Miscallaneous
Photographing the Landscape When It Really Isn’t Your Thing
Anyone who follows my blog knows that I am not really a landscape photographer. I like to see the man made element in my work, and in front of me when I am taking photos. That doesn’t mean that I can’t take landscape images, just that it is not my subject of choice. Quite a few years ago I went away with a friend to the Grampians, for those that don’t know, the Grampians are a National Park and very mountainous. During this weekend away I was supposed to be getting photos, we drove around and around, but I didn’t get any photos because I didn’t want to photograph anything. I thought it was beautiful, but was not the type of subject that I really wanted to photograph. There are times when you don’t have a choice and you just have to do it. I was asked recently to… | Read the full article
Photography as Art
Is all photography art, or is only some of it art? Are we photographers or artists? Are some of us photographers and some of us artists? How do you know which is which? Interesting questions, and something I’ve been trying to work out for some time. I tried to do a post on it last year, but I don’t think I thought about properly and I was slammed for it. No one seemed to understand what I was trying to get at. People thought I was putting photography down and implying that art was more superior, which I don’t think at all, I just feel that they are different. Recently I saw an online program from Joel Grimes and he talked about how he considers himself an artist and not a photographer. That while he uses the medium of photography, he is an artist. When I saw this I decided… | Read the full article
Hot/Cold Timetables
When my children were in Primary School they had what they called hot day timetables or wet day timetables. These were contingency plans for when the children couldn’t play as normal. I thought it would be a great idea to explore this option for photographers as I had a comment from a new blogging friend who told me she was getting too depressed from being trapped inside in the extreme weather that the Northern Hemisphere has been experiencing. I understood it when I got it because I realised that it would be us in Southern Australia being stuck inside trying to stay cool that would be getting depressed because we couldn’t really get out and take photos. I thought this would be a great time to take a look at what you can do when you can’t get outside to take photos. There are options, many of them really, not all… | Read the full article
Is Imitation the Best Form of Flattery?
Happy New Year everyone, hopefully you all had a great time over the break and are ready to get stuck into the year ahead. Back in November I did a post on Finding What Inspires You, I talked about many different ways to find inspiration, and one of the ways that artists are taught to find it is to look at the work of others. We try to get inspired from what others are doing and see if we can put some of that into our own work. When I was at art school we were encouraged to copy the work of others and try to do exactly what they did, so we could learn. I did some of that, though much of what I did never came off as well as the masters. It was a great way to learn. One lecturer used to say it to us… | Read the full article
Christmas is Here Again
With less than 15 days to go we have decided to take a break from blogging here, but wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas and hope you will find lots of time to take photos over this time. We will return around mid January with more posts for you. Merry Christmas and thank you for the support.
Rules, Rules, Rules
When I first got into photography I was given a Pentax K1000 for my birthday and I had no idea how to use it. It was a long time ago and the internet wasn’t around so I couldn’t google “how do I use my SLR”, so I had to figure it out for myself. Trial and error got me there. I did one course at the CAE here in Melbourne, but it was about black and white processing, didn’t really help with learning how to use it. I did read a lot, and I figured out what it all meant. Composition was a different thing though. I had to learn that on my own. I had to work out what was the best way an image looked. Then I did a beginners course at a local camera club and I learned the”Rules”.The rules that say everything must be on… | Read the full article
Finding What Inspires You
You hear the word inspiration used a lot with artists, what inspires them to paint or draw, but it isn’t a word that photographers use a lot. We seem to have things that we love photographing and we just photograph them right? Though there has to be something behind that, something that drives you to photograph it. It can be called many things, inspiration, drive, passion, influence, motivation, incentive, probably many many more words that are used to basically describe the same thing. So what is inspiration? I found a definition when I googled inspirations the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative Sounds easy, you will be stimulated, you will feel something, and then you will do something really creative. I wish it was that easy, and I know for a lot of people finding inspiration can be so hard…. | Read the full article
Are You Covered
My followers know recently that I photographed a wedding, I wasn’t the main photographer, I was the second photographer with very specific requirements. I had never met the other photographer before and, as you do, we got talking. One of the things that came up was insurance. I asked him if he had insurance, and he said yes, he had all his gear covered under his house and contents insurance. That is something a lot of us have, you get special insurance on your contents that protects your gear when you are away from the house. I replied, is that all. He looked at me and I said, what about public liability insurance? What about the insurance you get to cover you if something happens to all the photos you have taken? It has not occurred to him that he would need any further insurance. He was fairly… | Read the full article
Finding that Niche in the Market Place
Before digital photography most photographers would work in several areas. The average photographer would be a wedding photographer, a portrait photographer, they would take photos of anything that people asked them to take. There weren’t a lot of differences in what one photographer did, compared to another. If you look back on old family portraits, there wasn’t a lot of differences between one photographer and the next. That isn’t to say that there weren’t photographers who worked in a unique style, but they were rare. There was a way to take photos of a family, of an individual or of a wedding party. The lighting was much the same with all them, and most had the same backgrounds or back drops. So with the advent of digital photography and DSLR’s becoming affordable, there has been a big increase in the number of people with cameras, and calling themselves photographers. Do… | Read the full article
Shapes and Curves in the City of Melbourne
This is my first contribution to this blog, and I would like to say hello. I thought I could do my first post on something that I am very passionate about, Melbourne. I love this city, and I think it is a photographers dream. I know when most people think of Melbourne they think sport, Australian Open, AFL, Grand Prix, or coffee, fantastic coffee culture here, and there is food. The other thing that people think, is weather, we are known for our bad weather. Apparently it always rains here, though Sydney gets more rain a year than Melbourne. It is true, though the weather here can be rather unpredictable. Being a photographer living in Melbourne means, you deal with the weather and work around it. There is one part of Melbourne that I really don’t think gets enough publicity, our architecture. Flinders Street Station is a very obvious building… | Read the full article
