Monday 21st December is the shortest day of the year. Sunrise is at 08.29 and sunset 15.40, only 7hrs 10mins of daylight.

Come and help us celebrate the season and the coming of the light. In a studio encircled by candles and a roaring fire in the grate, we’ll be:

- planning and describing to you our Deep Sea Diving winter collaboration. We may even begin.

- answering some of your Ask Me enquiries, including a demonstration of at least 4 types of camera/film format. (APS, 35mm, MF in 3 aspect ratios, 5×4).

- Do bring your film camera issues/problems/successes to share.

- Take a look at a working darkroom with its (!!!) new 5×4 enlarger.

There’ll be:

- Warming vegetarian soup, home made bread and nibbles.

- A selection of truly excellent wines, including a tasting of a superb rose from our vineyard visit to Swabia. Soft drinks, tea, coffee too.

- Cake. Someone will bring cake, yes?

- Work on the walls to look at, and a few short films will be shown.

We’ll be starting at 1500, but feel free to drop in at any time during the afternoon and evening. Bring work to show-and-tell, bring food or drinks to share.

Complete the Contact Form below for directions and more. What you write in that box immediately below will be sent directly to me as an email enquiry, and not show up on this site. If you want to comment as normal, please use the box at the very bottom. Either way, we look forward to hearing from you.Similar Posts:

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There’s a suggestion that floats around camera clubs that digital sensors, automatic meters, point-and-shoot cameras tend to render snow as a grey-ish colour. Hmm.

Click through the image and watch this film about Michael Kenna at work in Japan:

What did you think?

Now try this.

Good eye.

Good eye is more important than worrying about grey. Flow, getting into the zone, is really where we all want to be. Of course if you’re worrying about technical aspects, or how cold you are, it’ll be much harder to achieve.

Eight tips for photographing snow that will help you get into flow.

1. Waterproof boots with some good ski trousers that have anklet skirts you can tuck into them, will keep your feet warm. Wear a hat, too. And fingerless mittens or good gloves you can take off and put back on regularly. Be physically comfortable. Don’t rush out the door at the first sign of a few flakes, prepare yourself.

2. Take a tripod, or at least a beanbag to sit your camera on, and learn to use it properly. There’s a right and a wrong way to erect a tripod so that the legs are safe, and that’ll be even more important when you can’t see the ground through a few inches of snow. Or you can make a quickfire beanbag with a plastic ziplock and a few cups of lentils.

3. The light at the beginning of the day is more likely to stay steadily even than light at the end of the day, when it will fade fast, so choose an early morning, get ready to go about an hour before daybreak so that you maximise your time in the best light. In the UK, if it’s snowy it’s likely also to be blustery. A calm spell of freshly blanketed stuff won’t ever last long, so grab it while you can. Take a cable release to minimise the effect of camera shake from the shutter, and weight things down.

4. If you want everything to be in focus, start at a minimum of F8 or F11 and chose shutter speed from there. Bracket. That means do several exposures at different shutter speeds, maybe as much as 2 or 3 seconds, depending on the strength of the available light. If your camera has an integrated meter, and most of them do, use it as a guide. like everything else, it’s a tool. Shoot a few frames at 2 stops above what it indicates: you’ll see later if that works for you and for those lighting conditions. Shoot a few frames at 1 and 2 stops under, too.

5. If you want to go technical, point your camera at something grey, a patch of concrete, or your jersey, the back of a well tanned hand will do, or even a patch of grass. We’re aiming for an 18% (or 12%) grey, or a field approximation thereof. Use that as a starting point for working out exposure, not the glittering white expanse before you. Metering ambient light is a pretty hit-and-miss affair anyway, especially in high contrast situations like mid-July and blankets of snow.

6. Michael Kenna suggests a faster shutter speed to collect visible snowflakes, and a slower shutter speed to achieve a milky misty effect. Do both, see what works for you. Photography is an art, not a science.

7. Take a friend, an assistant, a collaborator, or go alone. Solo works best for achieving flow, unless you know each other well enough to enjoy your silences.

8. If you can’t get outside, for whatever reason, fling open a window or a door. Climb the stairs of your office building; get out onto a roof.

The darkroom is calling: negatives from the winter of 2007 and 2008 need printing. This one, for example:

It’s a commission, inkjet printed on museum rag: low contrast, almost dusty. It will be great to see how it looks with some rich blacks and yes, we’ll see how grey that snow is, too.

