The photographer that came in from the cold

It's cold at the moment. I'll make no bones about it that I don't particularly enjoy the cold weather since I have become so used to warm weather. It used to be the other way around - I hated the warm weather because I could hardly breathe. Now it gets down to the kind of weather I used to consider shirt-sleeve weather and I practically freeze to death.

What with working, I tend these days just to use a cellphone to take photos most of the time. It's always at hand and it really doesn't take bad photos. Google even adds really cool animation effects. I do like the fake snowflakes.

The images produced aren't of the highest quality but they're pretty good and very usable. At web level, they're perfect. I've not tried printing them. I must try that one day - see how they work at 10x8 or thereabouts. Certainly for ebay they're just about perfect. Who in tarnation wants to spend the time putting up a picture perfect image of some bauble or other when it's going to go for next to nothing whatever the quality of the image? Actually, that's my gripe about selling stuff - you only ever get a nominal amount for it that makes selling things a bit insulting really.

Even at night, the built-in phone camera is quite good, thanks to its tiny LED flash. Without flash things tend not to be too visible but I'm quite happy. There are things of course that I can't do with my phone camera. People deride phone cameras but I just don't see the problem. I would rather have an unrepeatable moment photographed on a phone camera than not at all. A phone camera is pretty much always in my pocket and the pictures are automatically backed up online.

The disadvantage of photography in the dark and in snow is very much that it's just so darned cold. Because it's never cold in the South, my cold weather gear is all in Britain. I brought back sheepskin mittens and a fur hat from my time in the former USSR. People all cry foul about fur but honestly, it's a load better than the modern stuff and it lasts a load longer too. None of my fur is new - it was all secondhand. It still works and was both cheaper and better than synthetics.

One of my friends complained today about getting her fingers frozen taking photos in the snow. I'm right there with her. I've become a big softy living in the South. If the temperature's not 64F or above, I'm cold. That's 18 centigrade and I used to complain that anything over 10 centigrade was too hot (50F). I have not ventured out much in this cold weather and have no intention of leaving my nice warm workplace or nice warm house to get out there in the cold either.

I'd love to get out one weekend when the weather's warmer to take some Milky Way photos though. The advantage of that is I can drive to a remote location, point the camera upwards on a tripod, get into my nice warm car and operate the camera remotely.

Snowstorm in Lexington, South Carolina

Yesterday at work, the alarm sounded and an announcement was made over the speaker. "We are closing due to inclement weather. Starting from 3:30pm until 5:30pm all personnel will leave the building in designated batches". They did it like this so that all 1,000 of us would not clog the roads by leaving all at once. A memo went around that the emergency generator had been tested and that there was an emergency supply of blankets, flashlights and canned food on the premises. Needless to say, we all left, laughing at the concept of snow in South Carolina and being snowbound. Snow in Lexington, we laughed. There'll be plenty Lexington closures. People panic at the first sight of snow, here.

The weather service had forecast snow. They had forecast snow all day and all night. When I awoke, this was the scene that lay before me. Snow as far as the eye could see. Not much chance of getting to work in that. Work had, of course, been delayed by a few hours with emergency contact numbers given to everybody.

The trees were all laden with snow that fell with a quiet flumphing sound to the ground below. The contrast between the blue of the sky and the white of the snow was stunning. Even more stunning or should I say amazing was that the meter on my digital SLR could cope with snow beautifully. I was expecting to do the usual 3 stops change in exposure to get good pictures.

 My car had a lot of snow and ice on and under it. I was interested to see the stalactites hanging from the undercarriage. I wondered briefly whether it would be possible to go to work in weather like this. I need not have worried as the roads were quite passable. It is the South, after all and snow just doesn't like around all that long.

I looked up and down the road to see it was absolutely passable and ventured out gingerly in my SUV. Sure - I have a big, tough SUV but it's not a really macho vehicle. It's got wide tires and has two wheel drive as opposed to four. It's nice but is not an off-road vehicle. Maybe I should say that I have used it off-road - normally on dirt tracks and Walmart's car park. Other than that, it is pretty much of a posemobile and not something to attempt to drive on snow.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I drove gingerly to work. Fortunately when I got to the bigger roads with more traffic, they were largely clear. I trundled onward into work and was one of the few that made it in. Several people lived in remote areas and the dirt tracks they lived along were impassible.

 And so went the great snowstorm of 2013. By mid afternoon, of course, it had all melted. This is the Deep South after all. It was, of course, characterised by panic buying of bread and milk in the stores.

Needless to say, the journey in was characterized by South Carolina drivers who were either creeping along at 20mph on patches of road where there was no snow or blasting along at 45mph. I hate snow driving and always seek to avoid it but the keys are maintaining a constant speed, planning four times further ahead, slow braking, slow acceleration, slow lane changes. In snow, the front wheels act as rudders and traction control must be turned off or you get nowhere.

When I finished work, there was still snow on the hood and roof of my car - all dry dusty, powdery
snow - not the wet, sticky kind I'm used to from Britain. Some had melted to form icicles on cars.

 This was the scene that greeted me when I woke. Snow still falling. It fell for quite a while - I was lucky to get to work. Those of us that did manage it were appreciated greatly. A stack of very big pizzas and wings awaited the entire staff for lunch. No drinks but as there already is free tea and coffee for all, it wasn't necessary.

Video - not just stills

I have been known to shoot video as well as stills. I don't generally rate video as being of any great importance unless it's video of friends or family. It's just not my thing. I prefer still images. This video, however, was somewhat challenging to shoot, if you pardon the pun.

Certainly the video quality is nothing to write home about. It was filmed on my Blackberry, back when my Blackberry still worked. That thing lasted 14 months before the main board died on it. I don't consider that money well spent. Given that it took a full 15 minutes to reboot, it wasn't even a great phone although it did have advantages.

Curtailing myself from further digression, this video was filmed with the Blackberry held in my left hand and my pistol in my right hand. I still managed to knock down a couple of steel plates. Now those plates were very heavy and needed to be struck in just the right place (the top 3 inches) or they wouldn't fall. It's possible to hear my bullets hitting the plates.

