, set them up and photograph them hand-held in the gloom without the benefit of a test run, and get a photograph that fooled an expert of the day.

Were they natural-born photographers? Or did they just get fed up with all the questioning and say they faked it to shut everyone up?

Maybe the fairies were real ...

Making ... Marathon Runners

2009-04-13T22:51:00.001+02:00

A painting starts with a blank canvas and from there, out of imagination and perception, the painter builds an image.

A photograph, on the other hand, exists in its entirety before it is made. The photographer watches what is taking place and captures an image. Sometimes that image only appears for the briefest of moments.

This means, to make good photographs, the photographer should have the techniques of the art, and the rules of composition embedded in his memory. They should be so firmly fixed that they become second nature, allowing concentration on the ever-changing sequence of images.

To give an example ... imagine a painter wishing to paint an image of a marathon race. She will watch races, study human form, anatomy and motion, maybe even take photographs to help. But when she sits down to paint she will select what she shows and how she shows it.

The photographer is more constrained. To achieve his image he must select a point from which to make the image, choose camera settings, and make the photograph at an instant when the elements of composition come together ...

When photographing this race I felt that a high viewpoint was necessary to eliminate distractions, and found one as quickly as I could (it was on a fire escape). I decided on a medium telephoto zoom lens (50-200mm) giving me the ability to bring the subject as close as possible if need be, but I ended up using it at 65mm. I switched off the autofocus as, in sports photography you can miss shots whilst the camera is trying to focus. Instead, I focused on the tarmac. I set a relatively fast shutter speed (1/350th sec) shutter speed as I felt I didn’t need motion blur. Runners, particularly if you capture them in mid-air, are obviously moving fast. And I used a medium aperture (f8) to give best lens resolution.

I had to do all that fairly fast as the runners weren’t hanging about. Having done it, that left me free to concentrate on the composition.

Make lots of photographs and get to know your camera well. That leaves you free to concentrate on design and composition.

Photography and the UK police

2009-04-12T16:58:00.005+02:00

Extracts from an article entitled "Put enough cameras on the police and even the serially deferential wake up" by Marina Hyde, in today's Guardian newspaper ...

Who watches the watchmen? Or, to translate Juvenal another way: who polices the police? The answer this week was a New York fund manager, of all unlikely superheroes ... The man came forward (with his film of the incident) because "it was clear the family were not getting any answers" ...

... Not that turning our cameras on those who train theirs on us is without risk. Indeed, one might judge it fairly miraculous that the man was not forcibly disarmed of his camera phone, given that it is now illegal to photograph police ...

... it is something of a shame that certain elements of society have only recently woken up to the possibility that the police might not be the faultless, justice-dispensing force of establishment myth, and only because ... they have seen it with their own eyes ...

The full article can be read here.

Ian Tomlinson

2009-04-08T16:56:00.012+02:00

On Wednesday 1 April, during the G20 protests in London, Ian Tomlinson, a City of London resident, was walking home from work at a newsagents shop when he passed a line of policemen dressed in riot gear. Tomlinson had nothing whatever to do with the demonstrations, had his back to the police and his hands in his pockets.

Less than five minutes later he was dead.

Subsequently the police issued a statement that, "[He] suffered a sudden heart attack while on his way home from work."

That is true. He died of a heart attack. What the police did not state was ...

The man who shot that footage, a fund manager from New York who was in London on business, said he had attended the protests out of curiosity.

He said: "The primary reason for me coming forward is that it was clear the family were not getting any answers."

Had the police noticed that this man was filming, they could have arrested him under section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, confiscated his equipment and this footage would never have been seen.

Fortunately they seem not to have realised.

But they may be more alert next time.

UPDATE

More photographic evidence has come to light, on tape recovered from a damaged news camera, showing the force with which Ian Tomlinson was struck. No indication of why the camera was damaged is given.

UPDATE

More and more footage is coming to light on this incident. Here’s some taken at the spot where he collapsed.

In this sequence the police seem to be surrounding him. Use the timer (at the bottom). At 19 seconds it appears that a single plastic water bottle is thrown (but this is difficult to see) and other protestors call out to stop as there’s someone hurt. This contradicts the police statement that “... a number of missiles - believed to be bottles - were being thrown at them”.

Then between 23 and 30 seconds someone is jumping up and down, waving his hands and shouting 'Back up. Back the fuck up. There's someone hurt."

Finally pause at 56 seconds and count the number of police with their faces masked. Why do they need to wear masks?

From reading the reports it appears that the police released misinformation and untruths about what happened from the start.

Without film-makers and photographers being present the truth about this incident may well not have come to light.

In control again.

2009-04-07T19:57:00.006+02:00

Following on from my previous post, there's another very important aspect to using image editing programs like Photoshop.

They have put control back into the hands of the photographer.

Back in the days of black-and-white, photographers could develop and print their own images, keeping full control over them. Exposures could be altered, parts of an image could be 'held back' in the printing process, images could be cropped to give better composition, and so on.

When colour photography became widespread and popular, this became much more difficult. If you could afford it and were willing to spend a lot of time at it, you could develop and print your own colour photographs. But it was a good deal more difficult.

And if you were using colour transparency film. such as Kodachrome, it was impossible. I remember the days of 'cropping' a colour transparency by carefully cutting out tiny pieces of opaque black paper. I still have some 'cropped' slides in a box somewhere.

