Reuters Photographers On Covering The Olympics

Posted on October 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

I just came across a great short film of several of the Reuters photographers talking of their experiences and images from the Beijing Olympics. Its well worth a watch!

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War Exhibition At The Barbican

Posted on October 23, 2008 | Leave a comment

I had a chance to have a very quick look at the war exhibitions at the Barbican yesterday afternoon. I’ll definitely pop back as I only had 30 minutes before the place shut! Must say, that they are all worth a lengthy and thorough visit.


Robert Capa’s work was, as always, good to see again. There were a lot of images I hadn’t seen though, and some new prints from the recently discovered negatives have been exhibited. There’s an interesting section on the “Fallen Soldier” image, as well as some press cards and letters by Capa. My favourite has to be a letter he wrote to his mother and brother after the D-Day landings in which he said “Yesterday I had a bit of an adventure”!! Talk about an under statement!

I found Gerda Taro’s work really interesting too. Its such a shame that both Capa and Taro died so early in their careers. It would have been a joy and an education to see life through their cameras.

Geert van Kesteren also had an interesting collection of images worth checking out too.

Check here for some images.

The exhibition is on until 25 January 2009.

Barbican Art Gallery opening times:
Daily 11.00am – 8.00pm 
Except Tue & Wed 11.00am – 6.00pm 
Barbican Art Gallery is open late every Thu until 10pm.

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Posted in Photography, viewpoint

DRM on Music

Posted on October 21, 2008 | Leave a comment

DRM….Digital Rights Management. Anyone who knows me or has read this blog knows how strongly I feel on issues of copyright. I parted ways with a big wire agency after many years of working for them as they tried to bully me into signing over my intellectual rights to my work. My income has since less than halved as a direct result.


As photographers, we take great pride in the quality of our work; not just the content, but the physical quality too. The image has to be presented in its best form. I’m sure musicians take equal pride in the quality of their recordings, and find it paramount that listeners enjoy it at a high level of quality. This leads me onto DRM.

Whilst I 100% back the music industry in their efforts to protect their copyright, for us, the members of the listening audience who are quite happy to pay for music, DRM gets rather annoying. As an example, I can play MP3 CDs in my car. However, if I buy an album on iTunes, I need to make an audio copy of this in iTunes, then re-import it and make another lossy MP3 copy of it. In effect, running the MP3 compression twice. If you try and listen to any complex piece of music which has been compressed twice, you can definitely hear the difference. As I’m sure musicians care about the quality of their music, surely they need to apply pressure on their recording labels and the distributors to get rid of this DRM?

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Posted in viewpoint

Zeiss PhotoScope 1800mm f3.3

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

Its designed for bird watchers, but the Zeiss PhotoScope 85 T* FL  may just be ideal for news photographers too. Its a 600mm to 1800mm scope, f2.4 to f3.3, with a built in 7 megapixel camera. To top off this astonishing spec, it ony weighs 2.9 Kg!

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Posted in Uncategorized

What Makes A Good Photograph?

Posted on October 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

Like it or not, a photograph is an art form, regardless of subject or style. One of the reasons I can make this generalisation is that as with anything artistic, its not a definitive thing; it means different things to different viewers and is totally subjective. To one viewer it may be crap, to another it may be superb. Just like music, sculpture, painting, the written word or film, it stirs up a different feeling and thought within anyone who looks at a picture. Its not finite like a mathematical formula but totally infinite in its communication.


I came across this very interesting “discussion” between the Magnum photographer Christopher Anderson and another photographer Terry Carroll on the Magnum Blog. Its well worth a read.

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Posted in Photography

Afghanistan Diary Updates by John D McHugh

Posted on October 14, 2008 | Leave a comment

John D McHugh has two new stories from his long term Afghanistan project.

The aspect that I like from John D’s work is that it paints a picture of the difficulties faced in this vast country with its complex society. What the second report lacks in “bang bang” it makes up for in bucket loads of information on just how difficult the situation is; both for the Afghani locals and the forces trying to bring back a normality of life to a place which in recent history has only suffered war.


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Posted in Photography, Video