Photocritic photography blog

This article discusses the what’s, how’s and why’s of running a photography blog.

You’re a photographer, you’ve got a camera - probably one of those flashy SLR jobbies - and you have a harem of groupies who follow you wherever you go, and you make a quarter of a million quid out of a moderately sized photo shoot. Yeah, baby, that’s what it feels like when you’re a shit-hot ‘tog. Or so I’ve been led to believe.

In reality - and especially now that digital SLRs have become relatively affordable - the vast bulk of people reading this blog will be amateur photographers. Really good amateurs - hell, fanatic amateurs, even. Read the rest of the article »

Back in April, I did a Top 15 entry-level camera round-up, and it’s one of those posts where the comments stayed relatively calm, but I got tonnes of e-mail afterwards, with suggestions, comments etc. I was surprised at the level of passion people had about that one single article, but it got me thinking: I love trying to come up with interesting ways of doing photography, but what if people really want some buying advice? I discovered long ago that this particular blog isn’t really the place, but still… I figured I could do better than a top 15…

So I decided to launch a new website to help you out.
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“Photography has to be enjoyed by looking at pictures”, my arts teacher used to say, back when I still listened to teachers. I agree with the man, but I’m also a geek, and I love understanding things. I’m the kind of guy who enjoys knowing why the engine makes more noise and the car goes faster when I press the fast pedal on a car. I like to understand how a satellite works, and why it can make movies appear on my TV. And I love to understand how a photograph works.

There’s been a lot of books written about photography throughout the years (I had a stab at it myself…), but to be perfectly honest with you, a lot of them are complete and utter rubbish. Read the rest of the article »

Hey guys,

Sorry about more of the geekery, but basically, I’ve spent the past 48 hours trying to make Photocritic better. Part of that was getting shy of my (ludicrously expensive) colo-server, and getting myself on a virtual server instead. One of the geeks I work with (thanks Stuart!) pointed me at SliceHost, and I’m an absolute convert.

I’ve had a couple of problems with getting Photocritic moved over properly (mostly due to the fact that I’ve never set up Apache myself before, so I’m stretched well beyond my usual geekdom), but I think most things should be working properly now.

If you do stumble across anythign that ain’t working as expected, please post a comment with a desctiption, and I’ll look into it.

Finally, don’t worry, I’m about to launch into a series of wicked articles - they is gunz beez awsum, as te lolcats posse would have said :)

Anyway, Slicehost come with the warmest recommendations, and now I’m going to try and move some of my other sites across. Wish me luck :o

- Haje

Those of you who know me know that I’m never more than a metre away from my iPhone - it has its flaws (as I’ve written about on my personal home page before), but nonetheless, it’s a class piece of kit - and the iPhone 3G is going to make it better still - for photographers, too. Read the rest of the article »

Lack of updates

Sorry about the lack of updates recently, I’ve been mad busy with my day-job recently (excitingly, we just launched our version of BBC’s iPlayer, known as Demand Five, yesterday), and I’ve got an exciting extension to Photocritic which is coming up soon, so I’ve mostly been doing behind-the-scenes work.

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So you’ve finally graduated from taking photos with a compact, and have your grubby little paws on a fantastic digital single-lens reflex. All good and well, but why don’t your pictures come out as fantastic as some of the ones you see on Flickr? Surely, they’re using the same camera as you - where are you going wrong?

That was essentially what Pieter asked me about this week. So, without further ado, 8 ways to make your photos jump off the screen. Read the rest of the article »

Tripods are cheap as chips nowadays, but the cheaper ones have a few flaws. Most importantly, they are too light, and too unstable. So what do you do when you are working on macro stuff, and your tripod won’t stop vibrating, or the high winds are trying to disturb your photographic peace? Read the rest of the article »

There’s web galleries, there’s your mum’s photo printer, and then there is this…

One of the most beautiful ways of presenting photographs has to be getting your photos transferred onto canvas. The cool thing is that you can get quite creative what you do on a canvas - just ask Rembrandt & co!

There are a lot of companies out there who are offering the service these days, but I recently stumbled across one that stands out from the crowd with its snazzy Web 2.0 interface and its glorious prints. Read the rest of the article »

Combine a good old-fashioned team-based treasure hunt with a photography competition, and you’ve got a recipe for success, right?

Well, that’s what I thought too, when I signed up to attend Shoot London, an event based out of the Tate gallery, organised by Shoot Experience, a company who organises these kind of events for public and corporate events.

Sadly, it turns out that I’ll probably give future Shoot Experience events a miss - to find out why, I spoke to another participant of the event… Read the rest of the article »