Memories of Japan

While procrastinating I ended up going through pictures from my travels in Japan. Below is a small selection of photos I don't think I ever shared before. It is very tempting to revisit the entire folder and see if what I've learned about post-processing in the last 18 months could bring new life to the collection!

Google+ versus Facebook for photographers

I don't promote my photography heavily or work hard on networking with other photographers, but I do post on social media sites and over time I've noticed a shift in how photo posts are received.

Take a fairly mediocre macro shot like this:

The original had some issues with the composition but it stood out from the rest of the set because of the escaping bubble which I quite liked. A crop, rotate and slight tint improved it sufficiently that I thought it would be ok to publish, so it went up on Facebook and G+. The results are shown below.

The reaction on Facebook

The feedback on G+

While the comment rate was similar, six times more +1's were received than Likes. While I do have about 40% more followers on G+ than I have friends on Facebook, this does not suffice to explain the difference in response. I do not use restrictive privacy settings.

The main differences I can think of are:

- G+ gives a nearly full screen view of the image, while Facebook reserves considerable horizontal width for the description, comments, etc. The image looks better on G+.

- Reaching the right audience for each post is easier on G+ using hash tags, circles and events than on Facebook. There seems to be a strong self-organizing photography community on G+.

- People seem to be losing interest in Facebook, especially since the much-maligned migration to the timeline. The accounts remain active but public participation (sharing, commenting and liking) seems to be dwindling.

The second point, reaching the right audience, strikes me as being most important here. For me there is no doubt that if I was only going to be posting about photography in one place, then it would be G+.

Warmachine Cygnar miniature shoot

I don't have any experience shooting miniatures so when a friend visited me this summer on his way home from a tournament I jumped at the chance. The minis are 28mm tall Cygnar faction for the Warmachine tabletop game from Privateer Press.

The setup was very simple, using just the big lamp in the sky, white paper and two prime lenses - a regular 50mm and a 100mm macro lens on a Canon 60D. No flash or reflector was used.

The full set is at Flickr. I really enjoyed the shoot and it was quite different from what I usually work with. My friend was very happy with the result as well.
 

Glasgow wargame show 2012

I grabbed my camera and headed to the Royal Concert Hall this morning for my first ever visit to the Glasgow wargame show. The event started at 10am and I arrived shortly after opening, paid £3 for an all-day ticket and entered to find that the hall was already busy with many games going on and a lot of visitors checking out the traders and games.

Prussian army facing off against Russian and Austrian opponents

Bandit down! RAF scores a kill against the Luftwaffe.

There was a healthy mix of games, some appeared to be demonstration only but others invited active participation. The arrangers were very helpful and welcoming, with many taking time to explain the scenarios and games being played to interested bystanders.

Indian braves advancing in skirmish line

A rifleman seems to be checking his weapon - perhaps after a misfire?

Several of the tables were massive, showcasing warfare across the centuries (11th to 20th) and the continents (Europe, Middle East and North America). While the majority were focused on historical conflict there were two at least two games with fantasy elements.

British troops in line formation prepare to face assault by Indian braves

Fatimid cavalry advancing in the desert

Land, sea and air warfare were all represented and there was also a good range of complexity, with the smallest games having 10-20 units on the table while the largest had hundreds of miniatures.

Crossbowmen at the ready in front of the main Crusader line

It was good to see that the event had a healthy turn-out with visitors of all ages and it looked like people were enjoying themselves. While tabletop gaming may not offer the special effects of modern console games it is considerably more cerebral and I hope the hobby will continue to see new recruits joining, which events like the wargame show will surely contribute towards.

Skirmish at a chapel in a fantasy game

A Crusader army faces their Fatimid foes in open terrain near Ascalon in 1099

Pictures are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. A full set of pictures from the day are on Flickr.

Glasgow orchid fair 2012

The Glasgow orchid fair takes place in the Botanic Gardens every spring. As a free event it offers an excellent opportunity to see some very beautiful flowers and photograph them. This year was the first time I had a macro lens and the photos from the fair reflects this.

The full set of pictures is available on Flickr.

These photographs are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

The beauty of earthporn

Porn has been making its way into culture in many ways, not least in colloquial language where it is increasingly common to append 'porn' to signify a collection of something.

One such example is earthporn, as seen in one of Reddit's many communities. While this might at first give the impression of something sexual it is actually a collection of photographs featuring planet Earth at its most beautiful, unusual or awe-inspiring.

Below are a few sample photographs, all of which make me want to grab my camera and book a flight to go exploring. The last one also seems like an excellent location for a mad scientist engineer to create a base for bringing plans of world domination to fruition.


Tsingy de Bemeraha

Horseshoe Bend

Himmeltindan, Vestvågøy, Norway

Entrance to an ice cave

Aogashima, Japan

Macro photography

Reproducing subjects at 1:1 ratio or greater can reveal a world which is not normally visible for us to study closely without difficulty. Macro photography is commonly seen today with subjects such as insects and flowers, for example there is a large community on G+ tagging shots with #macromonday to share such photos. The Closer and Closer Macro group on Flickr has nearly a million photographs, demonstrating the popularity of macro photography.

