Fine Art Photography – Taking Pictures that Sell

Fine Art Photography is a term that’s hard to define. However, there are some parameters that can help us understand this medium. Usually, it’s a photograph or series of images that bring to life something that exists in the photographer’s mind. It’s highly subjective, but usually, it’s photography that’s created with the photographer’s artistic vision in mind. Fine Art Photography is often highly emotive, expressing ideas or messages. One way of defining the genre of photography is when the photographer alters the composition or image to make it sellable to someone who wouldn’t usually buy that genre of photography.   How to Create Fine Art Photography   The way you approach your photography will depend largely on the situation and subject you choose to shoot. However, one this is certain; you’ll need to have your equipment setup planned out ahead of time. For example, if you’re shooting landscapes, you’ll need a wide angle lens, tripod, and remote trigger. Try playing around with various angles and formats when you’re shooting. For example, adjust the shutter speed to get longer exposures. Once you’ve taken a selection of images, you’ll be able to adjust them using post-processing in programmes such as Lightroom and […]

Can an iPhone Lens Compete With a DSLR?

Smartphone photography is becoming ever more popular. As these handheld and convenient devices improve the quality of their cameras, the quality of the images they can take also improves. The rise of social media platforms has also seen a surge in people getting into photography. With this popularity come a number of accessories aimed specifically at smartphone photographers. In particular, lenses for these devices. The price and quality of such accessories vary greatly, but can an iPhone lens ever compete with a DSLR in terms of quality? Moment Lenses The Moment range of iPhone lenses has three different options you can choose from, a wide angle, superfish, and telephoto. However, in order to use the lenses with your iPhone, you’ll also have to purchase Moment’s phone case. We’ll take a look at each individually: Wide Angle Moment Lens This is a lens that’s ideal for vloggers. The usual iPhone lens crops things a little too tightly, which can be frustrating for vlogging. You don’t get quite enough detail in the shot. With the Moment Wide Angle, you get a much wider area to play with, offering a vast improvement over the standard camera. It’s also good for taking landscape photographs […]

What’s new in Darktable 2.6

What’s new in Darktable 2.6 Like the last few Christmases have done, this one too gave us a brand new version of my favourite image processing software, Darktable. This time we got a whole lot of new toys to play with. A whopping three new modules, significant updates to several others and lots of smaller tweaks all around makes this one a really great release. New module: duplicate manager We have always had the possibility to make virtual copies of images in Darktable when we wanted different versions. The new module duplicate manager takes this to the next level. Now we can give the different versions names and we can compare edits quickly with a single mouse click. New module: filmic This is one of the most talked about news. It’s a new approach to shaping the contrast and fitting the relatively high dynamic range of modern cameras into the lower dynamic range of a jpg file, and at the same time mimicing somewhat the image characteristics of film. The author of this module, Aurélien Pierre, has written a long and very good article about this module on his website, which is well worth reading: http://bit.ly/2RXFQue New module: retouch This […]

ClickASnap site updates 01/02/19

These updates are active and now live. Please ensure you clear your cache to see the effects: Suggested followers are now only allocated to users who have logged in within 4 weeks Pro account holders can now let their viewers browse ad free (note that this does stop the views being paid) Images for sale under the main image have been completely redesigned Various FED fixes  

How to Make Money from Photography

Many photographers dream of a time where their passion can become something that eventually makes them a living. For most, this may never be the case. However, a small percentage of photographers do make the transition from hobbyist to professional. It usually takes a lot of hard work, as well as a large slice of luck, in order to do so. Thankfully, there are some methods you can apply to make money from your photography. We explore some of the top tips, below.   1. Start Building your Portfolio Perhaps the best way to start on the road to monetizing your photography is to build your portfolio of work. Of course, this can be tricky if you live in a city that doesn’t have a lot of modelling agencies or professional models. However, don’t let this dissuade you. Find anyone or anything that can act as a subject. They don’t have to be a professional model; ask a friend or relative and take some portraits of them to show off your skill. 2. Know the Business Unfortunately, being able to take good pictures often isn’t enough to start selling your work. You need to have an idea of how business […]

