Monthly Archives: June 2009

The 52 week project for charity.

Do you ever lose your Phojo? Phojo, for the people scratching their heads, is photographic mojo. Do you ever wonder where the next photo is coming from? I see it all the time on photographic forums and Flickr. People pleading for inspiration. They feel they have lost their phojo and fear it may never come back. I admit, it has happened to me on many occasions.

So often, when people bare their souls on the interwebs, they get such a varied range of advice, it must be hard to know where to start. But, in one of those cyber oddities that are all to rare these days, when people claim to have lost their phojo, I hear the same piece of advice. “Have you tried the 365/52 projects?” Again, if you are wondering, they are projects on Flickr. The 365 group and the 52 weeks group are both based around a similar premise. Take a self portrait either every day for a year, or every week for a year. Easy. Well, not so easy it turns out.

Not Ireland!

Imagine, every day, you have to take a photo of yourself. That’s, every single day for a year! This from dictionary.com. Narcissism describes the trait of excessive self-love, based on self-image or ego. Now I am not saying that the thousands of people who are involved in the 365 project are in love with themselves, but I bet their aren’t too many emos doing it either. I really don’t think I have the head for the 365 project. So, how about the 52 week project. Surely, even I can manage one self portrait per week for a year. Or can I? Do I want 52 photos of me through out the year? I doubt even my darling wife would! But, I need a challenge, so, as of July 1, I am into it. The 365 project is just too damned daunting for me, but I reckon I can manage the 52 week project.

To spice things up even more, I am going to try and make it a charity event. I am not 100% sure how I can manage this at the moment, but I will give it some thought over the next fortnight and keep people advised. I will look into some childrens charities and see what would be the best one to support.

Watch this space!

5 Essential Tips for Black and White Photography

Without a leaf

Black and white photography is sometimes treated as the ‘poor relation’ of colour photography. After all, why limit yourself to shades of gray when you can use the entire spectrum of colours?

But in reality a black and white photo can often look even more stunning and captivating than the colour equivalent. Below are five tips to help you choose when to shoot in black and white, and how to get the best images when you do.

via Amateur Snapper | 5 Essential Tips for Black and White Photography.

10 Top Photography Composition Rules

This is quite a good guide to some of the rules that you will here when talking about photography.

Yashica  635 | Fuji Pro 400H

Now whilst I don’t try and stick to these rules, I do find a lot of my images meet one or more of these rules with out even realising.

The only rule in photography is that there are no rules. However, there are many composition guidelines which can be applied in almost any situation, to enhance the impact of a scene. Below are ten of the most popular and most widely respected composition ‘rules’.

via Amateur Snapper | 10 Top Photography Composition Rules.

Wants and don’t wants.

Do you have any old cameras lying around the house? You might be able to get some money for them. At the moment, I am on the look out for an Olympus Pen or an Olympus Pen F, a working Polaroid SX-70 and a Pentax 67. If you have any of these and you no longer want them, let me know. 🙂

Pen F

I also have a few old film cameras that I no longer want. I will post a list later in the week, with some photos.

Pictures of Olympus E-P1. I want!

Seeing as how I can’t get my grubby mitts on an original Olympus Pen camera, this thing looks very tasty.

Pictures of Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera leaked? (updated)

We were visiting the Olympus dpreview forums, where we noticed this thread pointing to this picture at Hong Kong site omuser.com.

It looks like the top view of what could be a new Olympus Micro Four Thirds camera with a 17mm f2.8 pancake lens attached?

via Pictures of Olympus E-P1 Micro Four Thirds camera leaked? (updated) – 1001 Noisy Cameras.

mmmmm