@365ken Ken “The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.” A view from within… #streetphotography #Philadelphia 365ken.tumblr.com/ I love Ken’s gritty black and white photography from the streets of Philadelphia @mustafaseven Mustafa Seven From Istanbul / Turkey Twitter: mstfsvn [email protected] Mustafa’s images are so inspiring. I particularly love the way he shoots street views through windows dappled with rain. @wisslaren Christopher Collin I’m Chris from Sweden. I try to capture beautiful things with my camera. Contact me at [email protected]. Snapchat: ChrisCollin Christoffer’s landscapes are absolutely stunning and without the cheesy sunsets. I want to visit every single location he photographs.

The Footy Show Cast/Courtesy Nine Network Australia Here is a really simple way to make photos look old and worn using Photoshop. I created this image as part of a promotion for the Nine Network’s coverage of the Ashes. The cast of The Footy Show had dressed up as cricketers from last century and I wanted to make the image look old and worn too. Here’s how I did it in six easy steps.                     1. Start with a colour image you would like to turn into an old worn image and convert it to a black and white image Image>adjust>Black and White     2. Make or download a textured background. I bought mine from a stock library but you could easily wrinkle a piece of textured card and stain it with an iron and coffee.     3. Open...

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” – Martin Luther King Jr. It was twenty-six years ago this week that I made the decision to become a photographer. To make it official I went out and got business cards printed that said: Gina Milicia Photographer … and my home phone number. I then spent the next 26 years making it up as I went along. It’s been a roller coaster of a ride and I’ve loved every minute of it but there have been times when I doubted my decision and wondered if I was really any good, or would be better off “getting a real job”. Starting out is never easy and, sometimes, all we really need is someone to tell us to keep going. It’s worth it and everything is going to be ok. So I decided to write my younger photographer...

When Jan (not her real name) at the passport office took my new passport photo, I wasn’t expecting anything high end. I knew the minute she pulled out the point and shoot with the tiny flash and mumbled something about standing on a line that this wasn’t going to be good. Jan was a no nonsense kind of girl and wasn’t going to waste time on pleasantries like “hello” or “how are you?” If it was up to me, my new passport photo would have been lit with seven big soft lights much like Oprah has, and my focal length of choice would have been 200mm. In my head I was hoping for Vogue, the reality was more like vague or vagrant. Great timing Jan had impeccable timing. She managed to take the image at the exact moment I’d scrunched my face in confusion at her mumbled instructions. I believe...

In this image, I used the model’s shoulder to partially block the sun. This helps create great starbursts using the sun. This night shot of the QV building in Sydney was a 20 second exposure at F16. The shot was taken at midnight. I love a bit of bling in my images, in fact I’m going through my starburst phase. I’m a bit obsessed now. They are really easy to achieve and I think they look awesome. So if you want to add some bling to your next shoot just follow these guidelines: 1. Shoot with a narrow or small aperture. Experiment between f16 to f 22. Each lens will give a different result. 2. Sunbursts work best when the sun is partially blocked by something. I use the edge of buildings or part of my model. 3. I also get much better results when I shoot with a wide...

The TIFF file is like a slow cooked bolognese, the JPEG is a stir fry. JPEG is a compressed file. It’s best used when you want to keep file size to a minimum such as web use. TIFF is the file format that is the highest quality and industry standard for professional and commercial printers. JPEG is recognised by browsers and most software, TIFF isn’t. This is why JPEG is known as a “web format” and TIFF is known as a “print format” for commercial printing. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. – Jimmy Johnson I love cooking homemade bolognese sauce for my family every Sunday. It’s a recipe I learned from my Sicilian mother and it’s been in our family for generations. The secret to this sauce is time and love. The time is not so much in the preparation, but in the slow cooking....

The type of connector you use to connect external devices (like card readers and hard drives) to your computer will have a dramatic effect on how long it takes to transfer files. That will become important if you are working on location or shooting events. As a general rule, the faster the transfer rate, the more money you’ll need to spend. If you’re not in a hurry and don’t need to backup huge amounts of data, then slower connectors are just fine.     The four main types of connectors you will find for memory card readers and external hard drives are USB 2.0 and USB 3.0, Firewire 800 and Thunderbolt®. USB 2.0 is the slowest of the four. USB 3.0 and Firewire 800 are about the same speed and Thunderbolt® is roughly twice as fast as USB 3.0.

Lost your creativity? Check under the coffee table. It had been a huge week: long 12-14 hour shoot days backed up by long hours of editing. I was wiped. My brain felt fried, my body ached and all I wanted to do was curl up in bed with a fresh jar of Nutella and binge watch America’s Next Top Model. Unfortunately my date with sugar, fat, and Tyra was going to have to wait. I had a creative pitch to prepare for a client that I’d promised to deliver by first thing Monday morning. I poured myself a coffee, fired up my computer and stared at a blank screen for the next 15 minutes… poured myself another coffee, checked Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Gmail… and then went back to staring at the screen again. I was waiting for something to happen. I was waiting for inspiration and creativity to turn...

Have you ever taken a portrait and thought you nailed light, location, and exposure only to realise you’d forgotten one tiny detail that ends up ruining your shot? Here is my checklist of the main offenders: ( I’ve done all of them. Some are repeat offences) Check the background to make sure nothing appears to be growing out of the back of people’s heads. Ensure the hands are relaxed. When models are nervous they tend to clench their fists or place their hands in awkward positions. Are the eyes in focus? It’s really easy to get so caught up in the moment that you accidentally focus on the nose or part of the background instead of the eyes. Button it up, tuck it in, smooth it out. Double check for wardrobe malfunctions as these can be a nightmare to retouch and potentially ruin a shot. Also watch out for lipstick...

Do you remember the first time you photographed something just because? No ulterior motive, not for ‘folio’, not for Instagram, not for a client, not to go on the wall, just because the light was just so, or the subject moved you and you wanted to capture what that moment felt like? I had not done this for a long, long time. I had fallen into the same trap that many working photographers fall into. I only picked up a camera when someone was paying me, or when I felt the need to shoot new folio shots to attract new clients. I’d forgotten what it felt like to really, really love taking photos. Photography became a job, a chore I had to do. The honeymoon was over. I could relate to the words in one of my favourite Madonna cover songs: “You abandoned me. Love don’t live here anymore, just...