Thomas is a professional fine art photographer and writer specialising in photography related instructional books as well as travel writing and street photography.
All in Editorial
With cameras constantly being released, I have found that a lot of the commentary around certain brands and models revolves around comparing the tech specs. People argue about things like minute differences in dynamic range or noise response as reasons to pick one camera over another. But there's so much more to choosing a camera.
It’s something of a new years tradition to look aead for the new year and set goals, while also keeping in mind where you’ve come from over the past 12 months. Last year was a really interesting year for me. In this post I want to outline my pans and goals for the next year!
It’s two hours to midnight here in Dublin as I write this, and it’s hard to believe that 2017 is nearly over. It was a really interesting year for me and my photography. The average visitors to this site increased significantly over the past year, and I’ve gained new audiences in areas I hadn’t expected. I started my Patreon Project and I also re-started my YouTube channel.
I have to say, I’m having somewhat mixed feelings about Adobe’s new Lightroom CC. When I tried it initially I didn’t like it at all. I thought it was way too limiting and I didn’t really see the point of it. My mind has shifted somewhat, after the most recent update, and now I just don’t know what to think anymore.
There has been a lot of talk lately about Lightroom alternatives. Much of this has been amplified by disquiet over the recent decision of Adobe to go subscription only, although there have been grumblings about this for a while. A lot of people are looking for alternatives because of this, and many people are making claims that x software will replace Lightroom and so on. Unfortunately because of the internet echo chamber, many of these claims are either untrue, out only true for specific purposes.
With more and more new RAW conversion applications coming out from small and independent developers, many suffer from the same problem. Cameras aren’t profiled properly or poorly, and as a result when you open a RAW file in many of these applications the colours look a bit flat or different than you would expect. So I had an idea. Why doesn’t someone come up with a way to create an open format for profiling and an open source database.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last few days, you’ve undoubtedly read about the updates to Lightroom, specifically the split into two versions. I’m swamped with a client job at the moment (some design work) and so I haven’t had the time to devote as much to checking out the new versions as I would like. With that in mind, I will have a more detailed analysis on the Adobe announcements next week, once I’ve done thorough testing, but for now I wanted to give you my first thoughts.
The internet has certainly helped democratise photography, as it has many other fields, but it also has its downsides, with misleading information and social issues ranging from the semi innocent to the extreme.... There's one unsavoury aspect that seems to be specific to photography, and I’m really sick of it. It’s about camera gear. In case you think you know where I’m going with this, you don’t. I’m not talking about people who like gear or are into gear, or like new technology. No, I’m talking about the people who constantly give out about the people who like gear.
I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I read this post in the official Lightroom blog this morning. It seems that Adobe has finally agreed to what its users have been telling them for years. Lightroom’s performance is abysmal.
If you follow photography news at all, you’ve probably read about this new site called pixelpeeper.io (not to be confused with Pixelpeeper.com). It’s a web application that lets you see what Lightroom edits were done to an image, just by uploading a Jpeg to it. Now, on top of that they’ve added the ability to see what Lightroom preset was used on an image (if it was something like one of the VSCO presets), again just from uploading a Jpeg. I have mixed feelings on whether or not this is a good idea, and I’ve gone back and forth in my mind as to whether I agree with what they’re doing or not
This may seem like a relatively obtuse question at first but bear with me. I found myself wondering if people actually consider this when reading some online commentary. Who is your audience? Obviously, if you’re a professional, then you are shooting for you clients. But for amateurs and enthusiasts: do you take photos for family or friends? Do you take them for yourself? Do you take pictures for the general public or certain interest groups?
We’re constantly being told that social media is the key to running any good online presence, especially for artists an creators. As a photographer, I’m constantly reading articles about how important social media is, and how you need to grow your followers and constantly post or your online presence will wither and die. Even if you’re not a professional, social media has become so pervasive in our online lives that it’s fair to say that a large part of the internet is dependent on it.
I recently watched a video on YouTube where the use of a SonyA6000 was discussed as a low cost entry into shooting video. In the video they acquired an A6000 second hand for a very reasonable price, and it got me thinking that this makes a really good entry level camera for street photography. I have kept a lot of my old cameras over the years, and it got me thinking as to what else would work well too. So after doing a bit of research, here are my two suggestions.
For some time now I’ve published several guides on Processing Fuji X-Trans images in various pieces of software. One of the first ones that I wrote was for Capture One, and it’s been on my store for several years now. I have recently updated it and added new information regarding capture one 10. While I have received mostly positive feedback about this guide, I received some negative comments recently, and I need your help to know if I should stop selling it or not.
If you’ve been a long-time reader of my blog you’ll know that I’m a bit of a stickler for image quality. A lot of what I’ve written has been about maximising image quality and how to get the best possible results. For some of you, this may seem like an obvious thing to care about, and yet, for some reason there seems to be this movement in the photography community out to demonise caring about image quality.
If you’re an Instagram user, you’re probably familiar with the importance of Hashtags. Just like on Twitter, hashtags let you assign a topic to your photos, and using hashtags allows other users to find your work. If you want to grow your account you really need to use this technique as doing so can mean a big difference in the amount of people that see your work. There is a dark side to using hashtags on Instagram however, and it’s to do with the rise of aggregate accounts.
With most cameras that are released these days having video, it may seem like a pointless exercise to point out the benefits of having the feature. However, if you read the comments on reviews of new cameras (and you probably shouldn’t for your own mental health) there’s always someone who complains about the video functions, saying that they are a photographer and “real photographers” don’t care about video. Even if you don’t like shooting video, I think that there are times when it’s a real benefit to have video in your camera, and the other day I came across a perfect example.
I was reading a blog post from Brian Smith the other day and he was asking people for what they wanted from Sony in terms of lenses. I thought it was an interesting post, and it got me thinking of other things that I would like to see from Sony to improve the company’s camera offerings. Sony has really pushed the envelope with their camera designs over the last few years, but in my opinion, there’s quite still a few areas that could do with some improvement. So, in no particular order, here’s my Sony wish list. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments.