Occasionally I will set up a real camera to record video - not, I hasten to add, a video camera but a compact that also shoots video. In fact that compact (a Canon S1 IS) shoots much better video than it takes photos. The video quality is higher, even if the shooting isn't.

What I'm saying is that in an online world, video can be fun. The trick is not to make videos too long. Ideally 30 seconds should be your longest video. People just don't want to hang about watching videos - not when they can watch grass growing, paint drying and have all those rice puddings to knit. 

My personal favorite of all my videos is of the execution by gunfire of a Virgin phone. Virgin and I had a tolerable relationship for a number of years but as I moved from 2G to 3G, the relationship broke down. This video shows the charges, judgement and execution of a particularly awful phone. Aside from the constant beeping that the phone produced whether I was using it or not, it did some pretty dreadful things. 

I could rant about my Virgin phones but to be honest, they did work up to a point. I found I could not get any reception where I used to work around Christmas. Where I work now I have to stand in the middle of the carpark to get reception with my new phone service provider. That's OK though as my new job requires my full attention and concentration whereas my old job did not. Generally, I found Virgin phones to be woefully inadequate for anything other than talking. The 3G wasn't that great. If you step through the video carefully, you can see that the logo at the top of the phone - which is where the phone's forehead would be is where the shot hits. It was shot a few more times later but the first shot was spot on. 

An ode to autumn - Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

John Keates (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) would surely have loved the photograph above which was taken on a journey in the vicinity of Lexington/Irmo, South Carolina last autumn.


Perhaps John Keates would not have physically seen a scene like this though his brother George undoubtedly would have notwithstanding that in the early 1800s there would likely not have been a rusty corrugated iron roof to be seen.


I love taking photos in the autumn. It is probably my favorite times of year. My two favorite times are spring and autumn. Spring because everything is very brightly colored and autumn for the same reason. Summer, particularly in the South tends to be rather hot and sticky. Winter tends to be quite miserably cold. When the summers peak at 100F and the winters drop to 10F and below, I tend to find the winters a little unbearably cold. Indeed, I went home to Britain in March after having been here and almost froze. Everybody there was in shirt sleeves and I was wrapped up in many layers. That had one of my old school friends commenting "It must be hot where you come from".


My main trick to all kinds of photography is not to carry a massive amount of gear. Some people want to carry everything including the kitchen sink. What an utter waste of time that is. I have to admit that this photograph was taken from right beside my car with a 17-85 lens. I am rarely ever seen using any lens other than a 17-85. It covers all the focal lengths that interest me. Certainly longer and wider would be useful at times but one misses so much when one lugs around every conceivable focal length in existence and every piece of equipment possible. Look at the truly great photographers - most of them used one camera body and one lens.


The most hateful individual is the know-it-all gear-head. These are the people that Feininger couldn't stand. They know every setting on every camera and how to do everything with their cameras and never set foot outside with them in case they get dirty. I used to get so infuriated by people at camera clubs that thought that buying more gear was their perfect answer to everything. It's not - the answer is to get out and take photos.

Light - the final frontier - your life's mission to explore and conquer strange new phenomena

Light is peculiar stuff. It travels in straight lines, most of the time (but not always). As a photographer, you might not be able to get close enough to an event horizon to view curved light beams but you can do some really neat things with light for all that.

Ages ago, I was walking (without a camera) in about minus 30 centigrade. That's -22 Fahrenheit and I can assure you it's pretty cold. I'd just missed a train and after looking in the heated waiting room, saw it was full of coughing, sneezing, spluttering Russians. Rather than spend 30 minutes waiting there for the next train, I elected to walk on toward the next station some 2 kilometers down the line. As I walked, I noted that the dense ice fog was allowing the moon to shine through before I remembered that as it was midday, the moon should be on the other side of the planet. It was then I realised that the pale disk in the sky was actually the sun. I trudged on, snow crunching but not compressing underfoot. It made that crisp crunchy sound associated with a newly opened cookie wrapper.  I followed the railway line as anything more than 3 meters from the line dissolved into a white nothingness. All I could see was white and the railway line that was rapidly being covered by snow.  The overall effect was very much like the photo below though this is not snow but fog.

As can be seen from the photo, everything has dissolved into a white mist. The image looks like a solarised monochrome photo but in reality it is in full glorious color.  Where sky and water meet has vanished; the two blending into the one. This is not China, notorious for its smogs nor Los Angeles nor even anywhere in Detroit. It is in fact in South Carolina.

The photo below shows what can be achieved with a sun that's fairly high in the sky. The contrast is strong and the shadows pronounced. The colors are vibrant. Most photographers fear the midday sun for making their photos appear bland or too contrasty. Don't fear the sun, embrace it - take some striking photos.

The photo above was taken in Wales in March of 2002 when I was there, visiting family and friends - something that had not been possible before. When I was there, I saw everything with fresh eyes having been absent for some 7 years. There's a lot to photograph in a small space. 

The photograph below was taken on a trip to Orangeburg. I'd gone down there to meet an acquaintance and it was cool with the sun lower on the horizon than I would have liked. It did however offer me the opportunity among other photographs to take this one. The sun is low in the sky, affording great illumination, great color and interesting contrast.

I will have to do more photos like this. I really like the contrast between the colors, the light and the shadow. It looks so delicious you almost want to eat it.

None of the photos above used anything special. They were all shot with a Canon XT and a 17-85 lens. No flash was used. No tripod was used. Nothing out of the ordinary was used. They were all shot hand held at 100 ISO. You don't need anything stunning to capture light. Just get out there and do it!

Potential uses for tablets

As far as I can see, tablet computers are just toys. Look at any child's Christmas list and an iPad will be on it. I have yet to see anybody with a tablet actually doing anything worthwhile with it. 90% of what people use their laptops, desktops and tablets for is frittering time away. Sure - they call it "networking", "learning", "communicating", "researching" etc but what those really mean is that they're sitting around playing with the internet. The internet is the great leveller of today's society. It brings everybody regardless of intellectual capacity down the the same lowest common denominator. It's not a drug but should be classified as a category A narcotic. Deprive somebody of their smartphone, tablet, PC, laptop and suddenly they panic, wondering what everybody else is doing and what to do now they can't "communicate". Tablets are a simple quick fix for the traveling internet junkie. They're the emergency heroin kit left for when they need to snort some.

