All posts by John Aldred

Senior editor at DIYPhotography.net, ASUS Brand Ambassador, photographer and geek.

“Do you photograph babies?”

My reply to the question posed in the title of this post is usually something along the lines of, “It depends.  What type of baby?”

Then the conversation tends to go one of three ways.

The first two answers are the obvious ones.  I either hear “a little boy” or, not surprisingly, “a little girl”.

The third answer is my favourite, and the one I seem to hear most often;  “It’s a baby [insert random non-human species here].”

It’s not that I have anything against kids, you understand, but if you want the absolute best photographs of your new children, go find somebody who’s good at photographing babies and LOVES doing it.

The images will be worth it!

When it comes to animals, however, it’s a whole different story.

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Calibrating an iPad Display!

So, this is interesting, and while datacolor have had a Spyder option for a while, its calibration is limited to its own software (unless it’s changed since I last took a proper look at it).

This new offering from X-Rite, released in March, looks rather good, though, and it seems it has an API that allows other app developers to add support for the profiles it creates (meaning other software can show your images correctly, too – Hello? Lightroom Mobile? You listening, Adobe?).

There are, however, a couple of things that annoy me slightly about it, although one kind of negates the other (for me anyway).

Continue reading Calibrating an iPad Display!

The Bluebells Are Back

Yesterday was spent out with a friend scouting a few of the locations I discovered last year but didn’t get to properly shoot at the time of year I wanted – the time when bluebells are out.

Last year was a strange one, with the longer winter they arrived a couple of months later than expected.  This year, however, they’ve already started to come out.

Continue reading The Bluebells Are Back

Turn off Facebook’s Auto-Playing Videos

It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Lifehacker recently posted a way to turn these off, but at the moment Facebook only really allows you to do it on the desktop.

We can turn it off for Android and iOS devices, but only if they’re using GPRS/3G/4G (ie, not WiFi), which is understandable, but unfortunately it doesn’t help my issue.

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LPS Annual Projected Image Competition 2014

So we recently held Lancaster Photographic Society‘s Annual Projected Image Competition, judged by Tillman Kleinhans.

Congratulations to Ruth and Allan for getting colour and mono Image of the Year, respectively.

My images are shown at 8:18, 15:46, 24:20 and 29:14, and linked below the video.

Continue reading LPS Annual Projected Image Competition 2014

It’s getting to be that time of year again

After 5 or 6 months of almost non-stop rain, we’ve finally started to see some breaks in the clouds the last couple of weeks and had one or two days of rather lovely sunshine.

That means it’s time to get out of the studio and back on location!

DSC_5831

Throughout the year, even when I’m not actively shooting on location, I’m always looking for new places to photograph clients, models and other subjects.  It’s just something I tend to naturally do when I’m out travelling somewhere.

Continue reading It’s getting to be that time of year again

Work Hard or Work Smart?

This post is the consequence of a conversation I had yesterday evening with my sister, chatting to her about the upcoming South Lakes Interclub Photography Competition, and how the whole thing works.

But it is also kind of the point I was attempting to make on my previous post about fixing things in Photoshop that you could’ve resolved at the time of shooting (well, one of the points I was trying to make).

In previous years, we’d remained at the venue (as a competing team, not as host) until at least 11pm usually (once past midnight – after which we had to make an hour and a half drive back home) due to waiting for technological hiccups to be overcome so that we could continue, but last year was different.

Continue reading Work Hard or Work Smart?