Photocritic photography blog

Imagine, for a second, that you are a young person with a camera. There are other cameras in the world around you, and there are people who use those cameras, too, but nobody really knows what they are doing, nobody can teach you anything you don’t already know, and the only tool you have in the world is the internet. All hope is lost … Or is it?

I was recently speaking to Elisa Longhitano, who found herself in the same situation. As she was telling me about how she was teaching herself photography, I found myself smiling, and wishing I had access to the internet back when I was learning. Either way, Elisa’s story is a lovely reminder of the fact that all you need to do to learn the dark (well, technically, the perfectly gradient) art of photography, is to be curious, and just that little bit inventive… Read the rest of the article »

It’s that time of year, and all that, so I thought I’d put together something of a christmas list: What can you get your photography-addicted buddy for the holiday season?

But first, let’s help the readers of this post with a poll. Here’s your chance to tell people what you’d really like!

n

Read the rest of the article »

There are dozens of ways of presenting your photographs, but ultimately, we all want to distribute our photos in as classy a way as possible. Moo is an unusual printing company that might just be able to help.

It’s very easy to explain what Moo is - it’s web 2.0 meets photography meets printing. What isn’t as easy to explain, however, is why people go completely bonkers about Moo’s products. It helps that it’s great quality at bargain-basement prices, of course, but there’s also other things at play - a little something that the Big Brother generation would call the X Factor… Read the rest of the article »

If you’re anything like me, you at some point discovered a button alowing you to take panorama pictures. Perhaps you try it once or twice, and then you think ‘well, that was fun, now what?’ and promptly forget about it. You did, didn’t you? I knew it.

Finally, there’s a solution… Read the rest of the article »

Okay, so don’t throw it away, that’d be a pointless waste, really. But you could consider throwing it around a little, and let gravity, inertia and other physics help you with your abstract photography.

The idea is to trip the shutter and then lob your camera through the air. The first couple of times you’ll have adrenaline coming out of your ears, but then the endorfines kick in as you realise what sort of results you are getting.

It all sounds rather dangerous, doesn’t it, but don’t worry too much, there’s a Flickr Pool of camera toss photos that contains over 2,000 photos, and rather few reports of smashed cameras. Read the rest of the article »

I seem to be months behind on this item of “news”. I actually spotted it a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t think it was that interesting. It seems as if people didn’t agree, as the topic is getting some serious discussion. Basically - a picture of a photographer in the middle of a marathon race is pissing off a lot of people.

On one hand, I can kind of see what is going on here. As Robert Capa said: “If the picture isn’t good enough, you’re not close enough”, and getting in the middle of a race is one way to get closer, I suppose… Read the rest of the article »

There are quite a few photos on Flicr tagged with pringlesmacro now - in other words, photos done with our DIY macro-lens built out of a Pringles clan.

If you don’t use Flickr, you totally should. And if you do, why not tag your Pringles Macro photos so it gets added to that same gallery?