My two uses for tablets. The first is pretty much the same as I did to a rather ghastly mobile telephone I purchased whose carcass just because I can't be bothered to toss it in the garbage lies in my desk drawer.

The other use for a tablet would be as a display unit. Data could be stored and processed on a mini computer stored in a closet somewhere and the tablet could be used just as a straightforward display unit. Communications could be via wifi and it would work very much in the manner of the new Google Chromebooks, where all data is stored online. Essentially, use the tablet as the display of a dumb terminal. A keyboard would be handy, of course, as most tablets don't have a keyboard.

I see so many people walking around with a laptop under one arm and a keyboard under the other that it makes me wonder what shortage of intelligence made them pay double the price of a laptop on what is essentially a digital photo frame and then pay more to get a keyboard when they could just as well have purchased a laptop that included a keyboard.

I hear that many of the school districts are now purchasing tablet computers to lend to the children. That's an expensive exercise! Heaven knows how many will survive a week with children and after a year those that aren't totally destroyed will be so old that new editions will have to be purchased. The old models that survived will be mixed with newer models and the whole system will become chaotic as Little Johnny's iPad won't do the same thing as Little Roger's iPad etc.

I have heard many people using the fact they take photos as being their excuse for having a tablet. That's all it is - an excuse. No photographer I have ever met could ever live off photography or even count on the income to pay for equipment they have already purchased let alone for new toys. 

Hanging my head in shame, I will admit I purchased a tablet computer. Mine was a Nook Color and it was really quite appalling. I don't know whether it was just mine that was flawed or whether the model or the brand was poor. Mine just went absolutely bonkers when there was a trace of humidity in the air, responding to phantom touches on the touch screen and not responding to genuine touches. There was a work-around of putting a screen protector on but I wasn't going to throw good money after bad and spend $20 on a screen protector that might or might not have solved the problem. Instead I sold the damn thing. I lost about 2/3rds of what I paid for it because nobody else wanted that piece of junk either. That leads me on to a gripe about ebay. I reckon that most of the ebay "listings" are fraudulent. Every time I try to sell something, I check on the prices everybody else has been getting for the same item. I put the same description, title lines etc and get a third of what they get for the final bid. That leads me to suspect that there's something fishy going on with that website.

Back to tablets though and the two uses or perhaps three uses they have:

• Targets on a rifle range (expensive and cardboard boxes would be cheaper)
• As displays for dumb terminals.
• As toys for small children.

Other than those uses, I see absolutely no reason on earth why anybody would buys a tablet. They're no good for reading books. They're no good for any worthwhile work. They are just toys.

Trekking around the globe, camera at the ready.

Many people take photographs on holiday. For that there are hundreds if not thousands of camera options available. For this article,  I want to concentrate on some of the pitfalls and some of the things you really need to consider when going on holiday and taking photographs

The photograph below was taken in Vilnius, Lithuania with a pretty mundane digital compact camera. At the time, theft and mugging was rampant so a camera had to be low value in order that it didn't hurt too much if it got stolen and easily concealable as well as quick into action. This brings me neatly to my first point which is practicality.

The ideal for wandering around in safe places is a camera that will allow you to take the images you want without problems. There's a tendency toward wanting something to cater for every eventuality. There is a penalty for that and that's a cost and a weight penalty. It's no fun wandering around a hot country with a 30lb weight over your shoulder. That's the kind of thing the army does in warfare. It's not what you want to do in peacetime. Of course it's possible to take all the camera gear you can dream of with you as luggage and just to leave it in an hotel room. The problem is that 90% of it will just get left in the hotel room. What you need to do is to carry what you will actually use without compromising on optical or image quality.

Zoom compacts are usually the best choice for most tourists as a handy all-in one photo solution. Some suggest buying bulk storage devices and uploading what's on your memory cards to the bulk storage unit on a nightly basis. I regard that as very bad advice. Much better to spend the money instead on more memory cards. Unless you plan to shoot video with your camera then there should be no problem with this as a storage option. I would not personally trust the wifi-memory cards too much. I had one and it kinda-sorta worked (mine was by Eye-Fi) but it didn't work well with video. The cost of one of the bulk storage devices is quite high compared to the cost of several memory cards. The biggest downside of the bulk storage devices is that if it gets broken or damaged or lost, that's all your photos gone and since most use a magnetic disk which is inherently fragile, it's almost pure suicide.

For those wishing to travel to take photos with a digital SLR, I recommend just taking one lens. If I were to take a Canon camera then the Canon 17-85IS seems a pretty decent choice. It has a good wide end and a fairly good telephoto end. Add a polarizing filter and a lens hood and you're away. Personally, I wouldn't bother carrying a flash. I'd just use the built-in flash for that extra illumination. I wouldn't take a tripod either. 

The ideal camera for travel has to be the Olympus digital SLR. It's a lot smaller, lighter and more portable than most digital SLRs. Even the new thing of Interchangeable Lens Compacts could be helpful. In a way these are very much the replacement for the Leica M series of cameras so beloved of travel photographers for their compact size. No modern camera is quite as robust as a Leica M but on the other hand, they're a lot lighter. In the travel game, weight and size count for a lot. The other thing with the ILCs is they look much more like a compact and much less like a professional camera. That counts for a lot.

Taking photos. Usually when traveling, it's best to avoid sensitive subjects. The police, armed forces, government buildings etc are all considered off limits for photography in most countries around the world. Taking a photo in such a place could well land you in jail for a few years or accused of espionage or worse. In the Middle East, it's usually frowned upon to photograph people or more particularly women. In some countries, people photography is banned outright on religious grounds. Know the country before you go and ask before there's a doubt about what you can photograph.

