Is it time for a change of image?

Are you an egg head on Twitter, a silhouette on Facebook, or a shadow on LinkedIn , or is your cyber presence concealed behind a business logo?

If you don’t have a photograph of yourself on your Social Media profiles does it matter and if you do should it be a professional portrait or a casual shot?

Ultimately, the answer and choice must be yours, but you should consider; how the image you present, represents you.

If Social Media is important to you as a business tool the picture you use needs to tell your clients something about you. A photograph for LinkedIn may not be the same image as you would use on Twitter or FaceBook and different again from a family portrait.

To present professional integrity such as a lawyer or doctor, a more conventional photo may be best, especially if your customers would expect to meet you in formal attire and a more casual image may be appropriate when you are working in a trade or craft where someone wearing a suit and tie may even be viewed with suspicion.

Your Social Media image can be a key ingredient to building a business relationship or a friendship and that initial contact and visual picture can influence trust.

What kind of social interaction is demonstrated by a logo or an unrelated avatar, would you converse with an inanimate object but a smiling face will make you far more likely to respond to others, getting to know and understand about them and establishing a dialogue?

People generally don’t mind having their picture taken in informal social situations, at parties on the beach or at events, but put them in a more formal setting to have a portrait picture taken and they often become reluctant.

One of most common comments I hear as a photographer is how the person “hates having their picture taken” or just isn’t “photogenic”. This is where the skill of the professional photographer is important, putting the sitter at ease and using their skills to flatter and enhance.

The photographer’s challenge is to picture them so they like themselves; don’t forget we rarely see each other as others do, looking at our reflected image in a mirror is our comfort zone, similar to the first time we hear our recorded voice; it can come as a shock.

The human face is unique and is the best guide to expression and personality, for this reason it is so important in establishing relationships, replacing it with an unrelated image will put you at a disadvantage and even provoke mistrust.

Maybe it’s time to review your Social Media profiles and get a new image.

From Plates to Chips

Old fashioned Slide Making

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking at the Hungerford Rotary Club about my career as a Medical Photographer.

Preparing for my talk, I started to think about the changes that have taken place, not only in Medical Photography, but how lecture material and slide presentations have been revolutionised over the last 40 years.

Regularly making slide presentations for my courses and lectures I realised how simple it is today compared with when I first started in photography.

When I began creating lecture slides, 35mm film was strictly reserved for colour slides and only one type of film was used, Kodachrome 25. This had to be returned to Kodak for processing and was returned in cardboard mounts, which then had the film stripped out and remounted in plastic.

Any text slides needed for lectures were produced using a most unpleasant brain rotting and nose choking process, which used ammonia gas to develop, diazochrome film giving a varying quality of white on blue slides.

Black and white copy slides from diagrams or pictures from books were made by projecting a reduced size image from a large photographic negative, in a reverse photographic enlarger, onto small glass photographical sensitive plates 2 inches square.

These were developed in a dish like photographic prints, dried and sandwiched with a black paper mask and a clear piece of glass, and bound together with a lickable, sticky paper called Passe-Partout.

The arrival of Kodak’s Ektachrome process signalled a total change in slide production allowing images to be produced on 35mm film direct positive images without the need for a negative.

By the late 1970s the demands of presentations was such that slides had to grab and maintain the audiences’ attention. The demand for special effects increased and cameras from the professional film animation industry, called rostrum cameras were adapted to make complex images on slide film.

Combining these slides with computer operated projection techniques, enabled elaborate and extremely complicated slide shows to be produced.

I regularly produced images for use in 64 projector shows for major international clients.

The work was extremely labour intensive producing every element using standard photographic technology and multiple exposures onto a single piece of film. Other slides were then matched together with a ‘pin registration’ process ensuring they all aligned correctly.

Then virtually overnight the digital revolution occurred and these complex slides could be produced simply in PowerPoint. Initially the images were converted to film using a film recorder; however, soon the digital projector became cost effective.

A complete slide show could now be produced on a laptop by the person giving the talk, with an amazing selection of effects and tricks without any photographic technology.

Presentation has gone from glass plates to digital chips in 40 years.

Photographing a spectacular display

Photographing fireworks can be fun and produce some brilliant images.

You will need a tripod to keep your camera steady and some form of cable release so you don’t wobble the camera when you open and close the shutter.

Because you’re photographing in the dark people assume you are going to need extra light, so they switch on their camera flash, all this will do is illuminate anything close to you in the foreground which will distract the eye away from the fireworks.

