iPhone

Well I now have one of these iPhone thingies and you know, Inever checked out the camera before buying it….I assumed that with 98 pages of photography apps that it was a good camera. But no, the apps are all tying to make the picture better.
As a phone, with internet connection it’s brilliant tool and will sure be a Photographers friend

Photographers agree to blur firearms officers faces

Now this is what really annoys me, who has given the photographers, agencies and newspapers the authority to agree to this, this should have gone trough the unions for a decision if any.

So now we have “The police will be issuing guidelines to picture desks across all London papers soon.” but thousands of press photographers won’t get that guideline, so it should be down to the editors decision on what is needed in privacy as they are the ones in control if a picture is too horrific it is the editors decision not the photographer. What about other forces don’t they have firearms officers? Do the guidelines apply?

We just don’t have time to vet and consider if the image is offensive to readers or we may have breached some hidden point of privacy in an individual we would have to start asking them this right at the beginning in which case the pictures change dramatically from the candid approach that says its real and not set up or posed.

It is also interesting to note that Nigel Howard an Evening Standard Photographer said “there could still a problem when “citizen journalists” take
pictures of crime scenes using mobile phones, but he admitted there was
little either side could do about it.”

No there is little you can do about it and you don’t have the right to speak for them either Howard!

Now its all very well them saying one dads kid got jibbed at school but that can happen for anyone who appearers in the paper, what about parents committing sucide, or being a hippy a pagan, a priest, all of which is enough for a kid to get teased at school, thats waht school is like…sadley

Photographers agree to blur firearms officers’ faces – Press Gazette

A group of Fleet Street photographers has agreed to greater cooperation with firearms police officers with the Metropolitan Police, including pixelating faces to hide the marksmen’s identities.

About 12 newspaper, agency and freelance photographers met senior officers from CO19, the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Firearms Command, yesterday in a bid to foster better relations between police and press. Read More>>

Ricoh GX100 Review

The people over at Luminous Landscapes have a review on the Ricoh GX100 another RAW shooting compact (which shoots in Adobes Digital Negative, .dng) There are some comparisons to the G9 in the article as well but as the GX100 takes 5 seconds to write the RAW file it’s not one for me

Go to article >>>

Solo Photo Book Month

Over on Musings on Photography they have started  a SoFoBoMo due to start on 1st April-ish 2008 which lasts for a 31 day month. The idea is you make a book (of photo’s) in a month as an intense mini project, it can be a Scribus PDF book, a printed book from a print house like Blurb or other formats of ‘book’.

What better way to get to know your G9 and all its functions, and you may even bump into other G9 users as well. Its also quite interesting to see how some photographers are gearing up for the month project as well.  For more information read bellow

Potato Photography Competition

Did you know 2008 is International Year of the Potato? We’re talking about the world’s number four food crop – after rice, wheat and maize – and one that grows in more than 100 countries – from the Andes to China’s plateaus, from India’s lowlands to the steppes of the Ukraine. To highlight the potato’s role as a source of food, employment and income in developing countries, the United Nations and the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have launched a competition for the best photographs illustrating potato biodiversity, cultivation, processing, trade, marketing and consumption. There are separate categories for professional and amateur photographers, with information on the FAO website and the IYP website (International Year of the Potato). The deadline is September 1st 2008, with cash and camera prizes.

Good Luck!

Art Nude with the G9?

Last week, I mentioned in my post on the G9′s Sweet Spot that I would try the G9 during an Art Nude shoot. Well I nearly ended up forgetting to do that!

The studio time was a bit rushed, as it was one of those days that seemed to conspire against me and it was not how I like it to be when I need to be creative. After the shoot, things did not get better either!

The model Lucie was on time and early and was the only ray of hope I thought I was going to get on the day, models are notoriously known for being late!

The session was just a lighting test for a more complicated shoot, Lucie used to do a lot of ballet and I had wanted to do a shoot on this theme for a while and the purpose was to show the dedication, muscle tone and demanding fitness that a dancer has to have. The background was just a plain gray backdrop but I didn’t quite know how I was going to light it, but knew what I wanted, and as this was a test shoot I was using my Nikon D2x, with the final images to be shot on a Large Format 5×4 (has a negative size 5inch x 4inch, sheet of film and is loaded one sheet at a time, like the Victorian days, where the photographer would hide under a black cloth to see the image) film camera.

