I’ve just been looking through a collection of some stunning images from the riots in Greece over the last week or so – well worth a look.

Also, this reminded me of one of my favourite sites to look through – whenever I get a bit disenheartened by my shallow, pretty photos of boring things -  The World Press Photo Awards are always worth checking this time of year, and include a gallery of winning images dating back to 1955, plenty of which are famous, iconic photo’s of world events, and really demonstrate the power of good journalistic photography. Go have a look…although not generally very cheerful stuff

Everyone should be checking back in January to see this years entries and winners!

For Halloween every year Sheffield has Fright Night in the city centre – billed as ‘Britains biggest Halloween party’. I went last year, and managed to miss everything as I was too late, so this time, turning up nice and early after a good pub lunch, I got to see everything I wanted and had a great time!

The zombies in Marks & Spencers window were really good, tons of rides, stalls and fairgroundy stuff, and a lot more people in costume this year I think. Plenty of people on Sheffield Forum sound to have had a good time, but there are a few complaints about it being too crowded. It was really busy all day, so maybe spacing things out a bit more next year will make it even better!

Zombies! I’ll be uploading more images to Flickr as soon, once I’ve got them sorted – got a lot more decent shots than last year, but then last years was pretty much done when I was there

It’s great to see the city centre like that – once it gets dark the lighting looks really good, and they definately go all out filling the streets with stuff. I would have loved it when I was a kid! I’ll hopefully be going again next year – still need to get some good pics of the stilt walkers and storm troopers

Also, hope all the zombie fans are planning on watching Dead Set tomorrow! It’s a 5-part zombie horror show running all week up to a Halloween night finale, set during the Big Brother eviction. It’s full of gueststars and ex-Big Brother contestants and is rumoured to be getting an 18 on its DVD release – all showing post watershed on E4. I’m hoping it will be right up there with Ghostwatch for good Halloween viewing – maybe a little too much to ask, but it’s made by Charlie Brooker, so I do have faith

It’s been a long time coming! For the past year or so I’ve had regular leaflets through my door from EOn UK explaining their plans for the old Blackburn Meadows power station site near Meadowhall. I don’t think anyone was in any doubt about the fact the iconic Tinsley Towers by the M1 would be coming down…but it’s so strange now to see that gap in the skyline!

So, myself and a few friends found ourselves on Meadowhall car park at 2am on Saturday the 24th, along with a few thousand other people! I was surprised how many people showed up – I think some of them had been there most of the night! I always loved the towers, but not being a Sheffield native I don’t think I can get into the debate over whether they should have been left there Love them or hate them they were certainly a landmark – signalling the entryway to Sheffield from the North. Anyway – there’s been plenty of discussion about them over the last few months, so here’s the sheffield forum thread, and the bbc report, if you want more info.

As I live pretty close to them they were my photo of choice when I learnt about HDR a year or so back -

I really like this pic, cause it was taken from right up next to them – a view a lot of people didn’t get a chance to see, and cause it shows just how close they were to the motorway. Not really been a popular one on stock sites though!

The amount of nice sunsets I’ve had round here over the last few years, I’m pretty sure I’ll regret not getting more photo’s of them now they’re gone, but I did go down to meadowhall and get some last shots on the Saturday before they came down, so just for comparison, their last day -

and…much later that day -

down they go!

We got a quick video of them going as well..although only just! I know there are plenty of good vids of the towers going out there, but this one is ours!

All in all – sad to see them go but it was great to watch – only really kinda wish I’d stayed on the side of the viaduct that my house is on – got home at about 5am! o.O

Wow…I’ve managed to go over a month without any posts! I guess I’ll be posting a lot all in one go then…

First, Stock updates – I finally got approved with IStockPhoto last month! I’ve not sent that many images to them yet, been too busy, but so far I’ve only got 3 approved out of about 8 I sent, but then everyone knows they do have pretty high standards. I got a copy of Noise Ninja a while back and was v. impressed! It’s much better than any other noise reduction software I’ve used, so I need to find the time to go through all my rejected stock images and noise-reduce them all.

