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May 19, 2012 by Michael Wayne Plant

Magnum Professional Practice workshop

I spent two days on May the 12th and 13th at the Magnum Professional Practice workshop. I would recommend attending to anyone ready to begin marketing their work and or thinking of relaunching their career. I am in the process of relaunching my portrait photography and redefining my art practice, which is why I wanted to attend the workshop. I recorded all the sessions, so I can refer to them again later. I think that branding of photographers is important. and most photographers do not do it in any meaningful way. When I get time I will write more on this subject as I think it is important.

 

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May 12, 2012 by Michael Wayne Plant

Magnum Professional Practice workshop 12th &13th May 2012

I am spending two days at Central St Martins attending a two day workshop on Professional Practice with Magnum.

So far we have heard from Sophie Wright- Cultural Director, Magnum Photos, Fiona Rogers - Cultural & Education Manager, Magnum Photos, Kate Pattison - Head of Stories – Film & Photography, Oxfam and Stuart Smith - Smith Design.

It was a long day with lots of information presented. The award for making the group laugh the most would go to Stuart Smith (if there was an award) whose presentation was interesting and informative throughout.

All the speakers had interesting things to say and brought lots of information to the group. We are hopefully getting a tour of the venue tomorrow as we are in Central St Martins new campus and it is quite a special building with lots of light and it feels like a place that lots of ideas could circulate freely within.

Magnum Professional Practice: London

Originated as a response to the changing nature of the photography market, Magnum’s Professional Practice events deliver impartial guidance and networking opportunities from a wide range of visual imaging industries. With access to key individuals working across the editorial, commercial, cultural and publishing visual industries, Magnum is well placed to advise the next generation of photographers on the best professional practice.

In a series of weekend lectures, leading figures of the photographic industry will deliver presentations and advice on the best means in engaging with and the realities of working in their sectors. Speakers from the advertising & corporate, editorial, gallery, NGO, museum, publishing and rights managed sectors will each give presentations on their subject of expertise, with plenty of time for questions and networking opportunities.

This event is aimed a wide range of photographers at different stages of their career: professional photographers working in a particular discourse but wanting to explore other avenues; emerging photographers who require practical, vocational training; or semi-professional photographers wishing to make the commitment to full time practice. Each of Magnum’s Professional Practice lectures is tailored to deliver the best impartial advice and provide the opportunity to meet with key industry specialists. Places on Magnum’s Professional Practice course are limited and successful candidates will be chosen on the perceived benefit to the applicant’s career.

This event is hosted by Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, Kings Cross Campus, Granary Building, 1 Granary Square, London, N1C 4AA

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May 3, 2012 by Michael Wayne Plant

New Tool to use Sony Nex-7

Last Friday I finally got my own copy of the Sony Nex-7 for personal use. I have been a Sony advocate photographer since 2007, late last year when Sony lanuched the Sony A77 and Nex-7 I was one of two photographers invited to Greece to help launch these cameras. I fell in love with the little Nex-7 having already got myself a Nex-5 which if I am honest I liked but could not get on with for one really simply reason. I keep basing my head against it when I would put the viewing screen to my eye to look though as if it was a viewfinder. This was not helping me to make iamges as I have been used to looking though a viewfinder and I could not get used to having the camera held at arms length to make images. So I sold it to my sister-in-law who absolutes loves the camera for all the reasons that I coudl not get on with it. So note to self here what works for someone does not work for everyone when it comes to camera design. I love the box that the camera comes it makignit feel like an expensive little jewel.

Sony Nex-7 in its packaging

I have it with the kit lens the 18-55 lens. now I have already decided that sony are missing something on all their lens in the Nex line up. The way I like to work is to use Zone focusing and depth of field to achieve focus on the images that I am making. Especially my street photography. How it works is I set the distance to 3 metres and then try and use f8 or f11 (perferably f11) to get the sharpness to be sufficent for the images I make. This allows me to get my focus really fast when shooting. As the lens do not allow you to set the distance I have to guess it. This is not how I want to work so I have ordered a Novoflex  leica M lens to Nex  adaptor to use on with either a Lecia Summicron-C 40mm f/2 or and I am still thinking about this maybe a Voightlander 25mm f4 or a 21mm f4 lens both good lens and not to expensive to buy compared to the equivalent Lecia lens. The 40mm will be equivalent to a 60mm and the 21 mm equivalent to 31.5 mm and the 25mm equivalent to 37.5 mm. I am currently leaning towards the 21mm Voightlander lens.

My reasons to love the Nex-7 apart from small size of camera and quality of images. My two favourite reasons are Focus peaking this works brilliantly in manual focus allowing you to see focus anywhere in the screen that there is contrast, and Setting effects this when turned on in the electronic viewfinder allows you to see the effects of your exposure on the image and give you a live histogram while you are making images not after the fact. These two features are just brilliant as they allow one t nail focus and exposure quickly and accurately. My reason to want to put other lense brands is that I need to zone focus for the type of photography that I do.  I will have  a review of the Novaflex adaptor when it arrives here as I have found very few reviews of this item online and I plan on rectifying that as soon as possible.

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April 21, 2012 by Michael Wayne Plant

Testing image sizes

I am getting the hang of adding galleries to the Base theme, but have to decide on image size and image quality to add to the web site. I was reading the Photoshelter guide to website design and most art directors are happy with 700px wide, whereas us photographers want images to be bigger. I have also always wanted to have my images down to about 60 to 80 kilobytes in size, if possible as having larger images means that results in  increased loading times. This is not good, loading times need to be short as the other thing the Photoshelter guide mentions is people get boarded and leave, if they have to wait to long, I mean seconds for an image to diplay.

 

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April 20, 2012 by Michael Wayne Plant

New web site and web hosting company

I have been busy with a new web site and webhosting company. I went ahead and purchased a series of Theme from Graph Papr Press to use on my websites and so far they are coming together okay. There have been teething problems with me learning how to really use wordpress to get the most out of it. I am tempted to make a few videos of the process but we will see as it take some effort to get it right.

I have now to decide on image size and all the other little things that make a website and blog work. One thing that I have realised is that WordPress can be frustrating and challenging to use but also strangely rewarding when one gets it doing what ones wants it to do.