Photobox - Fresh out of the Box
Tuesday 01 Jul 08 | Category: My Photography
I’m delighted to be the pin-up boy for July, appearing as the featured photographer in this month’s Photobox “Fresh out of the Box” news page.
Welcome to all Photobox users. Please don’t forget to sign-up for my free quarterly newsletter whilst you’re here and you’re just in time to catch July’s free desktop wallpaper too.
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Watching the storms roll in
Monday 30 Jun 08 | Category: My Photography
Bizarre though it may seem, I’ve actually been looking forward to seeing some of the Monsoon weather in Thailand. Holidaymakers generally visit in the dryer, cooler months of December and January. April is the hottest month of all but in June the monsoon season begins.
Most mornings begin bright and clear but some days the clouds build up overhead until they grow grey and then almost black. The wind builds and the air is charged with that pre-storm static that sets dogs across the neighbourhood barking like crazy.
I get a pretty good view of the storms from my apartment balcony and I’ve tried a number of times to catch a shot of a lightning bolt striking the city. Long exposures are required and I’ve mostly been using the Canon G9, which has a handy ND filter built-in. However, after a long exposure, the camera takes a few seconds to write the image to the SD card and it’s invariably during this time that the best strikes occur. However, I managed to catch just one this afternoon before the rain hit my part of town and I had to retreat indoors.
Most mornings begin bright and clear but some days the clouds build up overhead until they grow grey and then almost black. The wind builds and the air is charged with that pre-storm static that sets dogs across the neighbourhood barking like crazy.
I get a pretty good view of the storms from my apartment balcony and I’ve tried a number of times to catch a shot of a lightning bolt striking the city. Long exposures are required and I’ve mostly been using the Canon G9, which has a handy ND filter built-in. However, after a long exposure, the camera takes a few seconds to write the image to the SD card and it’s invariably during this time that the best strikes occur. However, I managed to catch just one this afternoon before the rain hit my part of town and I had to retreat indoors.
World Press Photo & Yann Arthus Bertrand
Monday 30 Jun 08 | Category: Other Photographers
Not one, not two but three great photo exhibitions in Bangkok over the weekend. The World Press Photo and Thai Press photo exhibitions are thought-provoking if harrowing. Difficult really to look at those photos and to leave the exhibition feeling terribly uplifted but there’s no question that these are images which should be brought to our attention. Depressing to see the numbers of journalists killed and wounded around the world last year listed at the entrance to the exhibition. One would be too many but, sadly, the numbers were in the hundreds.
By way of contrast, the aerial photos of Yann Arthus Bertrand show more aesthetically pleasing views of our world and were a welcome change of pace. Impressively big enlargements have been arranged in circles in the square outside the Zen shopping centre in central Bangkok and the backdrop of skyscrapers and skytrain line seemed to work really well.
The exhibitions also served as an opportunity for me to meet up with a few members of the Bangkok Camera Club, which I’m looking forward to joining next month.
Free desktop wallpaper for July
Monday 30 Jun 08 | Category: My Photography
My free desktop wallpaper for July shows a small selection of some of the pictures taken in Bangkok over the last couple of weeks. It’s dedicated to florists everywhere.Stock Photography - Getting the captioning right
Friday 27 Jun 08 | Category: Stock Photography
All good stock photographers know that even the most dynamic, engaging and saleable images will sit on a virtual shelf gathering dust if the keywords and caption applied to them isn’t detailed and accurate. Indeed, more than that, captions must contain all of the relevant information that a potential buyer might require. Captions must be brief yet comprehensive, it’s a challenging aspect of the job but it must be right.
When captioning, you have to put yourself into the position of a buyer looking for that particular image and ask “What words would I use if I were searching for this specific image”. Specific location information must, of course, be included and it’s got to be accurate. Editors won’t thank you if they run a double-page spread of a picture of a beach in cuba and tell their readers that it shows a beach in Brazil, as happened to the UK’s premier Travel mag recently. Captions must include all relevant information but including too much detail can be as damaging as not including enough.
There’s certainly an art to it and a good vocabulary combined with a grasp of conceptual keywords is an essential quality for those wishing to bring their images to the attention of potential buyers. I wouldn’t say that it’s as important a skill to develop as the photography itself - I’d say that if you ever want to market your images successfully that it’s much more important than that.
Having spent some time and energy honing my captioning and keywording skills and having agonised at length about how to get exactly the right combination of words into the Metadata in my images it was with great delight that I read this morning’s post from the Photoshelter blog.
Poor old Martin Corben is an Argentinian photographer who has a captioning style all of his own. Check out the other examples of his unique approach but this one was my favourite, Martin’s suggested caption is below.
“This I shot during a weekend getaway with my good friend Luciano. A month after this his boyfriend saw the picture and sent me the stupidest e-mail ever.”
When captioning, you have to put yourself into the position of a buyer looking for that particular image and ask “What words would I use if I were searching for this specific image”. Specific location information must, of course, be included and it’s got to be accurate. Editors won’t thank you if they run a double-page spread of a picture of a beach in cuba and tell their readers that it shows a beach in Brazil, as happened to the UK’s premier Travel mag recently. Captions must include all relevant information but including too much detail can be as damaging as not including enough.
There’s certainly an art to it and a good vocabulary combined with a grasp of conceptual keywords is an essential quality for those wishing to bring their images to the attention of potential buyers. I wouldn’t say that it’s as important a skill to develop as the photography itself - I’d say that if you ever want to market your images successfully that it’s much more important than that.
Having spent some time and energy honing my captioning and keywording skills and having agonised at length about how to get exactly the right combination of words into the Metadata in my images it was with great delight that I read this morning’s post from the Photoshelter blog.
Poor old Martin Corben is an Argentinian photographer who has a captioning style all of his own. Check out the other examples of his unique approach but this one was my favourite, Martin’s suggested caption is below.
“This I shot during a weekend getaway with my good friend Luciano. A month after this his boyfriend saw the picture and sent me the stupidest e-mail ever.”