On the positive side though, in the month I’ve had these 3 images available on IStock one of them has sold twice already! It’s also sold twice on Dreamstime, so is easily my best-selling image so far!

I guess people are just morbid – can’t get enough of the dead sheep! I’m pretty sure I can get my hands on a few more animal skulls to get some decent shots of, so hopefully they’ll prove as popular as this fella!

I hadn’t heard anything about this program but caught it late last night. It’s available to watch on BBC IPlayer. Shown on BBC3 I think, Alesha Dixon, who was unhappy with her retouched cover for FHM, presented this show about retouching, magazines and the beauty industry. I thought she did a really good job of presenting the information, despite the obvious contradiction of having a beautiful professional model trying to expose the lies of the beauty industry.

Most interesting for me was the section where she spoke to schoolchildren. The younger girls, like we’ve seen in Child of Our Time, were sometimes disturbingly image-conscious, but the older high-school aged girls interviewed surprised me! I’m not sure how old they were, but at least 11-12, and they were so surprised when she demonstrated the level of retouching that goes on in magazines. One of them commented that she had no idea they could make people look thinner – and these are girls years beyond the ones that have already developed these ideas about ideal body image etc that she interviewed at primary school.

In another section Alesha ran a poll in a young girls magazine asking readers to vote on an image of her – chosen from 4, from a very distorted super retouched version, to an untouched photo. The final result was for one of the partly retouched images, but a close second was the number 1, super-retouched version – which I have to say, really didn’t look like her…or that much like most humans!

To be honest, I wasn’t really surprised by much of the social commentary of the show, but was surprised how well presented the information was, and was able to watch some of the professionals in action in London, and find out more about the world of magazine retouching – all interesting stuff!

Also, if anyone does watch it, look out for the section on the studio shoot. Alesha follows a woman to a studio shoot and retouching business to have photo’s taken, as she was insecure about her body and wanted good photos before her wedding. When they look through the untouched photos from the shoot it’s a great demonstration of just how much can be done without retouching. Just through good photography – composition, postures, lighting, a comfortable and happy subject – they took some really nice shots of her, some of which I really don’t think will have needed much work doing to them.

All in all – I recommend! Guardian reviewer Stuart Jeffries thinks that Alesha was a bad choice to present given the subject, and although I agree with him in part – especially the section with Cheryl Cole – I think she did a really good job. She had an intelligent and interested approach throughout the show, and as someone in the industry was able to connect with the subject and offer us an insiders perspective.

It’s been a while since I posted anything!

This is cause I’ve been pretty busy doing a new batch of product shots for my favourite customer Your Own Brand Golf. They are a local company and were my first customer when I set up the business, so it’s been great to go back and do more work for them, and see how much their company has grown!

I’ve been looking forward to shooting some All Star Wrestling shows in Blackpool this summer for wrestler Rene Dupree, but it’s looking like he might not be back in the UK until the Autumn. Oh well..next time he’s around maybe! I might still have to go to Blackpool though I was really excited about Fridays at the Pleasure Beach!

Hmm..what else is new? I’ve made my first sales on Fotolia – odd that it took so long, then I got 2 sales in a week! I’ve not uploaded as many stock images as I’d have hoped to be honest, so should definately spend a bit of time soon updating the stock sites – and trying to get that elusive 3rd image accepted for IStockPhoto!

Well..much as I’ve not been posting – I have actually been working quite abit – so back to the golf bag editing for me I suppose! I also have a portrait shoot for a friends kids next week, and I’m currently trying to scan and repair printouts of images that were stolen when a friend had his house burgled recently . Today I have to search through old prints and find one from back in college that I think could be a great fit for the Sheffield Forum Photo Competetion this month – I’m pretty inactive on my local forums..and all forums in fact…so thought maybe this could be a good way to get involved with local photographers!

