A digital picture of britain?

Gandhi

Gandhi

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HAs anybody been watchin this series?

I've just noticed a post on another forum and realised I forgot to mention it yesterday! :stupid:

It's on thurs nights at about 23:20, been quite interesting so far but I wasn't too impressed with the calibre of last nights work, flat lighting and unoriginal compostion mostly. AND these people are gettin paid to do it! There's only so much you can blame on the fact that aren't used to the camera!


grrrrrrrrr so called pros!
 
I've found that a few times in the series, very poor quality work from the 'professionals'
 
the online 'competition' has its last days voting this weekend, i went through the entire gallery(all 100 pages) that i entered my picstures too and didnt see them, so the random rotation is rubbish, who is going to plough through 100 pages of photos whilst rating them???i did 3 pages and got fed up, then looked at another 97 before using the search to find my 2
 
or you could just do what my dad did, just e-mailed everyone he knew and all our family and told them if they didn't vote his pictures at 10 then they would be blackballed and not get any christmas action ha ha!!

There's life in the old dog yet!
 
gandhi said:
or you could just do what my dad did, just e-mailed everyone he knew and all our family and told them if they didn't vote his pictures at 10 then they would be blackballed and not get any christmas action ha ha!!

There's life in the old dog yet!
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cunning!:icon_cool
 
I've missed most of the episodes but I'd like to get hold of them. Preferably digitally (MPEG files or on DVD). I'm trying to get a login for UKNova but they've diabled signups at the mo. Has anyone recorded them?
 
I too missed alot of these, as they started at a time when my interest in photography had waned slightly, just before it pepped up and I bought my first DSLR ;)

So therefore I too am looking to watch all these. I did see the first one and enjoyed it somewhat.

I have a login for UKNova, and they're not on there anymore. Must have dropped off the end of the server.
 
TBH you haven't missed a great deal. It's been a bit of a let down. The photographers work hasn't been great and they've kept the exact same format every show. I personaly only found it interesting insofar as it was good glimpse into other peoples working methods.
 
Well... In the episode I saw (last week) I thought the guys worked pretty well within the limits of the kit they had.

It had the opposite effect on me actually. The programme, together with this site, reminded me that photography should be about capturing interesting moments. And we can get too bogged down in the technical stuff. Sharpness and image noise and all that is peripheral to taking a photo of something interesting.

Admittedly with landscapes you've got all the time in the world to compose the shot and get it spot-on but that's not what interests me most.
 
I'm glad that you found both inspirational and enjoyable. I also agree that it is easy to get bogged down with all the technical stuff and willy waving that goes on.

Where I do Disagree, however, is that photography has to be about capturing 'interesting moments' I realise that this phrase itself is open to varied interpretations, but surely it's the quality of the photograph and the phographers art in itself that can make a moment that somebody would normally consider boring into something they find pleasing to the eye and interesting.

As far as I'm concerned the art is in the interpretation of whats going on, not the actual event itself.

An interesting moment will not necessarily make a good photo, it's easy to cock it up, and landscape photography is very much time-limited, especially when it's early morning or late evening and the light is changing every second as the sun rises or sinks.

But having said that, it's all subjective anyway and I've probably got my head too far up my own @rse to see what a good photo is :D
 
Ah... you're interested in capturing 'the moment' then? Tis actually a noble aim - check out the work of Cartier-Bresson (you need the hyphen), arguably the greatest candid/street photographer (Do a Google image search) See what you think. Unless you already know of him that is.
 
Prepare to be somewhat humbled though! :D
 
fingerz said:
I'm sure good photography is a combination of many things really. Ignore me. I'm just narky cos I really like street photos but I can't seem to do them very well.
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No worries dude, everybody's opinion is valid.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Nobody is born great.
 
Had a look through this gallery: http://www.afterimagegallery.com/bresson.htm

It's good. But I was more inspired by the stuff on http://www.in-public.com than I am by Cartier-Bresson (such as I've seen). Obviously C-B must be a better photographer because he's more famous but as has been mentioned, it's all subjective.

I need a mate with a first-floor flat overlooking a really delapidated part of London so I can hang about at his gaff taking candids with a long lens.
 
CB did all his stuff with a rangefinder leica at 'normal' distances. ;)

Try the method I've told you about elsewhere - turn your DSLR into an instamatic and I defy you to fail! Experiment with fixing the focus distance for your lens - see what working distance you can get/ prefer with some test shots. Once you're happy tape the focus ring so you can't move it and go out and do it. Set Shutter Priority Mode, choose around 125th sec. 200 ISO, and don't look at the camera again till you get home. Do it! :)
 
Yeah... About that... I looked up hyperfocal distances on google and my brain exploded. It sort of made sense until I actually looked at the chart(s) and then it made no sense at all.