When you switch off your flash, change your camera settings to manual including the auto-focus. If you leave autofocus switched on the camera will not find anything to lock on and you may well not be able to even open the shutter.

Where do you point the camera; since you will only have a rough idea where the firework will explode use a wide angle lens and point it in the general direction of where you think this will happen.

To achieve the best focus, try and find the outline of distant building or object and focus on that, then do not readjust the focus ring, leave the lens set at that, alternatively just set the lens to infinity.

Avoid street lamps or other sources of illumination in your pictures or they will flood your image with light when you leave the shutter open for a long time and dilute the contrast of your firework image.

Never underestimate the brightness of a firework; you do not need a long exposure time for fireworks they are bright enough to photograph normally.

The reason for leaving the shutter open for a long time is because it would be impossible to open the shutter quickly enough once the firework has burst, so leaving it open guarantees getting the fully extent of the colours before the brightness disappears, you should then close the shutter as soon as it fades.

Fireworks are generally bright enough to record using normal exposure settings so leave your ISO at 100 or 200 and your aperture between f8 and f16.

Not all fireworks are in the air, use the light from a tabletop display or sparkler to illuminate a face  or create sparkler traces by again leaving the shutter open.

Enjoy a safe and exciting November the 5th

How a simple spelling mistake can affect your credit rating

Slightly off topic this week but something that can certainly affect you if you’re proposing to buy a new camera or add to your equipment.

My daughter came home from University this week and decided to buy herself a new mobile phone, with some left over Birthday money.

Having looked at the range she decided to go for the latest Blackberry Curve and found what she thought was the best deal, so she asked me to go with her to Phones 4u, so I could sort out the contract.

What I thought would be a quick trip to the shops, however was about to turn into a half day epic.

Phone selected, contract chosen and forms filled, all was set for a quick exit, sadly this was not to be. The final jigsaw piece was a credit reference check and since I knew this would be a formality I was more than a little shocked when the salesman said “declined”.

When I asked for more information I was told that Vodafone had credit checked me and that it was nothing to do with Phones 4u, and they couldn’t give me any assistance.

Unhappy with the explanation, I began to worry that maybe someone had stolen my identity and compromised my credit rating.

Since Phones 4u had told me that Vodafone were declining my application it seemed sensible to contact them and see what reason they had for not approving my application and once I had negotiated the myriad of dialling selections and reached the ‘human being’ interface, they were amazing.

The young lady I spoke to in the contracts department, listened carefully to my problem and immediately set about trying to resolve things.

After all the routine identity checks she looked back at the application that had come through from Phones 4u and systematically worked through the detail.

When she came to the spelling of my first name it became apparent that the salesman at Phones 4u had transposed the ‘a’ and the ‘e’ in Michael when reading it off my debit card.

After several minutes of speaking to colleagues she corrected the problem re-ran the check and deleted the previous one so that only one footprint would show.

To the delight of my daughter, she then bettered the deal from Phones 4u and made sure I knew how to get back to her if there was a further problem.

In half a day I witnessed the extremes of customer service; the assumption from Phones 4u that it was me at fault, hence ‘my problem’, and the helpful ‘go the extra mile’, response from Vodafone.

I certainly know who I’ll be recommending in future; well done Vodafone

More than Identity Theft

Putting photos on social media sites such as FaceBook is a great way to communicate with friends and relatives but have you considered the potential consequences.

Any image placed in the public domain on the internet is no longer within your control – you cannot recall it or stop it being copied and reused.

This may not worry you; in fact you may be flattered to have your picture used elsewhere.

Would you still be happy if one of your images was stolen and used in an inappropriate way? For instance, a picture of your child in the bath or playing undressed in the garden, sent in all innocence to a relative, could end up being used by a paedophile ring. A pretty girl’s head cloned onto a pornographic photograph, your face copied and used to deceive someone on a dating site or to misrepresent on business forum.

You may never know it’s happened and even if a crime has been committed, there is little or nothing you can do to stop the proliferation of the image.

Before the digital age, a picture could usually be withdrawn from future use.

I was responsible for a picture library of medical images and remember on one occasion a fully consented and released image of breast screening was withdrawn because the model’s new boyfriend objected; this could not happen now.

For better or worse as far as pictures on the internet are concerned, the ‘genie’, is now most definitely ‘out of the bottle’.

Photographs are wonderful additions to any social network, be aware that they can be attractive to those with less than honourable ideas.

Privacy settings are there for a reason, make sure you use them or risk your photos being abused.

Miss World Comes To Newbury

When at the beginning of September I wrote about the transient nature of images taken in this digital age, entitled ‘Loss of Memories’, I couldn’t have predicted how well this would be demonstrated within a couple of months.