Enjoy this week’s weather, and please post links to your own snow photographs in the comments. We’re all loaded up with Tri-X 400 and ready for daybreak.Similar Posts:

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Back in the mists of time, Liz Kuball thought it was about time women did more to help other women in the photography biz. Great idea, and naturally enough as these things go, it prompted a bit of a bleat from people who think men should ask questions too. Very valid point: let’s welcome questions from men. A woman, and now an officially qualified (smug) practitioner answering questions can only be A Good Thing, so yeah let’s try it again.

You can Ask Me on Twitter

Fill in the Contact Form from the Contact Me page on this site

Arrange to meet me at the EDAN Courtyard Gallery or at the Lickety Split ice cream parlour in sunny Seaham.

Come to one of the Open Studio events that’ll be starting in January 2010

Comment on these pages, anywhere.

Please don’t email or telephone: I don’t play voicemail, and email is barely functional, although the occasional text is absolutely fine if we have already met. By far the best way if you want a quick response is via Twitter. Either DM (direct message) me or make sure you use the @ reply like this @brendadadaand I will see it usually within a few hours.

Recent Ask Me questions:

- Aaron Cupid @aaroncupidwants to know what might sell in a Gallery. Don’t we all. I’ll do a blog post. You can all chip in.

- He also would like ideas on self-publishing that include how to sequence or edit, and again your thoughts are wanted.

- Bruce Burn needs help to get his Pentax 35mm film camera working again. There’s a whole post here on renewing your romance with an old film camera, much of which will help him too, but that’s definitely a good one for a real life meeting. If you want to bring me an old film camera to get going again, also bring along a fresh battery or batteries, and a roll of film.

- Several people have asked how to photograph snow. Answers to that one are coming up, since it looks like snow all over the UK is on its way.

- Jac Howard would like to see some examples of various film formats: 35mm/120/5×4 etc. I’ll photograph that session and blog it here.

- How to correctly load a 5×4 DDS: I asked Amanda McHale on a high fell one night while we were out seeking meteor showers. Thing about using LF camera on a college course, is that passing technicians swoop in and do it all for you, thus rendering the vital learning process, for which you’re paying £££££s , pretty much impotent. Do it yourself, every time, That way you’ll know how to load a DDS without having to Ask Me.

- SB800 flashes and their deep menus are pretty much impenetrable. I’ve mastered mine. Post to come, thanks to the 3 people who’ve enquired about how to set them for off-camera flash.

- What’s a grey card? Good question.

Ask Me posts passim are under the Ask Me category and I think there will also be a tag.

There is also this new widget from formspring.me

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One of these was hand held, against all the best advice. Shutter speed on the others was F16 and 20 or 30 seconds. Almost the best part of the year, these long autumn nights. There’s a table of exposure times here and a traffic trails tutorial here. If you’ve still got a fireworks party to do, try a really long exposure, say 2-5 minutes at as small an aperture as you can get, but make sure you’re away from the light of  the bonfire.

Karen Strunks‘ next 4am Project date is December 6th. If you like being part of these big collaborations be out there.Similar Posts:

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If you can physically exhibit unfettered, unalloyed, bouncing, tingling, heart-thumping, enthusiastic JOY, joie-de-vivre, खुशी, Радость, Iloon, الفرح, in a public open space somewhere, a beach, a shopping centre, your choice, feel free to get in touch. It’s for next year’s minibook project.

And a couple of new pending collaborations are coming: correspondences, (with grateful thanks to Marcelo Brodsky). Oh joy!Similar Posts:

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Back in 2006, someone was persuaded to give a last-minute place on a degree course to a mature student. It does happen: these days there are at least one, maybe two of us in every class of 30 or more teens. If you’re thinking about doing a photography degree, or an arts foundation course, or maybe you already have a place for this autumn, don’t hesitate, go for it.

Fourteen Tips for Your Interview

1. It’s never too late. Most of these courses are desperate for your money, and they like eager mature students, thinking they add a certain amount of moral levelling to the cohort. Whether we do or not, you can apply right up to the start date, and often after, even up to the end of the first term.

2. Don’t bother about UCCA, that’s largely for school leavers. Although you will have a form to fill in it will be a miniature version, because you’ll do it after you’ve been accepted.

3. Search the University or College course you’re interested in, find the name of the course leader and phone and/or email them directly, asking about a place. Be prepared for a few brief questions over the phone, and have your diary ready and empty. If you’re reading this, you’re probably going to be keen enough to be offered an interview.

4. Prepare thoroughly, as for any job interview. Be knowledgeable about the school’s previous successful students, about the tutors’ own work and interests. Google them if you don’t already know, find their book(s) in the library, look up their exhibitions, form an opinion about their work. You went to their end of year student degree show, yes? Find someone who did and ask about the high and lowlights.

