Hey there guys,

I know I am a little late but Happy New Year!

I wanted to go over a few things about the blog. We moved from blogger to wordpress and also changed the URL a little bit. I basically joined Hatphoto with Nomagicpill so that I can keep it on my own server and URL we there are no additional costs and also without having to suffer the crap with free services not being as flexible as I like it to be.

So http://hatphoto.nomagicpill.org is the new URL

Also Victor from the flickr forums will be joining the writing team. He has happily offered help out with his vast knowledge of photography. From Rob and The Lassie and myself we welcome you to the blog!

We also have finally set up a flickr group http://www.flickr.com/groups/hatphoto/ so please sign up and enter your photos in the pool. Soon we will be setting up competitions every month.

After that its going to be business as usual.

Enjoy!

Today on the BBC.co.uk I saw an ad that said "your pictures, your world. Send us your photos"

It caught my interest as I always look over the "your images" section in each region of the UK because it can give me some insperation.

The basic idea is that you just send in your pictures, you can match the monthly themes or just take pictures of current events.

No competition so you win nothing. But you can get bragging rights!

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7746570.stm

So now to the terms and conditions ON THAT PAGE!

Terms and conditions

If you submit an image, you do so in accordance with the BBC's

Terms and Conditions.

In contributing to BBC News you agree to grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media worldwide. This may include the transmission of the material by our overseas partners; these are all reputable foreign news broadcasters who are prohibited from altering the material in any way or making it available to other UK broadcasters or to the print media. (See the Terms and Conditions for the full terms of our rights.)

It's important to note, however, that you still own the copyright to everything you contribute to BBC News and that if your image and/or video is accepted, we will endeavour to publish your name alongside it on the BBC News website. Please note that due to operational reasons this accreditation will probably not be possible with video. The BBC cannot guarantee that all pictures and/or video will be used and we reserve the right to edit your comments.

At no time should you endanger yourself or others, take any unnecessary risks or infringe any laws.

You can choose any subject to photograph, but don't forget to ask permission from parents or guardians if the subject is under 16.

These rules are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

Now although I hate the "In contributing to BBC News you agree to grant us a royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to publish and otherwise use the material in any way that we want, and in any media worldwide." part, it still means you hold some rights to the image. Later they explain you still hold copywrite.

So we move on to the next part. "This may include the transmission of the material by our overseas partners; these are all reputable foreign news broadcasters who are prohibited from altering the material in any way or making it available to other UK broadcasters or to the print media. (See the Terms and Conditions for the full terms of our rights.)" Meaning that they wont change what you submit in any way and they wont give or sell to any other media group or publication but see T&C for full terms...............

Notice my long pause.... I read the FULL T&C link they provided!

www.bbc.co.uk/terms/

Contributions to the BBC

6. By sharing any contribution (including any text, photographs, graphics, video or audio) with the BBC you agree to grant to the BBC, free of charge, permission to use the material in any way it wants (including modifying and adapting it for operational and editorial reasons) for BBC services in any media worldwide (including on the BBC's site accessed by international users). In certain circumstance the BBC may also share your contribution with trusted third parties*.

That means they do in fact get to change your material... I mean cropping I get if the image does not fit but what is "editorial reasons"? Reading on again, "in certain circumstance the BBC may also share your contribution with trusted third parties" They just told us before that they wont share with third parties? But in the full terms they say with can if they want too...

I clicked the link to submit a photo and looked for the T&C agreement details... "By sending your content, you agree to our
Terms and Conditions" the link goes to www.bbc.co.uk/terms/ meaning they can do what they want except sell the images.

Your not agreeing to the bull in the first page but rather the more open terms I have an issue with...

BAD BBC! BAD!

I went out for a Photowalk around Portsmouth, UK, on Saturday. It was overcast and raining - a perfect backdrop for the '70s style concrete buildings, Battleship Grey Warships, and the economic mood at the moment.

Grabbed this one between rain showers - an old Multi-Storey Car Park, well past its prime. Did concrete ever look good?



The light was bad - I had to use High Iso's to maintain a decent shutter speed when shooting hand-held, so lots of these shots were grainy and a bit soft.



This was taken near one of the University buildings, on my way back to the ferry. I didn't realise it, but as I was lining up the composition in my viewfinder a queue of pedestrians had stopped while I took the picture - I jumped a mile when I looked away from my camera and saw them all patiently waiting!



The main reason for Portsmouth's existence - The Royal Navy Dockyard. This is Ark Royal and Illustrious, two small carriers designed to carry Harrier Jump Jets, as seen by the Ski-Jumps on the bows of both vessels.