Security - as I mentioned about the photograph of the church in Vilnius, you have to have your wits about you. A small, easily concealable camera or not carrying one at all could be your best option in some areas, particularly where there are plenty human predators.

Shots and visas. Just make sure you have all the right shots and visas - it makes life so much better when you're not fined or turned away at the border for not having a visa or come back suffering from some nasty disease.

GPS loggers for your photos? I wouldn't bother. I'd just carry a notepad and write down where you were when you took the photo. GPS isn't very accurate. at the best of times. I've seen my car GPS give me some very strange locations. There have been reports of GPSs being up to 500 miles out for no clearly discernible reason. In fact, my current phone has GPS on it and quite often I look at the track of where I am supposed to have been and wonder how I managed to do the journeys suggested. One of the more amazing things was a trip to the store. It's about 2 miles from my house and my phone GPS reckoned I had driven over 1,200 miles to get there. Get a notepad - much cheaper, more reliable, lighter, more durable, more practical and much less attractive to villains.

Just go and have fun. Post your best photos somewhere!

An experiment gone bad

One of my friends had taken some really wonderful photos that showed stars glowing through clouds. She takes really ethereal photographs and all those with a compact camera too. That had me looking up how to photograph stars and particularly the Milky Way.

This fellow had plenty advice on taking night photos of the Milky Way. I followed his advice. As my camera cannot handle more than 1600 ISO, I set it on 1600 ISO. I used his rule of the 500 over the focal length for exposure which for my lens (17mm) and crop factor came to 18 seconds. Well, I gave the exposure 18 seconds and was not overly impressed. I think I took better shots leaving the camera on automatic at Key West. 

My photographs from tonight were disappointing to say the least. At least the Key West photos looked pretty decent. I wonder whether the problem has more to do with there being just too much ambient light from nearby towns. I do recall seeing the Milky Way quite clearly from Fairwood Common in Wales. On the other hand, Fairwood Common though surrounded by villages is not subject to much light pollution. This is pretty much why there's an observatory on the common.

I did my best - I went to a car park beside a big dam. That'd be the Lake Murray dam. I was not the only occupant of the car park. There were several cars parked there. I tried to be inconspicuous but did note that one of the cars had a loud moaning coming from within and a pair of feet pressed firmly against the windshield. 

I suspect that a better place would probably be the Blue Ridge Parkway on the border with North Carolina. The beginning of January, however, is not the time to go to the Blue Ridge Parkway. At 6,000 feet and 200 miles further North, it will doubtless be a lot colder than the already very cold 34F (1C) of Lexington County, South Carolina. With a wind, I would expect it to be quite bitter.

The older and fartier I get, the more I like my creature comforts. Give me a balmy night in Key West anyday for steller photography. I will probably redo the experiment somewhere in the summer - most likely from the Blue Ridge Parkway. Maybe by then I might even have a new camera with higher ISOs possible. 

Speaking of cameras, I looked hard at the Nikon J1 and found it was not that great. The J3 is a vast improvement. I've come to the conclusion that I'm still going to sell off the camera stuff I don't use but not the whole lot. Oddly enough I used my tripod today. That has hardly ever been used. I have a feeling that now I'm taking photos for myself, it might get a load more use. I'm doing more of the things that please me. Having changed jobs and getting more regular hours, together with more pay, I am more able to roam and take photos than before.

July 4th celebrations

Ok, It's not the 4th of July today. I thought I'd share with you some splendid photos I took on July 4th a while back. These were actually shot on Dreher Island on Lake Murray, South Carolina.

I remember the day well. I'd decided to head out early, assuming an hour before would be sufficient to get onto the island to take photos. Oh boy, was I wrong! I drove as far as the entrance to Dreher Island and passed a car-park just before the causeway to the island and got onto the causeway. I got no further than half way along the causeway. It seemed that the whole of South Carolina had made the same decision.

In the end, I set up my tripod beside the road and started taking photos. Nobody was going to go anywhere.

Parade of boats, Lake Murray, South Carolina

I picked a fairly decent location though I would have preferred to be somewhere else. I didn't want to get too far from my car though as events like these are popular for thieves as nobody is minding the cars.

The Parade of Boats has just begun to line-up as darkness began to fall. I grabbed this shot fairly quickly then moved and set up my tripod for the remainder of the photos.

Parade of boats, Lake Murray, South Carolina

Now darkness began to fall and the parade began. It's interesting that the boat in the foreground stayed relatively still on the calm lake even though wakes from the now moving parade boats were beginning to reach the shore.

After darkness fell, I half expected somebody to start grilling something - it's what we'd do in Britain. This did not happen. What happened instead was that everybody watched the fireworks with reverent silence. The following photos were taken with my tripod and my camera set on B. I think I must have used maybe 5 second exposures. It's always a gamble as to where the fireworks will burst. Zoom in too close and risk missing the majority of the burst; leave it zoomed out too far and the burst is an insignificant pimple on the horizon. Wind plays a part too - look at the pictures and you can see there was a stiff breeze, blowing the fireworks from right to left. 

After the rather pleasant hour or so of fireworks, it was time to pack up and head home. The Park Ranger advised everybody to jump into their cars a few minutes before the display ended as he expected cars to be racing off Dreher Island the instant the display ended. It didn't happen quite like that. It was probably another 5 or 10 minutes.

After that, the fun of getting back home began. Nobody was allowed to do a simple turn in the road and head out. We all had to follow the leader all the way onto Dreher Island and then all the way around the island before heading back along the causeway. From there onward all the standard roads were choked. Thank goodness for GPS and some ingenuity. I managed to get home quicker than the vast majority of the people who'd been on that island.

Next time, I shall park in the car park before the island and walk!

Photography in color, in sepia, in black and white

Color and photography go hand in hand or do they? Let's look at the world around us. Do we see things in black and white or do we see them in color?

