Breast Cancer

I thought I'd share this.

You can bid on any of the prints in this magazine (starting price next to the photographs).
The proceeds will be donated to a selected freelancer in need of medical funding.
And there are some amazing prints to be bought:

New story for Sublime Magazine

I should have posted this a while ago as it has been out since November, but I was busy painting the ceilings and walls of my new studio!

So here are some snaps of our story in Sublime Magazine:

Photography: Me!
Styling Kay Korsh www.kaykorsh.com (who else?)
Make-up Caco Kinoshita www.cacokinoshita.com
Hair Kiyo Igarashi www.kiyoigarashi.com

Model: Eleonor

And in case you're wondering, I've had enough of blurry images too. My next one will be razor sharp!

Magic...

I don't normally like to post pictures of my actor clients on my blog, but this guy had an amazing costume...

New story for Random Magazine

If you happen to be in one of these stores, check out my story on the beautifully printed Random Magazine (November issue). Here is a preview with some snaps I've taken of the publication:

Do you want to learn about Fashion Photography? There's an App for that!

Today I was featured on the The British Journal Of Photography blog with an article about my fashion tutorial for the iPhone.

How exciting to be in a story that begins with the sentence: "We’ve come a long way since the daguerreotype and collodien plate."

Many thanks to BJP for embracing the new ways in which photographers promote their work.

Browsing pictures

For those of us who are still frustrated at how we browse pictures with existing softwares, here is a glimpse of what the future holds for us:




By the way, I'm becoming completely addicted to TED talks.

Wales - a retrospective.

I am in the process of writing a long, pictureless post. Possibly boring, but necessary.

In the meantime just to keep you entertained, I am posting some pictures I took in Wales a few weeks back.

Lessons learned during this shoot:

• Enduring sub-freezing temperatures on a windy beach is hard enough even when you don't have to take your gloves off to take pictures...

• Dogs drool. A lot.

• When people say the weather in Wales is awful, they're not exaggerating.

• Sand stays in your pockets and camera bag for a very long time. Potentially forever.
  

• I am scared of dogs. Especially the drooly type that get over excited on the beach and jump around without reason or warning.
  

And here is a sequence taken in the fields behind the beach:

Photographers on Twitter - How to and why.

Image by marc.benton via Flickr

If you're reading this article with interest, it's either because you're already on Twitter or because you've heard so much about it that you're thinking of joining, but are still not quite sure why.

So I'll cut to the chase and assume that you know already what Twitter is and how it works. What I'll be discussing is how Twitter can be useful to photographers, although I'm not by any means the first one to write an article about it. We have a great resource created by photographer Qiana Mestrich (whom you can follow on Twitter here).

Recently, Photocritic has also been able to create a mini database of photographers on Twitter through his followers.


But here are my conclusions. There are 4 main reasons for being on Twitter as a photographer:

• You have a blog and you're building a following.

• You want to keep up with industry news and the work of photographers, effortlessly.
  

• You are just like me. I have a blog and I always look for inspiration.

• You're an internet addict.

And here a few more points:

Make your Tweets about Photography.

The main problem with Twitter is that it can easily become a pointless exercise. No one cares what you ate and surely you wouldn't be interested in hearing what someone's watching on TV.

You don' t want to end up like the people in this brilliant video:http://current.com/items/89891774/supernews_twouble_with_twitters.htm

So if you feel you can contribute to the photographic community or learn from it, just make sure that everything is indeed about photography. That's the only way to make Twitter useful, whether you're following or being followed.

Twitter unspoken rules.

There is also some etiquette you should respect to make twitter a better community.

• If you are posting a link, try and describe what's on the other side of the click. I would want to know if I am going to watch a video, a photograph, a blog post or an Amazon link.

• If you like someone's tweet and would like to pass it on, you will copy the whole line including the name of the Tweeter and add the letters RT @ (which stand for RE-TWEET) before it. This way we'll know who the original twitterer was and we can choose to follow him/her should we find the content interesting.

• If you want to make what you are writing easily searchable within Twitter, then write the hash key sign next to the key word at the end of your tweet. For example, "Check my new updated portfolio on my website #photo."

Here are some suggestions on who to follow on Twitter:

Top photography news broadcasters (click on the name to see link):

1854 (aka British journal of photography) The industry photographic news leader on this side of the ocean (includes updates on competitions and jobs as well)

PDN The industry photographic news leader on the other side of the ocean

Own-it is a great resource of copyright news

MAGNUM - The world class agency is a new addition to Twitter. Always worth listening to what the best photojournalists in the world have to say.

• Some photographers and bloggers to follow for inspiration...
  

HEY HOT SHOT - Get inspired by up and coming photographers. They have a great competition going every year as well.

Chase Jarvis is one of the pioneers of on-line self marketing for photographers. He boasts thousands of followers and is a good one to keep an eye on for inspiration on what you can do with your blog or twitter posts.

Melissa Rodwell is a great resource for fashion photography. Her blog is extremely useful, informative and full of "behind the scenes" videos of her shoots.


Zack Arias is the heart of photographers on Twitter. He became widely popular with his short film "Transform" and has since then been able to keep his growing number of followers entertained with honest and personal posts, but somehow still making it entirely about photography.

Well I hope this helps some of you. But remember. If you're on Twitter in the first place, you're beyond help...

PS. Don't forget to follow me here:

LightSquash

Police incidents database is launched

Image by sharkbait via Flickr

Under an idiotic new law (perfectly phrased by A Photo Editor), photographers in the UK can be stopped and their cameras, memory cards and film seized. But it seems photo-journalists are fighting back with more then just a protest march.

Quoting from the British Journal of Photography:

"The National Union of Journalists and the British Press Photographers Association have partnered to launch a website where photographers who feel they have been obstructed by the police can log a report of the incident.

The Policing Incident Report service, available online, allows photographers to file a brief report of any instances where they have been stopped in their work by a police officer for no legitimate reason."

Read the full article here or log an incident here.

Pass it on.

Sleeping beauty.

I recently did a photo-shoot for the independent fashion label Molessa.

We had a great team on board and yes, even an assistant this time (if you read back to this post you'll know why) and it all went quite smoothly. But I guess working with a professional model, you also have to deal with their hectic lifestyle... Ava joined us at the shoot straight after her flight landed at Heathrow from New York and thus, understandably jet legged, she can't resist a quick snooze during the soothing process of being made up.

Watch the video to see a quick summary of the shoot (including the model's nap) or scroll down to see some selects from the shoot.

Credits:

Make-up and Styling - Kay Korsh

Hair Styling - Marc Eastlake

Model - Ava

Assistant - Esper