5. Organise your professional website or blog, pushing entries about your shattered love life down in favour of a couple of intelligent reviews of work you’ve seen recently or previews of your own projects. For a fine art foundation course, cinema reviews, crafty ideas and photos of art in progress are all good blog fodder.

6. Get into a darkroom and make some prints from scratch, using basic black & white chemistry. Don’t get all arty, just some work that shows you can process film, you can print using dodge and burn, and that it’s straight and clean.

7. Make a portfolio of your best work, assembled in themes. This doesn’t need to be expensive or fancy. A4 prints in some clear acetate sleeves in a stationary ring binder will be fine for undergraduate interviews. Three or four themes will be enough: a series of landscapes, some portraits, some using indoor ambient light. A strong documentary series is always impressive, so if you haven’t already got one of those, start making one. We’ve heard of people getting onto an MA course with a few 6×4 machine prints in an envelope, but you’d have to be an awfully good talker.

8. If you’ve got a sketchboook, tidy it up and take that too. If you haven’t, it’s definitely about time to start one. These are strange and often rather lovely beasts – more on that in another post.

9. If you are a digital maven make some prints using the best printer you can find, and that’s not usually the one on your desk at home. Use your local pro lab or mail order.

10. Be nervous. It shows you’re keen. And nobody likes a smartypants.

11. If they ask you to go away and do X, go away and do X rather well, then phone them up when you’re ready to show them your magnificent X. It’s a device often used as a filter, to show how committed you are. If they don’t actually like your X, they will still be impressed that you’ve followed their advice, which is a basic requirement anyway.

12. Teaching the same bunch of 19-20 year olds year in, year out can have all kinds of obvious and hidden benefits but after a few years they do all tend to blur into oneness. You, however, are going to stand out whatever you do, so make sure you’re memorable for all the right things and not as a cynical old know-all.

13. Be prepared for a few personal questions about how you are going to pay for the course, because it is expensive. Most photography degree courses require you to have your own equipment, and they sell film and paper and printing but it’s always to make them a bit of profit. If you’re retired and/or on a low income, it’s doable but they will want to know that you can complete. There might be bursaries. Ask about them after you have been offered the place, or ask their student services department.

14. When you get an offer, you don’t have to accept. You will spend 2, 3 or 4 years of your precious mid-life with no spare money, no social life, and you will lose friends and neglect your family. Your photography might improve far more if you spend a year with 52 rolls of HP5 and a Leica M6. If you’ve always wanted to spend a year with a M6, now might be the time to do it.

Whatever you decide, good luck! Let us know how you get on.Similar Posts:

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Unfiltered greyscale:

From the top: blue, green, yellow, red.

Hmm….Similar Posts:

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When Stephen Sidlo, a recently finished a photojournalist graduate from Swansea wrote in yesterday, it rang all sorts of alarm bells in terms of assessment standards and general probity. His letter is reproduced here in full. Pull up your favourite armchair, pour the tea and begin.

As a very recent graduate to the BA (Hons) Photojournalism course at Swansea Met, I have time and time again complained at the lack of support and recognition that Photography students receive. Now as the Education Minister made clear they want more working class backgrounds into the institutions and me being one, have come out with debt resembling some of the figures that have been mentioned on this site. Yet after the 2007/08 year, this to me is a tip of an ever increasing iceberg I found.

Getting a student loan of around £1500 every 3 months give or take £100 is the limit I personally received. Total up how much it would be to do a basic freelance photography job, and you would have to take into consideration the main thing the camera – yet with university you can loan the cameras out it isn’t the problem apart from the studio fees previously. Minus £1000 in rent and food for those first three months, that’s £282 a month in rent – the rest in food, dependant on how much you can get from the rest, maybe travel home for Christmas as well. The overdraft is also spiralling out of control from the first two years at university don’t forget. So say there’s around £500 – £700 left, now start taking away your equipment and printing costs, and so forth.

During this year’s ADM for the NUJ in Belfast, I overheard the current problems freelance photographers are having these days with money to buy equipment. This is a valid problem as many photographers live below the breadline, some risking life and limb to bring back stories of rebel movements in Africa, or stories from Iraq. Many students look up in awe at these, yet start their careers possibly as an assistant at weddings or tea boy in a newsroom. The typical photographer shells out £2000 for a top of the range camera and lens, another £1000 maybe on lenses, £800 laptop, storage, additional digital equipment, £100 for a website, rent and food.