I took this photo at a Swiss 'Lutte' competition, last year (see here for details on what 'lutte' is). I like the expressions on the smaller boy's face, but the composition is awful ...

Trouble is, when you're in a fast-moving situation like sports photography it's not easy to get the composition right. That handshake lasted about a second.

So I did a bit of cropping (and some other work too) in Photoshop ...

A great improvement ... in my opinion.

Now, had that been a colour transparency I would have spent ages with slivers of very carefully razored paper, tweezers and a glass slide mount trying to improve the composition.

The fact that so much can now be done after taking a photograph encourages us to look at the composition and qualities of a photograph much more carefully.

And, hopefully, to try and get it right in the camera where possible.

That can only be a good thing.

Is it cheating to use Photoshop?

2009-04-04T19:11:00.007+02:00

That was a question posed on a photographers forum that I came across recently.

And one of the answers?

I think using Photoshop to enhance your images is cheating. I was proudest of my 35mm and 2 1/4 film photos that were perfect, directly out of the camera. Maybe just some cropping, but no manipulation of the image.

Although, as regular readers will know, one of my photographic beliefs is ‘GIRIC’ (Get It Right In Camera), and although you can easily overdo it with Photoshop:

(Image copyright: Rama)

... there is nothing wrong with image manipulation within reason.

Photographers have been doing it ever since the medium was invented. Here are two versions of an iconic image taken by Dorothea Lange in the USA during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

This is the version displayed at the ‘Family of Man’ exhibition, held at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1955 ...

(Copyright: Library of Congress)

And here is the same image used in the BBC’s television programme ‘The Genius of Photography’, broadcast in 2007 ...
Just like manipulating images in a darkroom, I believe it’s okay to use Photoshop (or any other image editing program) to ‘develop’ your images. After all, photography is an art form in its own right.

But remember one thing. ‘GIGO’. Garbage In. Garbage Out.

Photoshop can’t make a bad photograph good.

Pinhole-it!

2009-03-27T22:48:00.003+01:00

So, you’ve bought yourself a fancy digital single lens reflex camera with an expensive lens.

Why not take off that lens and try taking photographs without it?

Do what?

How?

And why?

How? First you will need a camera body cap. That’s the circular piece of plastic that fitted in to the lens opening to seal the camera body when you bought it. You can use the one that came with your camera, but I’d advise you get another one. Most specialist photo shops can sell you one for a few bucks.

You’ll also need a largish drill (size doesn’t matter), a sharp pin, some sandpaper, sticky tape and a piece of heavy-duty aluminium cooking foil. The sort of foil used to make pie dishes is ideal.

Drill a largish hole in the centre of your camera body cap - removing the cap from the camera first, of course. The size isn't particularly important, but it should be fairly big.The large drill shattered the plastic here, making a rather ragged hole. But that doesn't matter. It's going to be covered by the foil.

If you don't have a large enough drill you can cut a square hole out of he plastic using a craft knife.

Next, cut a square of aluminium foil, significantly bigger than the hole you’ve just drilled and, using your pin, make a tiny hole in the metal.

Very gently sand down the outer edge of the hole – where the pin pushing through has raised the foil slightly – so it is flat. And then very carefully work the tip of the pin in the hole again to remove any burrs and make it perfectly round. The object is to get a perfectly round hole that is as small as possible.

Having made a pinhole to your satisfaction (you can hold it up to the light to see how it’s going) position the foil on the inside of the body cap so the pinhole is in the centre of the bigger hole and stick it in place with the tape.

Fit your modified body cap on the camera in place of the lens and ... voilá ... you have a pinhole camera.

But why do this?

Because you can learn a lot about the physics of photography, you can get some strange and unusual images ... for example, pinhole cameras have an extraordinary depth of field ... and it's fun.

World Pinhole Day is coming up in exactly one month. On the 26th April.

Here’s an image I took for the event last year.

This year, why not make your own pinhole camera and join the fun?

Getting high

2009-03-25T20:02:00.011+01:00

I took these two photographs from high on the old city walls of Lucerne, Switzerland. There was no more than a few minutes, and a few steps between them ...

I didn't think about it when I took them.

But now I'm processing them it's got me wondering.

Something in my subconscious trying to make itself felt?

Silver lining

2009-03-15T22:30:00.006+01:00

I was only half-awake as I went downstairs in the middle of the night to get a glass of water, so I didn’t switch the light on. That was a mistake.

On the penultimate step I missed my footing, fell the rest of the way down and landed heavily on my heel.

Then I was wide awake. The pain was exquisite.

The next morning my heel was still painful, so much so that I began to wonder if I’d broken a bone. Do we have bones in the heel that can be broken? I’d no idea but, whether we do or not, I decided to go to hospital.

After an interminable wait ... I was ‘walking wounded’ ... a doctor x-rayed my foot and told me nothing was broken. It was simply a bad bruise. But, so that I could rest it, he ‘prescribed’ me crutches for a week.

I hobbled about for the next few days, drawing sympathetic looks and trying to avoid probing questions about the extent of my injuries. By the end of the week it was time to take the crutches back to the hospital but, before I did so I thought it could be useful to take advantage of the opportunity.

The next morning was forecast to be clear so I packed the crutches, my camera and a tripod into the car and drove high up into the mountains to find a suitable ridge. There I fixed my camera on the tripod, facing the rising sun, activated the self-timer and scrambled up on to the ridge with the crutches ...

