insights into photography
Over at Lighstalking they often come up with great posts that are really informative and useful, this one is providing information on resources available to people who are thinking about turning pro.
While photography can be a tough way for some to make a living, there are a lot of free resources for established professional photographers or those hoping to get into the game that are both great and free. The trick is to constantly work at improving your knowledge and your business and professional photography blogs are a great way to keep up to date with that. Here are a few of our personal favourites.
The photographers of Vientiane in Laos. They take your picture then huddle close to their computers and produce your print in minutes, well it is one way to make a living as a photographer ©Keith Barnes
Click Here: 5 Worthwhile Blogs on The Business of Professional Photography
OK this post has little to do with photography but if you have followed this blog for a while you will know that music; new, vibrant, unusual, creative music is a spur (another passion there, Spurs) to us over here at OSP Towers. Each year we get to photograph at Britain’s festival for new and often unsigned bands down on the south coast in Brighton at The Great Escape. This is like a pilgrimage to the unknown because you rarely have an idea what you are going to get but you know some of it will be good. Our interest in photography is often a mirror to that, we like the things that are maybe a bit challenging and unusual rather than obvious. We do get the delight in seeing beautiful images but unless there is a bit more we get bored ever so easily. No, Ansel Adams is not one of our favourite photographers, much in the same way that we can appreciate Coldplay but just don’t care about the results.
This is a huge diversion from the point of this post but that what passion does for you, gets you off on tangents.
We find the music that excites us on the music blogs that feature new bands and artists, we don’t mind much what genre of music it is but more often than not avoid anything that has ‘rock’ in the name (especially if it is preceded by the word classic) I have just heard about a new site called Music Robot that is an amalgamation of the very best music blogs in the country featuring new music. Seems to be in part organised by our most favourite source of new music The Recommender and brings together a number of bloggers who make recommendations of the best new tracks, the site is clean and easy to use and you can listen to the tracks on Music Robot or go to the originating blog for more info and detail. There is a chance to vote for your favourite tracks and this generates a sort of chart, not sure this is too important to me but some will really like it as it highlights the best, or at least most potentially successful tracks on the site.
This is what they say about themselves:
We are a new music discovery service. Consider us a fresh style of music website that shares the genes of a blog collective and an aggregated music chart.
The best-established music bloggers in the UK regularly uncover lots of fantastic new music on their respected websites, so we pull their selections onto Music Robot. We then ask the public to vote for the tracks that they’ve fallen in love with.
Those votes then boost that track up our chart, so if an artist gets a number one on Music Robot, you will know that not only do the best music bloggers love them, but the public agree.
We have hand-picked 15 of the raddest music blogs, all of which have been selected because of their influence and importance in the UK music blog community. Music Robot wants to put these hard working taste-makers front and centre on our site, alongside the awesome tuneage, because we believe they’re key commentators for emerging music.
Together we bring you Music Robot, the home of the new cutting edge.
If you like finding new music and are prepared to go beyond the dull outpourings of the main stream the Music Robot should be bookmarked in your smart phone, tablet and computer.
On a photographic note, as this is a photography blog, I usually find that new bands use imagery very well, the photography is often usual and stimulating, I suppose they want to stand out from the plethora of other bands and the images they use is just part of the game.
Here are some images from the current Music Robot site
Here is the weekly round up brought to us all by Toad Hollow via Lighstalking. Enjoy the ride.
Another wonderful week in the wide world of photography passes us by, and Toad Hollow Photography is there collecting a list of links of tutorials, great photography and interesting blogs to share with everyone. This comprehensive list contains links to truly incredible works by some truly gifted artists and photographers. We hope you enjoy viewing the images and blogs here as much as the Toad did in bringing them to you.