Most people with normal vision see in color. A few with tetrachromatic abilities even see beyond the normal range of colors. Is either important to photography and the kind of photographs you take? In a word, no. You cannot fully understand what a tetrachromat can see and they may not be able to understand your limited color vision. This has no effect whatsoever on your photography save for two important things. Firstly, if you don't see as much the "normal" range of colors then it's probably better to stick with black and white photography. Secondly, if you see more than the "normal" range then understanding why other people cannot see the differences between different colors that is as plain as day to you might be incredibly frustrating. It might be better to stick in that case also to straight black and white.

Personally I love black and white. I like color too. There's a time and place for both. This photo is a prime example of this. I used a cheap Promaster polarizing filter on the lens. I'd forgotten I still actually had any Promaster stuff. I thought I was all Hoya. Needless to say, there was no anti-reflective coating on the cheap filter and I got bags of flare as can be seen from the lighter area above the tree branch. My hand alone was insufficient to ward off the excess light. Thus, turning this disappointing image into sepia made a huge difference. It's now quite an acceptable image. 

Where black and white really scores is when it's necessary to make a photograph look really dramatic. Increasing the contrast thus eliminating the slight hint of light in the background really makes the following image.

 

In color the candles were very orange and the aged brass of the candelabra combined with the white wall bathed by orange light did not look too great. This was from a wedding I photographed. I simply converted to black and white and left it at that. I won't even show the color version - that was really not very inspiring. The black and white is inspiring though.

As far as filters are concerned. I will mention them now because I've admitted to screwing up a photo using a cheap-ass ProMaster filter. I would advise either not using a filter at all or getting a really good one. Cheap-ass filters do not add to any photographic images at all. Rather they take a good photograph and destroy it.

I have spoken mostly of black and white. This is an image many would see in black and white. I see the color with the blue of the sky, the red, white and blue of the flag and the green of the trees all reflecting in the Vietnam wall in Washington DC.

This, for me, is where color really comes alive, when I can tease the color from a photograph most would turn black and white. It takes it from being a sombre memorial image into an image of hope and life. The men listed on the memorial died so others could live free, They don't need to be represented in a dramatically lifeless black and white image but celebrated in full, glorious color.

Model Photography

Model photography can be rewarding and fun and can be done with as many or as few lights as you have. At its most basic, ordinary household lighting can be used. Certain magazines, notably "Where Women Cook" and "Where Women Create" use solely natural lighting with no flash at all. Their look is one of natural photography though high ISOs must be used and the models must keep very still in order for the images not to be blurred due to the longer than normal exposures.

Below I have a photo taken with a very basic studio setup. There was no tripod used at all. The background is a slightly grubby off-white bed sheet suspended from a background stand. In the absence of a background stand, pinning the sheet to the wall would be adequate. Lighting was two studio flash bulbs from eBay at $15 each shipped from China. These were fired into two silvered umbrellas ($3 each on eBay) and supported on some inexpensive light stands. An alternative would be to use some halogen work lights on stands. Those are usually quite inexpensive at the builder's merchants.

The downside of halogen is they are hot and will make the model quite warm. In a cold studio, this could be beneficial though. The other downside is that there might be hotspots on the image.

Focus is the most important part of any photograph. With models, unless you're photographing an item they are holding or wearing, the eyes absolutely must be sharp. If the eyes are not sharp, the photo is garbage. This is why you must learn to adjust the focus points on your camera, particularly if you're shooting vertically. In the photo below, the focal point is on her eyes. In a gloomy studio with the setup described, this can be difficult to achieve with auto-focus and manual focus may need to be employed. Be careful with focus - focusing with the center of the lens and then moving the lens up or down will change the focal point forward or backward. It will not be in the same plane for two reasons. First, there's a little thing called geometry which means that by moving a few degrees, the focal point moves in or out accordingly. Secondly the sharp area in front of a lens is not a flat plane. It is generally curved unless you're using a dedicated macro lens which has an almost flat field. Thus while the center may be sharp, the edges could well be sufficiently out of focus to ruin the photograph. The focal field is not flat and this is most apparent at wider apertures.

Models are another thing you will need. The lady below is an aspiring model, hoping to work with Laine Bryant and who has already modeled for Ruth's Wardrobe and for Stallion. She's really great to work with.

It's bloody cold!

Darned right I used a British cuss word to describe the weather. It went down to 12 Fahrenheit or -11 Centigrade. It's cold and I live in a house with nominal insulation so I don't waste money heating it other than to keep it above freezing. I was amazed my car started so easily in the cold mornings. It was slightly more sluggish than normal but it wasn't more than a second slower.

I tend to use a cell phone a lot more for my casual photography these days. I can see exactly why camera sales are declining at the speed of sound. Everybody can get quite an acceptible photo from a callphone so they don't really feel like forking out the money for a compact camera or a digital SLR. To be honest you can see their point.

This morning I got into my car in the cold and took this picture of my windscreen. The ice crystals look absolutely gorgeous. This, to me, is the beauty of a cellphone camera - it's for taking photos of things that would otherwise be totally unrecorded and unseen.

A moment or so after that I had de-iced the windscreen and began my journey to work. This is actually my last week heading to my current workplace. I expect to start in my new workplace next Monday. Who knows what photo opportunities lie there.

Although I dearly love taking photos with a "proper" camera, I take a whole load with my cellphone and while my "proper" camera may take photos of a more aesthetically better quality, my cellphone is always to hand for opportunity photos. Take this early morning photo of a bookstore that I took a few moments before I headed into work.

Certainly you can criticise the photo for having visible digital nose and for blowing out some of the highlights but back in the real world, it's a very acceptable picture taken from the car park. The cellphone camera does better in good light but then so do people.

This is a simple picture of a gorgeous sunset that I took on my way home one day. It's just so easy to take interesting photos with a cellphone. I suspect they're more interesting because the cellphone is that much more readily to hand. 

This is the same sunset. Now the one criticism I would make of cellphones is that as they don't have a zoom lens then it's not really possible to do anything other than to crop the image which is something that I really hate doing. This is why I balanced the image and as luck would have it, caught the car coming toward me in the same frame, balancing the image even better.

Earlier in the day, the sun was against me and the cellphone performed particularly well. I was in a queue of traffic waiting for a somewhat lengthy train to complete its passage across the level crossing in front of me.

