You might have seen pictures from this twitter feed sweeping socialmedialand over the last few days <1>. Crowd-sourcing at its finest. People take photos of other people while they are asleep on public transport. They tweet them to @sleepycommuters. This account scrapes the picture, and tweets it from their own account, sometimes citing the originating tweeter <2>.
But it bloody lashes down. A cold, wet, dark November morning. Sane people are hiding in bed for at least another few hours.
The less sane are taking their prized veteran cars on the annual run from London to Brighton. And the really barking mad are heading into the storm to take photos of them.
…USE THEM!
Star client of the month is the wonderful Learning Pool. I’ve been shooting at their events for a while now, building up a vivid record of their learning events and vibrant community.
I live very near the M25, close to a bridge carrying a main road over it. Just over a year apart, in July 2010 and August 2011, I captured news photos of two spectacular crashes right next to it.
A few weeks back I was in the middle of a portrait shoot when I spotted one of those chance frames that really stopped me in my tracks. Not for the first time, it involved one of London’s bridges. These three red buses, set against a diabolical, stormy City backdrop, became a very popular image of the weird weather of Summer 2012. Pre-Olympics, at least.
One of the very first bits of advice I was given as I clutched a Kodak Instamatic back in the 70s, was to make sure I had the sun behind me when taking family snaps. Well-meant advice, of course, but as I’ve written before, light shining straight into the face of a subject is a mixed blessing. Yes, you can see them well enough – but you see them as they screw their eyes up against the glare, with any hope of casting interesting shadows lost to the flat, boring, frontal (and often intense) lighting.
The official launch of the Shard – tallest building in London by some distance – was trailed as being something spectacular.
Lasers, searchlights, pyrotechnics… Sauron’s eyeless tower conducting a thorough inspection (or benediction) of its new neighbours: much to see and much to capture.
LeWeb comes to London! Today was the first of two days of a little bit of Paris in England (well, quite a lot it seemed, with the whole crew from bouncers to videographers shipped in by the debonair Loic Le Meur). I’m doing photo coverage for a couple of tech publications, and having a fine old time of it.
A simple photo.
Such a powerful thing. It can demonstrate bare, unpalatable truths. It can lead to a swift journey to the courtroom. It can certainly frighten the hell out of people, especially those in authority. And even more so when there are children involved.
(Forgive the clunky title, but I’m quite keen that people stuck in the situation I’m about to describe can find this post.)
If you take your photography seriously or commercially, it can be a very good idea to embed some information about you-the-photographer-and-copyright-holder within the file itself.