Having two PPCs in one room isn’t particularly remarkable, especially as we draw ever closer to the much-expected May 6th general election date, but when one of them is the drummer from Blur, and the other has been described as ‘Britain’s Obama’, it becomes something a little more interesting.

This wasn’t the first time I’d come across Chuka Umunna, the Labour PPC for Streatham, and I doubt it’ll be the last, as he’s asked me several times recently to do some photography for him, but this time he had Dave Rowntree with him – who’s the Labour PPC in Westminster.

Both seem equally passionate about Labour, but Chuka comes across as – not unsurprisingly – more of a politician. Rowntree struck me as much more subdued (perhaps because he knows how hard it would be to win in his chosen constituency!), taking some time to become animated and engage with the audience as naturally as Chuka seems to.

The talk itself was interesting – taking place over lunchtime it was short, but the small lecture theatre made it something of an intimate setting. Both talked about their view of politics briefly, before spending the rest of the hour taking questions. Entertaining, informative and a britpop star. What more could you want from a Wednesday lunchtime?

Anyway, you can find more photos from the event in this Flickr set.

(The title of the post comes from the awful pun Chuka made in reply to one of Rowntree’s comments…)

Even though the UCLU Modo fashion society faced quite a few setbacks this year – their traditional venue within UCL was unavailable except at reading week, when no one would be around, and alternative venues were both ridiculously expensive and available for just one night, rather than their usual two, they pulled ‘The Green Fashion Show’ off spectacularly.

The Russell Hotel was a quite brilliant venue, and (from my point of view) the lighting was much better this year. Well, I say much better – I really mean there was some improvement. There was still a massive dark spot halfway down the runway, which happened to coincide with exactly where the models had been instructed to stop and pose… Luckily, the end of the runway was pretty well lit, and my new Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 wasn’t exactly unhelpful.

Unfortunately the for-one-night-only show this year meant I couldn’t cover both backstage and the runway, although I managed a few shots of models dressing and being made-up before the show started. Nor this year – it being a Sunday, when I was editing a whole bunch of shots from Celebrating Streatham – could I get a timelapse done of the set-up: being in an external venue for just one day meant a 6am start for the crew, and probably a similar finish the next morning!

I’ll get a gallery up when I’m not quite so busy – for now, this shot should suffice to illustrate what in the end was the best Modo show I’ve seen over the past four years.

I noticed the other day a post about the ‘rule’ that you shouldn’t decapitate or amputate people in photographs. Needless to say, the post went on to say that actually, doing just that could be perfectly acceptable. Not much of a rule, is it? Don’t get me started on the ‘rule of thirds’ – another one you can choose to break, for aesthetic effect.

Of course, you should never under- or over-expose your shots, unless it looks good.

And always – always! – focus on the eyes in a portrait…

The thing is, there’s no such things as rules when we’re talking about photography (or indeed any other creative pursuit – poetry, painting or piano playing). There’s some guidelines to make casual shots at least half-decent, like the ‘don’t decapitate’ rule, or the rule of thirds. Following these will give you, I’m sure, perfectly acceptable shots. But it doesn’t mean that anything else won’t be just as decent. You might have to practice a little more to get rule-breaking shots that work, but then how are you going to develop your own style unless you do what you think looks good, and not what someone has told you is a rule?

All these ‘rules’ are nothing more than tips, starting points and suggestions. Calling them rules gives them, in my opinion, too much weight, and they’ll be understood by some to be actual rules.

The only caveat I would make, however, is this: whether you choose to follow ‘rules’ or follow your gut feeling when it comes to taking a shot (and editing/developing it, of course), do what you’re doing for a reason. Don’t bounce the flash because someone told you, but because you want that quality of light. Don’t underexpose because you don’t understand how to use your camera properly, but because you want to. That’s all I ask: be deliberate.

The only rule there should be in photography is that HDR is rubbish…

Image: I figured since this post was a reflection on photography itself, we could do with a tree reflected in water. Bit lame, but there you go…!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I hadn’t quite realised just how magical light can be at certain times of the day. I’ve always heard advice that ‘the best time to shoot’ is around sunrise and sunset, but never really realised just how good they could be until yesterday.

I’ve shot sunrise before, but that was sunrise itself, rather than anything else. And, having spent the last three years as a student, by which I mean ‘quite unlikely to be up at such an hour as to stand a reasonable chance of catching sunrise, unless he’s still on the way home from the night before’, sunrise hasn’t been the easiest of things to catch – and when it’s time for sunset, well, quite frankly drinking has been more of a pressing concern!

