Practical Photography

Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee have posed for a magazine in the style of Posh and Beck’s recent photoshoot.

The couple have obviously done it in jest but has recieved more attention than the original photograph. 50 year old Debbie looks fantastic but 70 year old Paul Daniels has left me cringing at the saggy pants, although I am releived he didn’t copy the most famous of David Beckhams Armani poses where he site full frontal leaving little to the imagination. For any girls who wish to be reminded of this see image… heterosexual boys look away…

I am pleased that Paul didn’t do this but really do find the image amusing and everyone is talking about it.

If you have a photography business it is easy to take your staff for granted, a photographer I know has recently done a shoot for 100 wishes, a book that proclaims itself to be a beginners guide to having no regrets.

This intrigued me as I thought this was an interesting concept and wondered how it could live up to its advertising. Looking at the website for 100 wishes the photography looks lovely and the Author Ali Davidson has shared her own experiences in this motivational book.

What interested me the most though, was the section for businesses, you can get a free consultation;

Where a workforce seems jaded or low on enthusiasm, we deliver the “Empowering Business” corporate training programme, that helps to gather and solidify groups of workers from every level of the company, encouraging a greater sense of teamwork, output and results.

Through an initial FREE OF CHARGE consultation, we will gather information on your concerns and aspirations for your teams in order to ensure each programme is accurately geared for your company.

Carried out over a period to suit your company needs, we will pre-agree expected outcomes and provide a follow-up session in due course to monitor and report back on results achieved.

Based on a successful working lifetime in global business development, 100 wishes Ltd really does understand leadership, customer service, manufacturing, logistics and bottom line results and all Facilitators are chosen for their own personal accomplishments in business.

“Empowering People NOW!”

If time is an issue, we also offer a one-day taster seminar “Empowering People NOW!” that promises to get individuals thinking differently and more positively about their role in life and within the company.

Looking to the Future…

Our ultimate aim is to grow our success towards the launch of the 100 wishes Foundation, an organisation supported by local business contributions that, one day soon, will be able to offer financially-assisted opportunities for ordinary people to achieve their greatest wish.

I think in light of the current economic climate now is the time to look into these sorts of things and 100 wishes seems to have a better outlook than just giving people a reason to moan. 100 wishes is not about complaining but looking at things in a diferent light and learning from your experiences good and bad to help you in the future.

The photography industries are starting to struggle so I would certainly recommend this to any business hoping to increase productivity with happy staff who are empowered and enthusiastic in their work.

Happy Valentines Day! As today is a time for love, romance and candlelight dinners I thought I’d celebrate with some ideas on getting the best pictures using candlelight.

It is very difficult to take photographs in candlelight as your digital camera will try to use the flash, if you have your camera set to auto you will not get the best results. Candlelight can create amazing pictures with a warm glow and interesting flickers of light. You can create a romantic scene and get really warm results but it is difficult.

The first thing you should be aware of is NOT TO USE YOUR FLASH. In low lights a flash will fill the area with light and you will completely lose all of the ambiance that made the scene interesting. In most cases I would advise switching your flash off completely.
Shooting by candlelight obviously means you have very little light to work with, which means to get good results you’ll almost definately be shooting with slower shutter speeds. As is the case with slower shutter speeds you have to keep the camera still to make sure there is no noise or vibrations, I would recommend using a tripod to get the best results. You can also try using a remote shutter to take away the vibrations from hitting the button.
If you’re shooting with a Digital SLR and have more than one lens choose the ‘fastest’ one you own, faster lenses have a larger aperture and let more light into your camera. Make sure you remember thatthat the larger your aperture the smaller your depth of field, so you will have to be more vigilant with your focus.

Using different range lenses can mean you need to try different positions and focal spots, I recommend trying as many different ways and compositions as possible and have plenty of memory cards handy.

Another way to get more light into your camera is to use a slower shutter speed. But the slower the shutter speed you the bigger the chance of capturing movement (this could be of your subject, the flames of candles or the movement of your camera).

If your candles are in the shot, your camera will try to underexpose as this will be seen as a bright spot. Try overexposing by a stop from what your camera recommends. Don’t over expose though as this can cause your  candles to look like burnt out spots in your image.

Try to experiment with the white balance when using candle light. Candles give off a very ‘warm’ light which creates a nice atmosphere. However your depending on your white balance settings your camera may remove this warmth if you have your setting on ‘auto’. By trying different settings you can get various levels of warmth ad decide which you prefer. You can also shoot in RAW so you can get the balance right in editing.

Make sure if your candles are in the frame that use use attractive candles and save your less attractive bargain candles for the ambient glow in the background, or to the side of the frame.

Any candles in the frame will impact the settings your camera wants to us but can also create points of interest in the composition that can lead the eye around the photograph, this can work with the main focus of the subject or against depending on what style you want to go with.