At the ADM I was sent as a student delegate to see how I could benefit from them, they were surprised I couldn’t afford the full fee after I had spent countless pennies on cameras, paper, business cards, £300+ on an exhibition, postcards, travel to shoot, portfolio, portfolio printing…so on. Then on rent and food.

A freelance photography speaker got on the stand and spoke of their problem of pricing within the industry, but what about us!? I did speak to them but some members did say “Well you have the student loan, and a part-time job….and some of the other students are getting on fine…” As if to say…you’ll be grand just keep plodding on. But I didn’t want to, I wanted a grade that reflects my ambition and creativity that I have sacrificed for 5 years from when I started my first college studying for a two year ND in Photography.

We do sacrifice a lot, it cost me £60 with rail card to go home to see my family…that I then sacrificed which isn’t on. Even social life was non-existent in the last year and not because of the work load. I was stressed constantly, always waiting for pay or loan day to pay for rent, food and a box of postcards. I could have cut corners and got cheaper postcards or business cards but I reckoned it would look as if no effort was put in, yet that’s not me so I designed my own on CS3 and paid £200 for them and had them for my exhibition. I understand they were needed but it’s just another bill on top of many. In a slightly twisted way I actually wish that it is debt, and that I still owe that money because I could have put more effort into it all.

A recent survey in The Guardian newspaper found that the average debt is at £17,000 with a starting salary for graduates is at £13,000 or lower. After this we still have to buy all those items on the freelance list. Universities don’t have a grant specifically for students studying photography. The Guardian also said that if I hadn’t gone to university and started out in the workplace, I’d be further up in the ladder by now and earning over £22,000.

To show you to extent of how much we students pay for I do have an appeals application form to my University in front of me stating that the amount I had to find to do my course directly contributed to why I had a lower grade. Having countless visual diaries and theory work doesn’t seem to matter apparently. If my printing paper was of less standard because of money problems it was marked down for example.

I had two jobs at one point, bar work taking up the nights, but paid pittance towards this. I don’t want to say it wholly contributed to my lower grade but I did feel that it stopped my creativity.

I look at Doctor and Law courses that are very expensive and driven, but with Photography its creativity and on many occasions I stopped short of producing something I was proud of for my finals in the London graduate show (which cost me personally around £800, food, printing, framing, renting the space, travel, business cards, postcards, portfolio…I don’t want to actually go on because it does make me angry), with no help whatsoever.

The universities do have a Student Finance department, and what they do is send you first to a councillor to literally sit there and talk to them about your feelings and life, finances (this is not a joke) and how its affecting your studies. They give you money towards the course, not the £400 a month for living. So they ask you how much you need, and you can literally feel the surprise from them when you ask for something that resembles a lotto jackpot….instead you receive £200 and go through it again next month.

I have grown away from different class bitterness, but do hold some problem with the university bureacracy who mark you down on paper weight, type and style than what the image is. I was proud of my theory work, 5 visual diaries of handwriting and image deconstruction, 2 lever arch files of contacts, plans and future development, one 8000 word dissertation and my own magazine released, and a regular student delegate for the NUJ. But at the end if Jimmy has a nicer portfolio box than Stephen it looks like it shows in the grading.

I received a Third.

I really don’t want to say it’s all the moneys fault, my theory work was sound, my dissertation the same, the only problem I can see is that when in March/April some people still had money left they continued and had fresh work for exhibition, I used my work I had done previously which was stronger, yet wasn’t taken into consideration because they didn’t want to look at previous work for a 60% assessment module.

I felt very empty and still do. I didn’t want to base my photography creativity on how much money I have, yet that is how I found it. My website is also half-done because I couldn’t find the rest of the money to pay him.

I now am applying for photography jobs, yet have no faith for a while after my results, living back at home, I am also on the dole while I look for bar work because I don’t have any money for new business cards, lenses or a flash for occasional freelance work. I am very ambitious and creative yet extremely disappointed, as was everyone in my class when they heard my grade.

There is nothing left to do but this appeals application now.”

Stephen’s work can be seen here:
Stephen Sidlo Photography
His Blog
Page at Source
PortfolioSimilar Posts:

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“How come when I google my name the Northern Exposure site comes up before my co.uk one? I added a meta tag in my code with lots of words.”

A series of robots (and humans) do the somewhat hefty job of indexing the whole of the internet so that the search engines (Google, Yahoo, AOL etc) can find us on the world wide web. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the combination of methods used by content management and web authors to try and ensure that their site has the correct ranking. The higher the better, obviously.

