Archive for All articles

This Movember thing really is a terrible idea…

So I’ve been doing this Movember thing. Basically, you spend a month (the month of Movember, clearly) to grow the dodgiest moustache you can. But it’s for charity; by wearing this bushy abomination on my face, I am reminding the world of the scourge of prostate cancer.

I think I can with great certainty say that I have succeeded in growing a fantastically dodgy ‘mo. (more…)

A lot of dSLR for not-a-lot of money

‘What camera would you recommend?’ It happens to Team Photocritic&Small Aperture quite a bit. Mostly we get it from people who are looking to buy their first dSLR or from very generous types who want to buy one as a gift. (Wouldn’t we all like someone like that in our lives?).

And then we do something really irritating; we answer a question… with a question. It’s not that we don’t want to recommend cameras; we both love talking about them and want people to enjoy taking photos as much as we do. Why do you think that we keep writing about that magical mash-up between technology and artistry that is the mysti-tastical world of Photography?

As with so many other questions in life, there isn’t a hard-and-fast answer. So here is a few different answers for you… (more…)

Commissioning a website

I’ve been creating websites since around 1996 or so. When I got started, Netscape Navigator Gold was the, er, gold standard for creating web pages – it even came with a HTML WYSIWYG editor built-in. Cutting edge stuff. Oh how things have changed.

Throughout my web-life, I’ve seen quite a few different sides of websites: I’ve designed some (badly). I’ve programmed a few. I’ve been the editor of some major sites; I’ve specced and project managed the build of a load of very high-end sites, including one for a national broadcaster. I’ve worked in SEO. I’ve contributed to open-source projects. I became a certified Scrum product owner, and embraced agile project management… etc. I guess, since I’ve done all these different roles at some time, what I’m trying to say is that I’ve started to figure out how it all hangs together.

So, what follows is a ridiculously comprehensive guide to how you can work with various agencies to get a great web-site built for you or your company. (more…)

Stopping down a Canon EF lens

If you’re used to manual lenses, you know how easy it is to stop them down. If you are a little bit more advanced than that, and have ‘graduated’ to more advanced lenses, stopping down a lens (i.e making the aperture smaller) while it is not attached to a camera body can get a little problematic. There is a way to do it, however… (more…)

Better ways than 365 days?

I think that the statement I’m about to make could unleash something of a furore. (Give me a moment: I’m going to batten down the hatches and take a deep breath.)

I have a loathing for 365 self-portrait projects.

I can’t bear them. They irritate me. Sometimes they even bore me. They don’t quite make me want to scratch out my eyeballs, although occasionally some of the pictures might. There, I’ve said it. Admission made. Given that the 365 Days group on Flickr has 19,175 members, I suppose I ought to qualify this statement, because there are a whole host of people prepared to disagree with me. (more…)

Nokia & Photocritic Photography School

So you guys may have been wondering what the hell I’ve been up to these last few months. Finally, the cat is out of the bag.

When Nokia was developing their new Nokia N8 phones, they decided to create the best camera phone the world has ever seen. For starters, they got Carl Zeiss to make a tasty f/2.8 lens for them, and paired it with a rather capable 12-megapixel imaging sensor. Of course, it’s a pretty solid phone all around, but Nokia asked me to take us back to photography basics: With a camera phone this good, it is back to the drawing board for people who use their phones just for occasional snaps. (more…)

100 Flickr streams made of pure awesome

My relationship with Flickr goes back a long way; all the way to late 2004, in fact. I kept going back out of curiosity, deciding it’s not for me, and then leaving again. In the meantime, I spent a lot of time on PhotoSIG (but I decided the community was a bit too hostile for my liking) and Deviant Art (awesome, but too childish on the whole), before turning back to Flickr. Again.

My cycle kept going on until 2008, when I realised the community feel of Flickr had grown strong enough to be un-ignorable. By January 2009, I had collected a lot of amazing Flickr streams; and I wanted to share my finds with you guys. 50 amazing flickr streams was born. (more…)

Everything you ever wanted to know about Lightroom 3

…and shouldn’t be afraid to ask.

When it comes to photo editing software, Haje is convinced that Lightroom 3 is the best programme out there. I’m probably not that far behind him when it comes to cheerleading for it, either. (Take a look at my review over on Small Aperture if you need convincing.) Still, we’ve a fair few questions about it that we’d like to put to the team that developed it. (more…)

Gallery exhibitions? I don’t get ‘em.

“Hey”, they’ll say, “You’re a photographer! We should go to this really great photography exhibition”. I stick on my best grin, nod with feigned enthusiasm, and go along. Over the years, I’ve grown to learn that (with a very few notable exceptions), I’ll regret that decision.

It’s not that I don’t like photography. Quite the exact opposite, in fact. I live, breathe, write and occasionally sing photography. I love looking at photographs, nothing makes me happier than seeing a friend (of which I have several thousand) achieving a new milestone in their development as a photographer, and I do a 1980s-style punch-the-air whenever I get a particularly good photo myself.

So why the disenfranchisificationated feeling about photo galleries and exhibitions? (more…)

WordPress Amazon S3 CDN plug-in

First of all; you kids are going to have to forgive me for a non-photography post; I’ve coded a brand new thing which I’m rather excited about, and I figured I’d share it with the world.

Basically, I had a rather unique problem: I’ve been using Donncha’s rather awesome WP Super Cache for a long time. Then, in a moment’s weakness, I switched the Photocritic blog to W3 Total Cache. Mostly because I quite fancied using their Amazon S3 cache. The problem here was that the W3 Total Cache plug-in doesn’t play nice with Total Cache. Which is fine, I thought. But I was wrong: It turns out that to get the most out of W3 Total Cache, you need oodles of memory. Within minutes of me turning off WP Super Cache and turning on W3 Total Cache, my server was on its knees, begging for mercy. Then it crashed.

And I decided to come up with a better solution. (more…)