It would probably make sense for me to use my 50mm f/1.8 prime since I can't accidentally knock the zoom onto another value. But I couldn't work out a hyperfocal distance type thing for it.

Suppose I should just experiment really.
 
fingerz said:
I'm sure good photography is a combination of many things really. Ignore me. I'm just narky cos I really like street photos but I can't seem to do them very well.
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Hehe, you should check out my current battle with abstracts, its only been raging 18 months :annoyed:

Stick at it mate, you will not get there without persistence and determination.
 
Use the widest lens you got. The wider the lens, the deeper DOF is. The longer the lens, the shallower DOF is. Whatever the focal length of the lens is DOF extends further as you focus towards infinity( far distance) and decreases as you get closer to your subject, till you get right down to macro distances where you have DOF just enough for a gnat's foreskin.....sometimes! :LOL:

If you get your subjects on the sly at around say 15 - 20 feet in a crowded street, then you should be OK if you focus on something at around that distance before you tape your lens up. You don't have to worry about being on the slant etc cos you'll be cropping your shots afterwards and you should get a good percentage of useable shots.
 
Don't go too purist on me! ;) Get the camera hanging to around waist level where you're walking around or standing with one hand on the camera and obviously not taking pictures at all. :)
 
You'll be more aware of the shutter noise than anyone else will, and it's surprising how noisy a busy street/crowded area can be. Let's see some results soon. :thumb:
 
CT said:
Don't go too purist on me! ;) Get the camera hanging to around waist level where you're walking around or standing with one hand on the camera and obviously not taking pictures at all. :)
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I've been trying my hand at this for the past week or two whenever I've been out.

Had some personally pleasing results and some very very very skewiff ones. :D
I miss my quiet G3 with almost no noise, hehe

Steve, re This 18 month battle with abstract.....did you ever win your battle with black and white?
 
Marcel said:
I've been trying my hand at this for the past week or two whenever I've been out.

Had some personally pleasing results and some very very very skewiff ones. :D
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Let's see some then! :whistling

The skewiffy ones are easily sorted (straightened up)
 
not at all, the image qualtiy wont be changed by rotating it a little
 
Not necessarily. In fact to rotate an image 90, 180 or 360 degrees wont affect the quality at all. OK that's a bit of a cop out... I suspect you mean angles in between those? :naughty: Any decent photo editing package can cope well with this ... I do it all the time. There is a loss of definition which is easily sorted with applied sharpening. Try it. :)
 
Marcel said:
Steve, re This 18 month battle with abstract.....did you ever win your battle with black and white?
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We'll see at the end of this round of the competition ;)
 
Most of 'em will be on the slant probably using the 'instamatic' technique. Most of us take a fair percentage of off level pics even when we're trying not to anyway (with our eye to the viewfinder) To scrap an otherwise good shot for a minor thing like that is nuts. I was just recently looking at some wedding shots which cost a bomb and they were nearly all on the skew. Good shots too. I suspect the photographer simply doesn't know how to straighten them or he's using film and he'd have to pay for the lab to straighten them for him. I've advised the guy to negotiate a substantial discount or demand they're sorted out.

When people look at one of your shots fingerz and say "Wow" or " Great" they don't care whether it was rotated, cropped, bored, punched or countersunk. All that matters is the image mate, and how you got there doesn't matter one bit. Don't get too influenced by these purist ideas that it has be done in camera or it's not valid somehow. It never was anyway - most of it was done in the darkroom.

Some people may disagree. :D
 
I'm not really a purist. I just prefer to save myself time by getting it as right as possible first time round. My reasons for disliking cropping and rotation are simply that they reduce the quality (cropping drops the res, rotation is still destructive, even if it isn't that bad) and therefore the potential print size of the finished shot. That's all.

Not that I actually print much of my stuff but y'know. If I suddenly get good and someone wants to exhibit my stuff it'd be nice for it to be as high-quality as possible.

Not that it'll happen but still.
 
fingerz said:
If I suddenly get good and someone wants to exhibit my stuff it'd be nice for it to be as high-quality as possible.

Not that it'll happen but still.
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Well it wont if you don't stop taking about it and go and do it. :)

I should talk! :whistling
 
It's late. I'm at work. The dog ate it.

Next day off's not til Friday but I'm meeting mates. Might still take the camera out though. I'll get them to pose as if it was candid. They'll enjoy that :)
 
Oh and you don't suddenly get good. You're either born that way like David Bailey, but you can't hold a conversation with anyone who's left primary school, or you develop a technique and a style with lots of practice which gets you noticed.
 
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