I would recommend not using a flash but as you experiment and get better you can try using flash emphasize the warm natural glow from the candles you cannot do this with a bright flash so you will need to use flash gels like red or orange. These can dim the impact the flash gives off to give a warm light.

The hardest thing about candlelight photography is the amount of light you have to work with. Try to use more candles as this will produce more light to help you with getting the right shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings. If you use less candles or just one there will be harsher more interesting shadows on your subject’s face or flickering in the background. By speading more candles out you will still get the warm glow and atmosphere but a more even light. I personally recommend having more candles to one side than the other as this gives a nice side lighting effect but have some on the other side, unless you want a very harsh difeerence and shadow.

Have fun experimenting with your candle light photography!

A Nude photograph of Madonna has been auctioned off and sold for $37,500, yesterday and is reportedly the highest price paid for a celebrity nude to date.

Christies auction house were delighted when the photograph of Madonna valued at $15,000 was sold to an unnamed european buyer for over double what they had expected.

The photograph taken of Madonna, was taken when Madonna Louise Ciccone (as she was known at the time) was a struggling dancer in New York trying
to make ends meet. She answered a newspaper advert (very desperately seeking Susan) to find a nude
model. We believe she only earned about $25 for the 1979 photo session.

Lee
Friedlander’s raw, explicit black-and-white image appeared in Playboy
in 1985. Friedlander has said of the photo session that Madonna “seemed
very confident, a street-wise girl. She told me she was putting a band
together but half the kids that age are doing that. She was a good
professional model.”

This was before Madonna was famous and has cetainly increased in value, although I am surprised it sold for so much as Madonna always seems to be getting her kit off.

Businesses seem to be looking towards the internet these days to market themselves, here are a few good ways to help you on credit crunch budget.

Flickr

Flickr is an online photo sharing network where you can display your images online and meet other people with similar interests. By sharing your images you are actually advertising your portfolio, you can link flickr to your website and generate hits through this and potetially new business leads.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site that is being used my many people all over the world, it has a huge online presence and if you search for your own name, unless you have set your profile to private it will come up in Google.

Facebook allows you to invite friends and colleagues to network with.

These can be;

• Personal Friends, whom you have known at school, through family, and outside work
• Professional friends, people you work with
• Clients, these can be people whose wedding you did before or current and even potential clients

Blogging

By blogging about your business people can find you on the internet this helps build up trust and a sense of community you will get loyal readers and people that will recommend you to their friends. People can leave comments and put in their email address which you could use as a potential sales lead.

All of these methods can be useful to getting your business recognised and remind older clients or friends of what you do and showcase recent work.

This weekend I saw another load of snow, not enough for a snow day, but enough to mean I’m cold and miserable and feeling the need for a holiday, as money is tight it I’m trying to justify this with a photography holiday where I can build up my portfolio and brush up on my skills.

There are many different photography holidays you can go on but I prefer one in the sun at the moment, I prefer the sun to the snow any day!

You can go to Itally, Turkey all sorts of places but I think I’ll try and book Marakesh this time. Photography holidays are a good way to get away from things without switching off completely, they can be a chance to let loose your creative side. Sometimes working in a creative industry you only get to aspire to other peoples creative visions and keep within a brief so getting to do what you want can be liberating.

It is also a good chance to beef up your portfolio with new fresh images it is always good to keep your portfolio up to date.

Drew Barrymore is the latest in a long line of celebrities that are announcing their passion for photography and planning to take it more serious. Drew Barrymore is hoping to release a book of all of her best photography, she claims that she has been photographing friends and family for over ten years and producing a book will be a good way to archive these…. (and make some money).

She tells People.com, “I’d like to work on my book of photography. I’ve been taking photos for like 10 years so that’s a goal for this year. Even if I just start it. … Everything is just a mess and I need to archive it all. So I’d like to focus on my photography.”

This seems to be her main goal for 2009 and with all these models, singers and actors turning photographer it makes me wonder why?

Obviposly a famous photographer could probably charge more than us regular togs but it will be no where near the amount they could get fora film or even a moldelling shoot. Is Hollywood being hit by the credit crunch? Do these celebrities need to look at a secondary source of income or is as they would wantus to believe, that it is all for the love of taking photos.

Photography giants, Kodak have reportedly lost even more than anticipated due to the economic downturn.

Eastman Kodak Co based in New York are forecasting a drop in revenue of as much as 18% in 2009. Not to be beaten the photography soecialists are looking for business partners to help turn their fortunes around and aid them to develop technologies like camera sensors that will be more profitable.

Last week Kodakstated they expect revenue to drop 12 % from 2008 to 18 % in 2009, this is a loss fof $200 million to $400 million from continuing operations.

This comes as quite a shock as Analysts had only expected a loss of $35 million in 2009, according to Reuters Estimates.