Surprisingly the lighting was easier than I though to sort out and Lucie was able to keep jumping in the same spot tirelessly for nearly an hour and hardly out of breath, all I needed to do was press the shutter at the right moment to catch her in mid leap and frozen with the flash which seemed to be a bit more of a challenge.

Time flew bye, and Lucie was briefly naked so I could see how the light would pick up her muscle tone and I had already told her we were done; she was getting dressed when I turned around to see my G9 on the equipment table, looking all lonely and remembered that I was going to give it a try.

I called Lucie back, and asked if she could do a bit more and luckily she didn’t hesitate or moan at my request.

Triggering the Flash Heads in the studio with a G9

As there is no Sync lead socket to fire the studio flash heads, I just switched on the cell slaves, which means as soon as a high intensity of light (from a flash) the studio flash heads fire (this means you don’t have to have a lead to every flash head, running from your camera) so all I did was drop down the Flash power to minus 2 stops on the G9, set it to manual exposure mode and matched the aperture to the light reading I was already using for the D2x, and it worked and I took a couple of frames of Lucie in a classic art nude pose sat on the floor.

Using the G9 did not make it feel ‘pervy’ in any way, the large LCD screen on the rear made it very easy to show Lucie the results and the screen is better than the D2x as it is more colour accurate,not as contrasted and larger, that said it probably looked quite rain-mac flasher.

I quite like the images it made too, the 12MP on a small sensor when shot at ISO100 made a image that looked like fine grain film when I viewed it at 100%

The images showed a little too warm out of the camera but that was also true of the Nikon, and the G9 was set on (AWB) Auto White Balance as we were rushing to get out before the building shut, I forgot to set it too flash

Well, I will have another go next time, maybe start the shoot with it….

As I said previously, my troubles did not end there, I decided to upload the images to my Flickr account and forgot to set the ‘Safe Viewing’ filter on their uploadr tool as that is normally the level I use for Flickr, as I did not normally upload nude works, but have decided to use it for online backup of my images and forgot it was there!

Later in the evening, when I went to check the LifeSpy blog and I realised what I had done, as nude images of Lucie were running down the sidebar in my Flickr feed. I logged into my account to find an email form Flickr telling me they had received a complaint and had put my account into moderation!

My Flickr stats reported 1,220 views on that day.

I am now waiting for them to re-assess my account

but I have posted the images here but you will have to click the read more for the rest of the post

Please, don’t repost this article unless the images are hidden with the disclaimer bellow….Act responsibly, not everyone likes or wants nudity!

Disclaimer

SEXUAL CONTENT WARNING

This website/blog includes erotic art content of a sexually explicit nature. If you are under 18 years of age, offended by adult material, or it is illegal to view sexually explicit material in your community, please leave now.
BY ENTERING THIS WEBSITE YOU CERTIFY:

→ I am at least 18 years of age.
→ I desire to receive and view sexually explicit erotic art material, and do not find it obscene.
→ The sexually explicit erotic art material I am viewing is for my own personal use.
→ I will not show this sexually explicit erotic art material to minors.
→ The receiving and viewing of sexually explicit erotic art materials does not violate the laws and standards of my community, town, city, state or country.
→ I accept responsibility for my own actions and release Gary Austin and his agents from any liability.
I CERTIFY THAT THE FOREGOING STATEMENTS ARE TRUE AND I WISH TO ENTER

All models are consenting adults over 18

Tricks with the AF Illuminator on the G9

It may be a bit odd to consider how the AF (auto-focus) illuminator can be used as a creative tool to change the emphasis in your images especially with portraits, candid’s and street photography.

In Fine Art Photography, there is often a lot of discussion as to wether the subject is, or was, camera aware! Meaning; did they know they were, or might be photographed. Non of which maters outside the elite fine art schools however, so I am not going into a philosophical debate here as there is no right or wrong answer, but look at ways on how you can make the subject respond to your wishes.