With well over 400 sales now, it’s turned out to be one of my best-selling photographs.

Man arrested on suspicion of photographing a drain

2009-03-12T22:51:00.006+01:00

Huh?

Shome mishtake shurely?

Nope.

Stephen Clark, a man of good character, had never been on trouble with the police before. He is an Oxford graduate in politics who lives a blameless life in Manchester, UK.

However, despite this, he was arrested twice in the space of two hours by the Manchester police.

He was then held under arrest for two days, had his home, laptop computer and camera-phone searched and had his fingerprints and samples of his DNA taken.

Why?

Because the police suspected he was taking photographs of a drain-cover. And, of course, it is a well-known fact that 'what a drain-cover looks like' is an essential piece of terrorist intelligence.

It appears that the police subsequently found no sign of any drain-cover photographs in his possession. If they did, they're not saying anything. And they released Mr Stephen without charge.

However, they are keeping his fingerprints and DNA samples.

Anyone out there still think that if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear from the UK's surveillance and control laws?

Anyone for Grufts?

2009-03-05T20:02:00.013+01:00

The UK's greatest dog show, Crufts, is on once again.

But, unfortunately, you can't get into the show unless you're a platinum-plated pedigree pooch. Exclusive isn't in it.

But is that a good thing?

Not necessarily. There's been a lot of controversy over them there fancy dogs.

The UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Animals (RSPCA) has accused the Kennel Club (organisers of Crufts) of setting such restrictive breeding standards for pedigree dogs that many breeds are becoming unhealthy, bizarre mutants.

For example, it appears that some Pekingese dogs are now bred with such flat faces they can barely breathe. And pedigree German Shepherds have weak back legs that prompted one critic to call them, 'half dog, half frog'.

The storm of criticism that ensued has resulted in the BBC dropping it's television coverage of the show, Spillers pet foods, a major sponsor, pulling out, and a number of other animal welfare organisations voicing their concerns too.

All in all, you're probably better off with a mongrel mutt, filled with hybrid vigour.

And now we mongrel owners have our own online dog show - Grufts - run by the UK's Guardian newspaper. Just enter photographs of your dog and you could win awards in:

Most stylish
Most talented
Most loveable
Most heroic
Best Lookalike (your hound can bear an uncanny resemblance to yourself, a famous dog or, indeed, a celebrity)
Best-travelled (your picture, Photoshopped or otherwise, should show your dog in an exotic location).

Entry is free and you retain copyright (important ... always check that with competitions). There are no prizes, as far as I can see, but if you win your hound will get the honour of Best in Show, and maybe an appearance in a UK national newspaper.

Jess will be there.

Update 12/03/2009

Jess wasn't even in the running. Nowhere close. The winner was Tosca - not the sort of dog you'd want to meet on a dark night. Or even in broad daylight. But his story is amazing and turns everything around. Read it, consider what what humans can do, and see him, here.

Only one small thing has me wondering. Could his owners have taken a more flattering photograph of him? Or were they deliberately trying to make him look bizarre?

What is art? The sequel.

2009-02-28T18:34:00.002+01:00

Way back last year I commented on the award of the American Watercolor Society's 2008 Gold Medal to a Ms Sheryl Luxenburg who'd used 2 stock photographs that belonged to another person as the basis for her entry. (See here.)

As a result of that blog entry I got a letter in the post from Ms Luxenburg's lawyers - which gave me pause for some serious thought. However, I felt the issue raised important points as, with digital photography and the internet being what they are, it is all too easy for someone to pass off another's work as their own. So, with a few minor modifications, I let my entry stand.

Elsewhere in the blogosphere, and on forums, there was a storm of protest from both photographers and artists. The two hot questions were:

Mostly from photographers ... The legality of what Ms Luxenburg had done. Was she entitled - even if she'd bought reproduction rights from the agency - to pass the images off as her own work and earn a substantial prize from them?

Mostly from artists ... Had she broken the rules of the AWS's competition?

A number of bloggers and forum moderators received lawyers letters, too. And some of the posts disappeared. But that didn't silence the discussion.

As a result, the American Watercolor Society withdrew the award and started investigations. Now, at last, they have reached a ruling (edited) ...

The American Watercolor Society, Inc., (AWS) releases the following statement to the AWS membership and the artist community about the withdrawal of 2008 Gold Medal:

The controversy surrounding the American Watercolor Society’s 141st International Exhibition Gold Medal winner, “Impermanence,” by Canadian artist Sheryl Luxenburg has been the subject of innumerable blogs, websites and chat rooms worldwide for many months.

We sincerely appreciate all those who contacted the society and respect all opinions expressed on this issue. This dialogue has contributed to our understanding of the extent to which the art community has taken an interest in the outcome of this issue as it affects each artist and the respective art societies ...

The American Watercolor Society ... has developed its eligibility requirements for entry ... as follows. “The Annual Exhibition is open to all artists working in water media (watercolor, acrylic, casein, gouache, and egg tempera) on paper. No collage, pastels, class work, copies, digital images or prints; original work only.

The requirements as contained in the prospectus as well as the acceptance form are quite specific and leave no room for ambiguity. Upon acceptance, the requirements are further emphasized by a disclaimer signed by the artist stating that “The accompanying artwork is an original; not a copy or likeness of another’s work, i.e. painting, drawing or photograph.”