Presets and styles in Darktable

A massive time saver in photo editing is the ability to save settings for reuse on other images. This may apply to both complete or partial edits and individual settings for the different tools. In Darktable, there are two ways of storing these settings, called presets and styles, respectively. Presets Presets are stored in each module, containing settings from that module only. Most modules in Darkroom and some in Lighttable can have their settings stored as presets. Just adjust the module to your liking, click the Presets icon in the module header and choose “Store new preset”. Give the preset a name and you’re done. Some modules, like the Tone Curve and Equalizer already have a collection of presets built in. In Lightroom view, only a few modules have the ability to store presets. In Darkroom, however, all modules on the right hand side can do so, but none of the modules on the left hand side. Presets are also available in som modules in the Map and Print views. Styles Styles are the settings of multiple modules put together to create a quick way of applying more complex edits, involving more than one module. This is also an easy […]

Black and White in Darktable

Black and white is a genre as old as photography itself. Back then it was the only way, if you wanted colours you had to get out your crayons and colour the print. These days we do it the opposite way. We take a colour image and make it black and white.   Of course black and white means essentially that there’s no colour. But you can’t make a great black and white image by simply turning the saturation to zero. The colours are an important part of a colour image, and if you remove them you will have to compensate with something. And what is left when you take the colours away is contrast. To make a striking black and white image, we often have to increase the contrast, not only for the whole image, but also locally. This will enable us to emphasize our composition and focus on the shapes and patterns in our image in new and exiting ways.   One very useful way of manipulating the contrast of a black and white image is to adjust the brightness of individual colours. In Darktable, we have essentially three tools for this: Channel Mixer: Decide how much each […]

ClickAsnap site updates 08/01/19

These updates are now live. Enjoy! A guest checkout has now been added Multiple Mobile FED fixes Multiple Desktop FED fixes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07w3Tr0Rtl4&feature=youtu.be

ClickASnap 2018 year end report

Introduction 2018, for me certainly, has been an immensely fast-moving year. We have again made huge strides in the platforms usability, safety and profitability, and time seems to fly past ever quicker. As for Videscape limited, we are entering our 4th year but ClickASnap itself will only just be entering its 3rd year in May 2019. Which for an online tech start up, particularly a revenue sharing one is a record, with only YouTube and Spotify lasting longer than us so far. I must admit, it’s frustrating how slowly we are growing. We do add on average 30 new members per day, and an average of 300 new photos per day, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to large platforms like Flickr, 500px and Instagram. The caveats of course to this are that Flickr is 14 years old and 500px is almost 10 years old so they have significant ground on us. However, I believe, as do many of our supporters and users that our platform offers far more value for money and has a significant USP lead on any other image hosting platform online today, we just need to persevere until we get to that tipping […]

Take Better Photos Using These 10 Affordable Accessories

Photography is often seen as an expensive and exclusive pastime. While it’s true that top-of-the-range equipment can be very costly, you don’t have to spend a lot to improve your skills. It’s important that you know the principles of photography in order to advance your craft. There are also some essential and affordable accessories that you can purchase to help you take better photos. We’ve listed ten such accessories, below: 1. Batteries Your digital camera will, of course, come with a battery as standard. The chances are it’s a rechargeable lithium-ion cell. These usually last for a decent amount of time, but if you’re taking a lot of shots, it can soon run down. You can purchase additional batteries for your camera for a relatively low price. Branded ones tend to be expensive, so stick to third-party sellers to keep costs down. With an extra battery or two, you can continue taking pictures and practising your art. 2. Memory Cards It’s no good having extra batteries to take photos with if you run out of memory card space. Make sure that you also purchase an extra memory card or two to give you plenty of storage space. Try to choose […]