Dpreview, Ranting, Competitions and Publication

It’s been a good week. Not a lot of time to get out and about with the camera, but a few bits of good news for me on the photographic front.

In order to try and take my photography to the next level, I’ve been entering a few online photo competitions, flickr is all well and good as a channel to share your pictures, but if you actually want your shots critiqued by your peers, then competitions is the way to go.

It’s been a while since I’ve ranted so….

Dpreview.com, a brilliant, free website for all things photographic, the content is fantastic and the lengths that the guys go to in order to test the gear is amazing, and provides me with more than enough information about the latest camera gear.

Whilst the content generated by the owners of dpreview is excellent, the forums have gone down hill massively in the last few years (inline with the massive increase in people using DSLRs to make photos). For someone in IT, the Dpreview forums are really interesting, we often talk about digital moderation and control of information in my job and it’s typically viewed as a kind of draconian thing that makes peoples jobs more difficult.

Dpreview shows what happens if you don’t moderate forums. The Olympus forum in particular can be a very unpleasant place to live. If users identify issues with their equipment and ask their fellow forum members if they’ve encountered the same problem, they are typically derided and accused of trolling. Very few pictures are posted and a great deal of forum space is wasted by people simply moaning about other forum users. This is what happens when you don’t moderate. But, there are some incredibly talented photographers on dpreview and some wonderfully helpful people who give their time, advice, loans of equipment and knowledge to help others. The good is dramatically outweighed by the dross because there is no moderation, and that makes them almost unusable as a source of information. Some of the posters on dpreview might read this and then they’ll comment at the bottom of this blog about how much they disagree with me…you get the idea….except that you won’t because I moderate my comments!

The example I’ve used to illustrate this in the past is this one. In this case, one of the dpreview developers has posted a fascinating article on the evolution of a forum post. Showing how it grows and digresses and goes off at tangents. If you’re remotely interested in how people use the internet to communicate, it’s fascinating. If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll see how the dpreview community responds to it….basically by deriding, disagreeing and moaning. That’s why I don’t spend much time in the forums.

Away from the forums, Dpreview has introduced ‘Challenges’, effectively a way for users to set up and moderate their own competitions on a subject of their choice. This can be anything from a content specific challenge like ‘pictures of road signs’ to a technique like ‘Black and White’ or ‘HDR’, even equipment specific challenges like ‘Shots taken with a D90’. The challenges are opened, pictures are submitted and then the shots are judged by the community. It’s dpreview, so the same people that can be found moaning about the forums are also moaning about the challenges, but I think they are super.

I’ve entered 2 pictures so far, in the first I came about 100th out of 200 and the second one finished 39th out of 183. The standard of photography in the challenges is fantastic, and I’ve learnt an awful lot just by looking at other competitors in the challenges. It’s great fun, and for me it feels a lot more inclusive than the forums.

So that’s cool, in other news, my employer has approached me and asked to use some of pictures in a brochure! Okay, it’s unpaid, but it’s still getting my pictures out there and is enormously flattering. In still other news, one of my prints sold at a charity auction for about £60 so that’s cool as well.

I get told all the time that people ‘love’ my pictures and they are ‘excellent’ but when people are willing to reach for their wallets for my photos or rating them highly in competitions, well that’s praise indeed.

Just enough time to mention this weeks picture. I went back to the beach this weekend with my tripod to do some more water-blurring type stuff, the above shot is the best of the bunch. Enjoy.

Promiscuous fingers

I vaguely remember wittering on about setting yourself challenges or themes when out shooting. It helps focus the mind a little and forces you to take pictures of things you normally wouldn’t.

Cat was in Inverness on Friday, getting her hair cut, a process that takes about 3 hours, so it was a good chance to take some pictures of one my favourite cities. The challenge was to take some shots of Inverness that hadn’t been taken before. As the capital of the Highlands, Inverness is a real tourist hotspot and must be one of the most photographed cities in Scotland.

Recently I’ve also been taking 100s of shots of the same thing. on my recent trip to Dunrobin Castle, I must have taken 200 shots of the falconry display and almost using my SLR like a point and shoot, just firing off shot after shot in the hope that one would work out. I think I kept about 10 shots of the display, a keeper rate of just 10%.

My trigger finger is getting dangerously promiscuous.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, especially with wildlife, but the good photos were taken more by luck than judgement, and this somehow feels like I’m ignoring all the things I’ve learned over the past few years. With this in mind, I set myself the target of only taking 50 shots of Inverness, and then refining that number down to 25, a ‘keeper’ rate of 50%.

It’s really hard! Amazing how quickly bad habits get ingrained, I started by wandering up to Inverness Castle, to see if there was anything there that would make an interesting shot. The Castle also serves as a courthouse and council building, and it’s a rather squat, utilitarian building that isn’t too photogenic up close. Despite my eyes telling me there wasn’t a shot there, I decided to waste 5 of my precious shots on things that I knew wouldn’t make the cut. Curse my finger!

I then looked away from the castle itself and at the surrounding area, a brilliant panorama of the city and the hills and trees etc. That cost me a further 10 shots, but I really thought about each one. The ever brilliant Scott Bourne and Rick Sammon tell me every 10 days on their Photofocus podcast to ‘make pictures not take pictures’ and I think it’s finally sinking in!

Then it was down around the river, over the bridge and back up the other side, passing the architecturally interesting Eden Court theatre (pictured below). There goes another 10 shots. Down a nice alley and then into a church and I spent the last of my precious shots taking pictures of church spires and graves etc.

I’m really pleased with my final selection. Instead of spending hours choosing which shots to choose and perhaps sharing half of them…I was left with just a handful of pictures that I knew were okay. You can see the shots on my Picasa stream.

Now, I’m not advocating taking this approach on every trip out with the camera, I can visit Inverness anytime and take the shots I might have missed. If you’re at a wedding or an event that will only happen once, then fill every memory card you possess, but as an exercise in self discipline it’s really useful.

What are your thoughts – are your fingers getting promiscuous?