Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: auto focus, auto focus points, Depth of Field, Focusing, photography
Focus and recompose is a frequently used technique by many photographers. It is often used when you want to compose their subject in an area of the frame that doesn’t have an autofocus point nearby. On many cameras which have just a few focus points, focus and recompose is sometimes the only strategy that you will have at your disposal. When shooting in bright light with small apertures, this strategy can work just fine. However, when you shoot with wide apertures, focus and recompose can lead to poor results, even failure.
This is from a blog post by James Duncan Davidson.
Filed under: Photography Links, photography | Tags: Grand Prix, photography, Singapore Grand Prix
because I don’t find it appealing, I wouldn’t want to do it; its the hours and the pressure possibly having something to do with it. Saying that, I love looking at the images other photographers create. Like from this article about the Singapore Grand Prix. It is the first night Grand Prix in the world. Again just like with the images from the Olympics, you have to check out the Tilt and Shift images.
Filed under: Jonathan's Photography, Waffles, photography | Tags: Abertawe, City, fence, Swansea
I find something really interesting about this image. Swansea are putting up street signs in the city (part of their regeneration plans) but for the moment they have to put up temporary fencing to protect the wet concrete from the village idiots. I saw the sign posts fenced off and decided to make a picture with the elements behind it and deliberately have some people in there as well walking in the direction of the arrow pointing backwards. But I’ve managed to crop nearly every important element with being so close to the fence, the people are contained in between the spaces in the fence as well.
I lit the fence with some flash. I’m making a statement about Swansea but I’m not sure why I felt the need too. Or if I am successful.
Filed under: Opinion, Waffles, photography | Tags: CCTV, children, ethics, journalism, law, Pedophilia, photograph, photography, police, public, rules, space, UK, United Kingdom, unlawful
This is related to my previous post about photographing in public places. Today I went into the city centre and took some research pictures for a project I’m beginning about technology. I must have been shooting for an hour and 3 city rangers were walking in my direction. Initially I thought somebody had called them because of their irrationally placed sense of fear with the mighty DSLR. Which isn’t helped with the direction the government takes when it comes to photography in public places or with TV/newspaper reports.
I was pleasantly surprised when all they did was say hello as they walked past. This is a big difference to when I was first stopped in the city around 3 months ago and told I needed a permit from the council to photograph in a public place and that I needed people’s permission to take a picture of them! This is a lie btw.
But then you read things like this in other cities:
http://www.epuk.org/News/818/police-officer-forced-photographer-to-delete-images
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/photography_law/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/23/police_photographer_stops/
To be fair though, it can work both ways. I don’t care if plod have an image of me, they have tons already on CCTV.
For the most part I just hope public servants simply haven’t been reading up on the law and are ill-informed when it comes to photography in public. It was a little unsettling for me to simply take pictures today. I was wondering when somebody was going to stop me, question me or ask me what I’m doing (besides the obvious). But in the end I did actually get stopped twice, but by other photographers!
Yet with all the things happening in society, photography is one of the current evils, its a sad state of affairs and something I would like to help turn around. Something which I can only hope to do by continually taking pictures and having more days like today. The wrong thing for me and other photographers to do is stay at home.
Can you see the danger?
There are even children in this image and the Rangers are behind me at this point. I make the point about children because they are in fact not given any protection different from adults in a public space, though with the way the news bangs on about pedophiles you would think otherwise. Of course any decent photographer would stop taking pictures and respect parents wishes if they ask you not too.
NOTE: I do actually get asked *every* week if I am a Pedophile (sad state of affairs to link photography now with sexual deviance) with another project I shoot in the city centre concerning youth culture. I’m only a 27 years old! I’ll be talking more about this project in a later blog entry.
Filed under: Waffles | Tags: Adobe, Firewire, Hard drive failure, LightRoom, Macbook
So my new laptop hard drive decided to die on me in the last 5 minutes of watching the Thomas Crown Affair. The Pierce Brosnan version from iTunes movie of the week (99p). Currently I’m running my MacBook off a firewire cable to my external drive like its an umbilical cord, kinda neat I can do this with Firewire but it also acts like a ball and chain around the laptop. The external drive is mains powered, being a 3.5 inch desktop size hard drive, so I’m not taking this anywhere for a while.
So until the new laptop drive gets here (tomorrow now) I don’t fancy installing a lot of software when I have to wipe the drive anyway. I’ve only installed the apps I’ve needed, Camino, Skype, etc, etc. It hasn’t been too bad until I shot on the Saturday and today and only in raw! I can’t do any edits until the drive gets here. On top of that I have tried to reinstall Lightroom at least just so I can convert my ORF files to DNG. No dice, Lightroom will install but will not load up the the palette screens or allow me to import files. I get a ‘failure to load module’ type error which I haven’t seen anybody been able to rectify while on my travels in forums looking for a solution.
Anyway if somebody can help me with that, it would be great, drop me a comment or something. There isn’t a need to register here btw.
Filed under: Opinion, Photography Links, photography | Tags: filming, photography, police, powers, public, section 44, section 60
The issue of photographing in public keeps cropping up each day and big media only ever try to sensationalize stories, never taking a responsibility to actually inform readers. They never bother to provide a ‘know your rights’ bit that would easily clear up the situation for the general public (I’ve never seen it in the UK anyway).
I came across this site that has links to the laws regarding the act of filming in public. If you didn’t know them then this is a good time to learn them. There is plenty of misinformation coming from officials if they stop you*, if you’re armed with the knowledge, they haven’t got a leg to stand on nor be likely to stop anybody again as it will make them think twice. Just because they don’t like it, doesn’t mean its illegal.
For the UK, section 44 and section 60 are relevant.
There is this video as well showing if you are informed, the police or the security guards can’t do anything. But in any case, please show respect if you are in such a situation.
* It was said to me that I needed to get *every-bodies* permission if I take a photograph in a public place (think of the logistics involved!). This was after the City official tried to tell me I needed to get a permit to photograph in a public space first.
Filed under: Opinion, Photography Links, photography | Tags: Lightstalkers, photography, photojournalism, Slow News Day
Jon Anderson writes:
This is the problem with current methods of telling and distributing our journalistic stories. Our methods are disjunctive, piecemeal, choppy, reductive, and formally inconsequential. We furnish bites and bulletins rather than stories with sufficient body to make it worth our readers’ while to stop and absorb their meaning. We fail to provide meaningful, comprehensive and inventive structure capable of contextualizing the violence and the heartbreak in a way that redeems that content and makes it compelling, rather than just another journalistic cliché – just another skeletal child with flies in its eyes – that either repels or bores the viewer. If we take care to create narratives as compelling as those we flock to see at the cinema, then I see no reason why we cannot count in the future on people to solicit our material, download it, and pay us for it.
From Lightstalkers. I entirely agree with everything he says and as a photography student about to enter the world it lays down the coming change, something all photographers will come across soon enough, especially during a time when the economy is slowing down. I don’t want to go back to Tesco after I graduate, I want to ‘do’ photography and earn my living. Something I noted is that communications are speeding up, not slowing down. Who will make the time to digest (buy) such stories if this happens? The question remains how do I and other photographers get there.