Our prospectus clearly informs artists of these eligibility requirements which were designed to maintain high standards and to focus on originality.

By establishing these requirements, the onus rests with the artists to ensure compliance with the rules set forth. Each artist is therefore free to accept or decline these conditions.

When it was determined that Ms. Luxenburg’s entry violated our eligibility requirements, the AWS requested that our Gold Medal and prize money be returned. The Medal and prize money were returned, and Ms. Luxenburg has been disqualified from entering any future AWS exhibitions ...

(The full statement can be read here)

The legality of Ms Luxenburg's actions rests unresolved. But the issue with regard to her using work that was not her own to enter this competition has been settled.

But I believe it goes deeper. Photography is just as much an art form as painting is.

It is no more right for a photographer to take a picture of a painting and pass it off as his/her own work as it is for a painter to make an exact reproduction (as far as the eye can see) of photographs and pass them off as his/her own work.

On the otter hand ...

2009-02-23T22:56:00.005+01:00

Street photography may be increasingly risky in the UK and US, what with the zealous Boys (and Belles) in Blue taking you for a terrorist.

But wildlife photography will never be the same, either.

There you go, aiming your camera at those cuddly creatures, seemingly secure in the knowledge that they ain’t gonna give you any grief when, all of a sudden, you find them pointing a camera back at you ...

It's an otter, in Monterey Bay, California, holding a seaweed-coated video camera.

Or is it? Didn't I read somewhere that the Government was training animals to be spies?

The full story here, and thanks to Mighty Mom for giving me the lead.

Photo credit: Enrique Aguirre

Steps to a police state

2009-02-16T22:13:00.011+01:00

Today, 16 february 2009, a law has come into force in the UK making it illegal to photograph a police officer.

To be precise, it is section 76 of the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 which states:

A person commits an offence who elicits or attempts to elicit information about an individual who is or has been ... a constable ... which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or publishes or communicates any such information.

On the surface that appears entirely reasonable. The police do a difficult and dangerous job protecting citizens of the UK.

But think about the ramifications of this law and the way it’s worded.

‘... eliciting information .. likely to be useful to a person ... preparing an act of terrorism ....’ can mean pretty well anything.

Notice the vagueness of the wording. Any information could be construed as “... likely to be useful ...”. By its very definition, information is useful. That’s why it’s information. And then there's the catch-all qualifier, 'likely'.

The law is wide open. ‘Eliciting information,’ could mean writing down the colour of a police officer’s hair, or recording something he says, or asking for his police number when confronted ... or taking a photograph.

And, given the propensity for police officers to harass anyone legally taking a photograph in public places – from a 15-year old schoolboy in school uniform to UK Members of Parliament – it is very likely that this law will be applied vigorously.

Some points to consider:

a) The majority of people in the UK are photographed several times a day by the ubiquitous (and spreading) CCTV cameras. They probably do not know that they’re being photographed and they do not know what happens to the images that have been made of them. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing – many crimes have been solved as a result – but why is it legal in one direction, yet illegal in the other? And what is done with all this information that is gathered. Do you know?

b) More sinister, the police themselves use photography threateningly. According to a UK newspaper, the Brighton Argus, members of an environmental organisation who were having a meeting in a local club were confronted by police officers wielding high-powered cameras. One of the club members, David Biset, said:

"There was no suggestion of anything going on ... The police had no reason to be there beyond intimidating people. You shouldn't be put on a database simply for attending a meeting."

The local MP, David Lepper, agreed that the police operation was designed to scare activists rather than prevent crime. And, revealingly, when asked about it, a spokesman for the police said that the photography was “ ... part of ongoing police work to gather information to support future operations.” Future operations? Chilling stuff. (See the full article here.)

c) The police in the UK have been known to use brutal tactics and excessive violence when suppressing legal demonstrations, making arrests, even when simply questioning people. Occasionally, in the past these tactics have been shown to the rest of the world by journalists and film-makers or someone who happened to have a camera with them.

Now, under this new law, the police can arrest anyone taking such photographs, and the photographer can be convicted for up to 10 years in prison.

Watch this incident ...

It was recorded in November 2008.

If, instead, that video had been taken today, it might never be seen. And, for taking it, the photographer could find himself in deep trouble.

Think about it.

It matters. Even if you're not a photographer.

Footnote

Interestingly, no lesser body than the Metropolitan Police Federation oppose this law too.

See here for details.

In short, this is a poorly-drafted law from a Government that has consistently reneged on its principles since coming to power.

The vanishing hand, and other tales

2009-02-13T17:50:00.009+01:00

I'm a great believer in 'getting it right in the camera'.

You can make a lot of changes to your images using Photoshop, or similar programs. Some of those changes can be dramatic. But there's no substitute for getting it as good as you can when you press the shutter button.

Unfortunately certain things are unavoidable ... like some joker pulling the old 'V' sign caper when you're photographing a group.

Not long ago I was doing just this, using the self-timer so as to include myself. I put my camera on a tripod, posed everyone and got them to smile sweetly. Then I pressed the button, rushed to my place and ...

Yawn. That trick is so old. (N.B. To protect reputations the perpetrator is not in the picture.)

A well ... out with the trusty old Photoshop clone tool ...

