iJourneys

John Gough Photography

Photography Video Tutorials

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Pandemic / John Gough

Below is a newsletter written by my friend Ian Whiting, which will resonate with all photographers who are self isolating, or stuck at home during this coronavirus nightmare that we all are sharing.

If you are looking for something to do when it is raining (or after you have finished redecorating the house) there are many good, photographic, video tutorials on the net. Some sites worth exploring…

Creative Live – Many paid, classroom style tutorials running from 1 hour to 3 days each. If you purchase a course it can be watched online or the videos downloaded to your PC; I suggest you do the latter as one never knows if the organisation will go out of business. Be aware, some are a few years old, I suggest you find the last page of the reviews to see when the first review was posted, if you are learning a software package, e.g. Photoshop, an old tutorial will be using an older version of the software although the content may still be relevant. They run a daily free viewing of one of their tutorials, usually starting at about 4pm or 5pm and running on a repeat loop until the next afternoon. You can find the current list of free videos being run from the CLASSES > ON AIR NOW menu. They also do a monthly and annual subscription deal whereby all videos are available online for that month/year.

Adorama – This is a photographic shop based in New York, USA. They have many free video tutorials on their Adorama TV YouTube channel. These run from 3 minutes to 90 minutes long.

B&H – This is also a photographic shop based in New York, USA. They have many free video tutorials on their B&H Events site. These are often 60 to 120 minutes long by very well known photographers.

Adobe TV – Many free tutorials on Photoshop and Lightroom

The Photoshop Training Channel – Run by Jesus Ramirez, many free and some paid tutorials on Photoshop, well worth learning new techniques from

The BBC I-Player has interesting programmes on Photography in general, try: The Genius of Photography (5 years old, no longer on I-Player but this archive site has it) and The Age of The Image (also currently on BBC 4)  –  Harry Birrell Presents Films of Love and War  

The Open University has some free courses and articles: Detecting Fake Images  –  Reading Visual Images  –  Designing the User Interface, Text, Colour, Images…  –  Word and Image  –  A Brief History of the Lens  –  Seeing a Life Through a Lens

Many more ideas on our BCC Resources page under TUTORIALS and our BCC How To page

Remember it will end. Stay safe.

Photography Online

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Photography Online is a photography channel on Youtube which produces a magazine show which is aired monthly. There have been two episodes so far (as at 10th Feb 2020) and I was impressed with both.

It assumes the viewer has some knowledge because so far there has not been a piece on ‘How to Get Out of Auto’. It moves at a decent pace, and all the presenters are professional and seem to know what they are talking about.

It is more broadcast television quality, rather than the typical YouTube blogger, speaking to a camera mounted on a pile of books in his bedroom.

So far it has mainly been focussed on landscape and wildlife, but that is just the start, and to be fair that’s what most photographers are into. It also dares to delve into post processing, so there is not the evangelising to do everything ‘in camera’ which is a relief.

New episodes will be released on the last Sunday of each month, I have embedded the February episode above and below there is a meet the team introduction.

Enjoy.



Camera Wrist Strap

I have avoided dropping my camera so many times using a simple inexpensive wrist strap like this one. Cameras and expensive lenses do not bounce!

UK

USA



PHLEARN 30 Days of Photoshop

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One of the best resources on the web for learning Photoshop is PHLEARN. Now they have a free 30 day course online, which they say takes you from the basics to more complicated stuff.

I thought it may be useful because I have learnt my Photoshop piecemeal, as I moved from solving one issue to the next. Perhaps, therefore, an overview was overdue.

So if you have resolved to learn more Photoshop in 2020, this is a good start. So get started here.



Camera Wrist Strap

I have avoided dropping my camera so many times using a simple inexpensive wrist strap like this one. Cameras and expensive lenses do not bounce!

UK

USA



The Joy of Bokeh

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bokeh

May Morning / John Gough / Canon 6D

At 7 am the morning the sun was up and flashing at a near horizontal angle through the trees. The temperature was a bit fresh, but in my local country park,  the opportunity to photograph wildlife, plants, flowers and trees was everywhere.

Blur were right:

 …morning soup can be avoided if you take a route straight through what is known as Parklife

but for me, it was not just blur but the joy of bokeh.

Beginners Guide to Photography

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Beginners Guide to Photography

 

I always thought I was a reasonable photographer. So a few years ago now I set off to the Lake District to take some magnificent landscapes. A few days alone with my camera would I thought nail some stunning images. It was a photographic pilgrimage which would turn into an epiphany.

I had a Canon EOS 450D with a kit lens and a map of the area. World beating shots would be easy. Perhaps I thought I could even win a competition.

The Result

The example above is the sort of thing I came back with.

I had been given a Landscape Photographer of the Year book which was my inspiration for this trip. However, my images did not bear any resemblance to the classy pictures in the book.

I had to make a decision. Should I ditch photography and take up bowls or gardening. Or should I immerse my self in photo geekery. Learn all I could and give it a go.

Beginners Guide to Photography

It was then I decided to change everything about my photography. To start again.

The list of what I needed to know was a long one. It would I know take me a long time. I set a goal to gain an LRPS from the Royal Photographic Society. This would be my benchmark.

It has been an iJourney ever since.

I was reminded of this tortuous period by corresponding with Joanna Thomas at Hobby Help. Her Ultimate Beginners Guide to Photography is just the sort of solid information I devoured in huge chunks during that time, and still do.