However, seeing the light catch on my sister’s face through the trees as we walked down a wooded path, I made her stop and walk back a few steps  (and then forward a couple, and then back one, and then forward half a step!) to get the perfect spot.

Of course, you can fiddle around with white balances and saturation and all that jazz – and just a little tweaking may have happened here – but you can’t beat the natural quality of the light, the long shadows, and of course the smug feeling that you’ve not cheated!

Boxing Day in my house is the day of the traditional family walk – we take the dogs, anyone who has been foolish enough to join us for the holidays, and head to the beach.

Being the middle of winter, sunset is very early, and luckily this year we had a clear blue sky, allowing the beautiful light of sunset to flood the scene. (My only complaint is that being on the east coast of the UK, once you descend the cliffs to the beach below, you’re stuck mostly in shadow, except at the very edge of the sea!) I must admit, until yesterday, I hadn’t quite realised just how amazing this light is -

This shot was taken quite late in the walk, once we’d come back up the cliff and the sun was almost lost, just hitting the tops of these trees.

Last night I went up to Alexandra Palace in north London for one of the city’s best displays. Because the Palace is on top of such a big hill, you get fantastic views across the city, and every now and then there’s a little burst of fireworks in the panorama in front of you, even before the main display starts. We managed to watch most of a display in Greenwich while walking back down, which puts the view into perspective.

It was a bit crowded – something like 50,000 people – and there was a bit of a mad rush after getting food and so on to get to a half decent spot, on a fairly steep slope. Luckily, with my brand spanking new Velbon Sherpa 250 tripod, this wasn’t much of an issue. I took plenty of photos during displays last year, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the camera this year, except to have a little experiment with zooming in and out during a shot at one point – you can see the half-decent result here.

Taking photos of fireworks is pretty simple, really – so long as you do have a tripod. The basics are:

• Manual settings!
• Low ISO for best colour reproduction and least noise
• Quite narrow aperture for depth of field – I was using f/11 most of the night – so it doesn’t really matter if your focusing is off.
• Long exposures. A lot of my shots were on 2.5″, although at times I went up to 15″. Try out various combinations for different effects, and find your own personal style.

I’m off to the Lord Mayor’s Fireworks on the Thames again next weekend, so expect more soon!

This is just a quick video I shot when testing the E-P1 – you should also have a read of my hands-on review. I’m not a video expert, and see few problems with the footage itself. The 14-42mm lens I was using, however, had quite  a stiff zoom ring, resulting in some jerky footage, as you’ll see. Let me know what you think!

Olympus E-P1 Test from Josh Blacker on Vimeo.

Thanks to the wonderful Ghene Snowdon, I was able to spend a couple of hours today on the streets of central London playing with the new Olympus E-P1. Before I get into my thoughts on this little camera, a big thank-you to Ghene for letting me play with it (even if I did seem to disappear quite often – sorry if you thought I was running off with it!).

The Look and Feel

There’s no real doubting that the E-P1 is a stylish piece of kit. It has a slightly-updated-but-retro look, being more or less just a digital version of the original Olympus Pen cameras. Although the one I was using is silver with black trim, there are other colours in the works; still, the silver and black is perfect even to my unstylish eyes.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is again quite late that I post this photo – my only excuse is that events overtook me and I’ve been so busy since the Champions League final that I just haven’t had time to select images to post!

Anyway, you may recall that this year’s Champions League final was between Barcelona and Man United – the latter team supported by a flatmate of mine. (I personally don’t care much which team wins where – so long as I enjoy watching the game itself, I’m ok. None of this overdone tribal nonsense.) It wasn’t, I recall, a particularly thrilling match. Man Utd never really seemed to put much effort in – Barca were out of their league.

This being before my nifty fifty suffered its little accident, I managed to get away with shooting in really low light at the Duck & Dive bar at ULU, and up close to those sitting around me – the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II has a minimum focusing distance of only 45cm, which can come in really handy in situations like this – a moment where it looked, briefly, like Man Utd might actually have been capable of playing some decent football. Alas for my flatmate, the moment passed.

Last weekend I headed into UCL for the annual UCLU Drama Society Quad Play. It’s my third in three years (and, interestingly enough, I’ve gone with a different girl each year. Says something, right?), and the third Shakespeare play I’ve seen them perform there.

This year’s Twelfth Night (printed Twelth Night on the ticket, unfortunately) was a bit more ambitious than last year’s, which erected a stage in front of the Portico along with bringing out rather uncomfortable chairs to watch from. Instead, we were treated to cushions and rugs on the grass, with three performance areas around us. Although the rain appeared at various points, the free ponchos managed to keep at least some people dry.

Pictured is Malvolio, played fantastically. There are a couple more images in this flickr set.