Candid’s

AF Illuminator off: The idea with candid photography is they are ‘not’ aware of your presence OR intentions, so the AF illuminator should be off! The Canon G9 still focuses fine unless in low contrast situations like dingy, dark conditions or foggy, misty mornings as the AF illuminates and adds contrast to a scene.

Aware

AF Illuminator On: I discovered quite by accident that the AF illuminator light works constantly unless you turn it off. It’s not the same as my Nikon which automatically switches on, in low light conditions.

So there I am photographing people from the bus as it goes by, and realising they all keep looking up, puzzled, with some occasional angry glares. I only realised when taking a picture of myself in a mirror just how intense that green light is, and it was on! Oops… (well that will make my friend a bit happier over on ‘Adventures of an Idiot-occasional notes of a photo freak’ who writes about his photography mistakes, as it shows we all make them and it not just him, honest Mike!)

From that, now happy accident (a fine art term) I found the interaction is quite interesting as more random strangers were looking directly at me in a very natural way. So it has potential for some interesting shots. It also gets the attention form small children and the occasional pet when they are not expecting it and gets them to look at the camera, but don’t over do it all in one session, even pets and children will get bored of being dazzled with intense green light unless they are weird or are trying really hard to please you photographic endeavour.

Optical viewfinder

If you are wanting to use the optical viewfinder as a way of composing and shooting, it is hard to give advice as to wether the AF Illuminator should be on or off, that said if you are shooting dark subjects the AF Illuminator will show a little green dot on the subject (like a laser sight from the movies, but green and un-focused; OK, so its not like that at all!) but it is easier to see than the black un-illuminated cross hairs in the viewfinder against dark subjects. so it might be best to have it switched on.

Bad light

AF Illuminator On: As I mentioned above, if the G9 is struggling to focus like in a night club, a foggy day or even in macro shooting (you may be blocking available light) it’s best to leave switched on. The AF illuminator won’t help focus over very long distances such as landscapes and you may need to switch to Manual Focus (MF) That said if there is light the lens should focus at infinity, or if you can’t see well enough yourself set the lens manually to infinity and all should be good.

Torch

The AF Illuminator can also be used as an emergency torch as it always switches on when AUTO is set on the mode dial and the shutter button is pressed half way down, ideal for a quick search in your camera bag, or looking for the key hole. All you have to remember in the number 4 as its four clicks from the gap in the shooting modes on the mode dial going anti-clock wise, play with it and you will see what I mean.

 

The down side to all this is there is no easy method to change the AF Illuminator without going into the menu and scrolling through.

The Digital Story: "How I Did It" 3 – Las Vegas Night Traffic

A really good tip on how to use your canon G9 at night by Derrick Story

“How I Did It” 3 – Las Vegas Night Traffic

When I’m in big cities, I try to travel by foot as much as possible. That’s when I see the good shots, and if I’m lucky, I come home with one or two.

I was walking back from a dinner meeting in Las Vegas with a Canon G9 and a small Gorillapod tucked away in my jacket pocket. I felt like shooting something, but nothing caught my eye until I climbed a set of stairs for a street overpass and noticed this scene. I wanted the streaming lights of traffic driving by, but I thought they would look best in context with the Las Vegas cityscape.

I mounted the Canon G9 to the Gorillapod and wrapped its legs around the edge of the overpass so I could compose the scene. I made sure the flash was turned off and set the ISO to 80 to control noise. I then went to manual exposure mode, which is very easy to use on the G9, and played with the settings until I saw what I liked on the LCD screen. The exposure was 1.3 seconds at f-2.8. I set the self-timer to anticipate when traffic would begin to move, then pressed the shutter button.

Some of the frames didn’t have the right look. But this image has a nice combination of moving lights and stationary objects. So it became my “keeper” for the night.

Photo of Las Vegas traffic by Derrick Story using Canon G9, 1.3 seconds at f-2.8, ISO 80, using manual exposure mode.

The Digital Story: “How I Did It” 3 – Las Vegas Night Traffic