Blog#157 Magnum Workshop Reader Rating 📷 📷 📷 Professional In April of this year, I participated in a five day Magnum Workshop. The workshop was hosted by Jean Gaumy, a spritely old Frenchman with an accomplished repertoire as a professional photographer and filmmaker. The workshop was attended about about a dozen photographers ranging from amateur to professional. The format of the workshop was designed around the development of a project or body of work produced with the

Blog #154 Abstract Photography Reader Rating 📷 📷 Hobbyist This year I finally joined the Cathay Camera Club, a local photography enthusiast club that hold monthly independently judged competitions. It’s a terrific group of artists, across various levels of experience from amateur, hobbyist, and professional photographers and everything in between. The monthly competitions are theme based and can be pretty challenging. This month’s theme was abstract. Abstract images are dif

Blog #153 Art is in the Air Reader Rating 📷 Amateur Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last month, you’re well aware of the explosion of art and related shows in Hong Kong these days. In this third and last blog post of a series, I’ll post some images of some of the shows that I’ve seen recently. The Fan Ho show at the recently relocated Blue Lotus Gallery is especially wonderful. I had to wait on line to get in since it was so packed! Images herein are from the fol

Blog #152 March Madness Reader Rating 📷 Amateur March Madness refers to the annual NCAA basketball tournament. However, in Hong Kong, it’s Art month and the galleries are jumping! Art Basel is in town, and there are photography exhibits all over the place. In last week’s blog, I posted some shows and I’m happy to report that the Hong Kong photography scene does not disappoint. It’s alive and well. Maybe the most significant of the current photography exhibits is at the non-

Blog #151 Binge Watch Reader Rating 📷 Amateur In case you’ve been on vacation for the past twenty years you should know that binge watch has officially been added to the dictionary. Usually this refers to watching TV shows or a series. You might now know that in March, Hong Kong goes crazy but the good kind of crazy about ART! Art Basel, and all the rest along with the warmer weather gets us all out and about and the creative juices flowing. There are a number of photography

Blog #150 How to Make Pictures that Work Reader Rating 📷 Amateur Here is a basic and simple formula that may help you to make better pictures. Basically, you start by finding an interesting subject. Give your viewer a break and avoid making them work to hard to figure out what they are looking at. Make their lives easier by simplifying your image. Look for a gesture or pose of interest when making pictures of people, to add to the story. You can make more “busy” or complex i

Blog #149 Run What You Brung Reader Rating 📷 📷 Hobbyist I’ve been in Hong Kong for about 10 years. In my past life in New York, a serious hobby of mine was autocross. Autocross is an amateur motorsport that involves bringing whatever car you have with any number of performance modifications and race around a make-shift track. You race against times that are compared to other cars and drivers in the same class. Classes are based on engine displacement first, then the amount

Blog #148 Scanning Film Negatives Reader Rating 📷 📷 📷 Professional If you’ve been reading my blog, you already know that I’m a total film nut. So I gave a new film scanning technique a go this past week. I love shooting film and I dislike the long wait times it takes to run to the lab, and wait for my film to be developed and scanned. I do, however, enjoy a bit of hands-on developing at least with black and white. Developing colour film I used to do at home but it’s actual

Blog #147 Don’t Know Your Past, Don’t Know Your Future Reader Rating 📷 📷 Amateur Ziggy Marley sang “Don’t know your past, don’t know your future” in the song titled Tomorrow People on the album Conscience Party back in 1988. An education in the history of photography can be entertaining as well as beneficial to the practice of the art form even today. Depending on how far you want to go back, how many decades, that is, you may find some interesting artists, trends, and work

Blog #146 The Project vs. The Series Reader Rating 📷 📷 📷 Professional In this week’s blog post, I want to share a few words on the concept of a photography project. A photography project is something different than a series. I’ve blogged about this before in Blog #2 on my Project 365, Blog #6 on the topic of projects, and Blog #110 that was about a series with bikes. Series are collections of images around one subject or theme. A project or photo essay is more at a stateme

Blog #145 Flower Power Project Reader Rating 📷 📷 Hobbyist In this week’s blog post, I want to share an idea for a project. Photographers LIVE for projects, no? First a comment on the “series”. I enjoy making series of images and have done so in the past on many occasions. I have made series of many subjects including: birds, street signs, cars, shadows, dogs, taxis, all types of random stuff out and about. I live in a very urban part of Hong Kong so these are the stuff of m

Blog #144 Bridging the Gap Reader Rating 📷 📷 Hobbyist Oh the days of film! For those readers old enough to remember or lucky enough to appreciate the wonders of film photography, I’m preaching to the choir. For the rest of you, hear me out. Next time you’re on a family holiday, shoot a few rolls of film. With today’s camera gear (or any camera since above 1980) the modern accoutrement of technology will be there for you so that you almost can’t miss a shot. A light meter wa

Blog #143 Less is More [small is HUGE] Reader Rating 📷 Amateur One of my 2018 resolutions was to avoid buying any new cameras. I pretty much completed that while only buying one new lens for my Fujifilm X Series cameras, the 16mm f/1.4, a stunningly sharp super wide angle fast prime. A camera is simply a tool that artists who paint with light (photographers, that is) need. We all tend to obsess a bit about our gear. The main objective is to have something that works and you

Blog #142 CCC People of Hong Kong Reader Rating 📷 Amateur Cathay Camera Club is the premier camera club in Hong Kong with roots back to the early 1980s. A mature and diverse group of amateur, hobbyist, and professional photographers participate in monthly themed contests and talk about all things photography, of course. I recently attended the People of Hong Kong Exhibit showing where each participating member included a themed image and open image. The pictures were printed

Blog #141 Camera Wrappers Reader Rating 📷 Amateur Maybe it’s the post-holiday high from GAS or the horrible air quality in Hong Kong these days (we haven’t seen the sun in a fortnight) but my attention has drawn once again to gear. Once of my new years resolutions last year was to avoid buying any new cameras, and I stuck to it! (full disclosure, last fall I bought a 16mm f/1.4 Fujifilm lens to tie me over…rehab it for quitters!). I also posted (before the holidays) about t

Blog #140 Photography Quotations [Part 4] Reader Rating 📷 Amateur I love quotes. On a few occasions in the past, I’ve gathered a number of photography related quotations or quotations that could be related to art making or photography and have shared those here. Here’s the Part 4. I hope that you enjoy them. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 1. We do not capture images, but rather we share images that communicate our thoughts and feelings about the world. Brooks Jensen 2. Discomfort is t

Blog #139 One Photograph to Rule Them All Reader Rating 📷📷 Intermediate There’s an old English idiom that a picture is worth a thousand words. Some feel that when words don’t suffice, photography can express what words cannot. Photography is absolutely a form of art and art a form of human expression. So is dance, sculpture, music, poetry, and other art forms human expression. In fact, early cave drawings were a type of shared image that predated the first proper French ima

Reader Rating 📷 Amateur That’s not a typo. I wish you a Happy [and very] Nude Year. Making art with your camera is the most fun that you can have with your clothes on (or off if you prefer). It’s 2019! OUCH! My head hurts. I’m starting a new year of art, photography and life with a new sense of humour. Here are some of the changes in the pipeline: Blogs posts will now be fun-er or funnier, whatever works. Posts will also contain a simple system to communicate the complexity