Subject List

Hi there everybody,

I was having a skim through all the posts I've made over the last few months and realised that there was no real way for you guys and girls to go back and find your favourite posts. Sure there's the Search function but it's a bit clumsy.

So I've added a list of all the keywords I have used in my posts. So if you remember reading a post on the Taj Mahal just click on Taj Mahal and all the posts that mention it will come up.

Going through the keywords I noticed there were a few redundancies so hopefully I've got rid of most of them. So have a browse through and maybe find a few posts you didn't read, or re-read a few you enjoyed.

Just scroll down and the keywords come up on the right hand side. Oh and there's another post from today just under this one so don't stop reading yet!

cheers

Paul

Don't forget to look over your shoulder

Back in April I wrote about photographing famous destinations at sunrise, and used it as an example of how you can get up early to get photos that nobody else has. Basically because the rest of the world is still asleep!

Something I didn't mention in that post that I want to talk about here is not to keep your eyes on the main game alone. When you're somewhere famous it's all too easy just to focus your camera on that one thing and forget about everything else. You need to look over your shoulder.

In fact this is a rule I always use when I'm out and about photographing. Whenever I feel myself always looking forward and what's coming up, I physically remind myself to turn around and look behind me.

April's post showed Lake Mashuuko at sunrise and it was a beautiful sight but when I could wrench myself away from it and turn around I was amazed to see this.

I hadn't even noticed this beautiful snow-capped mountain in the darkness when I first arrived. I love the way the light goes in bands of purple, to red to black where the sun hasn't hit yet. Even though the foreground is a couple of kilometres in front of the distant mountains I used a telephoto lens to compress the scene and make them look like they are nice and close. I also used a small aperture to increase the depth-of-field.

Often when you use a telephoto lens to photograph landscapes you find that if there is any fog, smog or just general haze the telephoto really emphasises this and makes photos unclear. Not on this morning though, as it was as clear as a bell.

So just remember that the photos you think you're going to take aren't the only ones you're allowed to. Always be prepared to look back over your shoulder and keep an open mind about what nature presents you with.

A sign of the times

When you're travelling don't forget to photograph the signs. You find all sorts of signs when you're out and about - everything from warnings to street and place names, to funny little things. If you're travelling through the outback of Australia you're likely to find bullet holes in signs. Hell I even found a cut-out kangaroo on a road sign at the entrance to the Caprivi strip just outside of Angola!

This sign here is one that you might not be able to read but it kind of gives you a hint at what it might be on about with the pictures of the yellow bears and a bright pink exclamation mark.

The top writing says breeding ground of grizzly bears. Underneath the bears it reads: the following are strictly prohibited - feeding or getting close to the bears. You don't need a sign to convince me of that!

This is one of the world's most recently World Heritage Listed areas in Shiretoko National Park, in far eastern Hokkaido. It is filled with bears and the Shiretoko Five Lakes is notorious for spottings. Needless to say I was a bit nervous as I walked around the Five Lakes with my wife and baby son. In Japan they recommend you place a bell on your backpack to let the bears know you're coming and give them time to get out of the way. I did the next best thing and took a non-stop chattering father-in-law! Seemed to work a treat.

The ethics of travel photography

On the weekend I had the opportunity to speak on a freelance journalist's forum held here in Cairns at the Tropical Writers' Festival.

It was a fun hour talking about the biz and afterwards I had a chance to catch up with quite a few aspiring travel writers, ex-students and readers of the blog.

One of the readers I had a chance to catch up with was Nikki, who alerted me to a bit of controversy I had stirred up between her and a friend. Well I hadn't necessarily stirred it up but this photo above had.

This is a Photoshopped image - a combination of three separate images taken at three different exposures. It's from my post about Kakadu National Park last week and was taken during the middle of the day - a time when the contrast levels are extreme to say the least.

Nikki's friend argued that by combining three images I wasn't conveying what another visitor to the area would see at that time of the day and I should have shown it how it was - in a single exposure. Nikki argued that I had the right to do whatever I wanted to. (Please correct me if I got the wrong end of the stick Nikki!) Here's my position on it because I think there's been a little bit of misunderstanding as to what I did and why I did it.