Not perfect, I know, but at the resolution the photograph was going to be viewed at, it would pass muster.

But, be a wee bit careful if you are making dramatic changes with Photoshop. This breakfast cereal may help you lose weight, but what else does it to to you?

And who created this extraordinary picture? M.C. Escher?

(More Photoshop disasters here.)

Poster Boy ...

2009-02-04T23:55:00.003+01:00

... I like

But now the cops have caught him.

Or so they think.

Cycle paths ... pigeon droppings ...

2009-02-03T23:00:00.002+01:00

... bus stations ... an old printing works ...

These are all things that, over the past few months, innocent private individuals have been photographing in the UK when, to their dismay, they have found themselves interrogated, or even arrested.

It may all sound like a joke. But it isn’t. It’s getting serious. The British Police are busting a gut in their ‘War on Terror.’

For example, at the beginning of January, a UK Member of Parliament was stopped and searched for taking photographs of a cycle path in his own constituency. (See here.)

Then, a few days ago a prospective parliamentary candidate, Dr Rachel Joyce, and a colleague were similarly stopped and searched for taking photographs at a bus station.

And this was not the first time that this had happened to Dr Joyce. In September 2007 she was walking through Harrow town centre with another colleague when, in her own words “… we noticed a thick layer of pigeon droppings on some of the public seats. As this could be a health hazard, we took a photo of it to highlight to the authorities and we got stopped and questioned by PCSOs (Police Community Support Officers) under the Terrorism Act ...” (See here.)

Then there was a well-known London artist who was handcuffed, detained by the police for 5 hours and had his fingerprints and samples of DNA taken, all for photographing an old printing works he intended to draw (See here).

And last summer a team of armed police ... yes, armed ... swooped on six aging trainspotters, who call themselves the ‘Steam Boys’ as they waited with their cameras to capture an historic 1950s steam engine called The Great Marquess crossing the Forth Railway Bridge. The Steam Boys must have had a terrifying experience. Remember, not so very long ago, armed police swooped on another innocent man in a London Underground train and shot him dead.

The list goes on ...

If that wasn’t enough, on February 16th 2009 a new UK Counter-Terrorism Act will become law. Amongst other things it contains a clause making it an offence (punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment and a fine) to take photographs of police constables.

Slowly but surely individual liberties are being eroded in the UK.

And all for what?

There is no evidence whatsoever that taking photographs has played any role in the planning and execution of any terrorist act. There were no photographs involved in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre, the Madrid train bombing or the London transport bombings. The liquid bombers arrested in 2006 had taken no photographs. Timothy McVeigh didn't point a camera at the Oklahoma City Federal Building before he blew it to pieces. The Unabomber didn't photograph anything, neither did shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Palestinian suicide bombers don’t take photographs, nor did the IRA.

Apart from anything else, there’s no reason for terrorists to take photographs. Why should they want to? If they require information about the layout of a location they can get it from maps, Google Earth and host of other information sources legally and freely available.

So why do the police have this fixation on photographers?

Could it be because that’s what happens in the movies?

In the movies, the baddies taking photographs before their dastardly act is a vital detail. It makes sense, doesn’t it? They have to check out their target and make their evil plans, don’t they?

And, of course, we viewers need a whole chunk of suspense-building before the climax. A bit of faffing about with cameras ... especially if the gear looks impressive ... is perfect as part of that suspense-building. The baddies have long lenses and big black cameras. They must be really bad.

And there’s another aspect too. These days the police have targets to meet.

This combination of the police inability to get to grips with reality, and the pressure of the targets they have to meet results in a lot of innocent people being intimidated.

And innocent people being intimidated is, of course, one of the objectives of a terrorist act. It is precisely the loss of our liberties, coupled with the development of fear and distrust of the authorities, that the perpetrators of such acts want to see.

===============================

Some notes of advice (from the Police National Legal Database).

If you have the misfortune to be stopped and searched for taking photographs in the UK, you have certain rights:

the officer must tell you the grounds for the search;
the officer must inform you of the object of the search (e.g. to find drugs, an offensive weapon, etc.);
the officer must show you his/her warrant card if in plain clothes, or if requested;
the officer must tell you his/her identity;
the officer must also tell you to which station he/she is attached;
the officer must tell you that you are being detained for the purpose of the search

Further information here.

And a useful PDF file of photographers’ rights in the UK is available from this website.

Making ... 'Play With Me'

2009-01-28T12:16:00.005+01:00

Getting good photographs of dogs isn't easy. It's almost as difficult as photographing children.

Dogs ... especially those that like to play ... won't sit still for long. They can also get twitchy and nervous if they're put in unfamiliar surroundings and have a lens pointed at them.

What's more, you'll get the best shots by getting down to their level or lower. This usually involves lying on the ground. And that's a further invitation either to play ... or become more nervous. Few humans, in the general course of events, lie on the floor in front of their pooch.

Earlier this month Jasra came to stay. She's a beautiful all black Dobermann/Labrador cross-breed. And she loves playing with balls.

In my mind's eye I could see a photograph of her as a dog imploring her owner to play. So I set about trying to achieve it.

I cleared the furniture and rolled back the carpet from one end of the sitting room, and removed pictures from the wall, to create a 'studio'.