A few weeks ago in the regular Newbury Weekly News retrospective page looking at news from 40 years ago, I spotted an item about the then Miss World, Eva Reuber-Staier visiting Newbury to open the Camp Hopson Department Store lingerie department.

This immediately triggered a memory. At that time I was a freelance photographer for the Reading Evening Post and was asked to go along and take some pictures.

Oddly, I was the only press photographer there; an opportunity not to be missed which meant I had an exclusive modelling session with Miss World.

Knowing that somewhere in my portfolio I still had a picture from that day, I searched it out. It’s sad to reflect that most traditional photographers tend to keep original prints that featured in their collection but it allowed me to scan the photo and see if the newspaper would find it an interesting enough story to publish on the letters page.

When Thursday morning, publication day, came it was exciting to discover that the editorial team had decided to include my letter and a good sized reproduction of my picture

One of the great moments for any photographer or writer, has to be when you see one of your creations in print. Somehow having your work reduced to a rather poor quality dot screen image is far more impressive than looking at your crisp photograph on a computer screen and there is always a buzz opening a magazine or newspaper to reveal something you have created.

That should have been the end of the story, but 2 weeks later I opened the letters page and again my picture of Miss World was staring at me, with a reply from Eva herself and a special mention for me at the end.

I wonder if my photograph had been taken digitally would I still have had the file, would it be readable and most of all, would I have remembered the event.

How important is image quality in photography in the 2010s?

Are we sacrificing image quality as a consequence of digital technology?

Social Media has made it so much easier to share our pictures with each other,  the digital equivalent of an evening looking at someone’s holiday snaps or being bored to death by a slide show or movie film is now within the control of the individual, you can now flick through the pictures as quickly as you like, or not at all, without offending the owner.

This low resolution culture, where all images are viewed briefly onscreen or taken on a mobile phone is fine for that purpose and is readily accepted by the younger generation; but where is the quality?

Your favourite picture on a mouse-mat, mug, shopping bag or cushion it may look great as a fashion accessory but do you ever look at the image for what it is – a picture to be cherished, an image to study and enjoy. A tangible, physical print, needs to have depth, saturation and above all deliberate focus to draw the eye.

I have no argument that the need for visual quality online or onscreen, should not be greater than the human eye can satisfactorily resolve; in fact I can’t see the advantage of having a mobile phone with a 5 megapixel camera when the imaging quality of the lens cannot realistically compare to that of a digital camera and will probably only ever be viewed as a low resolution screen image.

Admittedly, within the news media, a picture of an unrepeatable event, snatched in a moment, which is out of focus, wrongly exposed and badly lit, is worth attempting to recover; even in the days of film there were processes and actions that could be used to rescue a scoop photograph and create a useable image out of seeming total loss. However, should this become routine and acceptable in less critical applications?

The human brain gets pleasure and satisfaction from looking at beautiful art in galleries, in coffee table books or on the walls of our homes, offices and hospitals.

What makes a photograph different; maybe it’s a factual record and has no artistic interpretation, is it any less valued, that we accept its demise so casually?

For a while in my career I worked in the darkrooms of a national newspaper, acknowledged for its use of large size reproduction of high quality photographs, developing black and white prints. Even after a conventional lithographic print process, these still retained the quality and the tonal range of the original.

Now with digital technology the process of printing is so much easier and quicker but has the quality improved, newspapers are now almost always in colour but the registration of the separations into cyan, magenta, yellow and black rarely match, producing an image reminiscent of chronic camera shake.

Because we are no longer expecting quality we accept this compromise but as a photographer it offends my eye.

This down grading of the visual image probably explains the readiness of publications to print what can only be described as sub-standard pictures which have been artificially enhanced, the willingness of art directors, editors and other image users to accept this and spend time and money manipulating pictures to improve something that should have been correctly photographed in the first place.

Ever since William Fox-Talbot recorded the image of the windows at Laycock Abbey in 1835, the desire to record visual fact, as opposed to the artistic interpretation of an artist, has fallen to photography.

Are we now prepared to compromise this quality because it doesn’t currently sit comfortably within the digital age?

How To Be More Creative With Your Camera

Across the world there must be thousands, upon thousands of Digital Single Lens Reflex cameras sitting gathering dust because the impulse purchase that seemed to be such a great bargain at the time lost its appeal 10 seconds after you opened the user manual.