A typical macro shot has razor sharp focus on the subject matter and a narrow depth of field (sometimes extended with focus stacking). The use of a ring flash or a flash diffuser is common in order to improve light conditions as the photographer needs to work very close to the subject. Tripods are not required but are very helpful in order to stabilise the camera when longer exposures are needed to compensate for poor light conditions and the subject can be relied on to not fly off while you are setting up the tripod.

Personally I use the Canon EF 100mm 2.8 USM lens on a 60D with a 430 EX II flash and a diffuser. Below are some sample photographs taken with the lens.

View on black here. This shot of a hornet has been cropped and rotated to improve the composition. Some photographers feel strongly that using crop to achieve a 'macro effect' is not appropriate. In this case the original shot was already a macro shot, as can be seen here. If you are shooting for your own enjoyment then there is no reason to worry about 'rules' but just be aware that some people may take a purist position.

This is a shot of an ice cube on a printed circuit board, with an air bubble (about 2 to 3 mm wide) trapped in the melting water. Again the shot has been cropped for composition. View on black here.

Euro coin, uncropped image shot af f/5.0, 1/400s with ISO 100 and no post processing (JPEG file straight from camera). View on black. Criticism of this picture would probably include that the coin is not fully in focus and that the subject does not fill the frame. A second light source would have been helpful as well.

In conclusion, macro photography can bring out previously unseen colours and details in the world around you. It can be great fun and range from very easy shots such as the coin to very difficult where the subject is prone to flee at the slightest provocation. There are some inexpensive ways, such as extension tubes, to get into macro photography or you can pick up some good glass - many macro lenses have excellent optical characteristics.

Street photography - Passing by

Two strangers, caught in what may seem as a confrontational pose, pass each other outside Lunds Konsthall, an art museum in Lund, Sweden. The apparent tension in the picture never existed. The picture can be viewed on a black background here.

This is by far my most viewed photograph, with nearly 14,000 views on Flickr. It is not a posed photograph, but instead an example of street photography with both subjects unaware that the photo was taken. This is a controversial area of photography as both opinion and law differs widely between different countries and cultures. Stories of photographers being hassled,  threatened or even arrested are commonplace today.

In the UK, there is a Home Office consultation right now where part of the aim to clarify the law and issue guidance to police on interaction with photographers. There is a great deal of confusion about the rights to ones likeness, model releases and what is socially acceptable. Street photography can also be very challenging as the opportunity to take a shot is fleeting and light conditions are often far from ideal.

My personal experience of doing street photography in Japan, England, Poland, Sweden, Scotland, Portugal and Denmark has been positive so far. Generally the rules I live by are simple:

• Do not be creepy.
• Do not trespass.
• Smile a lot.
• Move along if somebody indicates they don't want to be in the shot.

I use a both zoom lens and a 50mm lens for street photography. The former lends itself to shots where the subjects are unaware of the photo while the latter requires a degree of proximity that usually entails interaction with the subject, resulting in posed shots. I don't see either method as being more pure or better than the other, but rather think that both have their rightful place in street photography.

Looking at the technical aspects of the particular shot in this post, it was taken with a zoom lens (135mm) with a 1/500 of a second exposure at aperture of f/5.6 and with ISO set to 100. In retrospect taking the picture at f/8 or f/11 would have provided a better depth of field for keeping the man fully in focus without sacrificing too much speed. A high shutter speed was required as both subjects were moving and a longer exposure would have introduced motion blur or prevented me from capturing the moment.

One of the most upvoted comments on Reddit regarding this picture was a request to develop this into a series. With spring finally here I hope to make this happen in the next few months.

A year of photography

I have long had some interest in photography, but did not have the time or money to really get into it as a hobby. Owning only a film camera which did not provide timely feedback (in fact it may take weeks between shooting and seeing the finished product) and which had a high cost per shot made independent learning slow and frustrating.

Eventually I picked up a compact digital camera but found it quite frustrating as it had many limitations and was really only suitable for tourist snapshots. If I was a brilliant photographer I could perhaps have gotten more out of it, but having poor to average skills and a cheap camera was a barrier to learning. On the bright side it gave me a lot of practise in framing shots, provided instant feedback and had almost zero cost per shot.

A little over a year ago I finally took the decision to make time for it and picked up my first DSLR, a Canon 60D. This was done just ahead of a trip to Japan for which I strongly wanted to have the possibility of taking higher quality pictures of memorable places and people. I opted for an upgraded kit lens (18-135mm) which gave me some extra zoom compared to the standard 18-55mm kit lens and quickly started learning the camera basics.

When I came back from Japan it was with 10,000 pictures, more shots than I had taken in my entire life before that trip. This was a complete game changer as feedback was instant (through 'chimping' on the small LCD display on the camera) and the camera capabilities were fantastic. The kit lens turned out to be more limited than I expected but other than that it was a great experience.

Since then I feel I have made huge progress as a photographer, developing both skills and confidence. There was some external validation of this as last year there was more than 50,000 views on my Flickr account, one picture was used by news.com.au and I got a couple of pictures into the top 100 on Reddit's ITAP community. A couple of pictures were also picked to illustrate Wikipedia articles or picked up by other websites.

I've been sharing my experiences with friends and as a result a few of them have also gotten into photography over the last six months. If you have been thinking about getting started or making the move from film or compact to a DSLR then I would definitely recommend going for it. It is a great time to be a starting photographer.