35mm
Posted: Mon 8 August, 2005 Filed under: News, Photography, Thoughts 1 Comment »I’m going to be slightly hypocritical on this, as I don’t use a 35mm camera myself, but I do think it’s pretty sad that Dixons has announced it is to stop stocking 35mm cameras once their current supplies run out. A lot of new photographers go straight to digital cameras now (I know, because that’s what I did) but that doesn’t mean there’s not still a large demand for 35mm cameras.
Many camera companies are having trouble at the moment with continuing to manufacture their 35mm range, and are all heading towards making only digital cameras. Maybe this is progress, the gradual removal of a film standard in favour of digital. Maybe it’ll just make 35mm cameras a more “professional” choice – but I know I’d hate to see them die out altogether.
Competitive
Posted: Sat 30 July, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 1 Comment »Part of my Resolutions this year was to start working harder on my photography stuff, and to both enter more competitions and build up my portfolio. All of these things are now happening, slowly but surely.
Currently, though, I find entering competitions to be quite a demoralising experience. Last month I sent off one I’m particularly pleased with (and, in fact, that we’ve had printed up and framed for the house) of The Hound, taken when we were in Somerset earlier this year. I sent it in to Amateur Photographer‘s “Amateur Photographer of the Year” competition as part of their “Pets” category, and – I can’t deny – I was optimistic. Technically it’s pretty much spot-on, except for the fact it can be a victim of the “it’s not an SLR” snobbery occasionally evidenced in AP, because I took it with my Fuji S5000. But there’s been no alteration to the image at all – no curves adjustment, or white-balance alterations. Not even a crop to make the photo better – that’s how I took it, and as such, yes, I’m bloody pleased with it.
The results were published from the Pets round this week, and of course it came nowhere in the top 30, which is all that’s published in the magazine. And while I can see why some of the images won, there are others that I simply don’t rate at all, and wonder how they were class as winners.
Photography is a horrendously subjective discipline at the best of times, and I suspect that there are hundreds (if not thousands) of entries in each round. I don’t want this to sound like sour grapes, because it isn’t – I’m not going to throw my toys out of the pram screaming “It’s not fair!”. I just wanted to write out some thoughts about the entire thing. I’m not going to stop submitting photos I’m proud of – in fact, there’s two more competitions that I’ll be entering this weekend – and I’m not going to stop working on building a portfolio.
But yes, sometimes I do find it demoralising, sending off stuff I’m pleased with or proud of, only to see it fail to even be rated. Maybe I’ll learn to harden myself a bit to this sort of thing, I don’t know. For now, well, we’ll see.
Chromasia
Posted: Wed 20 July, 2005 Filed under: Photography Leave a comment »I’ve written about Chromasia‘s photos a couple of times recently, as he’s becoming a fairly major influence on how I want to go with photography etc. As such, I’m really pleased to see his photos and thoughts featured in a BBC piece today on Photoblogging. Congratulations!
And the same goes to Sam at Daily Dose of Imagery, also featured in the piece.
Photo category
Posted: Mon 18 July, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions, Thoughts 1 Comment »While I’m stumbling around thinking about how to write a CMS for a photoblog (yes, I think that’s the way I’m going to go with it – having looked at a couple of photoblog templates, they’ve annoyed the shite out of me very quickly for not doing stuff the way I want – oh good, more coding work) I’ve changed around my blogroll a bit.
There’s now a new category, simply named “photography” for the photographic sites I look at regularly, such as Chromasia, DDOI and so on. I just want to keep the two sections seperate for a while, and see how I do with it.
I’ve got a lot of photo stuff coming up – for our Anniversary thing, Herself bought me a portfolio (I’ve been saying about doing one all this year, and hadn’t got round to it just yet) so I’m also going to be working on building that up in order to whore out sell some of my stuff, with any luck. It’ll be interesting to see who says what when I get round to touting it about a bit.
All of which makes this kind of thing a lot more interesting, of course…
Arse’oles
Posted: Fri 15 July, 2005 Filed under: Customer Services, Music, Photography, Sweary, Thoughts 7 Comments »Dear Brixton Academy,
You utter, utter bunch of cunts. I arrived at the venue last night to see Nine Inch Nails, which I’d been looking forward to since the tickets went on sale. When I got to the door, the security jobsworth motherfucker person searched me and my bag, and refused me access.
My sin? To be carrying a camera. To whit, a digital camera. Now, I realise that the ticket says “no professional cameras”, which is fair enough. And mine, while nice, is most definitely not a professional camera. But no, it turns out that – according to Brixton Academy – “professional” is the same as “digital”. If you’ve got a digital camera, you’re not coming in. If you’ve got a 35mm camera, you’re not coming in. Non-professional cameras would be non-digital, non-zoom, “use once” cameras. And that’s about it. Fucking hell, my bastard phone is listed as a professional camera under your classifications.
Oh, I did get told “you can leave it with us, and collect it at the end of the show“, but that comes listed under the “Yeah, right, pull the other one it’s got fucking bells on” scheme of things.
So, all told, that’s £40 up the swanny. I don’t know if the “no digital cameras” is the policy of the venue or the band, or if it’s just that you have utter fuckwit bastard cunts for doormen. Quite honestly I’ve no intention of finding out. Because I won’t be going back to Brixton Academy again.
You cunts.
Sincerely.
Lyle.
UPDATED : What really rankles is then seeing other people’s photos from the gig.
Photobloggery
Posted: Thu 14 July, 2005 Filed under: Photography 5 Comments »(Note : I’m going to I did leave this at the top of the page for a few days. There’s new stuff underneath, just scroll down a bit…)
I’m thinking about setting up a seperate blog (potentially held under a different site name) purely for photos. I like the design and ideas behind Chromasia, but I know he runs that on MT, which is a bag of worms I really don’t want to get into.
So, what I wonder is this : does anyone run a pure photoblog under WordPress? Or is it going to be easier for me to write some stuff myself in order to do it how I want? Or even just use a different CMS entirely? (I’m currently slightly edging towards the latter, if only because I’m a sad sod, and don’t have a problem with learning yet another piece of software)
Party Photo
Posted: Tue 12 July, 2005 Filed under: Photography 1 Comment »Knew I’d forgotten something – and that was sorting out some of the photos from the party we went to in Norfolk a few weeks back. This one is my favourite, and seems to just sum up how it all went!
