When you photograph people, consider black and white rather than colour. For several possible reasons:
Nothing wrong with this portrait of Floor Manager Rose:
But this also looks great:
So next time you shoot portraits, consider also trying B/W. You can convert from colour too B/W after shooting – that gives you great control over relative shades.
Do you take photos when travelling? Yes, so do I.
And I suggest that you, like me, may want to go back regularly to old shoots, old vacations, old trips, to see them in a new light, with a new eye. And you will be surprised.
Like this for example. From a trip to Rome in 2005:
And from the same trip:
(See the wolf, with Romulus and Remus?)
And those are just two images from hundreds that are quite good and that I never even spotted before – even though I must have looked at these photos 50 times in the years since the trip.
Photos really are forever!
When do I tilt a photo? Whenever I feel like it.
Like in this 2020 photo of TV Chef David Adjey, where the toilet makes it look like he is cradling a little baby.. his baby the culinary creation:
I have always recommended shooting a roll of film every now and then. Film – that stuff they used like in the 1800s. And if you are artistic, black and white film.
So I shoot a roll of film every now and then. Because it’s cool. And because I remember to respect the click. Every time you shoot, you spend a few dollars. And you need to get it right: no feedback, no second chances. So you think about photos.
I use my Nikon FE:
And that’s why in my store we also develop film – and in the case of most black and white film, we even do this in-house, right in the store. Here’s some of the equipment, and today’s film drying (35mm as well as 120):
But you don’t need a pro camera… sure, hipsters use cameras like mine, but young women instead love single-use cameras, or better, the simple brightly coloured Kodak snapshot cameras (yes, and we sell them):
And here’s why:
I tell all my students to shoot a roll of film every now and then. Because you have to think. And you value that click. And it’s fun to see “what you got”.
Young people have realized this too, which is why these are so popular all of a sudden, and why I now carry them in my shop:
Kodak M35: Re-usable (not single use) film cameras, in fun colours. And since I imported them directly from, um, yeah, China, they are affordable too.
Who’d have thought: back to film!
…of which right now I have quite a lot. My store/studio (www.michaelwillemsphoto.com) is still open, but only for passport/ID photos and curbside delivery/pickup, so the days are super slow.
So I get to do some hobby stuff. And my hobby intertests are wide. They also include electronics and computers, and the other day, I bought an Arduino-based Altair 8800 simulator kit (from www.adwaterandstir.com). An excellent kit, by the way, highly recommended.
The Arduino is a modern microcontroller, and the Altair 8080 was really the first personal computer, way back in 1974.
After seeing that article, a couple of young students from Harvard decided to write a BASIC interpreter for it, and the rest is history – you may recognize the names in the Altair BASIC manual:
Anyway, the Altair looked like this…:
And the simulator I built looked like this:
And then it looked like this:
And now, after seven hours of soldering and constructing, looks like this:
And it works! So now I can watch blinking lights (loom up “blinkenlights“). And I can program some BASIC to calculate primes:
..and I can rum CP/M, play Othello and Star Trek and Zork, and in general, do the things you could do in 1977.
Why on earth would I want to do this?
Because it’s a cool conversation piece. And it looks super cool: the Altair with its lights and data/address switches was based on the Data General NOVA.
And because it’s a special thing to run the original Bill Gates/Paul Allen Basic (even “Micro-Soft” did not exist yet) – the project that made Gates $100 billion, and that is responsible for most computer stuff you have now. And to type the same “PRINT 2+2” command that Paul Allen typed in New Mexico to demonstrate the project to MITS, the makers of Altair, and to see the same “4” appear that impressed them enough to buy this BASIC, is quite an experience too.
And above all else, because just like photography, this takes me back. Back to the 1970s and 80s. I feel like I am 20-odd years old again!
And it’s always handy to know prime numbers. I guess.
One of the most important things to do in photo composition is to decide the crop.
A tight crop can be good, like here in my dinner last month:
That tight cop makes it simple, and simplicity is everything in photos – and it draws attention to the subject win a clear manner. So that’s a good crop.
Other crops are less obvious. For example this photo:
That’s all good – except if you were to frame it. The frame’;s mat would cut off the photo very close to, or even on, the top of the head.
Also: you need to crop for the frame. And a 4×6 has a different shape from an 8×10, for example.
So the wise thing to do is to shoot a little wide, so you can crop the image to size later. Do not have your subject touch the edges of the photo, in most cases!
We can often add extra sides to your photo that we fill in to look natural, by the way. Like when you ask us to print a 4×6 as an 8×10! But if you shoot wide ion the first place, it isn’t necessary, and that saves you money!
You know, I though I’d found a good photo sharing site in YouPic. Not American, not Puritan, a good way to share some of my work. Even the work that American platforms do not allow: violence is ok, but the human body is not. Yes, the American excuse for morality is skewed, and wrong.
But at least they’re honest.
As for YouPic: Puritans they may not be, but tacky East Europeans, they are. My advice: stay away from these people. They send messages from aliases, people without surnames – God knows if they actually exist. If you send emails to the addresses they send email from, these emails immediately bounce. A sure sign of a scam. Even on their web site you can’t send them a message without allowing all sorts of “compulsory” nonsense. And no phone numbers you can call, obviously. All giant warning signs.
And if you ever sign up for a paid account, then without warning, they charge you double the next year, without warning – and refuse to refund if you ask, quoting agreements, rules, and policy. Apple may be dictatorial, but they’re hones5 and would refund. As would I: it is inconceivable to me that I would have an unhappy customer and I would force them to pay against their will. I guess the ex Soviet nature of whatever Baltic state these people are from shows its history.
Do I sound pissed? Yes. And that is because I am. Because these cheap kind of scams annoy me. This is 2021. You don’t tell customers that this is allowed, that is compulsory, or such-and-such is “forbidden”.
These people seem to think that they are doing me a favour by publishing my work. It is the reverse. I’m doing them a favour by being on their platform, obviously.
All right, so the search is on for the next platform. No Puritans, but also no scammers. Any ideas welcome. As long as they’re not YouPic.
And otherwise we’ll set up our own!