photojournalism

Tinkering with my folio

I spent a long time working as a photographer specialising in education and I spent as long as the rest of you in full-time education as a pupil and a student too. I think that those two facts combine to make me feel that “new year feeling” in September as the kids go back to school and the not-so-young ones go away to university. January is the new year of course and April sees the beginning of the financial year but September feels like to ‘work new year’ to me.

And it is at this time of year I start to think about getting out there with my folio looking for new and interesting work and, at the same time, I like to have at least a minor refresh with my on-line folio too. (more…)

The Four Cs – metadata musts

Last month my friend and colleague Andrew Wiard attended the annual IPTC (International Press and Telecommunications Council) Metadata Conference in Paris on behalf of The British Press Photographers’ Association. He came back with one of the most sensible ideas that I have ever heard for getting all photographers to add their basic information to all of their pictures – The Four Cs.

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Location lighting half day workshop in London

Thursday 23rd May at the wonderful Cherryduck Studios in Wapping.

For anyone who remembers that far back my www.dg28.com website started out as a vehicle for me to post updates about the work that I was doing along with some technique examples that I rather pompously called “photographer education”. Well, that was in 1999 and a couple of years later I started doing occasional workshops and lectures about my use of portable flash on location. I have done a lot of talks over the years including a couple on behalf of The BPPA to coincide with exhibitions that were held on the old SS Robin at Canary Wharf. SS Robin attendee Steven Frischling said

“He’s good folks… totally worth the price of admisssion, got off the plane and went right to work with what I learned from you within hours”.  
(Steven had flown from Pennsylvania and was en route to Germany!) (more…)

Five weeks with Photo Mechanic 6

Towards the end of last month I was excited about the arrival of the production version of Camera Bits new update to their excellent (and indispensable) workflow application Photo Mechanic. I have been using this version (with two updates and counting) for the last five weeks and I am about ready to say that I have settled into enough to put my early opinions down here in the blog.

It’s very good.

People say that they like short and concise reviews and that, ladies and gentlemen, was it. For those who prefer an expanded and more considered opinion I guess that I am going to have to write on because it hasn’t all been lovely. Camera Bits have been asking everyone for feedback and the fact that they have released two extra builds since the launch of version 6 five weeks ago tells me that they are working hard to make this the best version so far and free from faults and niggles.

Let’s start with a few of those niggles: (more…)

Using NeoFinder as an image catalogue

Like most photographers my workflow has developed over the years and there are some bits of it that are more to do with convenience and habit than they are to do with efficiency. Cataloguing my archive is definitely something that I haven’t given enough thought to. Well that’s not entirely true; every time I look at Lightroom one of the things that attracts me to it is the cataloguing function that it brings with it. The idea of having an application that does so much and that is effectively free (as I subscribe to Photoshop CC anyway) is a good one but every time I have given it a go, I have decided that it isn’t as convenient at Media Pro as a catalogue. I have had Media Pro in its various forms for a very long time now and it has served me well. Phase One’s decision to stop supporting it has made me look around for an alternative.

Being a long-time fan of Photo Mechanic I have been holding out and waiting for them to bring out a new version of the application that forms the core of my workflow with a cataloguing function. Camera Bits have been saying for years that “it is coming” but  I have decided to look around for other options.

A few months ago I was reading a thread on a Facebook photographers’ group that mentioned NeoFinder. I thought to myself “how come I have never heard of it?” A quick search on the web brought up their site and I realised that this was a newer name for the old CD Finder application that I tried and quite liked half a dozen years or more ago. They offer a free trial and I had some time on my hands and so I downloaded and installed it. I made a quick catalogue from about 20,000 old images and I was shocked by how easy it was to use and how good the searches it allowed were. The question popped into my head “why keep trying to make Media Pro work when this is available?” All of my pictures have their metadata intact and I have tried hard over the years to get my captions and keywords as good as I can make them. Moving from Media Pro to NeoFinder was a doddle. The developers even offer a “sidegrade” discount for people making this transition. (more…)

The Workflow Nerd strikes again

On January 22nd in London I’m going to be running a workshop for photographers who want to expand their knowledge of the various options for speeding up the IPTC captioning part of their workflow. We will be drilling right down into autocomplete, code replacements and variables and even using more than one of them at the same time.

Most of us use the techniques that we know and tend to keep using them until we are persuaded to try something new. This is an opportunity to come and find out what I know and see if you can improve your own workflow at the same time.

If you are interested, the booking is open through Eventbrite and the standard price is just £25.00 with a £15.00 concessionary price for members of The BPPA.

Theresa May MP – July 2000 portrait

The fifteen frame edit supplied to the newspaper from a seven minute portrait shoot with Theresa May who was the Conservative front-bench spokesperson on education in July 2000. © Neil Turner/TSL

When I published my piece last month about the arrival of the Kodak DCS520 cameras I included an interesting portrait of Theresa May MP taken just over eighteen years ago. Several people – including some picture editors – got in touch and asked to see the whole shoot. It was the second time that month that I had photographed Mrs May which, given that I was working for a group of education titles, wasn’t that unusual back then. As always the interview overran and the time for pictures was severely curtailed. The inside of a Member of Parliament’s private office is rarely interesting and so I went tight with what little time I had. (more…)