So to summarise – busy busy! I’m trying to be a bit more organised and get a few posts up now – so I don’t miss the chance at the end of the month again!

This weekend I attended the Sheffield Fencing Open at the English Institute of Sport -and it was great! I got a lot of photos – some of which are turning out pretty well, met some cool people, including another photographer, Rob Comerford, who was really friendly and let me try out his new lens…which was brilliant! There were some big names there, with UK no.1 ranked epeeist Jonathan Willis winning the Mens epee, (full results here) but across the board some really top notch fencing and a fun weekend!

Plenty more images to be uploaded to my gallery over the next week or so!

We’ve had a couple of days of nice weather so I’ve been out in the garden a lot this week – yay to Spring! Or was that Summer….?

Also..it does seem that seasonally themed shots are getting are lot more hits on microstock sites right now, which makes sense, so why not load up on nice Spring images

WordPress have launched a new theme – the Monotone Photoblog theme, and it’s great! I wish this had been around when I had set up this blog, as I would probably have focused on posting more images…

Anyway, it’s a really impressive theme that alters the layout colours to match the first image in a post – check out the demo site here!

Right now I think I’d end up with a lot of black and white pages, as there are a lot of posts with just text…but my aim is now to up the image posts so I can switch to the Monotone theme at some point!

I found this ages ago and should have posted it back then..but anyway…

Jason Barnhart has a photo essay submitted for publication in JPG Magazine this month, under the title ‘Curiouser and Curiouser!’ and I just love it! It’s a pretty simple idea but done so well…they are well executed, clever, but most of all really fun!!

He gets a big ‘Yes’ vote from me…and everyone should go there and vote! And, while you’re there come and vote for my otter in the ‘creatures’ category

So what’s new…?

Looking through the calendar so far I’m averaging 3 post days a month..which isn’t great, but then I usually post more than once when I update, so it just looks like I don’t update that often

I ordered some of the Moo.com minicards I posted about earlier this month, and they’ve just arrived today! I’m pretty impressed with the end product – they look great and you do get a decent amount for your money – although for £9.99 I couldn’t complain much either way – they are a bargain!

If you’re considering buying them my tips would be – plan ahead! Look at the crop and decide which images you want to use beforehand. Also, I would recommend registering for the site before placing your order, that way you can save the settings for your upload and crop etc. in case you have to change things, or take too long deciding! Or better yet..decide what you want written on the back before you start uploading them!

I ordered them on the 25th, and they arrived today, so thats 5 days – not bad at all!

Microstock uploads are progressing..slowly Now that I’ve got my main backlog batch uploaded to Fotolia and Dreamstime, it’s now a matter of getting new images taken and uploaded to these sites, and getting signed up with other agencies.

I’ve heard on forums that Shutterstock are now turning down everybody and aren’t really interested in new photographers anymore. I don’t know if thats true, but they did refuse all 10 of my sample upload..so I’m leaving them be for now. I’ve got 2 out of 3 approved for my IStockPhoto submission, so just as soon as I get one more uploaded next week, that should be good to go. Although I think I can conclude that IStock *does* have very high standards and I really am not going to get many..if any…of my older images taken on my Minolta approved there.

I’ve had 2 sales through Dreamstime so far, out of 18 uploads, which is good to see, and all of the images are getting regular views, which has to be a good sign – although I do realise views mean nothing..it’s downloads that count

The views on Fotolia are still increasing, but not at the same speed, and still no downloads through there.

When I joined BigStockPhoto I messed up my uploads. I don’t find the site or the upload system that easy to use, and as this one was joined later I haven’t been using ProStockMaster for my uploads yet. This has meant that my first couple of batches ended up having some duplicates in, and a fair few have had to be deleted. My approval rating is low because of this, but I have noticed a few of the duplicates have been approved on second upload…and plenty have been given different reasons for refusal. I guess this is nothing new..but has been the most clear demonstration for me of the subjective nature of microstock.