Check out the Toad’s latest acclaimed photoblog series “The Toad And The Lodge”, showcasing a series of images captured of a long term care facility that lies abandoned for over 17 years now. This 5 part series discusses the history of the location as well as drawing on metaphors for the meaning of life. Pt 1: Tillicum Lodge: A Lost Facility | Pt 2: The Silence Is Deafening | Pt 3: The Overgrown Courtyard | Pt 4: Field Of Whispers | Pt 5: Echoes Of Our Elders. The Toad also maintains a large gallery of images on their Architecture and Landscape Photography website.
Here is a sample of this week’s links for the full set go HERE
TUTORIALS
Project in development: Inexpensive way to shoot expensive jewelry – Alex Koloskov is one of my favorite photographers, not only is he one of the leading photographers of our generation, he also selflessly continues to give back to the photography community through his blog posts. This post is a great example of this; here Alex shows us how to achieve GREAT results in the genre of product photography using relatively inexpensive and easy to use photographic components. If you’re interested in emulating fabulous lighting for your imagery then you just simply must see this article.
Quick Tip: Duplicating a Project – sometimes a brief article with tips and tricks can be just as helpful as a full on 1,000 page tutorial. This blog post is a great example of this.
Quick Photo Tip: Turn Your Photo Upside Down – another fabulous article by Joe Baraban gets the photographer thinking differently about the photography they produce. This is a great exercise, guaranteed to get everyone looking at their compositions with a different perspective.
Portrait Editing In Photoshop-part 2 of a series – a great piece that shares some awesome insights, tips and tricks into performing portrait editing in Photoshop. Complete with a sample image, this tutorial will definitely get the creative juices flowing in terms of using this tool for your post-processing needs.
Composing Better Backgrounds in Photography – a great tutorial that gives the reader some great tips on how to compose a shot with a great background. This short and easy-to-read article delivers some great ideas on how to come home with the perfect shot, well worth the time to visit and read.
Red White and Blue Shoe – this post and image belongs in two categories for this weeks list, here in the Tutorials section and in the Great Photography section below. Ultimately, the great tips and tricks on studio lighting won over, and we placed it here. Erik and Kathleen Kerstenbeck capture a truly unique shot and discuss the intricacies of the lighting employed to achieve this look, producing a post that is guaranteed to delight in terms of great photography, but also shares some great tips and tricks on this particular style of photography.
Photo Composition Technique – The Feinberg Rule – I have a voracious appetite for learning about compositional and lighting techniques and this article delivered something absolutely new to me. This brief tutorial discusses The Feinberg Rule and supplies an example image to use to visualize how to apply it. This is an exciting technique that I have never heard of myself, and am very much looking forward to trying it out in our practice. Check it out yourself!
GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY
Girls School L – Into the Light | Abandoned Girls School L | Corridor | The Conservatory | The Grand Staircase | Staircase Detail | The Upper Rooms | The Pool Party – what a completely fabulous series posted here by one of our generations leading UrBex photographers, Chris Maskell. This fabulous bit of heritage architecture that once was a girls school now lies in near ruin. Chris carefully and purposely composes a stunning series and provides some background history on the location to provide extra depth. No matter what your taste in art, this series is guaranteed to delight and amaze everyone who pops by for a visit.
Learning to See (Part 8) – profound, touching, emotional and accented with some of the best photography the world has ever seen, this post from Tom Dinning takes us deep into ourselves and answers some questions about why we pursue this craft. Guaranteed to inspire you to push further and harder, this wonderful post will leave you with as many questions remaining as answered. This is a must-see post for this weeks list!
Tom Dinning is a bit special, his blog is always interesting, he is not big on equipment but is huge on ideas. His photography is a way of talking to you, sometimes his posts are specific and sometimes, as with this, telling a story.
Many people struggle to know what to photograph, if you need a prod or poke to get you going then telling a story is a good start. Just going out with a camera and hoping a story will happen is a bit unrealistic. You have to think about your story before, maybe make notes of the areas you will need to photograph to convey your ideas and purpose. A story can be as simple as how to do something, I blogged about one photographer who made a picture essay on wine making, if you missed it have a look here.