Whilst it’s great to have a point and shoot camera set on auto and ready for any eventuality the limitations of photography in this mode are immense. In fact the very process of taking photographs is becoming so automated, even to the extent of ensuring your subjects face is in the centre of the frame and whether they’re smiling, the whole process of creativity is being lost.

Restoring some of the photographic skill by moving away from automatic and switching to manual offers a whole new creative opportunity and more and more people are looking for the excitement of controlling the creation of their own pictures.

Unlike traditional film cameras, digital cameras are forgiving, there is no cost involved when you take a bad picture and you won’t run out of film. Just study the picture you’re unhappy with, decide what changes you want to make, delete the image and try again; even better keep it to compare with your next improved attempt.

Experimentation is fun, much of the photographic ‘wall art’, on sale today is the result of accidental exposure, which has been adapted and cultivated to become a repeatable and saleable product.

And remember it is very unlikely you will do anything to wreck your digital camera by simply taking pictures, apart from physical damage don’t drop it (they don’t bounce well),keep it away from sand and water (particularly sea) and you should have long and reliable service.

Autumn an Exciting Time

The arrival of Autumn is heralded by the darker mornings and evenings, together with a chill in the air and the need to turn on the central heating.

Outside, some of the most significant changes since Spring are happening, the quality of the light is changing from the bright intensity of a Summer’s day to a softer more forgiving, shadow free illumination.

Ethereal Trees

With this change of season and the cooler mornings comes mist and fog, which can provide an ethereal overlay to everything we see.

Mist rising above a water-meadow or over the meanderings of a river, caught by the first light of the day creates a wonderfully tranquil image.

When the inevitable colour changes of the leaves on the trees takes place, everywhere becomes the photographer’s palette of colour.

Photographing the colours with the sun behind has a vibrancy and intensity, whereas the leaves reflected on water provides softly merging colour change.

Blackberries

The hedgerows too provide an abundance of colour and imagery, bunches of elderberries, the remains of the blackberries, rosehips, hawthorn berries all combine to create an exciting array of photographic subjects.

Toadstools

Underfoot the sudden arrival the mushrooms and toadstools offer yet another spectacular visual composition, singly or in close communities they are a fascinating subject.

Early morning or sunset, the photographic opportunities of autumn are singularly magnificent to even the most inexperienced camera person, use this special time of year to practice your photography and create a wonderful collection of images to view and maybe a print to hang on the wall.

Photography and Photographers Attacked

There can be few interests other than photography, either amateur or professional that evokes what seems to be an almost universal love/hate relationship.

Yet another physical attack by a celebrity on a photographer doing his job, demonstrates fame’s contempt for the very people who have enabled their success.

Unknown and unrecognised, one of the first requirements on the career ladder to stardom is a visit to a photographer to acquire the head sheet of pictures needed to promote themselves; they are charm personified.

With fame comes the need to be controversial and photographers appear to be fair game; for example, Russell Brand is photographed shoving a photographer at an airport.

Undoubtedly, having a camera lens constantly thrust into your face or, as he alleges, ‘up the skirt’ of his fiancée Katy Perry is an intrusion, but they have both chosen their careers to be noticed, observed and commented on; without this, would they be rich and famous? Those who adopt an outrageous way of life should not be surprised when others treat them outrageously: ergo Brand’s treatment of Andrew Sachs.

Brand is far from the first to behave aggressively towards a photographer, in 1975 Les McKeown of the Bay City Rollers was given a 2 year suspended prison sentence for beating up a photographer colleague of mine, during a concert, and there are many recorded instances of musicians, film stars and politicians, all who depend on publicity for their salaries, being violent and aggressive towards snappers.

Photographers expect disparaging comments from the people they photograph, even the high street portrait photographer will be used to clients saying they don’t like having their photographs taken, (why did you book the session then?)

But probably the most alarming acts of aggression towards the photographer, come from the very people we all turn to for protection, the police.

By their uninformed and over zealous misinterpretation of anti-terror legislation and other public order laws, they now seek to criminalise the photographer at all levels.

An enthusiastic amateur pointing a camera at the wrong building or person, will provoke demands from the police that they hand over their camera and delete the images or face arrest, simply on the basis of badly drafted legislation.

We can no longer photograph our own children taking part in school activities for fear of being accused under child protection laws and even pictures taken in the privacy of our own homes of our children in the bath can provoke accusations of paedophilia, when we try to get prints for the family album.

As with everything there is good and bad, and without doubt there are a lot of unprofessional and badly behaved photographers out there, but I have the distinct impression that ‘Open Season’, has been declared on photography – everyone wants to be one – but nobody wishes to be associated with the profession.