Yes - you can make all the criticisms that the pedants like to make. The reality is it captured the moment. Sure, it would have been nice to leap out of the car and take photos from the roadway. The reality is that wasn't going to happen. Certainly not in freezing temperatures when I'm in a nice warm car.

Let's just say I love my cellphone camera for its immediacy while I love my SLR for its higher image quality. Both types of image have a home in my heart. 

Kill Facebook Now!

Click here to delete your facebook account or read below to find out why you should delete it.

At first thoughts you might wonder why I'm not writing specifically about cameras or photography in this post. I am but it's more about copyright of your images and text that I'm concerned about.

Everything published online is not really public domain but on the other hand it is public domain. It's not public domain insofar as the creator owns the copyright but as there's bugger all you can do about somebody copying and using your work without attribution then it is public domain. Sure - a big company might bully somebody over something stupid like a hyperlinked image from their own website but if the company hasn't got a presence in the area in which the individual lives then even they are out of luck. If I was a company called Mega Acme and somebody in Ungabungaland copied my entire website and posted it as MegaAcmeOfUngabungaland.com then there's nothing I could do about it if I did not have a trading presence in Ungabungaland. It would involve international lawyers etc all trying to track down somebody who's most likely living in a grass hut and using a local school to put up the website. What am I as Mega Acme going to do? Repossess his grass hut? Send him to jail where he'll get better food and living conditions than when he was living in his grass hut? There's no conceivable financial benefit in bothering although some large corporations might attempt just out of sheer malice.

The crux of the matter is that Facebook seems to lay claims to your data - every scrap of data on their servers that is authored by you is owned by them. Think of it as rent. You're not paying to use their services so they can be expected to make money out of your activity somehow. Facebook has to make money in order to survive.

I have not had a Facebook account for a very long time. I think I've been Facebook free since 2010 or 2011. That's an eon in the technological world. I quit mine because I was being stalked by a psychopath. I am still being stalked by a psychopath but aside from reading my Twitter feed about what I had for breakfast, my Foursquare feed about vaguely where I am (when I feel like posting) or my blogs about photography or travel photography on which there is no usable personal information, I am much more in control of what's viewable. Facebook has all kinds of loopholes and changes they make to their security settings lets people see all the data you thought was private. Not to mention the fact that Facebook has availed itself of the right to publish anything you consider personal.

Imagine for a moment that you were in university and went to a drag party in drag and your friends posted the photos on Facebook and set the security so that only people present at the party were able to see them. Then fast forward a few years when you're working as a security consultant when Facebook suddenly sees your drag photo and decides it would look good advertising Facebook to a more diverse audience. Instantly your shameful drag photo is public and your boss can see it - your friends and family can see it. Bang goes your chance of further promotion and you're more likely to be eased out of the company because the company now views you as a blackmail risk.

Unless you have a PRESSING reason to maintain Facebook then I strongly urge you to use this link and delete the perishing thing. Cleanse your life of the foulness of Facebook. Make sure your photos are yours and not owned by Facebook. For further reading on this matter, I recommend this link from Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-to-delete-your-facebook-account-2010-5

To take a tablet or not to take a tablet that is the question!

A tablet can be a very bitter pill to swallow if it's a bad device. Ages ago, I bought a tablet to display my photographs. It only kinda-sorta worked. It was a Nook Color and as at the time I was working at a store that sold them I was able to pick up the very last certified pre-owned model for about $90, the night before they were withdrawn.

While I had been at the store that sold Nooks, I had a lot of Nook returns but usually it was just because people didn't understand how to use them. Other than that, there were battery issues, charging issues and wifi issues though those were in the minority. I recall a customer coming in and complaining that it would start turning pages randomly after a while but it never did in the shop so I discounted that as a fault. Now the thing about the shop was that it was humidity controlled. When I got my Nook Color home is when I found out that it really misbehaved in humidity. I could not use it in my bedroom as I would likely be breathing on it and then it would go berserk, acting on phantom touches or going completely screen dead. Thus I resolved to using it for other things.

One day I took the thing to show photos to some people that didn't really matter much. It was a talking point and that was all. At the start of the meeting it was fine then as the room got more humid, it began to act up by which time people were asking to see it. Needless to say it embarrassed me considerably. A professional trying to show off things and his equipment malfunctioning. It just made me look incompetent and I was getting remarks like "shouldn't have wasted your money on that. Should have bought an iPad".

Aside from the fact that I could not comfortably have afforded an iPad, I did look at an iPad mini which I could have had for $260 but decided to spend $90 on the Nook instead. What a bad decision that was. Indeed, my friend told me that she didn't see why I bought a Nook when I was eventually going to have to buy the iPad she knew I wanted in the first place. It's true - I should have bought the iPad - even if it was the mini and not the full size model.

In the end I put the tablet up for sale on eBay and was rather disappointed to get $30 for it. The previous week they had all been selling used for $75 - $100. I had hardly any bidders. This is generally my experience of anything I put up for sale online - hardly anybody is interested. It cannot be the description because I simply copy the description like everybody else does.

At the moment I have a Nexus 4 phone which means I can display photos on the fly. Since I now no longer have a pressing need to display a portfolio since I now no longer try to operate a business, I can't say that I have any particular use for a tablet.

Indeed, I looked just now at tablets and it seems that they're pretty expensive for what they are. Take the latest iPad as an example. Honestly I don't really think any of the cheap tablets are worth the bother - they're cheap for a reason. They're made cheaply and they're made with cheap materials and put together cheaply. When you buy something cheap, it won't be good. If it's good, it won't be cheap. So, the iPad is about $500 (from memory). In addition to the iPad, if you don't have one you'll still need a laptop or a desktop. You will quickly tire of bashing your fingers on a hard, unforgiving screen so you'll want to buy a keyboard and those seem to start at about $80. Thus a $500 iPad is now a $580 iPad. Then you will need storage since iPads come with minimal storage. $500 gets you just 16gb while $800 gets you 128GB. So, if you want to do something useful then your iPad is going to end up at $880 and still won't have any way of printing documents as there aren't any printer drivers for most printers available. In my opinion, you're better off spending $1,000 and getting a Macbook Air rather than going the not-so-cheap tablet route. It really is all about the money! Tablets are cheap because they're crap. Once you have a tablet you want to buy a laptop/desktop. Once you're locked into Apple with one product you need to follow through - same with Android.

