Category: Links

JPG magazine is running some good themes for the next issue – Nighttime, Delectable and Faith.

The quality of the images on the site is constantly impressive, and also inspiring, so if you’re in the mood, head on over and submit your own.

I submitted to Nighttime, and here’s my submissionto the Delectable theme.

If you’re interested in the sort of work I like, here are my favourite shots from other people.

My Rebel XT is getting longer and longer in the tooth. First was the XTi, then the XSi and now the XS.

Pop Photo’s hands-on gives us a good overview, and it’s great to see a new entry-level SLR on the cards, rather than the bottom of the range camera being a higher-level one from a couple of years ago.

The live view feature will help people coming from point and shoots, but I’m not sure how much I’d use it – if the camera’s away from my face it’s normally because it’s in a place where live view wouldn’t help me much anyway (above my head, on the ground . . . ).

US pricing’s not released yet, but it’s sure to come in under the XTi’s $685-ish with the 18-55mm IS kit lens.

If you’re already got a DSLR, it’d be a sideways move at best (unless it’s an original Rebel you’ve got), but it looks like a great deal for those starting out.

Definitely the drug-dealer approach – start you out on a relatively affordable package that’ll still repay some effort, and before you know it you’re down the expensive road towards L-lenses. I should know – it happened to me.

Thomas Hawk and Jason Burn have some harsh but fair things to say about local camera stores. Here’s Thomas:

Well, I’m bound to make a few enemies with this one, but I just finished reading Jason Burn’s post on a bad experience he had with his local camera retailer and have to agree that your local camera store is increasingly becoming a bad place to buy camera gear.

I often wonder about what the future holds for the camera stores in here Santa Fe. There are a lot of tourists and a lot of pro photographers in town (and lots more semi-pro and committed amateurs), and more than one camera store.You’d think competition and a local market with some high-end requirements might make the stores responsive and on their games.

First, sorry for lack of posts around here – mad busy with 3 big projects to get out the door before we head to Ireland and Italy in mid-April.

That said, here’s a great toy I stumbled across recently. Jim Bumgardner’s Experimental Color Pickr does exactly what it says on the tin.

Choose a colour, adjust its brightness and the picker will show you images from the Flickr Color Fields group (worth a look in itself) that exactly match the colour you’ve chosen.

It doesn’t sound like much, but in practice it’s very cool. It might also be useful for designers looking to find images that match a particular color (but as you have to drag the picker around, and can’t enter a RGB value, you might struggle to get exactly the right shade).

There’s a great article over at Digital Photography School about how to approach composition. We’ve all been there – you see a scene that attracts you, and you know there’s _something_ good there, you’re just not sure how to bring it out.

Photographer Neil Creek talks you through his thought processes as he assesses a potential shot, and works out how to say what he sees. Good examples show how things turn out.

For experienced photographers, I’m sure much of what he talks through happens at a non-rational level, but it’s valuable to be given some step by step illustrations.

I guess it’s like writing – I’ve been writing articles so long now, that I don’t ask myself a lot of specific questions as I’m working. I follow a feeling of what has to happen when, and how things should work. A little more like uncovering than creating.

But much of that comes from inwardly absorbing a lot of very small decisions about things over a long time. Thinking hard so I don’t have to think so hard any more. If someone asked me, I could plausibly explain why I’d done things the way I had, even though I hadn’t really been thinking about that at the time.