Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Add New Dimensions to Your Photography with Interesting Angles

We have all seen it – the straight-on, focus-in-the-foreground photograph that is beloved by many photographers. It is perfectly fine, but for the intrepid photographer looking to make a mark in this competitive area, how do you make your photo really stand out from the crowd? Manipulating angles is the easiest way to give photographs that extra boost of unusual ingenuity. When you mix up the way you take your photographs, your portfolio immediately has variety and the viewer can see your skill shine through. The obvious way to create drama with photography is to focus on one feature of the subject of the photograph and make it stand out. Has your subject got a striking aspect that you want to highlight? Take the photograph at an angle that is side on, at an angle. For example, a spiral staircase is often photographed from the top down, but focusing on the balustrade and changing the typical way of looking at it can make all the difference. If you change the level at which you take the photograph, you can create dynamic, fun images that are interesting for the viewer. Most portraits are taken at head height; why not take it at ankle level? You can form a totally different view of a person if you ask the subject to lie down and look horizontally up at the camera. If you're taking a portrait of a parent and child, why not take photographs from the perspective of each person? We often have dim memories of our time as children, so giving this alternative viewpoint can prove popular. Upwards is another direction that is often left out. Lie down under a tree canopy and take a photograph of rain f
Read more... Add New Dimensions to Your Photography with Interesting Angles

Monday, July 8, 2013

Photographing Sport

While much of today's online media rely on video and moving images to tell their stories, there is still a huge demand for photography from certain news outlets. The art of telling a story is pivotal to sports photography. While viewers are able to watch an entire match, game or event over the course of several minutes or hours, not everyone has the time or interest to devote to following their hobbies. A photograph is the perfect partner for a news report on a website or in more traditional media such as newspapers or magazines, whereby photographs are used to complement the narrative and editorial content of the publication. A good photograph not only captures a precise moment in the game but also sums up the general feeling of the story. If the article relates the loss of a match it would be inappropriate to show players or managers looking happy. This allows the reader to guess the tone of the article in conjunction with the headline. This poses many problems for sports photographers. In football, a photographer has 90 minutes to capture as many quality pictures as possible never quite knowing what the story will be at the end of the match.

Film versus Digital - The great debate

As technology develops there are always going to be purists and nostalgia obsessed photographers who preach the pros of old fashioned techniques over modern developments. In photography, the rise of digital cameras means that very rarely will you find a photographer, unless they've been to university, who can use the skills of a light room to develop their images. Recording Camera _Mark_Holyoake_Web While most people choose digital for speed and cost reasons, the jury is still out as to whether the images are the same quality. The grain in a film print is far greater than a pixellated digital image. As Batman director Christopher Nolan states about his choice to shoot on film, "We're not counting pixels here." Secondly, the unpredictable nature of physically developing an image leads to some accidental discoveries. Double exposures and light leaks may not be the desired effect but removing any element of danger you remove any chance of experimenting. In terms of storage, a thousand digital prints only take up the space of a hard drive but hard drives are prone to failures and once they are lost they are irretrievable. Whereas, a developed negative is filed in seconds and as long as they are stored properly, they can last for 50 years.

Monday, July 1, 2013

Macro Photography

It seems fitting, at a time when a new exhibition exploring the photography of the solar system is opened, to take a look at the opposite capabilities of photography. Welcome to the wonderful world of macro. While photographing the unknown solar system above our heads is amazing, beautiful and captivating, it is also the world in front of us which our eyes literally can't see, which amazes me. The ability of a lens to detect so much detail and then magnify it with such precision is a great source of inspiration and allows us to see the world in a different way. Photos are referred to as "macro" when you are increase the size of an object in your picture from about half life-size, as represented on the image sensor, to five times life-size. You should use an f-stop no wider/larger than f/16 to get all or most of the main subject in focus. Experiment with wider/larger lens apertures, which will throw more of the subject out of focus and may produce pleasing artistic effects. Get creative with macro photography by shooting the subject from an unexpected angle. The most exciting thing about macro photography is that as technology improves, so does our ability to see the processes which make up our world. Processes which have always been there, but without the capability to see it, w
Read more... Macro Photography

Photographing the City

mark-holyoake-63 People often ask me, what my favourite subject to photograph is. For some, it may be sport which inspires them or maybe dance or travelling to different lands. While I appreciate the skill and determination required to capture such difficult subjects, the only thing which really inspires me is the city. Having grown up in the countryside, I am used to being surrounded by nature. I don't know whether this has numbed me to the beauty of nature but for some reason I find it hard to become truly inspired by the natural world. What many people find beautiful, I find average and uninteresting. Whereas, the random sprawl of the big city really makes me curious to explore through my camera. The way cities evolve overtime means that you have a patchwork of mismatched periods all within closely confined spaces. You could have a huge sky scraper next to a Victorian pub or a derelict warehouse next to a five star hotel. It's this diversity of textures and history which invite the artist to explore different areas their hidden histories. While nature in general doesn't interest me, the positioning and history of green spaces within inner cities fascinates me. Whether it Hyde Park, London with its boating lake or the old Horse racing track around Sefton Park, Liverpool. The scarcity of green spaces in cities means they are often utilised in interesting and creative ways.