Jane's Photography Blog

PhotoCamp Leeds {2008}

2008-07-21T21:17:00.003Z

PhotoCamp is happening in Leeds on September 6th 2008 and is an unconference based on the barcamp principle.

PhotoCamp Leeds will be the UK’s Europe’s first ‘unconference‘ dedicated to photography and imagemaking.

What a great idea. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend because:

I'll be on holiday
If I wasn't on holiday I'd be at barcamp Brighton 3
There aren't any tickets left - only standby places

I wish the organisers the best of luck, and the attendees a great time. Please make it a success so that more of them happen!

TED Talk: "Rick Smolan: A girl, a photograph, a homecoming"

2008-07-11T08:29:00.002Z

I just finished watching an amazing TED Talk by Rick Smolan about "A girl, A photography, a homecoming". This talk is described as

Photographer Rick Smolan tells the unforgettable story of a young Amerasian girl, a fateful photograph, and an adoption saga with a twist.

and it is quite simply beautiful. Beautiful photos, a beautiful story.

Home Secretary green lights restrictions on photography

2008-07-09T06:38:00.002Z

A British Journal of Photography article states that:

Local restrictions on photography in public places are legitimate the Home Secretary has stated in a letter to the National Union of Journalists.

It continues to say that there are no legal restrictions, but that local Chief Constables were allowed to restrict or monitor photographers in 'reasonable" circumstances. It also quotes from a letter sent from the home secretary that :

The home office does not provide any guidance on photography in public places

To my mind this is far, far worse than having documented legal restrictions. This means that every time I take my camera out to any public place I am at the mercy of these unpublished "local restrictions" and the level of force that these "local restrictions" are governed by.

(Spotted via Andy's tweet)

Team Madgex photographer

2008-07-06T12:48:00.001Z

My position as Madgex Photographer came into play again yesterday when I fired off a load of shots of Team Madgex during a mountain bike race, The Long Good Saturday. The race was held at Stanmer Park, here in Brighton, and was an 8 hour endurance race. We had 3 teams entered, one pair, one mixed team of 4 and one all male team of 4. They chose to raise money for local charity StreetSmart and can still be sponsored.

I arrived at about 11.30 (the riders had been there since 10), giving me half an hour before the race to get some team shots, and pre-start shots. When the race started I headed off with the team videographer, and videographer's assistant to find some places along the route to shoot. Unfortunately for me, that meant being in dense woodland with little or no ambient light. The photos from this section aren't great, but do at least capture our guys in action.

We then headed back down to the start/finish area and spent more time with the team preparing for their changeovers, and recovering after their laps. The teams all worked well, and hard, and there was always someone at the changeover point with the riders swapping over which I think showed great support - admittedly I was also there pointing a camera in people's faces, but hey, they should all be used to that by now :-)

I headed off home at 5.30, leaving them with another 2 and a half hours to survive, but I'd ran out of space on my cards, and also knew that I had 450+ photos to process before Monday to ensure that they could see them first thing. The results for the race are available thanks to TimeLaps and I think that the 3 teams making up Team Madgex did a great job. Well done guys!

More on photography laws

2008-06-24T19:19:00.004Z

Richard sent me a link to a The Register article entitled So, what can you photograph? which relates to the laws surrounding what can, and cannot, be photographed in the UK.

Amongst other facts it says:

As of last week, the government has forbidden couples getting married in registry offices from having their photograph taken as they sign the wedding register.

This was news to me (although Richard has just reminded me that he was asked not to video the registry signing at a recent wedding), but a quick google later and an article Govt bans wedding registry pics shows up, sourcing The Mail, and says

New Government guidelines say photographs of couples signing the register could invade the privacy of others because their signatures may be visible on the same page

and

There are further concerns that details taken from the wedding snaps could be used by fraudsters planning identity theft and that the photos could be in breach of Crown Copyright.

The original Mail article also says

But it seems that the ruling does not affect traditional church weddings. Church of England spokesman Steve Jenkins said: "The focus is always the couple, not the book. It would be obvious if someone started zooming and shooting the book instead.
"I'm not aware of anybody being prevented from taking a photo the couple have requested because of data protection at a church wedding."

which just seems to complicate the matter.