The WWW is indexed using text – words alone. For photography websites, and especially for static brochure-type sites based mostly or wholly around photographs, SEO is difficult to manage because there is simply not enough data (words) for the robots to catch.

Things you can do to improve your site’s search ranking:

1. Name your photographs in several places. The file name SaltburnPier01 is far better than IMG00356, and do make use of captions, titles and alt=”" tags. The more words associated with your photographs the easier they are to find.

2. Write about the work. Descriptions, explanatory pieces of prose, critique or even appropriate poetry, anything (See 1). Doesn’t have to be on the same page, but the more text the better.

3. Link to lots of other sites. Traffic is vital for SEO. Visitors in and through your site will automatically add to your ranking. Success definitely breeds success. If you have no visitors, you’ll get no visitors.

4. Keep your links relevant. For photographers, that means linking to other photography sites, and not to a general mashup of your other interests, unless they’re part of your context or genre, or they’re one of your clients.

5. Put your domain name (URL) into your signature on all your emails, and attach to any posts you make in photography forums, and in comments on other blogs. In other words, promote your own site. All the time.

6. Use Web2 social media like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Deviant Art, Lomography, whatever is current, fashionable, and is where the people you want to see your work are hanging out. If you’re not active on these sites, take a couple of days to get around as many of them as you can and register with a name unique to you that will help you stand out or create the feel or buzz you’re seeking to create around your work If you can engage properly in the ‘community’ on any of these sites, do so. Creating a sense of community around one’s work has never been easier, but like most things of any value, takes time to cultivate.

7. Use metatags. They won’t help much on their own, but put them in anyway.

8. Use a proprietory Content Management System (CMS) which is well known as an instant provider of good SEO. Currently WordPress is streets ahead in this game. If you want to make your own static website using something like Dreamweaver, make sure you do all of the above and keep your content regularly updated and changing.

9. WordPress is great for photographers, but there are a whole host of other content management systems for photographs out there. Look also at Drupal, Expression Engine and Moveable Type, and album and gallery systems like JAlbum, Banana Album, Simple Viewer, PixelPost and so on. Specifically look for sites made with any of these and see how high they rank by Googling their keywords or titles.

10. If you can’t manage much or all of the above, or still feel you need a static word-free site just for just photographs, like an extended business card, then do supplement your website with a weblog. A how-to of blogging for photographers is overdue here, but is on its way in the next week or so. The most basic key to successful blogging is very simple though: do it and just keep on doing it.

As ever, anyone with additional hints or tips, please do follow up in the comments section.Similar Posts:

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Charlotte Mendelson © Adrian Lourie

Big fish in small pond, or tiddler in a billowing melee? There’s no-one better to consult than Adrian Lourie, who was top of the Class of 2007, so TPP dropped him a line and this is his reply.

“Things here are going well. I’ve been working for freelance editorial photographer Graham Jepson for 4 months assisting him in photographing the great and the good. A varied mix of people from Gordon Ramsey to John Prescott and Ray Winstone to Geri Halliwell! All good and a fascinating insight into the madness of celebrity.

Graham also has a picture agency called writerpictures.com which specialises in author photos and I have recently started photographing authors as a contributor. I recently photographed several of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008 short-listers as well as covering the event itself at the Royal Festival Hall earlier this week.

I’m also finding time to pursue my portrait photography with a view to approaching some magazines. I’m also submitting some stock photography to Alamy and recently sold still life images which have appeared in the Guardian.

Chris John © Adrian Lourie

After an initial period of false starts, doubts, knocks and knock backs as well as the continuing financial struggle, things are starting to work for me down here and I’m confident of my future careeer progression.”

No regrets then Adrian?

“No regrets but there has been self doubt…inevitable I suppose.”

“I’ll be interested to know how Dan Aziz is faring and Dan Prince seems like a nice guy. I do firmly believe though that it’s still all about London if you want to make it (rightly or wrongly). There are most definitely more opportunities here for those who are willing to stick it, bug the living daylights out of people and work bloody hard for little or no money. There is obviously a great deal of competition but also massive amounts of work out there. Did I say that 75 people applied for my current job?!?!”

No you didn’t! You knew you’d crack it though, didn’t you? Five years hard graft and you’ll be where you want to be, no question.

“I’m hoping to do it in 4 years!!!!!”

“Love the Northern Exposure website btw.”

So do we.

Rachel Manilow © Adrian Lourie

It’s certain that Adrian will drop in to answer people’s specific questions, or you can mail him via his own website linked here. Ask away! Thanks Ade.

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