I used two flash units, one to illuminate my subject and the other to illuminate the background and cut out any shadows. The flash to illuminate the dog was used indirectly - i.e. not pointed at the subject but relying on reflected light. This was also the one connected to the camera (though not on it). The second flash, to illuminate the background, was operated by a slave unit.

I needed to set the exposure manually as the dog is all black and the wall behind is white. If I relied on the camera's automatic features it would average out the two and I'd get a featureless dog, and a grey wall. As it was, I didn't care if the wall was over-exposed. I wanted it pure white.

Normally you shouldn't use a wide angle lens for portraits - whether human, dog or whatever. It will distort your subject. However, I deliberately used a 17mm lens here to give a degree of distortion and add a touch of drama. I set it at f11 to give me a reasonable depth of field. Any smaller and the imperfections on the wall may have come into focus and, anyway, most lenses perform less well at smaller apertures.

Then, technicalities sorted out, it was a question of getting all the components in the right place at the right time.

I deliberately arranged the ball so that the string would lead the viewer's eye into the picture. Jasra was another matter. She was a puzzled dog, and preferred to sit behind me, looking over my shoulder at the ball.

When I did get her in front of the lens, she'd usually pick up the ball and carry it behind me ... usually to the far end of the room. There was a fair degree of getting up and lying down again, and I got an awful lot of dud shots ... dog half out of picture, looking the wrong way, too close to the wall so that shadows showed.

But, in the end it all came together in a way that was close to the image I'd envisaged in the first place.

It's very satisfying when it does that.

P.S. I hadn't intended the slightly diagonal angle - where wall joins floor, but I think it works well. It gives a more dynamic feel to the image.

Can't afford image stabilization?

2009-01-23T17:58:00.002+01:00

Yes, cameras with Image Stabilization (IS) are a whole lot more expensive than bog-standard ones. What if you can't afford the super-duper technology?

Get a chicken ...

... and strap your camera to its head.

Seriously, this just goes to show that we're really not quite as clever as we think. Many of our wonderful technological developments have already evolved in nature, long ago.

Humbling.

Dis-Grace

2009-01-19T10:19:00.005+01:00

I’m sorry to report that the wife of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe – Grace – has just had her overseas holiday ruined.

Apparently, as she emerged from the Shangri-La, a $3000-a-night Hong Kong hotel, Mrs. Mugabe had her picture taken by Richard Jones, a photographer from the UK’s Sunday Times newspaper.

For some reason this threw Grace Mugabe into a rage. According to witnesses at the scene, she ordered her bodyguard to attack the photographer and then joined in the assault.

“The man held him while she hit him again and again in the face with her fist,” said Werner Zapletal, an Austrian tourist who saw it happen. “She was screaming, completely crazy.”

According to a medical report by Dr Raymond Ng, a general practitioner in Hong Kong, Mr. Jones suffered cuts, abrasions and bruises to the face and head caused by the heavy, diamond-encrusted rings Grace Mugabe was wearing.

Meanwhile, back at home, cholera has claimed the lives of more than 2’100 of Mrs. Mugabe's compatriots, inflation has risen to over 231 million percent and the Government has just issued a Z$100 trillion banknote.

I’m not sure how much 100 trillion Zimbucks is worth as I’m not very good with figures. I begin to lose track of zeroes at that level. However, to put it in perspective, as I write (morning of 19th January) a million Zimbabwe dollars are worth 5 US cents. Last time I shopped in Zimbabwe, one of their dollars was about the same as one US dollar.

But does Grace Mugabe let these small discomforts get her down? No. As Zimbabwe's First Lady she has to keep up appearances. Once, when asked why she spent thousands on expensive Ferragamo shoes while her people starved, she replied, “I have very narrow feet, so I wear only Ferragamo.”

So, with such a sense of style – an important attribute for a First Lady – I’m astonished that she objected so strongly to being photographed.

You can read more on this story in the Zimbabwe Times.

(Photograph: Associated Press)

Watermarking

2009-01-16T22:01:00.005+01:00

One of the big headaches faced by photographers is the theft of their images. Digital images can be copied with ease. Anything that appears on a monitor can be copied.

One way around this is to make sure that any images that you publish on the internet are of low quality so that they cannot be printed or enlarged to any size, but of sufficiently high quality to look good on a screen. I've discussed that here.

But what if you need to send someone a high-resolution image? A potential customer, for example. The way around this is to watermark your image. Here's one of mine that I've watermarked:

And how do you do that?

If you have Photoshop, a quick and relatively easy way of doing it is to create your own watermark 'brush'. Then you can apply this like a stamp, again and again, to a whole series of images.

Here's how you do it ...

Creating your watermark brush

1. In Photoshop, create a brand new empty document with a white background. Don’t make this too big, otherwise you won’t be able to save it as a brush. 3000 pixels wide by 2000 pixels high is a good size. Choose ‘greyscale’ and ‘background colour’ as options, making sure the background is white.

2. If you want the Copyright symbol in your watermark ( © ) open the Custom Shape Tool – the bottom choice in the menu that pops out when you select the menu of Shape Tools, immediately below the Text tool.

3. Go up to the Options bar at the top and select the ‘Fill Pixels’ button – it’s the third choice from the left (it’s a little square). This creates your custom shape with pixels rather than vectors – important.

4. Press Enter and a menu of shapes appears. You’ll find the Copyright symbol in that. Select it, then click and drag out the symbol somewhere in the middle of your blank document. To ensure that the symbol comes out perfectly round, hold down the ‘shift’ key as you do this.