Flickr: Most Interesting

2008-06-14T10:12:00.004Z

When reading the flickr blog earlier I spotted a beautiful penguin photo, amongst a post about tomorrow (Sunday 15th June) being Nature Photography Day, and being a penguin fan I took a closer look.

adelie penguin antarctica
Originally uploaded by *christopher*

Among the sets that the photo belonged to was Most Interesting (automatic) which mentions that is automatically created by dopiaza's Flickr Set Manager. So, I took a look at the set generator, and created my own Most Interesting set. I've set it to show my 24 most interesting photos, and to refresh once a day.

Based on this set, my current most interesting photograph is this one:

Powder Mountain, Utah
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

I'm quite surprised by how diverese the photos in this set are and it is quite fun to notice that, at least today, 6 of them are Stick figures in Peril

UK Photographer's Rights

2008-06-05T18:06:00.005Z

Thanks to Pete I've now got a print out of The UK Photographers Rights Guide PDF in my camera bag. It

is intended to provide a short UK guide to the main legal restrictions on the right to take photographs and the right to publish photographs that have been taken.

Madgex Promotion Cards

2008-05-27T19:20:00.004Z

Madgex Promotion Cards
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

Another set of my photos used for Madgex promotional materials. This time for careers cards, and more sales oriented cards.

It's a really nice feeling to know that my photography is helping to promote the company.

More examples of my photos in the wild.

Lensbaby

2008-05-19T21:20:00.001Z

Lots of packaging for a small lens
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

I bought a lensbaby last week, and it arrived in a ridiculous amount of packaging.

I'd heard of them quite a while ago, and then spotted this videocast and so decided to buy one.

My first attempts are these:

I'm sure I'll be adding more to my
lensbaby set over the next few weeks.

A piece of Aral

2008-05-06T13:41:00.001Z

Phantom Aral
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

Aral emailed me a while ago to ask for a larger version of this photo. I sent it through to him and he briefly explained what he had planned.

He's just blogged about it. He has split the photo into 100 moo card shaped images, and has produced a moo card mosaic. So, if you meet Aral in the near future, you might get a bit of his face on a moo card.

Lightroom for Digital Photographers - RAW images

2008-05-02T07:32:00.004Z

The Lightroom for Digital Photographers videocast covered an interesting and illustrative topic this week What's the benefit of RAW images?. This is discussed within the context of Lightroom, but does indicate the extra information that is stored in a RAW image against a JPG image by looking into white balance options and colour depth.

A good tutorial to watch if you've ever wondered what the RAW vs JPG fuss is all about.

Vodcast: The Daily Critique

2008-05-01T17:24:00.005Z

Since getting my iPod touch I've been on the lookout for good photography related video based podcasts. I've previously mentioned some of my favourite Lightroom instruction/tutorial ones, but I recently came across Radiant Vista's The Daily Critique.

This vodcast takes an image or a series of images and then critiques them in a constructive and pleasant manner. The video aspects are simple - primarily the photograph is displayed and a red marker is used to highlight areas that the commentary is paying particular attention to. This simple approach is a great tool for people like myself to learn from. And, because it is a digital image, Craig (the reviewer) has the ability to actually edit the photo and show what impact some seemingly simple manipulations can make to it.

Contemporary Photography : Lydia Yee

2008-04-26T16:29:00.002Z

On Wednesday evening I attended another of the Contemporary Photography talks. This time it was Lydia Yee, curator of the current Barbican exhibition Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art.

She showed imagery of exhibits, as well as of some of the signage that has been used, and explained how they'd organised the exhibition of contemporary art according to anthropological categorisation. So, the exhibition is broken down into sections such as "Kinship and Descent", "Magic and Belief", "Ritual" and "Communication". Amongst the exhibits is a copy of the calibrator that Damian Hirst created to go to Mars on Beagle 2 - it is present because it might well have been one of the first earth based objects that a Martian would come across.

Lydia was a very engaging speaker, and did an excellent job of explaining how the exhibition came together, as well as describing the taxonomy and organisation of it. There are another 2 of these events to go. Next week is Anne Hardy, and the final talk, on the 7th May is Julian Germain.

More on Photography laws

2008-04-22T20:09:00.004Z

I was browsing through flickr and spotted another example of poor treatment of photographers. Amongst the comments, not only was there a link to the Petition to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places but also there was a link to an Early Day Motion entitled Photography in Public Areas. As suggested by the commenter I have written to my MP via TheyWorkForYou to request his support in this matter (although having since looked at the Early Day Motions he has signed, he already has).

Petition the Prime Minister to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places

2008-04-21T18:59:00.001Z

Alex sent me the link to an article from the BBC news last week on Innocent photographer or terrorist? about the treatment of a photographer by the police. It is something I've often been concerned about myself, but fortunately have only ever had run-ins with the security guards in shopping centres.