Cameras don't have the same ability to capture detail in both the highlights and the shadows at the same time in contrasty situations. Compared to our eyes and brains they are pretty simple instruments to record reality. If I had taken a single shot you would have had the right hand cliff face perfectly exposed and everything else an inky, black shadow. That is how the camera would have recorded it. But that isn't how you would have seen it.

Because your brain has the ability to record an amazing amount of detail in both the highlights and shadows, what I've actually done is combine the three images in an attempt to show what you would actually see if you went there. So rather than me trying to create a fiction I'm actually trying to go beyond the limitations of photography and show reality. This is how the scene appeared to my eye.

I have a good friend here in town who is an award-winning photographer. His art basically involves taking a photograph and manipulating the hell out of it until it looks like a Renaissance-era painting. It is, without a doubt, art. But for me personally it isn't photography.

He is always trying to convince me to fiddle around, combine sunsets with camels and whatnot to create interesting travel pictures. It's not my cup of tea. I want to show the world for what it is. I figure it's beautiful enough without messing around to improve it.

Whenever I think of my photographic inspirations they are the great documentary photographers. That is what I aspire to and I just don't fiddle with stuff. I will certainly combine exposures to overcome the limitations of the digital sensor, I certainly play with curves and levels and saturation to come up with how I remember the scene. But I don't add and subtract things or try to change reality. Any post-production computer work I do is to try and accurately represent reality as much as possible.

So while I agree totally with Nikki's friend that I should show reality, sometimes you have to acknowledge the inability of the camera to show that reality.

Don't forget if you'd like to subscribe to the blog just scroll down and the RSS Feed is on the right hand side.

Some more blogs for the weekend...

I have to admit to being slightly photography obsessed. OK, not slightly, extremely. I really do love everything photography and I'm guessing many of you are the same.

And the photography blogs I love are the ones that not only teach me something but show me new places to find things out.

So in the spirit of giving I wanted to share with you some blogs and web pages that I love and invite you to visit them and, I hope, enjoy them as much as I do.

I'll start off by following my Blog List on the right hand side of this page. From the top, as they say in Bollywood:

What The Duck is a really funny comic book all about photography, in particular the business of photography. It has some hilarious insights into the crazy things we do in this job and is a great read.

Next we have Photo Attorney which is a great blog about your legal rights as a photographer. What you are and aren't allowed to photograph. It's US based so not everything may be relevant to your part of the world but it's very interesting.

Burns Auto Parts is not a blog about car maintenance but marketing and self-promotion by the wonderful photo consultant and author Leslie Burns-Dell'Acqua. She's about to start a law degree so the blog posts may get a bit thin but they're always very insightful.

Welcome all Bloggers is the strangely named blog of amazing wildlife photographer Andy Rouse. Andy is my all-time favourite nature photographer, seems to be a pretty funny guy and is always very entertaining. This is a must for those of you who love animals.

Rob Galbraith has all the latest updates on what's happening in terms of new equipment and gear. He also has a great compact flash card database on his site which lets you see which CF card will be the fastest in your camera. A definite must-read before you buy a new card.

PDNPulse is all about what's happening in the big wide world of photography. It has a lot of posts on who's doing what at US magazines and general interest photography stories.

Black Star Rising is for you photojournalism junkies. Articles on newspaper photography, war photojournalism and documentary photography. A lot of the information is very relevant for travel photography.

A Photo Editor is the blog of former Men's Journal photo editor Rob Haggart. It's a great insight into how photo editors see your work and pick photographers for certain jobs.

What can I say about Strobist? Just go there and have your life changed forever. You will find yourself buying lots of new equipment but it's worth it! One of my all-time favourites.

David Tejada's is a blog from a professonal photographer in the US who does a lot of industrial work. He posts great videos on how he works, including a lot of information on using small flashes.

Now Chase Jarvis is the man! Even if youdon't aspire to do big advertising shoots his blog is amazing. The videos alone are worth spending hours drooling over. He is a lot of fun, very motivated, self taught and a great inspiration.

This one's not photography related but Andrew Griffiths is a wonderful man, a good friend and his small business blog is a must-read for anyone in business for themselves, no matter what your line of work. He is an incredible mentor and one of my most inspiring friends.