(If you don’t want the Copyright symbol, leave out steps 2-4)

5. Switch on the Type Tool, select your font and its size, draw a box where you want your text to appear in relation to the Copyright symbol.

6. Then type your text. Make sure it is black. For best-looking results select ‘Centre Text’. You can change the font size as you work to match your Copyright symbol. You can also select Bold and/or Italic if you want. Play with it. Don’t worry if the text doesn’t line up exactly with the Copyright symbol at this stage.

7. When you’ve finished typing your text, click on the Move tool (the symbol top right of the toolbox, with four arrows). Select your text and align it exactly as you want it in relation to the Copyright symbol.

9. Select the Rectangular Marquee (top left of toolbox) and draw a rectangle close around your watermark.

10. Go to the Edit menu and select Define Brush. A dialogue box will pop up. Give your brush a name and ... voilà! ... it’s done. (N.B. The preview on the Brush Tool menu may make your brush look all squashed and deformed. Don’t worry. It won’t come out like that.)

Applying your watermark

1. Open the image you want to watermark.

2. From the ‘Layers’ palette, create a new layer (icon at bottom, second from right).

3. Making sure that you are in your new layer, select the Brush Tool and choose your personal ‘Copyright’ brush (It’ll probably be at the bottom of the list). Stamp it wherever you want. You can adjust its size to fit your image. You can stamp it once big across the centre, like I’ve done, or several times, smaller, all over.

4. Reduce the opacity of this layer so that the watermark becomes transparent. Reducing it to 30% works well, but you may wish to do more, or less. See how it looks.

5. Flatten the image (i.e. join the layers together) and save it with a different name from the original ... unless you want to ruin the original.

And it’s done.

P.S. Really, really tough question. Can you spot the bad tangent in my watermarked photo?

A bad tangent

2009-01-13T10:59:00.004+01:00

I didn’t hang about after I’d taken the photo of Sir Nigel Gresley coming around the bend (here). I packed my gear, hared down the hill and drove off in a cloud of dust.

I wanted to get some photos of the venerable old gentleman coming in to the terminus, further down the line.

The timetable showed that he stopped at several stations on the way and I’d worked out that, if I was quick, I could make it to the final station before Sir Nigel did.

In fact, I was quicker than I thought – it was a good downhill slope to the car – and I overtook him just before a spot where the road went under the railway.

Sensing another photo opportunity I pulled in, leaped out and slammed on a medium telephoto lens. I was just in time. Sir Nigel roared past, and this is what I got ...

Rubbish.

First, there’s no impression of speed at all. The engine could be standing still.

Second, the composition is boring, with the horizon cutting the picture in half.

But, most annoying to me, is the bad tangent, where the horizon runs precisely through the top of the chimney.

You get a bad tangent when two unrelated edges or lines in a composition just touch one another. Most viewers don’t notice it. But, although they can’t explain why, they find something annoying or displeasing about a picture with a bad tangent.

Ah well ... lousy photo but learning experience.

An old friend

2009-01-10T13:53:00.010+01:00

When I was a kid, steam engines ruled the rails – roaring down the line to London trailing clouds of smoke and cinders over their train of carriages. I loved those massive monsters. When I grew up I wanted to be an engine driver. Yes, I know, that’s a cliché ... but I did ... really.

One glorious day my Mum took me up to London by train. As we walked to the exit at Kings Cross Station we passed one of the fastest engines on the line - the sleek, streamlined ‘Sir Nigel Gresley’.

I stopped beside the gently hissing engine, the heat shimmering off it, and gazed up in awe. A coal-grimed man leaned out of the driver’s cab.

“Wanna come up, Sonny?” he asked.

I was dumbstruck. He was speaking to me. My mum lifted me up to the footplate and the driver showed me around. I peeped into the red-hot, roaring firebox, tapped the dials, twiddled a brake-wheel. He even let me sit in his seat and toot the whistle ... making everyone on the platform jump.

I’ve never forgotten it.

Last summer I was walking on the Yorkshire Moors, beside a railway line, when I heard a familiar whistle. I stopped ... turned, and around the corner came an old friend. Sir Nigel Gresley.

Now for the true story.

The whole first bit about my childhood experience is gospel. I have no idea what I did on the trip to London with my mum, but the details of my encounter with the Sir Nigel Gresley are etched indelibly into my memory.

The second part of the story is a little more complicated.

Last summer I took a ride on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a steam preservation society. To my amazement I discovered this railway was now the home of the Sir Nigel Gresley. I asked an official about the engine, and my luck was in. He told me that it would be pulling a train the very next day.

I immediately got out an Ordnance Survey map, scanned the route of the line and found an interesting-looking footpath that ran alongside. That afternoon we walked the length of footpath, my long-suffering family and I, looking for suitable vantage points.

The best one was high on a hillside, looking down on to where the railway line came around a curve and up a gradient.

I was up there early next morning, ready and waiting, with my tripod, cable release, and long lens on to compress the perspective a bit.

My only regret was that it was a warm summer’s morning. Had it been colder there would have been a very photogenic cloud of smoke as Sir Nigel Gresley chuffed up the slope.

But it was good to see an old friend again.

A little story.

2009-01-04T19:42:00.003+01:00

A prominent photographer was invited to an exclusive dinner party in New York.

