PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS: Pursue your muse, be it rock stars or lizards

SHOOT: The great thing about photography is it allows you to spend time absorbing, paying attention to and soaking up with you love. It might be nature, or beauty or fashion.

If you'd like to book a shoot with me in Johannesburg email me at nickvanderleek@gmail.com

clipped from www.photoradar.com Be business-like – marketing is the other half of the story. Or hire someone to do the hustling! Choose subjects you’re passionate about. I decided I wanted to shoot motorsports when I was a teenager. Don’t be afraid to experiment in order to stand out from the crowd. Your work has to stand out. Follow your passion. You’ll do best shooting what you love, and I see this with my students. Never stop learning about the endless subtleties of light. Don’t follow trends or copy other people’s work. Think about creating images that look fantastic straight out of the camera, without relying on post-processing Photoshop enhancements. Choose your times – photograph at  first and last light. Always look for colour and how best to capture it. Listen to your inner voice... it’s usually right about everything. Try to travel light. This will encourage you to always take a camera out and about with you.. Learn to shoot against the light because this will give you the most atmospheric shots.

Photography tips to inspire you

You need to know when it’s the perfect time to take the shot. I try to use only natural light and avoid heavy digital enhancement.

SHOOT: At the link below are over 225 tips from 50 photographers. I am anothewr photographer who prefers to shoot in natural [ambient] light. Studio and design photography looks fake, because it is fake. I'm also constantly asking my models to come naked [as in without make-up] and more often than not I try to get them not to smile.

If you'd like to book a shoot with me email me: nickvanderleek@gmail.com

clipped from www.photoradar.com Born in Surrey in 1952, Martin Parr is one of the UK’s best-known documentary photographers. He studied (and taught) photography at Manchester Poly in the 1970s. Career highlights include an Arts Council Award in 1975, full membership of Magnum Photos and a retrospective at the Barbican in 2002. See Martin Parr's photos 1. Make sure people aren’t smiling. Otherwise you end up with a snapshot. 2. Move in closer when you’re taking people shots. 4. Then make sure people aren’t smiling again. This is the biggest error in portraits taken by amateurs. 5. For candid shots, just keep persevering. Your luck will come in the end. Be engaged with your subject, but at the same time be considerate – you are the guest. Think about combining the composition of the shot with the context of where you’re taking it. The two shouldn’t be separated. For my kind of work, I try to use natural light wherever possible. It’s more natural! Ask permission to get in close.

Ode to Album Covers

SHOOT: Have a look at the last one, right at the bottom.

That’s the wonderful life and spirit in this sleeve. It celebrates spontaneity, doing stuff ‘cause it’s fun, having a drink and a laugh and a joke whenever you can.It’s fun, and it’s infectious, and track three says it all: “I just cannot contain this.”

clipped from www.themorningnews.org As an adult, I can nod enthusiastically during dinner parties while my fellow guests discuss their favorite record sleeves of all time. I can go out and waste money on books that claim to list the top record sleeves of all time. But I’ll know my favorite record sleeve of all time when I see it, and it will be this one. This sleeve is life itself. On the front, beautiful singer Róisín Murphy wobbles drunkenly, thuggishly, threateningly before me. She holds those two pints of beer and looks like she’s going to hurl them in my face, simply for being cheeky enough to look at her. She’s snarling, aggressive, soaking wet. Not, um, wearing a bra. And she doesn’t care. She gives not a flying fuck what I think, what you think, what anybody thinks, because she is having the time of her life larking about in freezing cold seawater with her mates. Did the band ask photographer Elaine Constantine to do a shoot while they larked on a beach?

Pictures from a National Geographic Documentary called "Extraordinary Animals in the Womb".

SHOOT: Amazing isn't it.

clipped from www.thisblogrules.com These amazing embryonic animal photographs of dolphins, sharks, dogs, penguins, cats and elephants are from a new National Geographic Documentary called "Extraordinary Animals in the Womb". The show's producer, Peter Chinn, used a combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and tiny cameras to capture the process from conception to birth. They are the most detailed embryonic animal pictures ever seen. If you would like to see more baby animal photos, you should take a look at these frozen semen test tube pandas.

Swallow hit by a car [PHOTOGRAPHY]

SHOOT: A female swallow swooped low over a road and was struck by a car. Her mate tended to her, brought her food but was unable to save her. Touching isn't it.

clipped from www.binscorner.com

Marethe [PHOTOGRAPHY]

Murals Worth Looking At

SHOOT: And living around.

clipped from www.cartridgesave.co.uk