andyhutchinson

It’s Okay to Lose Interest in Photography

Quite often when I’m browsing my Facebook photographic communities I see posts from people who are depressed because they have lost interest in their hobby. They usually say that they can’t work up the enthusiasm to get out there and photograph anything and that they haven’t even picked up their cameras in weeks, months or even years. They have lost their ‘phojo’ and they wonder if they’ll ever get it back.

The Silliest Online Reviews of Beautiful Landscape Photo Spots

Our lives are ruled by ratings. We 21st-century humans seem to spend an inordinate amount of our time attaching star ratings to stuff for the benefit of complete strangers. We rate comments, we rate photographs, we rate articles, we rate products and we rate places.

Has Social Media Turned Photography Into a Contest With No Closing Date?

Being a photographer used to be pretty simple. You had a camera, you had a subject you liked photographing, and you used to go out with your camera and photograph the subject you liked. And apart from perhaps showing off the occasional print at the local camera club to a group of like-minded tragics, that’s probably about as far as it went. Then social media arrived and, as with so many aspects of this modern connected life of ours, everything changed.

Confessions of an Autistic Photographer

Photography is a broad church. It is an art form, it is a tool of the press, it is a form of recreation, it is a business. It is a social record. It is a medium for pornography and it also records family history, sometimes at one and the same time.

9 Signs You Might be Turning into a Lifestyle Photographer

It started out innocently enough. You were a landscape photographer, a solitary scenery hunter, a planet-loving, tree-hugging, mountain-climbing, river-crossing, track-scrambling wanderer in the wilds. You loved documenting our planet and all of its hidden little nooks and crannies.

How to Photograph Bioluminescent Oceans

There are certain natural phenomena that most photographers would love to capture. Aurora, eclipses, meteors, rainbows, eruptions, lightning and tornados all present challenges to the photographer, not least of which is (with the exception of eclipses) having a camera pointed the right way when they happen. Bioluminescent algae is no different in this regard. Like all the most incredible natural spectacles it is hard to predict and tricky to capture.

The Instagram Generation is Really Bad News for Beauty Spots

Photography is an ever-evolving, ever-changing hobby, career and art-form. Over the years the cameras have evolved from primitive wooden boxes powered by chemicals, into technologically-advanced power-packed gizmos that enable pretty much anyone to take a good photograph in pretty much any environment.

The Real Reason You Suck on Photo Sharing Sites: The Bots are Beating You

Photographers join photo-sharing sites for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s as simple as a need for recognition and the occasional pat-on-the-back. In fact, I suspect that’s the reason most people join these sites in the first place; a little bit of recognition is worth big dollars in the feel-good bank.

Attending a Popular Event? Consider Leaving Your Camera at Home

Vivid is a festival of light and color thrown by the city of Sydney every year. Run by Destination NSW (the state’s tourism authority) and paid for by a mixture of state and business sponsorship, it’s an amazing looking event. At its core are the building takeovers in which they drop unique projection-mapped animations on some of the most famous structures in the world, located on one of the most famous harbours in the world.

The Real Meanings of Common Photographic Words and Expressions

We photographers do love our catch-phrases, but what do they all mean? Here’s my not-so-serious and very tongue-in-cheek rundown of some of the more commonly used terms and their meanings. And yes, I’m as guilty as the next guy: