A Monkey's Revenge - My Blog

How to travel light

It's 2017 and time I re-started my own blog. I've been writing for other blogs instead lately so not had much time or the inclination to update my own!

I aim to change all that though.

Here is my latest blog post for the Manfrotto School of Xcellence!

Instagrab

After an absence of over a year I finally decided to rejoin 'Instagram' which was named 'Instagrab' by me and many other photographers after appearing to do a rights grab on anybody uploading photos to it.
I missed uploading to it in truth. It's quick and easy and a great way to show recent work or just fun stuff which you may or may not have shot on your mobile phone.

So why the change of heart by me then? Well, I did switch to EyeEm for a while but for me it just didn't seem as good as Instagram. So I gave up on it.Then Instagrab got taken over by Facebook. I've been a 'Facebook tart' for years so decided as I upload loads of stuff to FB I might as well include their photo sharing 'club'. The difference now is that I watermark everything and include a copyright notice.The pics are small and I make sure they are uploaded at low res.

It looks to me like the cat is well and truly out of the bag now. If you upload anything at all to the internet then people will steal it, alter it, consider it theirs, etc. So the only way to avoid that is to become a hermit and go and live in a cave somewhere. That's too radical for me, and besides there is no TV reception in a cave. So I've decided to embrace the internet rather than reject it and if people steal my humble efforts for commercial sites, etc then I can always sue them for breach of my copyright and flagrancy if they remove the watermarks. If you'd like to follow me on Instagram, I'm 'Johnwattsrobertson'on there.

The Road Less Travelled

The road less travelled- No, I'm not talking about the self help book of the same name, although you could claim taking photos just for myself on the way back from a paying job is self-help I suppose ;-)

Sometimes I decide not to go the usual route to places and avoid the toll roads and busy motorways. Last week was no exception with a choice between a trip along the M6 and forking out £11 on tolls or taking the scenic route through the snowy Peak District up to Stockport.

I'm always on the lookout for sellable photos, stock or otherwise during my travels and sometimes see things I feel I have to photograph just for myself. These two were both taken from inside my nice warm car with the windows down and briefly stopped in a layby at Bottomhouse near Leek. The sheep were on one side of the car and the dry stone wall against a snow-covered steep hill on the other side. I guess I will stick them with my stock collection in any case, but I enjoyed taking them during a 10 minute coffee break.

The best camera

The best camera is the one you have with you. These days that usually means a phone with a built in camera-in my case an iPhone 4s. This was taken today during a coffee break after shopping in Kettering town centre. I liked the way the reindeer stickers on the window seemed to be floating in the air. Problem is that I find my iPhone's camera very difficult to use for street photography and capturing a moment. I hate the lack of a viewfinder in any camera. Also the shutter lag and the incredible 'pull' on the volume shutter button. Lack of control on focus and shutter speed-etc,etc.

There are good things about the smartphone camera though. Number one of these is they are so ubiquitous that nobody takes the slightest interest in what you are doing. The quality is good enough for web use. If you are into filters there are tons of them to give 'professional effects'. We pro's will probably turn our noses up at these filters, but if it helps people enjoy photography then that can only be good news in my book.

Many newspapers are sending reporters out with smartphones for video reporting and even to take stills pics. That is always going to be second best to doing the job properly with a trained pictures person and decent gear, but in these 'good enough' times I don't see anything changing soon on that front unfortunately. 

It often amazes me when I see other photographers work on smartphone cameras. It can be very accomplished unlike my humble effort above.I have no idea how they do it with so many limitations. Perhaps I don't use mine enough to be familiar with work-arounds. I think I'll wait until somebody makes a real pocket sized digi camera that produces lovely files and has a great viewfinder. Hopefully before I retire ;-)

Typecast

I've gotten out of the habit of regular blog postings. The problem is that a lot of the stuff I photograph these days can't be pre-published on here. So by the time it is published it's often a month or so ago from when I did the job and I've moved on to the next thing.

So I've decided on general rambling posts instead-here is the first one!

I'm so old that when I started in newspapers they were printed using hot metal press- paper in contact with metal set in a 'stone'.

This image is of a 'stone' at Oxford Uni Press. Fancy type. Not the same as was generally used on newspapers.

When I first started on an evening newspaper, it was located in an old workhouse. To get to the photographic department you had first to negotiate the print room with it's stones and machinery that clinked and clanked as the hot metal cooled down after that night's print run.

It was traditional for photographers to hide amongst the machinery on the newbie's first night duty and throw bits of the metal type near where they would walk to get to the stairs. Of course the old lags had laid the ground well in the first place by telling tales of ghosts to the newbie in the afternoon.

Another trick was to stick a white lab coat in the darkroom, complete with broom handle and old newspapers stuffed inside to make it more lifelike, then illuminate this with old PF flashbulbs linked to a battery and a thin tripwire or home-made device that went off when the poor unfortunate victim opened a door. It's a wonder more photographers didn't drop dead of a heart attack on being presented with a flash going off in the dark and a nicely lit ghostly apparition!