So when I spotted a blog post over at London Photos mentioning a petition to clarify the laws surrounding photography in public places I thought I'd add my name to the list. Currently 3,483 other people have done so too, so if you're a UK citizen and interested in getting the laws clarified, then head on over and add yourself.

The new Madgex website

2008-04-21T17:53:00.002Z

The new Madgex website
Originally uploaded by Jane Dallaway

The new Madgex website has launched, and has 5 of my photographs as the page headers. These photos have all been taken over the past year at various events (our hackday and table football tournament matches mostly) and are a fairly true representation of the company.

It is a really good feeling to be able to contribute to the company in this way, and hopefully I can continue to supply imagery from my ever increasing collection of Madgex photos

Contemporary Photography : John Stezaker

2008-04-16T19:11:00.003Z

This evening I attended a talk as part of a series on Contemporary Photography being staged by Photoworks in conjunction with the MA Photography course of the University of Brighton.

John Stezaker isn't an artist I've come across before, but from this talk I felt I got a really good understanding of the evolution of his works, where he started from, and how his more recent work (the marriage and betrayal series) builds on his work of the past. As with the Joachim Schmid exhibition I saw last year at the Photographers Gallery there still seems something slightly sacrilegious to me about the deliberate destruction of photographs, even to then use these elements to produce something more. In fact, a member of the audience this evening asked John about this, and John accepted this, and said that he couldn't use photos of his family or loved ones in this manner, but was more than comfortable using film stock and postcards. He mentioned that he liked using damaged photographs, and has also used postcards and images from his own past - postcards from his parents when he was a little boy, a picture of Queen Victoria from a book that he scribbled all over as a child.

John recorded a video interview with Tate Britain for Tate Triennial 2006 which gives a flavour of the content of his talk.

There are three more talks in the series, all being held at the Friends Meeting House in Brighton over the next 3 Wednesday evenings. To reserve a place, all you need to do is drop an email to events@photoworksuk.org.

TWIP - Histogram

2008-04-13T09:09:00.003Z

I've been catching up on a few photography podcasts this morning, and came across the excellent TWIP episode about Histograms. It is a video about 7 minutes long and does a really clear job of explaining what the histogram represents, and how to use it both whilst taking the photos, and afterwards when processing images.

The eipsode can be downloaded via Pixelcorps.tv. Great job guys!

D80 showing CHA error on LCD screen

2008-04-10T21:44:00.003Z

I had a moment of panic earlier when I put one of the full SD cards from my friend's wedding at the weekend into the D80 to allow me to import them into Lightroom and it flashed "CHA" on the LCD screen. Then I remembered that I'd switched the used SD cards to the Lock position to prevent any accidental overwriting. A quick google later (the camera was still tethered to my laptop), and I find out that I'm not the only one to have spotted this

Kit Bag: Nikon S500

2008-04-01T17:32:00.005Z

After a couple of days on our recent trip I realized that my Olympus Fe-130 was just causing me frustration - it took 6 attempts one day to get it to start up :-(

Time for a replacement then. Annoyingly prior to our trip I had toyed with the idea but dismissed it as unnecessary - I didn't need a replacement secondary camera, the fe-130 would do just fine - and so didn't do much research. Consequently I headed into The Shutterbug in Woodburn Company Stores without a really clear idea of what I wanted. My criteria were:
1) cheap - up to $200
2) small and light - fit into my snowboarding trousers pocket
3) take either xd or SD cards - I have both with me

I explained what I was after and the first camera I was shown was an Olympus tough which is water resistant and shock proof, takes xd cards and small - over budget at $300 though but this wasn't the real killer, after my experience with the Fe-130 I wasn't sure if I was ready to trust another Olympus yet.

We then moved on to the Nikon Coolpix S500 which fitted all the criteria, has easy to use controls and has menus similar enough to the D80 to not send me scrabbling for the manual every other minute. Over the course of the trip, this proved to be reliable, have a good battery life and take a fairly decent snow based picture.

And yes I do remember that one of my tips for photography was to never buy a camera and use it for the first time on an important occasion, like a holiday, but the unreliability of the Fe-130 - at least in cold temperatures - gave me little option.

