PJ. Morley

On the 8th October 2007, Alamy released figures that it had reached 10,000,000 images in its library. 10 million! Their turnover for 2006 was £13.8 million/$24 million. That’s a lot of images and turnover for a family run business. An unreliable source suggests that Getty has around 2 million. I thought they would have more than that but even so, 2 million is a lot of images to look through. If the Getty figure is correct then they have fewer images than some of the relatively new microstock agencies. Shutterstock and Fotolia claim 2.5 million and 2.9 million images respectively. Continue Reading »

As I explained in my previous Convert to Black and White tutorial, using the channel mixer is the technique that offers the most control. But what if your software doesn’t have a channel mixer? This method is effective and works in Adobe Elements, Photoshop and will work in other software that supports the use of adjustment layers.

This fellow has an interesting face and he was kind enough to let me photograph him at a recent reenactment event I attended.

The weather that day was dull, extremely overcast and the light was very flat as you can see but that’s OK because it made the contrast very low in this image. Ideal for converting to black and white. This method shows how to achieve effective black and white conversions without the use of the channel mixer.

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Take a look at this image.

1. Original

It follows some of the rules of composition with a lead in line provided by the fence, the subject (Lindisfarne Castle) sits nicely in the left upper third of the image following the composition rule of thirds. Exposure is OK, neither under or over exposed although that may be subject to opinion.

But it lacks something. That’s one of the problems with digital photography. Unlike photos taken on film which have saturation and contrast characteristics built into the film. CMOS or CCD sensors simply record what is there. You can change various settings in camera for contrast and saturation etc. but once they are made and the changes processed in camera you can’t really undo them if you don’t like the result, unless you shoot in RAW of course. What this image really lacks is punch. So let’s see what we mean by punch and what we can do to improve it to give the image that Fuji Velvia look.

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Political correctness gone mad? Over zealous staff? Protecting children? Plain stupidity or nothing more than a ploy to make a few quid?

A Derby man claims he was told by staff at a public open air ice rink to stop taking photos of his two children ice skating because it contravened the Child Protection Act. Full Story Here.

The management at the ice rink claim that the reason he was told to stop was because he was on the ice. Now if that’s true, then fair enough, there’s clearly a health and safety issue with someone is walking around a sheet of ice, eye to the viewfinder not watching where they are going amongst ice skaters. But there are so many stories similar to this where over zealous and ignorant staff and even the police make outrageous erroneous statements with claims that they are protecting children. Continue Reading »

Now this is an interesting development. Zahi Awass, the chair of Egypt’s Supreme council of Antiquities has announced a plan to make it law in all countries that anyone producing replicas of the pyramids and ancient relics of Egypt will have to pay royalties. Continue Reading »