You can catch up with the rest of the set on my blog, and I'm planning to return to Portsmouth soon, maybe on a day with some well-defined clouds in the sky for dramatic effect...

Cheers, Rob.

Hey there, it’s been a while since I last posted so I am sorry for the delay.

In the effort to learn how to control light I thought I would start with the easiest: constant light source.

An example would lamps, torches and hell you could even use your monitor (but the monitor thing is another post).

I took a little trip to Ikea and bought the following items for my shoot:

• RIAN - Small white table with metal legs
• LAGRA - Super cheap and small lamps (I got 3)
• POLARVIDE - White blanket for background.

I then put them together into the following setup

Using the table I attached the lamps and blanket to it to make a miniature studio. I then used a Canon 450D I had on loan from a friend to make some pretty cool product shots of the cameras I own.

After just before I packed up, it dawned on me that I could try something else. I turned the lamps so they pointed upward and then put a figurine in the middle... This created an excluding effect where only the figurine where in view and the background was not in view. Remember I did this in a dark room in the first place.

As you can see the effect is remarkable. Even the white table with the glare from the table looks like fog.

Cons

• Some bulbs give off a tinted light so that you might get a yellow tint on everything you take.
• It is messy with all the cables around. Defiantly a heath hazard
• The lamps/bulbs are not so strong so you always need them near your subject
• It will never be a bright as flash.
• Not combatable with store bought filters and diffusers.
• Outdoor photography is almost not possible.

Pros

• Instead of taking shots all the time to see if you got the setup correct, you can just look up from the camera and decide if you need to move something. Everything is just instant.
• A much cheaper solution than using flash all the time.
• If you buy the lamps you can clamp then you have an almost unlimited range to where you can put the lights.
• When it brakes its easy and cheap to replace.

In conclusion I found this system very effective in lighting product and macro shots. But I still think that flash should be used for portrait photos using the correct setup.

I have to admit I've been avoiding HDR recently due to two reasons. Firstly my main computer died a few months ago, and my back-up PC is very slow, so it's a pain to process and work on the images. Secondly I was getting tired of the "HDR Look", you know, over-processed false looking images.

I'm not saying that my HDR's look natural, but I've tried to reign in my enthusiasm and use a bit of subtlety - mainly by converting strong HDR's to black and white!

Yesterday I also had the opportunity to shoot inside a church, The Holy Trinity in Gosport, but I didn't have much time, so shot hand-held and relied on my S5700's auto-bracketing:



I use Photomatix to process the three images - one just right, and an under and over-exposed shot, usually by + / - 1ev. I'd have liked to shoot a wider range of bracketed exposures to get deeper images, but I was too pushed for time.

After fiddling with the settings in Photomatix Detail Enhance I save the Tone Mapped image as an 8 bit TIFF, then use my usual processing techniques in Elements. It's laborious on my old PC, but I think I'll start doing it more often....

Cheers, Rob.

The weathers bad, it's pouring down outside, you're not feeling too well anyway, so what do you do? Build your own indoor beach set!

I was still feeling the effects of a bout of 'flu yesterday, but after watching Andreas Feiningers Video on Youtube, I fancied having a go at a similar macro type shot.

If you'd like to recreate the look too, you'll need an old baking tray, some sand (or pebbles), something to brush the sand, a subject (in my case a piece of potpourri), a printed out back-drop (it's a strange colour in my set because my printer was running out of ink) and a tripod:

I used my camera in macro mode, with a large aperture (f3.5) to reduce the depth of field - I specifically wanted the background out of focus. I wasn't worried about the white-balance because I knew I'd be converting to black and white.

In Photoshop Elements I stripped out the colour, played with the levels, then applied a Gaussian blur to the foreground and background, masking out the subject.

Next time I'll try and get more texture into the sand, try a different background, and play around with light more.

Here's my first go:



Cheers, Rob.

Joe McNally, professional Photographer with National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Life, and many more, recently gave a talk as part of the "Authors at Google Series".

Joe talks about his career, what inspires him, and how he keeps his enthusiasm in an ever more competitive arena.

A versatile Photographer, shooting from the top of the Empire State Buildings Radio Antennae, the deserts of Africa, and using the worlds largest Polaroid Camera to record the heroes of 9/11, this is a man well worth listening to. Enjoy.

Check out Joe's Blog, and his main website.

If you fancy watching more videos with photographers, check out these interviews.

Cheers, Rob.