In the statement, Chief Executive Antonio Perez said the company’s balance sheet is “solid”, but that it sees “no immediate signs of economic recovery.”

Kodak, along with other photography names have been affected more by the recession as photography usage has diminished as consumers hold back on activities like vacations, parties and other events that often encourage the use of photography . Meanwhile, many businesses in effort to save money and reduce their carbon footprint have reduced the amount of priniting they do.

“It has been a very difficult year to plan for,” Perez said at the meeting of its 2009 outlook.

One year ago, before the worst of the economic downturn, Kodak’s outlook was much rosier. It had anticipated revenue by a compound annual growth rate 5 percent from 2008 to 2011. At that time, Kodak said it had completed an expensive four-year restructuring that transformed it into a maker of digital photography products and printers.

A level photography student, Josh Kellet 17,helped police catch multiple offender Shaun Rimmer 25 by taking a photograph of the burgular as he tried to break into Josh’s neighbours’ house.

Josh heard a disturbance from his neighbours garden, he knew they were away on holiday so looked out of his bedroom window to see what was going on. He saw two ‘chavvy’ looking men in tracksuits scoping the house one of the men saw Josh and alerted his friend. The two scarpered and jumped the fence but not before the quick thinking photography student had grabbed his camera and taken photographs of the suspects.

Josh did not manage to get a photo of the mens faces but caught their distinctive tracksuits. Josh immediately called the police who were able to use the images to identify the burgulars and capture them within 20 minutes.

Josh was awarded £150 by Leeds Crown court for his quick thinking.

Josh, of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, said: ‘I knew my neighbours were on holiday, and I saw these two people acting shifty in their back garden.

‘They looked like right chavs. One of them saw me in the window and they jumped over the fence. I picked up my camera and started taking pictures. Then I called 999 and the police showed up.

‘I thought I should catch them in case they had done something bad. I was just trying to do the right thing.’

PC Daniel Stoppard was the first officer on the scene and he headed off to look for the suspects after looking at the digital image on the teenager’s camera.

‘They were wearing very distinctive clothes, so we found them and arrested them in 20 minutes, and that was down to Josh. They had all their tools on them and it turns out they were prolific offenders.

‘Josh should be very proud of his actions, knowing that a prolific burglar is now behind bars. Teenagers often get bad press but Josh is a prime example of how they shouldn’t all be tarred with the same brush.’

Rimmer, of Normanton, West Yorkshire, admitted nine counts of burglary and one attempted burglary at last week’s hearing. His partner-in-crime Anthony Booth, 31, is to be sentenced later this month.

Judge John Spencer said the teenager’s actions had ‘contributed significantly’ to the serial burglary being caught.

Josh, who is studying Photography, Psychology and History at Pontefract New College, plans to spend his reward cash on a new camera lens.

It’s not the first time he had made an impact with his photography. A picture of a bus fire in his neighbourhood was used on the local TV news. But despite his obvious talent, he is keen to join the RAF rather than the ranks of the paparazzi.

His grandmother Iris Botten, 68, said: ‘We’re so proud of him. Not only did he help get that man jailed, but he stopped his neighbours’ house from being ransacked.’

Linda McCartneys photography will be used on comic relief T-shirts designed by her daughter Stella McCartney.

One of the T-shirts features an photograph of her husband, Sir Paul McCartney and the rest of his famous bandmates taken by Linda at the height of their Beatles’ fame. To keep in with the comic relief theme all of them on the  original photo have been given red noses.

Stella McCatrneys T Shirts don’t just feature her Mothers photography but also images taken by famous veteran fashion photographer David Bailey. His photographs of comedy duo Morecambe and Wise, are also printed wearing red noses on the comic relief T-Shirts.

Keeping it in the family her sister Mary McCartney has been taking the photographs of Stella’s celebrity friends like; Making it even more of a family affair, a host of celebrities and friends of the fashion designer,  Keira Knightley, Claudia Schiffer, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sam Taylor-Wood, have all posed for the worthy cause.

The T-shirts, priced from £5.99 for babies and children, and from £9.99 for adults, will go on sale on Monday at 214 TK Maxx stores nationwide, with all net profits from sales going to Comic Relief ahead of Red Nose Day on March 13.

Its charitable activities range from supporting orphans in Africa who have lost their parents to Aids or helping older people in the UK who are abused by someone they should be able to trust.

Miss McCartney said: “It’s a real honour to be involved in such a tremendous cause and be a part of the Red Nose Day campaign 2009. The designs of the T-shirts were inspired by iconic images of iconic people by iconic photographers and adding an element of humour to them.”

In line with her beliefs, the T-shirts are manufactured in Africa, using Fairtrade-certified organic cotton co-operatives in Senegal, ensuring a pesticide and GM-free product at a fair price to farmers in developing countries.