Bloody Hell, look at the prices!

As I said in my previous entry, my retail position had just come to an end. While I was there, people used to chat with me. One of the comments made was by a policeman whose hobby had been shooting. His comment was that he knew shooting was an expensive hobby but photography was even more expensive. And so it is.

I will put together some camera setups aimed at the kind of photography that interests me. It's going to be quite arbitrary and based solely upon what I like and of course will be done solely from online shopping catalogs. I am going to cover five camera systems. They will be:

• Fuji X system, micro four thirds
• Nikon 1 system
• Canon EOS M system
• Nikon SLR -  1:1.5
• Canon SLR - 1:1.6

The areas covered for all five systems are 

long lenses up to around 400mm - 500mm

macro lenses

lenses from wide to telephoto. (in 35mm format about 28mm to about 300mm)

I will not be covering tripods or flashes nor filters nor camera bags. The cheapest decent quality tripod will start somewhere around $150. A decent head will start at around $50. Filters if they're any good will be between $30 and $100 per lens. Camera bags are so much personal choice that I just won't mention them.

Before we have spoken about a camera we are already into $230 - $300 and we haven't added any lenses nor anything else. There are also the hidden costs such as the computer, the storage, the backup storage, the software, the memory cards etc.

I'm going to look specifically at the entry-level cameras in each category because there's nothing really to choose between them and the more expensive cameras for most users. The real differences are very small and not really worth bothering about. When I did professional photography, I had a Canon XT and then went and made an ass of myself by buying a 30D when two the same would have been helpful from an operational point of view and when the XT would have cost half as much as the 30D. Aside from small differences in buffering and a slight difference in the control locations, there's no noticeable difference between them.

Fuji X system

The camera chosen is Fuji X-A1 with 16-50mm lens for $599
The longer lens is the Fuji 50 - 230 for $399
The macro lens is the Fuji 60mm at $649
Total system cost $1,647

Nikon 1 system

The camera chosen is the Nikon J1 with 10-30mm lens.
This is an oddball camera because it's $219 with a silver or white color and $299 for other colors.
The longer lens is the Nikon 30 - 100 for $246
For the macro lens - out of luck as there isn't one on sale.
Total system cost incalculable as elements are missing.

Canon EOS M system

The camera chosen is the Canon EOS M with 18-55 lens for $350
For the longer length - out of luck as there isn't one on sale.
For the macro lens - out of luck as there isn't one on sale.
Total system cost incalculable as many elements are missing.

Nikon SLR system

The camera chosen is the D3100 with 18-55 lens kit for $445
The longer lens is the Nikon 55-200 IS lens for $246
The macro lens is the Nikon 40mm for $277
Total system cost is $968

Canon SLR system

The camera chosen is the T3 with 18-55 lens kit for $449
The longer lens is the Canon 55 - 250 for $299
The macro lens is the Sigma 50mm for $369 (Canon's 50mm macro doesn't do true macro)
Total system cost (with one oddball lens) $1,117

So, it would seem that the "cheaper" smaller cameras just don't have the same lens selection. It's interesting to note that Nikon's 1 system is the most likely of all the systems to disappear in the same manner as Nikon's Pronea system did in the 1990s given that no other manufacturer makes lenses for it and given that my cellphone takes better photos.

Fuji's X system is half as expensive again as a Nikon setup. Canon's EOS M lacks an important lens and seems to have been an afterthought to Canon along the lines of. "we see other people making smaller cameras and charging more. We should have one too. Let's develop one but we won't spend any money doing it because it's a flash in the pan. Maybe we can kludge along by putting a converter mount in so users can buy regular Canon lenses".

Now you can see just how much camera systems cost. In comparison, an all-in-one zoom compact that does everything those cameras can do in a smaller size albeit with image quality on a par with the Nikon 1 start at about $170. I have been a digital SLR user for a number of years and the quality achievable from compacts has rocketed almost to the stage where it's just not worth doing anything with digital SLRs any more. I could get pretty much all I need quality wise from a really good superzoom compact.

This is not meant to be a stunning photo by any means. It's just here as an example of what a humble cell phone can achieve. The Nikon 1 J1 can't even beat this when it comes to noise in the darker areas. I was a fan of the form factor of the Nikon 1 system. I still am. The image quality just blows me away with its awfulness.

Happy New Year

The New Year makes a great transition from the old for me, already. I firmly believe this New Year will be bigger, better, brighter and more profitable.

Over the last year I decided to cease bothering with a photography business that wasn't paying its way. It was business I had been reluctant to start as I never could see how on earth photography could ever pay its way. It made a bit here and there but always less than was spent on it and the capital investment is largely money thrown down the toilet due to depreciation.

I started trying to sell the studio stuff in February with a line laid down that if it didn't sell by the New Year, it would go in the garbage skip outside my front door as I would deem it totally unsalable. It finally sold in October - for way less than I paid for it. I just sold it as a job lot. I just had the guy make me an offer, negotiated higher and sold it. I don't know exactly how much that had all cost. I knew it was a mix of stuff from ebay and from B&H and he got an exceptionally good deal.

A month or so back, I put two of my flashes on Amazon to sell. Thus far, no interest at all. It took a while for the flash controller to sell which was surprising as it was in mint condition and priced below secondhand market value. A note about Amazon - just like eBay, they chronically underestimate postage. The only way to get the real value of postage is to charge for express mail and then to send via standard mail. Certainly it's a scurrilous tactic as the buyer has paid for what they believe to be the postage but doing otherwise cuts deeply into the value of the item. Given one loses 10% of the sale value already in fees, eBay and Amazon seem not to be good places to sell anything unless one is prepared to get pennies on the dollar. Thus, my flashes have been listed on this blog and have attracted no interest whatsoever. There is a limitation - people have to contact me through Twitter or through the blog which requires a GMail account to send a message. That's just to avoid spam and phone spam.