I often like to pop by this one just for a few new hints. Photopreneur is aimed at people who are just starting to dip their toe into the world of professional photography. Those who want to make a bit of income from their images but aren't quite sure how to do it. It has great ideas on little ways to make money from your hobby (read:obsession!)

John Harrington's Photo Business News is the bible for everything about the business of photography. If photopreneur gives you some ideas on how to start out, John shows you how not to go bankrupt in the first year!

Magnum blog. Need I say more? The best documentary photography from the best photographers in the world. Priceless.

And one of those Magnum dudes is the inimitable David Alan Harvey whose road trip blog is full of rich musings on photography and life.

So those are my blogs. I have them all in my Google Reader and I spend the first half hour of every day having a read. Not everyone posts every day but when they do I have an information-packed start to the morning!

As for websites, the first place I head to to find out when Canon is finally going to release the new 5D is dpreview, once I've discovered that it ain't yet I head across to the Luminous Landscape to see what beautiful pictures Michael Reichmann has been taking.

For inspiration I head across to Bob Krist. He is my all-time favourite travel photographer. And for the God of all things documentary photography head to Steve McCurry's page. I have everything he's ever published and love it.

Well I hope you enjoy reading some of these blogs and websites over the weekend. You'll also notice I've added a slideshow just to the right hand side above my intro. All the pictures I've ever posted here will cruise by.

I'm off to the Tropical Writer's Festival tomorrow to sit on a discussion panel about freelance journalism so for those of you in town feel free to drop by the Pier Marketplace from 12.30 till 1.30pm. It's totally free and no bookings are necessary.

What is travel photography?

Last night I was asked to think about something I had, surprisingly, not given a lot of consideration to before. Southside Camera Club here in Cairns asked me to judge their monthly photographic competition - and the theme was travel photography.

Now I've judged a few photographic competitions in my time, and won one, the Australian Society of Travel Writers' 2003 Travel Photograph of the Year. But I'd never actually judged one where the theme was travel.

So I'll be honest, when I was presented with the entries it actually took a fair bit of thinking about what constituted a travel picture. I ended up coming the following conclusions.

A travel photograph can be taken anywhere. What may be local for you would be a travel destination for somebody else. On this blog we have readers from all over the world, and no matter how boring you may think your home town is, and how much you long to travel to distant lands, you can fine-tune your travel photography skills by trying to look at your local area through new eyes. Imagine what a visitor from another country would want to see if they came to where you live.

So even though there were entries taken locally, and some from overseas, the location they were taken didn't matter. What did matter to me was that the location was suggested, or was even obvious, in the picture. In other words a picture of a single leaf wasn't going to do it unless that leaf was obviously from some part of the world - a cactus for deserts, a big tropical leaf for the rainforest or something along those lines.

We had a picture of a large her of elephants bathing in a river. Elephants in such a big group like that suggests travel (not too many of them in Cairns!) but what made it even better were the palm trees in the background. It was somewhere tropical - my mind immediately guessed Sri Lanka and it was right. Had it just been a photo of elephants I wouldn't have known where they were but the addition of other visual clues made it into a travel photograph.

There weren't many entries of people photos in last night's comp but people can be perfect travel photographs not necessarily for their faces alone but for their clothing. The women above are the perfect example. Put them in business suits and they could be in almost any city in the world but put them in their lovely colourful saris and it screams India.

So even though there were some wonderful photos in last night's competition I actually gave the most points to those pictures which actually showed me the spirit of a place and came to the conclusion that that is probably the most important element of a travel photo. Spirit of Place to borrow a phrase from my colleague Bob Krist.

A few additions...

Hi there everybody,

in case you hadn't noticed there's a couple of new additions to the page on the right hand side. If you scroll down there's a place to subscribe to both the posts and comments. Subscribing means you don't have to come back every day to see if I've posted something, your reader will tell you when I have!

Underneath that is a list of the blogs that I read on a daily basis. There's some tech ones as well as ones about the business of photography, and some that are just photography fun. Have an explore of them and see if you find any you like.

cheers

Paul