As he entered his hostess’s apartment she took him by the hand and whispered, "So good of you to come. I do so love your photographs. They're breathtaking. You must have a fantastic camera.”

The photographer acknowledged her greeting, but did not respond to the compliment.

However, as he was departing, he took his hostess by the hand, gazed into her eyes and said, “Thank you for a wonderful dinner. It was delicious. You must have an amazing stove.”

Good Resolution

2009-01-02T14:10:00.012+01:00

So, you’ve made all your New Year’s resolutions?

You’re going to lose weight? Get organised? Learn a new language? Save more money? Cut back on the beer?

Good luck!

A recent study showed that only 12% of people who made New Year’s resolutions actually kept them.

Here's a way to get up amongst that 12%. Make a photographic resolution. That should be easier to keep. Here are some ideas:

Try out a new technique. You could have a go at pinhole photography for example – World Pinhole Day is coming up on April 26th. Or you could try your hand at macro photography, painting with light, or silhouettes. Stretch your horizons.
Set yourself an assignment - capture the atmosphere of your town or village, make a photographic record of the insects in your garden, or build a portfolio of emotions.
Enter competitions. Not all require entry fees, and you might win enough to buy that new lens you’ve been coveting. Photocompete gives up-to-date details of many competitions. But, do be careful to read the rules. Don’t enter any competitions that take all rights to entries.
Find a new perspective. Photograph familiar objects from down low, or up high. Photograph reflections on water, without the original objects, and then turn them upside down for unusual abstracts.
Photograph local sporting events, the more off-beat the better.
Learn more about the history of photography. Find out where we’re coming from, and marvel at images taken on film, often with heavy, unwieldy equipment. My daughter gave me the autobiography of one of my photographic heros - Ansel Adams - for Christmas, and I’m looking forward to reading it. How about Julia Margaret Cameron? Dorothea Lange? Frank Hurley? Eric Hosking? Weegee? Know who they were?
Make a photo-sequence – for example, the same tree in the same field every month of the year – and stitch them together into one big image. Or try panoramic photography. It’s not as difficult as you think.
Abandon colour and try photographing in monochrome. You can get some wonderfully moody effects.
Buy my book (shameless plug), use it, and if you like it, recommend it to others. Review it on Amazon, even.
Carry a camera with you wherever you go. You never know when that extraordinary photographic opportunity might arise.

Snappy New Year!

(Hmmmm. Maybe I shouldn't say that. The last thing I want you to do is take 'snaps')

Amazing!

2008-12-29T23:00:00.007+01:00

Remember the sequence of photos showing a mourning swallow'?

The commentary with it gushed all sentimental about a bird crying out in grief at the death of its 'wife' (sic ... and sick) when any half-way competent ornithologist could tell you that, in fact, it showed exactly the opposite - a deadly territorial battle between two males.

Such interpretations annoy me because there are genuinely extraordinary things that happen with wild animals, events that don't need us imposing our human views on them.

Here's one - a truly remarkable collection taken in the wilds of Canada's Hudson Bay. The photographer, Norbert Rosing, said that when the polar bear appeared he was sure he was going to see the end of his huskies ...

Extraordinary! And moving. I have no doubt that these are genuine. In the first image the dogs are aggressive (flattened ears) and the bear is wary. But, by the 5th image the bear appears to be grooming the dog. And in the last one - unbelievably - it is in a submissive posture.

Just a couple of things puzzle me. It looks like there are two bears shown here. Note the difference in shape and colouring of the muzzle between the bears in the first and second images.

Also, all the images appear to have been taken on the ice pack except for number 3 which has lots of grass.

An incredible sequence. But let's not get too sentimental about it.

I'd guess it was a well-fed bear (or bears).

We need darkness.

2008-12-26T22:47:00.013+01:00

That may seem a strange thing to say in the depths of a Northern Hemisphere winter, just a few days after the shortest day of the year. It may seem even stranger, coming from a photographer. Photographers need light. Usually lots of it.

But I've been thinking about it these past few days.

I'm writing this from the depths of a valley in rural Wales. The valley is so deep that I cannot get a signal on my mobile phone unless I drive up the side and out. And at mid-day the sun can barely hoist itself above the treetops. At night, when I walk the dog, it seems to be pitch dark. But ...

Many years ago I was camping with my family in the depths of the Namib Desert. There was no other dwelling for hundreds of miles in any direction - probably no other people. Before crawling into my sleeping bag I lay on my back on the sand and gazed up at the sky. It was breathtaking. All around me, right down to the horizon, were billions of stars, swirling galaxies and constellations. Meteors streaked through the darkness. Planets wandered their own unique paths. There was even a comet. An infinity of other worlds. It was like some awesome presence surrounding me. It made me feel very humble and small.

When I look up into the night sky from this Welsh valley I can see many more stars than I can from home, but it's still nothing like the the Namib was. Lights from a farm on the hill, from a distant highway interchange, even the lights of Swansea town, 50 kilometres away, all spill up into the sky, ruining the view

There's almost nowhere we can go in Europe to see the true splendour of the night sky - just one place at the moment.

I'm glad my children have been in the Namib to see it properly because, if they'd grown up here, they would not know.

And it's something everyone should see. We need more darkness at night.

Star trails above Gland, Switzerland.
A long exposure taken over a period of more than 2½ hours ...
and the light pollution shows.