If you're interested in seeing some of the resulting photos, take a look here

Gerd Ludwig

2008-02-03T11:05:00.000Z

Gerd Ludwig is the subject of the most recent videocast from George Jardine on Adobe Lightroom. It is presented in a really interesting format, with the audio track being an interview between George and Gerd, and the visuals being a photo slideshow of photographs that relate to the conversation. The tie up between audio and choice of photograph is really well done, and whilst originally I thought that this format might be distracting, by a few minutes in (it has a 45 minute duration) I was really appreciating it and enjoying the conversation and imagery.

If you have a spare 45 minutes, and a spare 105MB then its worth downloading and watching (the podcast can be downloaded from George's iDisk - it is labeled "20071120 Podcast - Gerd Ludwig").

Adobe Lightroom videocasts

2008-01-28T20:07:00.000Z

Since getting my iPod Touch for Christmas I've been investigating some of the Lightroom tutorial videocasts. I've had a copy of The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers but still haven't had a lot of time to sit down and read through it.

These are the podcasts I've been watching:

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom with George Jadine - tutorials are interspersed with interviews and portfolio reviews, but the tutorials are of a very high standard and are very informative although mostly focussed on the develop module
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips - mostly short videos giving hints and tips
Lightroom for digital photographers with Michael Rather. This is a regularly updated podcast covering a wide range of subjects

Braun PixelBank - first impressions

2008-01-26T12:29:00.001Z

I have recently bought a Braun PixelBank as a backup for my photographs whilst I'm on the move. I had a set of criteria which were:

Reads SD cards
Reads xD cards
Accepts Nikon Raw format
Works with a Mac
At least 40GB

I initially started looking at some of the portable storage devices and found an interesting article reviewing a handful of them. I initially was taken with the units with a screen, so that I could reassure myself that they'd been saved successfully, but I was finding it hard to justify spending an extra £150 for such a feature (which took the Nikon Raw format requirement away). After reading some more of that review I started looking for the "DataBank Digital Data Backup/Storage" but I failed to find one anywhere - DataBank isn't the easiest term to find in google. After reading some more reviews and comments I found a Braun PixelBank at Park Cameras retailing for a very reasonable £79.99. I ordered it on Sunday, and the couriers attempted to deliver it on Tuesday - it finally arrived on Friday after rearranging delivery.

I unpacked the box and found some nice features - they've included screws and a screwdriver so that you can change the hard drive if you so wish - it takes a standard 2.5" one. One disappointment was that the power supply has a European plug so an adapter is necessary. I couldn't find one around the house, so used the provided USB cable to charge the unit up initially. I left it charging overnight, to ensure it got a good solid charge, and when I looked at it this morning the LED had changed from red (charging) to green (charged).

I took a selection of photographs on 2 different SD cards, and 1 xD card and put the cards in one at a time. Next to the power button there is a play button, and pressing this starts the copying process. There is a % count displayed whilst the copying happening, ending at 100%. If you leave the machine to do this, don't be surprised if it turns itself off after doing the copy, it has an auto shut off to protect battery life. Displayed on the right of the unit is the remaining capacity of the unit. It is probably worth doing some mental arithmetic to validate the saving by checking that the capacity is decreasing as you'd expect.

Attaching the PixelBank to the computer via the USB cable results in the screen lighting up, with just the HDD and USB signs being displayed.

Opening the drive in Finder, shows a top level folder named CARDS. Under this is a folder for every card copy that has been done. The folders are prefixed with SD for an SD card (presumably also for MMC and MS), SM for an xD card (presumably also for SM) and according to the manual CF for CF or MD cards. The cards are then numbered sequentially, so the first card is SD0001, the second SD0002 etc. There is no different naming conventions for different physical cards - I copied my first SD card twice (SD0001 and SD0002), and the second one once (SD0003). The data stored is a full copy of the disc, so includes any extra files that get stored by the camera (e.g. NIKON001.DSC for my Nikon D80).

So, there ends the first impressions. I'll add more thoughts as I use it and rely on it more.

Photoblogs of the year

2008-01-03T19:28:00.000Z

wink is the photoblog of the year according to Photoblogawards. All of the finalists are impressive and provide great inspiration.

Via Bruce and openculture.

Andreas Gursky

2008-01-03T19:02:00.000Z

Whilst I was on my pre-Christmas travels around the country, I caught up with some back issues of the British Journal of Photography. Among other useful articles, I was particularly taken with a review of Andreas Gursky's exhibition At Large, illustrated with an amazing photograph of skiers at the annual ski marathon in Engadin.

The exhibition is on at the Kunstmuseum, Basel until the 24th February and looks like it'll be amazing. Here's hoping there will be an opportunity to see this exhibition in the UK at some point.