This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
Well so much for posting every week! Things are pretty manic with researching for my Final Major Project, arranging a new film for Prague in three weeks, and arranging things for China in April. A LOT going on.
For those of you looking at Flickr, I uploaded some new photos (link on the right). These are black and white landscapes I took whilst walking home from work.
Speaking of work, I was asked to take the staff’s photos for a leaving present. They came out really well, and they were to good to leave off Flickr. So those are now also up there to!
In other news, all my film has arrived so I can start my Final Major Project as soon as I want to. Likely date will be the 1st of February.
I’ve decided I want to blog more. Rather than just thinking about doing it, I’m starting right now. I will be posting on this blog once a week for all of 2011.
I know it won’t be easy, but it might be fun, inspiring, awesome and wonderful. Therefore I’m promising to make use of The DailyPost, and the community of other bloggers with similiar goals, to help me along the way, including asking for help when I need it and encouraging others when I can.
If you already read my blog, I hope you’ll encourage me with comments and likes, and good will along the way.
Signed,
Josh
Well now you can! With this simple video:
So we’re nearing the end of another year. A year where so much has been crammed in. Those of you who have seen the retrospective will notice that a lot has gone on this year; and it ends at September! Having tried my hand at a lot of things, I’m starting to find my niche. This is what I expected it to be way back in college. So from now I’ll be working in three main areas. These are:
I’ll explain why I’m working in these three areas briefly.
I’ve chosen portraits because as much as I don’t like people, I do like people. I hope that makes sense. I love how everyone is slightly different. How everyone’s story is different, and how this can be told by one image. Portraiture isn’t constrained to the studio either. You can take them anywhere, which is why I love taken photos of people.
So why do landscapes? Well I also love this place we call Earth. Those of us who truly see it see how beautiful, and ugly, it can be, and I think that that is worth recording. I’m not ashamed to say I’m drawn to pretty things, and if I see a particularly beautiful landscape, I want to photograph that.
And finally street photography. This is satisfying the other photographer in me. As much as I love messing from small to large depth of fields, there is part of me that likes to wander the streets, and document what I see. It’s one of the main reasons I bought my Holga. It’s a take anywhere, shoot anytime camera, and I love it. Sure some people hate on it, saying it’s not “real” photography. But who cares? A good image is a good image, and square negatives are a wonderful thing to develop.
So there we are. The three main fields I will be working on from now on. Whilst we’re on the subject of niches, I’ve come to another decision. After I have developed my next roll of colour film, that will be it. No more colour after that.
Where some colour photography can be stunning, black and white, for me, is far more beautiful. Some people might say, “What’s the point of the holga then?”, and they’re inclined to say that. I’ve had some great colour shots from it, but for the three themes I’ve mentioned above, I feel black and white will work better for me.
I’m not ruling colour out forever. I will most likely return to it later, but for the foreseeable future, colour is out.
So that’s the (fairly significant) update. I hope you watch the retrospective (it can be viewed below) and enjoy the stuff I’ve done, take inspiration from it etc.
And for those starting out, or wondering why they bother sometimes, just remember, “The most magical moments only last for a split second.” So always have a camera with you!
Here is 2010′s retrospective, an overview of the work I’ve done this year. Enjoy!
Those of you that already use the social networking site Twitter will most likely know all about hashtags. For those of you that don’t use Twitter, I’ll give you a short explanation. (People that use Twitter can skip the explanation).
As you’re probably aware, Twitter is a social networking site where you update your status. For regular people this could be something like, “I’m eating dinner”. However, Twitter has now attracted advertisers, personalities and fan groups. It has become a major tool in promoting yourself or your product/service.
Along side this, it has also become a point of news. Now this ‘news’ is not always accurate. I’ve lost count of the number of times a Chuckle Brother has died. However, Twitter has the power of looking through tweets (status updates) and finding the top ten most commonly used phrase or word. As I am writing (29-9-10 1022), in America ‘Britney Spears Episode’ is trending at number one. Here in the UK, ‘Sir Michael Caine’ is number one. This is because the Britney Spears episode of Glee aired last night in America, and Glee has a huge following on Twitter. In the UK, Sir Michael Caine has just joined Twitter, and this was publicised by Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles.
So what is a hashtag? Hashtags are as a filing system by users. If you are tweeting about a subject, you might want that tweet to appear in a search. I’ll give an example. During the UK election of 2010 there were three televised leader’s debates. This caught a lot of attention from the online community, and Twitter was filled with tweets during the debates. So while I’m watching it, I might want to tweet my views on David Cameron’s last point. I might say something like “Cameron has got it right with foreign policy”.
But how do I know what the rest of the country is thinking? A hashtag was created for the purpose of the leader’s debates. It looked like this, “#leadersdebate”. By adding this in every tweet about the leader’s debate, anyone searching for tweets on this subject will see your tweet.
So now we know how Twitter works, and that it can find the ten most popular phrases. So why is it important to hashtag? As I mentioned it helps to sort tweets into their subject. People interested in politics might have searched for tweets on the leader’s debates.
Since this a blog about photography, lets shift the conversation that way. As some people may have noticed, my Twitter username has changed recently from joshlewis1972 to JoshLewisPhotog. By including ‘Photog’ in my name, people know that I will be posting about photography. To aid my theme, I add the hashtag ‘#photography’ into tweets about photography. Obviously this will never become a trending topic, but people can search for ‘photography’ and will get a list of tweets with this hashtag. Its another way of exposing yourself. But there is a second reason.
The New Twitter
The new Twitter has been rolling out for the last week or so. It is handed out to accounts at random. Last night my account was updated, and this prompted me to write this. The new twitter (#newtwitter) has the ability to open a tweet in a second pane, and show tweets tagged with the same hashtag (assuming there is a hashtag). Let me show you what I mean.
This is the new home screen:
Home Screen
So we have tweets on the left, and trending topics and recommendations on the right. Now lets click on a tweet with the hashtag ‘#photography’:
With a tweet open we see the tweet at the top on the right. Below that we see other tweets tagged with ‘#photography’. This is why you should hashtag tweets. The new Twitter makes it easier to get exposure.
This pane on the right can also display photos from TwitPic and yfrog, and YouTube videos. It is now easier than ever to get your message out there!
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