This book, How to Photograph Absolutely Everything: Successful Pictures from your Digital Camera was also very useful and a great start point. It is a bit dated now but no worse for that.

Where I Buy

I buy my equipment from Wex because of their exceptional customer service. I once returned a camera after 30 days, and the next day they called to return my money to my account. Their prices are always competitive and they offer good prices on the trade in of your used gear

Before Photography there was Watercolour

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We are used to photography documenting our world. Where we are. What we do. How we do it. But what about before photography?

It was then that painters would use watercolour painting to document the world. These paintings, however, were often hidden away in archives, private collections, museums and art galleries. Now for the first time a UK based charity, Watercolour World has made it their mission to digitise watercolour painting and make it available to everyone.

We are creating a free online database of documentary watercolours painted before 1900. For the first time, you can explore these fascinating visual records on a world map, search for topics that are important to you, and compare watercolours from multiple collections in one place. We hope that this project will not simply preserve the watercolour record but revive it, sparking new conversations and revelations. By making history visible to more people, we can deepen our understanding of the world.

We may be used to watercolour landscape painting, but searching through the Watercolour World database it is revealing just how much social history is documented. Have a look, it is well worth a watercolour moment.

 

 

Rule of Thirds

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Crossed Lines / John Gough / Sony a6300

In photography why bother following the rules to be really creative?  Why not just throw away the rule book and create beautiful images?

However, breaking up is just so hard to do, and the Rule of Thirds is just so useful that you will never want to dispose of it. It is the first composition rule that most photographers learn, and the one they will use forever.

The Rule of Thirds has been used for centuries. By Leonardo da Vinci for example.

Rule of Thirds

Rule of Thirds

Once you aware of the rule you will notice it countless times each day in photography, film and TV. Rarely does the subject of a photograph happily sit slap bang in the centre. Instead, it is usually more pleasing to place it one third in from the left or the right. Similarly with a horizon. In the centre would just split the image in two, a third from the top or bottom makes the image far more interesting.

Why does it work? It just does. The Rule of Thirds is one of the rules of nature.

Rachel across at Photography Talk has created a great guide on how to make it work in your photography. Check it out.

 

11 Stages That Every Photographer Goes Through

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Just had to share this from the Digital Photography School, which is a great site and a valuable source of tuition and information.

I read this article thinking it was going to be rubbish. I am always very wary of articles that start, “10 things you didn’t know about………..”, but it turned out to be very true, and funny. Especially the stage about giving up all your gear and just choosing to shoot with a small camera with a prime lens. Personally I am still in that phase, but because my site is about a personal journey. Enjoy…………….

11 Stages That Every Photographer Goes Through

What is Street Photography?

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Street Photography

I have always defined street photography as ‘taking pictures of strangers’, but I was interested how others defined it. These are my notes:

Street photography, also sometimes called candidphotography, is photography conducted for art or enquiry that features unmediated chance encounters and random incidents within public places. Wikipedia

The definition of Street Photography is actually extremely vague. The most accepted “term” states that it is a conducted art that features unmediated and randomness in public places. Something like “serendipity,” so to speak. phototraces.com

‘the decisive moment’, ‘when form and content, vision and composition merged into a transcendent whole’, Cartier-Bresson 

‘When I’m photographing I see life. That’s what I deal with’ Garry Winogrand

‘To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them’. Elliott Erwitt

‘Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see is what my life is all about’. Don McCullin

‘To me, street photography is just documenting human life. Period. Candid or with permission? I don’t care. Colour or black and white? It doesn’t matter. Street photography is about capturing the essence of humanity’. Imran Sahid

What is street photography? You don’t need a dictionary to define it. Study the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz, David Seymour (Chim), Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis, Brassai, Walker Evans, Elliott Erwitt, Mark Riboud, Garry Winogrand, Helen Levitt and Robert Frank, who are only a few of the masters of street, and you’ll have a much better appreciation for what street photography is than words can give you. The Luminous Landscape

This particular genre of fine photography is probably best explained as an opportunistic moment in which a photographer captures a candid public scene in front of him. …. – in order for a street photo to be genuine, it has to feature an unposed situation within a public place, regardless of where that place may be.  Openwallsgallery.com

Now I understand that ‘Street Photography’ is just ‘Photography’ in its simplest form, it is the medium itself, it is actually all the other forms of photography that need defining, landscape, fashion, portrait, reportage, art, advertising….these are all complicating additions to the medium of Photography, they are the areas that need to be defined, ring fenced and partitioned out of the medium of ‘Street Photography’. Nick Turpin

There is nothing more inspirational and satisfying that a day on the streets with your camera. The definition of Street Photography has many different interpretations depending on what photographer you speak to. Personally, I like to take the simple approach and don’t like to curtail my picture taking in any way. To me if I take a picture on the street or any urban environment then it is street photography; this will include urban landscape, candid shots of people, portraits and still life. Ronnie Cairns

A recent article in the Huffington Post was entitled, ’Street Photography Has No Clothes’. As the author clearly intended, it sparked a lot of controversy. In it, he decried the lumping together in one category, of the work of time-honoured masters with the ‘hundreds of thousands of dull, hackneyed candid images of random strangers by hopeless photographers.  olafwilloughby.com 

I met an old friend the other day who I had not seen for years. He asked what was I doing. I told him that I was into street photography.

‘Does that mean you are a nosy parker’, he replied.

I guess that about sums it up.