Category: Links

My friend Dave Walsh is currently on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, having spent the last two months chasing Japanese ‘scientific’ whaling shapes around the Southern Ocean.

He’s a great photographer, and when it dawned on him that the ship contained a bunch of Canon gear he wondered what Canon’s stance on whaling is – especially given its commitment to other conservation efforts.

Here’s the upshot:

Here at Greenpeace, we support shooting whales… with cameras. But we’re surprised to learn that Canon, the world’s number one digital camera producer, isn’t willing to condemn using harpoons — despite their high-profile advertising and sponsorship programmes dedicated to wildlife and endangered species.

We wrote to Canon headquarters in Japan asking their CEO to speak out against Japan’s whaling programme. But Canon declined to take a stand against the killing of thousands of whales.

As a Canon user I’m not very happy about this, so I dashed off a quick letter to the CEO. Maybe you should think about doing the same. There’s more information here.

I’m a shy person in many ways, and the prospect of stopping strangers in the street and asking to take their pictures fills me with dread.

But I can see that it would be a great way to extend my photographic range, and get some great images.

So the Flickr Group 100 Strangers might be just the place for me:

This is a contact photo group to inspire you to practice taking portraits of people you don’t know. The ultimate challenge for the members is to take 100 portraits of 100 strangers. Candids are not allowed. Little by little, learning by doing you’ll get better results. You might even find that taking contact with strangers isn’t as scary as you thought it would be.

Here’s how it goes: Stop people by the street, talk with them, ask if you can take a portrait. Post the picture to Flickr and 100 strangers pool. Try to get an idea who they are. Write a caption that tells something about the person in portrait. Describe how you got the photo.

Don’t post archive photos. Get out on the streets to take new ones.

One of my favourite bloggers and journalists (and no mean photographer) – John Naughton of the Observer in London – has taken the leap into Aperture for organising and editing his photo collection.

I look forward to his posts and articles on a range of topics, and his photography posts are well worth a look. He says:

I’ve decided that [Naughton’s friend and colleague] Quentin was right about Aperture as a tool for managing large numbers of images. What finally tipped me over the edge was finding that it was the best way of handling RAW images. It’s also very good for dealing with the archiving of large filesets.

And despite my recent printing woes, I agree that Aperture works brilliantly for managing and working on photographs.

Since I got the program around the same time as my digital camera, I literally find it hard to imagine working in a different way (a subject I’ll return to soon).

Constraints can be hugely liberating, and in this digital age many of us have forgotten what it’s like to have to weigh every shot as carefully as we might.

Enter the 36 Exposures Contest – a join venture between FILE, Coudal Partners and Flak Photo.The basic idea is to shoot a roll of film with 36 exposures, and display all the shots – no deleting or complex Photoshopping. You have to submit your ideas by January 6th, and if your concept is chosen, they’ll send you a roll of film to shoot and return to them.

All the images will be displayed in the order they were shot, and winners get some great prizes. Full details here.

Even if you’re not interested in the competition, it might be interesting to subject yourself to a bit of discipline in your photography, to see what happens when you take your time a little more.

And when I say ‘you’, I mean me, of course. I submitted my idea to the competition, so we’ll see if I get some film in the mail next month.