I'm not desperate to sell them. I just want to get something with negative memories associated with it that I don't use, out of my life. They're just expensive junk as far as I'm concerned. My aim is to get back as many of my shekels as I possibly can.

Meanwhile, I have been watching with interest the decline and closure of the location where I have been working. People have asked repeatedly whether the organisation is closing and I have no answer to that - just my location. I believe the nature of the industry has changed and is changing the business model. As ever, I documented some of it with my smartphone. I believe true documentary photography these days is done with a smatphone and a website rather than with a traditional digital SLR.

 This was taken on the very last day the premises were open for business. Most of the stock had been sold and the rest will simply be packed up and shipped back to various warehouses. It's a sad day for all the employees that could not find other work. Fortunately I have acquired another position with a different company. Oddly enough, it's more suited to my interests, away from the public, better paid with more hours, better benefits and closer to home - not to mention a full hour for lunch with lots of cheap cafes nearby. 2014 looks to be off to a very good start already.

I have read some scathing comments about Olympus that suggest that Olympus might not be going to continue in the camera world for much longer. Smartphones have decimated the compact camera industry. Have you noticed how many of my photos have been put up using a smartphone? There are quite a few. It is estimated that Olympus camera division has lost money consistently. It is also expected the camera market will contract by 25% this year. I would not be surprised to see Olympus exiting the marketplace and abandoning its user base. They did this before in the 1990s. Olympus seems to be very good at making excellent cameras with high-quality but no mass appeal. I did not go for Olympus when I got my digital SLR because the E300 that was around at the time was just butt-ugly. I was also mindful of Olympus' track record of abandoning its user base.

I have been looking toward replacing my Canon equipment with a different brand but the Nikon 1 that I looked at and liked so much proved not up to snuff when I downloaded a RAW image file and converted it to JPEG. There was just too much apparent noise in the shadows. More noise than in the shadows on my smartphone which has a smaller sensor. I think Nikon is on the right track with the smaller format. I'm still holding off on that though. I feel that smaller is better with camera systems.

As a business, I set up with two camera bodies that are now essentially valueless. They're 8 megapixels which is adequate for my own usage. As I said before, the drip-fed megapixel "race" was just a scam to get people to spend more money on more electronic junk. There is hardly any difference between 6 megapixels and 8 and between 8 and 10. At the sizes most people use, even the difference between 3 and 30,000 megapixels would be unnoticeable. I set up with flashes that I'm trying hard to sell. I set up with studio equipment that I practically had to give away to get rid of. All of this stuff cost a ton of money and I'm practically having to give it away to get shot of it. I donated an electronic photo frame and some framed prints to the Chamber of Commerce fundraising auction. Somebody crossed out the suggested starting bid and I think they went for way less than the cost of just the frames. It was ridiculously low. Having said that, a fellow I work with had a business doing picture framing. In the end he had to close his shop that he'd run for 12 years because people stopped buying frames and framed prints. Everywhere I look I see art floundering and artists failing.

I see a severe contraction coming in the camera and photography industry. It started with all the photographers I saw in 2013 putting up the shutters and going bankrupt. At least one newspaper fired all its photographers and trained its reporters to use iPhones for video, audio and photography. I believe they all have keyboards and type their stories in their cars to be sent by iPhone to their base. It won't be long before newspapers cease to have offices and just hire random reporters who work from home.

I see more contraction in the retail industry. In my area, two bookstores vanished in 2013 and a golf store is also vanishing. I read that retail was 21% down over the Christmas period. Oddly enough UPS had such a backlog of parcels to deliver that many were late arriving. There has been a seismic shift in retail away from physical stores to online stores. I can see why too. If I walk into a shop to view a camera, I don't want to be "greeted" or pestered. I want to look and make my own decisions and to ask questions if I wish. I don't want to be ignored either. I can avoid all these problems and avoid going within smelling distance of the person with a bad case of Body Odour or risk being mown down by children running amok. I don't have to beat my way to the front of a crowd to view the latest gadget then to get some minimum wage employee to move the kids who're playing with the electronics away and clean them up with an alcohol wipe before I can check them out. I can avoid all this by shopping online or by simply saving my money and buying just what I actually need. I suspect many people are going the online route.

In 2013 I tried an electronic reader and was very underwhelmed by the experience. I tried it as a tablet to display photos after finding that I could not even download new free books without registering a credit card on the device. Given that large corporations such as Target and Barnes & Noble and others had their systems hacked to such an extent that many credit cards had to be cancelled, one can understand my reluctance to register a functioning card. As it wouldn't take all zeroes, it was useless as a reader. It turned out to be equally useless at displaying photos. I ended up flogging the blasted thing for a third of what I paid for it on eBay and I consider myself lucky. Relating the tale to my dad, his comment was that I was a sucker for electronic gizmos and that he'd rarely seen anything electronic that was worth the bother or the money. I tend to agree that one has to be very selective and that electronics seem to add to the cost of things without adding benefits. I look at electronic ignition on cars as a prime example of that. There was nothing that could not be done with a distributor and it was so much easier to adjust a distributor and if I wanted to make sure nobody stole my car, I could simply put the rotor arm in my pocket.

In 2014 I will not be buying new electronics save to replace any that fail during the course of the year. I hope to sell my flashes and possibly a lens or two. I want to get back to the kind of photography that I enjoy - which is entirely personal. I don't want to do anything "commercial" and never really did want to. In 2014 I will be starting my new job. I will be gaining my qualifications to work in an entirely different industry (it's a handy backup). 2013 was a year of building my bases. 2014 will be a year of developing those bases. 2012 was a year of building foundations. 2013 was a year that ended with sadness due to the unexpected death of a co-worker. I will miss Nick.

2014 I expect to be better than 2013. I expect this coming year to be out and about more with my camera than last year. I still need to update my travel photography blog with trips that I have not yet included. Perhaps I might document some of my daily life. Who knows?