Tim Parkin

Give some Praise where Praise is Due

I've read a couple of blog posts recently that asked photographers to give a bit of praise and I thought I'd pass this request on. Next time you see a website or a photograph that moves you, spend a few moments to send the photographer an email or use the contact form on their website. Most photographers don't make much money out of their work an the boost that the praise from another photographer can give is so much more →

Composition – Introducing Flow

Last issue I took a look at the concept of balance in composition. The second main concept that I want to cover is the concept of 'flow'. Flow describes the natural directionality in a  composition and it also describes the way the eye will flow around a photograph. Firstly it may help to cover a few psychological/perceptual ideas that pertain to composition and how our eye moves around a picture. Research has shown that our eyes find it impossible to more →

Chris Goddard

This week I asked Chris Goddard from the south of Wales to send a couple of pictures of Mewslade to me to 'critique'. I'm not a huge fan of the term critique - hints of criticise but that is far from what I want to do here. The two photographs are wonderful interpretations of an area of the world that I visited and found very difficult. If you want to see some more of Chris's pictures, take a look more →

Elemental Landscapes & The Photographer at Work – Harry Callahan

My interest in Harry Callahan was piqued when Joe Cornish showed me some of his work and I also saw him mentioned in relation to Minor White and Steiglitz. I saw a book called 'Elemental Landscapes' whilst searching on Alibris and had to buy it. I also bought 'Harry Callahan - The Photographer at Work' from Amazon. more →

Hindsight – Scotland

A shot that is a bit different from Richard's usual modus operandi - taken with a medium format camera at the start of setting up his business in Scotland more →

Harry Callahan

Harry Callahan, born 1912, was a photographer many of us could relate to. He wasn’t a graduate of any particular art school or a rich family who could support a creative life. Harry, an engineer by training, worked for Chrysler during the Great Depression and only started photography as a hobby during a ‘mid life crisis’ in 1938 (sounds like an early life crisis to me). He was going to buy a movie camera but couldn’t afford one so more →

Which ‘Self’ do you Take Pictures for?

When asked ‘who do you make photographs for’, a very common answer is ‘myself’. However, given recent discussion, I started to think about what this means. When I started my photography, I didn’t know who I was doing it for. I did know that I wanted to show people what I was doing though; I wanted to share the buzz that I got from seeing these scenes with other people my wife and family seemed to bear the brunt of more →

Tilt / Shift Photography

As people quest for more resolution and sharper pictures, they invariably encounter someone singing the praises of tilt-shift lenses. Most commonly used in close up product or architectural photography, these lenses allow the photographer to choose where the plane of sharp focus lies and also choose to correct or to manipulate perspective (to a limited extent). It is the ability to control where the plane of focus lies that we will cover in this article (we will come back more →

Colin Campbell

In most photographers lives there are 'epiphanic’ moments where things become clear, or new directions are formed. What were your two main moments and how did they change your photography? The idea of a narrative existing within a photograph intrigues me. A successful image can be as much about atmosphere and storytelling as about the subject and the composition. The novels of Neil Gunn, a Highland author best known more →