Website is now live

At last I have had a chance to rebuild my website, although it is still not complete, I have uploaded a small selection of my photographs.

The web address is www.peteremery.co.uk.

Can you give me your opinions on the site, bearing in mind it is still work in progress.

Thank you.

Views of Photography

Something different, for the Easter Weekend.

Saw this article on the BBC news section of their website:

Paul Graham: Photographs 1981-2006

What do you think ?

Return to Whitby

Another of our trips, this time to Whitby, hoping for a repeat of last year’s Goth Weekend, but unfortunately the British weather had other ideas !

This time there were only three of us, Jim, Steve and myself.

After the essential stop for nourishment (ok a full English Breakfast), we got to Whitby and parked near the Abbey.

Below are some of my photographs from the day:

 

Gothic Cowboy

 

Vampire

 

Umbrella Girl

 

Golden Eyes

 

Gothic Bride

 

Whilst at Whitby we did have a look around at other sites;

Colourful but Cold

 

Dedication at Robin Hood Bay

 

Although today was a cold one, the opportunity for portrait photography was still quite good, but not as good as last year.

The next  Goth Weekend is 4 – 6th November 2011.

When the worst happens

I saw the following article, having been registered with this website, and I thought it might be handy for others to look at, just in case !

http://www.digital-photography-school.com/recover-images-from-a-damaged-sd-card/comment-page-1#comment-165253

It does work, I have used this method myself.  But it is important to note though that any type of file can be recovered from a memory card, USB pen drive, hard disk, etc.

Focus on Imaging 2011

The Focus on Imaging show, at the Birmingham NEC, is a big annual event where anyone can visit to see what the main manufacturers in digital photography and imaging are announcing. At the show there was Pentax, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony and someone called Nikon (or was that Nikoff).

Studio lighting from the Flash Centre, amongst others, was demonstrated, together with photo framing.

Also smaller manufacturers and a host of retailers, and magazines, are always ready to show what they have to offer with all kinds of offers and discounts available. For example, Advanced Photographer magazine were offering a Gorilla pod (a very flexible and handy camera tripod / support) to anyone taking out a twelve month subscription to their magazine.

With the retailers who are at the show it's the perfect opportunity to see some of their products and talk to their sales team about anything they sell that interests you. Whilst at the show I asked about a softbox for my portable, hotshoe, flash. After a discussion, and a demo, I came away with one !

A number of companies were offering tutorials and demonstrations using their software, including Corel for their PaintShop Pro X3 software, Adobe and Portrait Professional.

There were also a series of lectures on running a photographic business, wedding photography, etc.

All in all a good day out, at £10 to get in, which you could easily recoup in savings. One tip though, bring your own drinks ! At £1.90 for a small bottle of water, which you could easily buy similar for about 39p in a supermarket, it can become very expensive.

For more details look at http://www.focus-on-imaging.co.uk.

Other Presentation Methods

Although I have chosen to present my images as A3 prints, a requirement of module 310, there are alternative methods of presenting photographs.

One of the most common is the Internet, which has a far larger audience than any exhibition could achieve.  There are various ways to upload images to the internet:

• Photograph sites like Flickr
• Blogs, such as this one
• Websites (club or personal sites)

Photographs can be as separate images, as slide shows or even background images, all complete with music.  I have uploaded some images to Flickr whilst studying a previous course.

Other methods for more localised viewing include:

• Photo books are another option, which is becoming very popular as people are going back to wanting to see photographs away from the computer.  These are available in a number of styles and sizes ranging from small softback books right up to wedding albums.

• Digital Photograph Frames are also becoming more popular as someone can select a range of photographs to be displayed on their photograph frame, which changes every so often.
• Cake Designs – yes Asda (there’s a bit of advertising) do their own photo cakes, where you provide a photograph, which they scan and print on icing sugar paper and then put this on top of their sponge cakes.  It is very effective, but bear in mind that the icing paper is slightly smaller than A4 (allow about 25mm all round to get the image on the paper), the colours always seem faint and contrast is lacking but then again you cannot have your cake and eat it !

Some people even have photographic digital key ring fobs !

At the end of the day, it is up to you how you want your photographs to be displayed.

I am a member of the Burton Photographic Society, who hold a number of photographic competitions and exhibitions.  Entries for these can either be as prints (mounted or not), usually around A3 in size, or as PDI or Projected Digital Images.

Ethics and Photography

There are some who would argue that photographers have no ethics, and sadly there are a few that don't.

What or who we take photographs of, are to the majority, what or whom we wish to photograph. There are photographers who are paid, good money, to take photographs to discredit, embarrass or even hurt people, especially those in the public eye.

So what should we consider before we press the shutter button:

• Could anything be implied from the photograph that we take which is wrong. For example a vegetarian being photographed coming out of a butcher's shop, could imply that they are not a real vegetarian or someone being photographed with a member of parliament whom they dislike, in a way that suggests they support the persons and their policies.
• Another area of controversy is invasion of privacy. This would not just involve taking photographs through someone's window. If you were found with a 1000mm lens near to someone's private property you could find yourself explaining what you are doing there with such a powerful lens - bird watching would not be an acceptable excuse !
• Being too persistent when wanting to photograph someone. As the old saying goes, NO means NO !
• Claiming credit for other people's work is another area.

But even after the shutter button is pressed and the image captured there is still more than happen to the photograph than simple printing.

During my last course I did a post entitled Photoshoped Too Far, and in one part I wrote about a photographer who took some photographs in a war zone. In one photograph there was an American soldier watching as a man carried his child towards him, in another photograph the solider put his hand up to stop people.

The photographer later combined elements from the two photographs creating a new image where the soldier was putting up his hand to the man carrying his child, as if ordering him to stop. Once the photograph was proven to have been manipulated, and the photographer sacked, he was asked why he had created the photograph, the photographer responded that he felt the manipulated photograph was more interesting, even though it implied that the soldier was almost threatening the man with the child. Here two innocent photographs were combined to imply something very different from the reality that the photographer saw.