Advice & Guidance

UK PHOTOGRAPHER’S RIGHTS

If you are concerned about photography in a public place and/or potential harassment by security staff or police see this web site and this web site for guidance.

PHOTOGRAPHIC DISTINCTIONS AND AWARDS

If you are thinking of going for any of the awards which you see attached to photographers names – or are just curious about what they mean here are some short summaries:

For a summary of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) distinction system click HERE

and for the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) awards system click HERE

and for the British Photographic Exhibition (BPE) Crown awards click HERE

COMPOSITION

There are some useful tips about basic composition here under “Hints and Tips” and here on the “amateursnapper” web site.

DIGITAL PORTRAITURE

Advice on Digital Portraiture HERE

PHOTOSHOP WORKSHOPS

Some useful Photoshop workshops HERE

CALIBRATION IMAGE

This image is useful for checking that your monitor and printer can reproduce a satisfactory range of colours and the Black and White gray scale.

Download the image by right click on your mouse and selecting “Save as” from the menu. Save it in a suitable place on your computer. It’s a jpeg so use whatever programme you would normally use to display them. You should be able to see all the individual bands on the right hand side from black to white and correct skin tones are a good guide for colour. If your monitor and printer are set up correctly the printer should print what you see on the screen. This is better than using one of your own images because it contains the full range of colours which yours might not.

CONVERTING DIGITAL IMAGES TO SLIDES

We are suffering from the lack of entries in our slide competitions. With the trend towards digital cameras, fewer and fewer members are going down the traditional route of shooting slide film. On the face of it, it might seem that the projection of slide film is dying a death. This would be an almighty shame if it happened because a projected slide is without doubt is a superior way to project an image, and much better than we are currently able to achieve with our existing digital projection equipment set-up.

This is not a problem unique to our club. Most clubs suffer similar problems of compatibility of formatting, low resolution, affordability etc.

However, there is an alternative way. I am not sure if everyone is aware of the possibilities of having digital images transferred onto slide film. This is how most clubs do it these days.

You can prepare your images sat at the comfort of your own PC/Apple, crop and manipulate them to your hearts content, and then simply upload them electronically, or send on a CD.
Lo and behold a couple of days later slides drop back through your letterbox. The costs are quite modest and compare favourably with prints, certainly a lot cheaper than an A3 size mounted print!. The quality of the transferred images on to slide film is identical to those shot on slide film. You have the flexibility to crop, manipulate and still maintain superior slide quality standards. There is no difference!

One place that I have used successfully is a lab in Derby. Their web address is digitalslides.co.uk   Costs are £2.00 per slide. I am not plugging them but simply want you to be aware of the options open to you. I have no doubt that there are many others offering this type of service.

We will venture into digital image competition in the future, but we do not feel that it is the right option at the moment. To achieve equivalent quality with digital projection that we can get with existing film slide projection equipment will cost many thousands of pounds. It is not yet a readily affordable viable option. In the meantime we do have the slide from digital option available to us, as an excellent low cost alternative.

Please consider trying it out for yourselves.

John Roberts
24th October 2008