Tom Dinning has taken a different approach he has remembered when he was 6 and how it felt to be taken to the city (Sydney) by his father and has photographed how it left a lasting impression. Always the success of Tom’s work is the way he makes it personal his pictures and essays are generally about his response and for that reason always enchanting and up close. Do have a look at this post on Tom’s blog site and make something personal of your own.
“Today I am six years old again. I am dressed in my best Sunday attire. Shoes polished, hair slicked back in the style of my father who guides me through the stations as we approach the city. ‘Three more stops,’ he assures me. I’m in no hurry. This journey will last all day and into the rest of my life.” …….more here
“People stand on street corners like they always did.”…..
“Back then there was little of the shine and gloss of a modern city. It was brass and sandstone, tiled walls and awnings that sheltered us from the Sun in the summer or the winter rain.”….
Last time out it was only 29 articles that Toad Hollow recommended so when they say “The internet has been very active this week in terms of photography, and Toad Hollow Photography has been searching to find the best links to sites with great tutorials, blogs and just incredible photography to share with everyone. We hope you enjoy this week’s list.” they do mean busy….more of the article and links here By Toad Hollow Photography
Mojave Green in the Black Rock Desert by jurvetson, on Flickr
This is a fascinating article from The BJP giving a view as to the best photoblogs, author, Jörg Colberg, acknowledges that there are many different forms of photoblogs. Some are big on equipment, some are just the musings of photographers who have an idea that seo (search engine optimisation) requires them to blather on about the most recent wedding they shot, and some are full of tutorials.
Here at OSofP we try to bring a aggregation of the interesting things we find from all areas of photoblogging on the web. It is an extention of the time when as a darkroom hire centre, some 20 years ago now, photographers would sit around drinking coffee, waiting for films to dry and talk about interesting things they had seen and heard. Anyone who ever spent time at The Photographers Workshop in St Mary’s Road, Oxford will know exactly what I mean when I mention one name, Paddy Summerfield.
So this is what Jörg Colberg has to say “Photography blogging is a relatively new phenomenon with a history of about 10 years. But it is old enough to have already spawned debates about whether blogging is dead and, although those kinds of conversations – which are usually reserved for jazz or photojournalism – can be quite tedious, in the case of blogging, they have a point. What we think of as “the photoblog” has undergone some changes over the course of these past 10 years. I should clarify that I am talking about contemporary photography from a fine-art point of view. There are also numerous blogs about camera equipment, but I want to focus on what I know best.” Photoblogs came of age in 2006, when bloggers started looking at other people’s images as well as their own. Joerg Colberg, the man behind the influential Conscientious blog, profiles 10 of his top recommendations..…more
This one won the Life Magazine 2011 Photo Blog Award and very nice it is too
The ever dependable blogger The Recommender, (new music) sent me a link to this site which is a collection of portraits of bloggers.
“Photographer Gabriela Herman has put together a portrait collection of bloggers which puts a glowing face to the words and images that they produce and share” Someone should do the same for bloggers in the UK. What makes her pictures so interesting is the continuity of style, images on her website are well worth checking out especially if you are into a slightly alternative view, and following on from the post about Cindy Sherman, Gabriela also has a series of self-portraits, maybe someone in the UK should do the same…. Do go and look at her pictures.
A combination of Light Stalking and someone we pointed you to a couple of weeks ago have combined to provide this really useful tutorial on using Flickr to upload images to your various photographic sites.
This is a guest tutorial from Light Stalking community member and professional photographer and teacher, Tom Dinning. Check out Tom’s photography website and his blog for some great photos and tutorials.
Uploading your images to Light Stalking or many other photographic communities is a simple process. This short tutorial will take you from the beginning.
Read more: How to use Flickr to Post your Images to Photographic Communities | Light Stalking
Oxford School of Photography 