Photographing the Great Depression, then and now – Dorothea Lange

Jonathan Jones writing in the Guardian makes valid and pertinent points using Lange’s image as a start to assess the current world financial crisis.

“Dorothea Lange‘s stark portraits of poverty-stricken Americans in the 1930s seem terrifyingly contemporary…………When Lange took her photograph, times were terrible. But there were powerful voices of optimism and rationality, from Roosevelt to John Maynard Keynes, and these voices would win through in the end. In 2011 American politics seems headed in the opposite direction to the forward-looking road it took in the 1930s, while everywhere primitive gloom is in the ascendant. In this sense the situation does not resemble the 1930s. It is potentially far worse.”

Read the whole article here

Florence Owens Thompson, a migrant worker and mother of seven children. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Getty Images

7 Deadly Mistakes You Might Be Making On Your Photography Website

Digital Photography School brings you this advice

“Google tells us that there are almost one million photography websites on the web right now. This is bad news for you. The good news is that most of these websites suck. Photographers keep making the same mistakes over and over again, never getting the best out of their websites.

This post will show you what are these deadly mistakes and how you can fix them in order to get ahead of your competition.”

Read more: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/7-deadly-mistakes-you-might-be-making-on-your-photography-website#ixzz1Y9igpGa5

Here’s mine

35 Stunning Hi-Res “Public Domain” Astronomy Images

 

I have no idea how they photograph planets but they are quite beautiful there are many more here Do you know your Orion Nebula from your Mars?

What You Need to Know About Shooting Stock Photography

This is a very useful article if you are thinking of getting involved with shooting for stock photography from Lightstalking and By Mike Panic

“The Wikipedia entry for stock photography describes it as, the supply of photographs licensed for specific uses. It is used to fulfill the needs of creative assignments instead of hiring a photographer. Dropping prices in high quality DLSR cameras and increasing speeds and bandwidth for the Internet, stock photography has become a second stream of income for thousands of photographers.

At one point, shooting stock photography was a private club that only let certain new people in, and much of the inner-workings remained guarded under a veil of secrecy.  The general concept and approach to shooting stock hasn’t changed, but the availability for anyone to contribute and sell is.  Here’s what you need to know if you’re interested in shooting stock.”

Click Here: What You Need to Know About Shooting Stock Photography

Photo by D’Arcy Norman

A view on the Steve McCurry Exhibition currently in London

Hugh Fane, a regular course attendee at OSP and friend has been to see the Steve McCurry exhibition, if you missed our previous post about this must see exhibition  here is a link

This is a brief opinion and , giving a good reason for going to see the show

“Just a quick email to say I went to the Steve McCurry exhibition at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs and it was really interesting to see his images enlarged and in a gallery environment. His singular use of colour is much more evident and striking when you see the images in print form rather than in a book or on screen. Sadly I didn’t have a spare £5700 for the “Afghan girl” although I think he has taken more powerful photographs than that one.” Thanks Hugh

What Everybody Ought to Know About Posing for Portraits

Portraiture is a very popular area of photography, assuming you have family or friends… you probably like taking pictures of them, you get something and so do they. There are many technical issues to consider but the thing that causes most photographers problems is how to help their subjects pose.

We spend a whole session on this in our Portrait course, the next starts on 5th October if you are in Oxford and would like to be a better photographer. If you don’t live near Oxford you may find this post by Darren Rowse on his Digital Photo Schoolblog very useful. He has gathered together a  number of tips from around the web that will help you to pose your subjects better. The 9 different tips include subject areas like hands, power posing?, thighs, bums and other bits…Here is a link to Darren’s post