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Editorial Other

error!

FLASHERROR copy.jpgHaven’t done much in the way of photography recently, but I have been tinkering with my site again!

I put a lot of the code for my websites together myself, either by pinching bits from other places and reverse engineering it to learn how it works and fit it to my own design, or editing existing template code (for example, my glass eye runs on Pixelpost templates).

I also learnt a lot from reading Dan Cederholm‘s two books, Bulletproof Web Design and Web Standards Solutions. They might sound like a dry read but if you’re interested in creating simple, strong, flexible websites using CSS and HTML they’re actually a very good read, the skills you need delivered with humour and clarity and plenty of fully worked-through examples.

I digress!

One thing I came away with more than any other from reading them and putting my sites together bit by bit is getting little personal details right. I’ve always been unsatisfied with the basic 404 error page and the ‘No Flash detected’ error text I had on my portfolio site, so yesterday I had a little fun in Photoshop and made something a bit more personal.

I’m certain hardly anyone will ever see the Flash error image as according to my Mint statistics only 2% of all the visitors I’ve ever had to the site don’t have any form of Flash installed, and I’d bet most of those were me visiting my own site on my iPhone to see how it rendered!

404whoops copy.jpgSo that leaves the 404 error pages, which you get if you follow a bad link to a page on my site that doesn’t exist any more, or you type in a wrong address or something. I have no idea how often that happens really but all the same I whipped up a 404 page by using the front page as a template and cutting back the navigation to the bare minimum. Then I made some custom 404 images and used some Javascript to randomly call one of the images whenever the page is reloaded.

Which I think is kinda cool in a terribly geeky way. 🙂

If you fancy a peek, here’s a link to a page on my website that doesn’t currently exist and never will, which should generate a friendly 404!

Categories
Editorial Photographic

chasing the dream

Despite 9 years working in the entertainment industry I’ve only got 3 years of experience shooting stills on set, and although in that time I’ve made in-roads with most of the major TV broadcasters and have buckets of experience on set, working on this career is, like any other, a long-term endeavour with lots of long days and terrible paycheques along the way. But I do love it, which is half the battle! Frustratingly it really is only half the battle at this stage, the other half being largely taken up with knowing the right people to show your book to and getting the right breaks.

With that in mind, two bits of absolutely excellent news: first of all, tomorrow I’ve been invited to meet and observe one of the industry’s leading unit stills photographers on location in Surrey on Neil Marshall’s new film, which I’m really looking forward to. I won’t be allowed to shoot anything myself, but just the chance to see how an established professional shoots and interacts with the crew and talent will be absolutely indispensable experience, so I’m really looking forward to that and am extremely grateful to all those who pulled the necessary strings to make it happen!

Secondly, today I came across the website of another of the leading unit stills photographers, Alex Bailey. To my surprise and delight, he not only maintains an active blog, but he’s also written a book about publicity photography, called Movie Photos and available for the princely sum of just £19.99. I didn’t even think twice about ordering it…

Categories
Editorial Photographic

what i did at the weekend

If this were a homework assignment I’m afraid I’d be lying in the title as I actually did this last weekend. However, it’s not, so I’m allowing myself a little poetic license in order to use a snappy title.

Last weekend was one of my toughest assignments yet. I had to spend the entire day out in the sunshine in a lovely back garden up in picturesque Muswell Hill, photographing a series of decorations and party favours for Decor and Favour, a party accessories website. They even made me coffee and sandwiches to order! Like I said, tough gig…

When I first started in TV I spent a lot of time filming a series of 2-3 minute VTs for Great Food Live called ‘Objects of Desire’, where a producer would select a bunch of themed objects such as crockery or decorations and we’d shoot sexy angles of them, set to music. It’s been a long time now since I did that sort of thing but my personal photography is very heavily focussed on details and making the mundane look pretty so this sort of gig was right up my street. At this point the photos aren’t live on their site but here’s a few sneaky peeks.

Continue reading “what i did at the weekend”
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Editorial Other

new iPhone photography page on ‘my glass eye’

IMG_0567 express escalator to hell.JPGI already use Flickr to host my iPhone photos that are worth sharing, as well as displaying the most recent 5 in the sidebar on the front page of this blog, but I decided I wanted somewhere on this site to properly showcase them so I’ve just added a new page – iPhone photos.

I selected 24 of my favourites and used Airtight Interactive’s free Flash gallery creator, PostcardViewer, to display them above a short blurb about the apps that I use. As and when I have new photos I want to add I’ll just swap out older ones I’m bored of – apart from anything else I just love tinkering with my site and adding new pages! 😉

Also, I keep meaning to finish a blog post about an app I recently added to my collection called ToyCamera (by the creator of QuadCamera). I’m not as enamoured with it as I am CameraBag but it does have some charming qualities. I also have a giveaway to announce. Really ought to get that uploaded today but there are some ‘real world’ chores I should probably attend to first…

Enjoy the gallery!

Categories
Editorial Photographic

daddy or chips? comic or sweets? cropped or uncropped?

Whenever I have a big decision to make, a clear choice between ‘a’ or ‘b’, my mum likes to remind me of my habit as a 3 or 4 year old toddler of storming out of newsagents empty handed, crying my eyes out and having a right old hissy fit because I couldn’t choose between a) a comic or b) a packet of sweets. So rather than risk making the ‘wrong’ decision I’d go empty handed like a proper little martyr.

(and my mum would argue that this still happens)

So, I had a really difficult decision to make recently. In fact, I’ve still not made it. No sweets or comics were involved, but all the same it’s pretty much hamstrung my entire creative flow. I’ve got photos in my camera that I can’t even find the motivation to download simply because Photoshop is still open in the background with two slightly different versions of the exact same shot sitting there waiting to have the Ultimate Verdict delivered, and it’s been like that for over 24 hours. Talk about making a lot of fuss over nothing.

The shot in question isn’t even all that amazing (well, obviously it is really – I’m just being modest). It was taken a few days ago when I was on a wander around my neighbourhood with the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens, looking for little details that caught my eye in an attempt to keep my hand in with casual personal urban photography, something the photoblog was pretty much founded on but which I seem to have strayed away from recently. I was deliberately looking for the really small stuff that still told some kind of story in terms of how it might have got there, and also have something aesthetically pleasing to my eye.

So, which of these two versions is ‘better’?

Continue reading “daddy or chips? comic or sweets? cropped or uncropped?”