Beyond the obvious

I recently had the great priviledge of spending time with a few of the world's best selling authors, including Lee Child and Harlan Coben . Many of the things they said struck a cord, an affirmation of the ideas that I've held for a long time. You'll probably recognise these ideas too but just like me I'm sure you won't mind hearing them again. There are many things which apply across all creative endeavours. Integrity to your art and vision is everything. You write a book, or in our case take a photograph, because it expresses something essential in yourself. It is your vision, your voice. If you're not true to your vision, your inner voice, you will never achieve your full potential. Do not copy others. It's got to come from inside you. This is true even when we're working for clients, to a brief. The client has chosen you because of who you are, your vision, the injection of that special something which is uniquely yours. If you see a band wagon the...

Best selling crime writer, Harlan Coben, is a gentle, witty, charming, intelligent guy. Chatting to him you can't help wondering how he can come up with such brutal and murderous characters. He says, maybe it's therapy. Gets it out of the system, which is why crime writers are such gentle folk. If you've not read any of his books then you're really missing something. Check out his website ( www.harlancoben.com ) I'm working on a portrait project. Will keep you posted. Cheers, Paul

Paul Blezard and Lee Child field a question from the audience during an interview with the best selling author at the Crime Writing festival in Harrogate, 20 July 2007. Lee told many entertaining stories and spoke about his writing and the creation of his famous character, Jack Reacher. It was great meeting them and chatting to them after the show. If you get a chance to go along to one of Lee Child's talks I can highly recommend it. More pictures here . His books are fantastic. Check out ( www.leechild.com ). Cheers, Paul

Magda floats down for a photo shoot on a rainy summer day along the British coast. I've had numerous emails from people wanting to see more of my photography and asking about buying images. As you know I do respond to every email but to make things a bit easier here's where you can find my work. www.indigo2photography.co.uk www.flickr.com/photos/paulindigo I also have portfolios on numerous photography community websites. I plan to do a review in the near future on these websites and my experiences, which have not always been positive. Having said that I've made friends with wonderful photographers across the globe. Hi guys! I also sell Rights Managed and Royalty Free images for editorial and advertising. Please contact me for more information on the licenses available for the particular image you have chosen. I am available for photography and writing commissions, and work mostly in the UK and Western Europe. Happy to discuss any proposals. Hopefully this co...

Stephen Baker, the same member of the Fuji website has stolen yet another photo from Trekearth and used it in the current Fuji competition. I believe Fuji are dealing with the issue. Fuji have now removed the image from the competition website and replaced it with another winner. See my previous post . This story is being picked up all over the net. We have to do something to increase awareness about copyright infringement. Thanks to everyone that emailed Fuji about this and it's good to see they've responded promptly. Cheers, Paul www.indigo2photography.co.uk

Click on the image above to see the large version. This shot was stolen from here and used to win second place in a Fujifilm competition . We all know that images get stolen from the Internet but two recent examples really take the cake. A certain Stephen Baker from Essex appears to have stolen an image, taken by Pamela DG, from a popular photo-sharing site and used it to win second place in a Fujifilm online competition. The prize money he is accused of fraudulently obtaining is £200 pounds. It is unbelievable that people think they can steal photographer's images from the Internet and use them for their own purposes. Another much publicised case revolves around images plagiarised from a popular flickr photographer. The company that allegedly stole them produced canvas prints and sold them for a healthy profit without the photographer knowing anything about it. The whole thing erupted into a bit of a dispute with flickr but that has all settled down now. The heart of the is...

Full frame landscape composition. This rocky arch can be found in Perranporth in Cornwall. There's an aesthetic discipline in photography which has all but dropped off the radar these days. It's to make your composition in camera using the full available frame and keep that through to the final print without any cropping. Photographers advocating this discipline often proudly printed their shots in the darkroom with a thin black border, or even the film rebate visible in the print to show that their composition utilised the full frame and negative without any cropping. These days with the digital darkroom to hand most photographers crop their images. It's so easy to do. One of the reasons for using the full frame is to preserve quality. The more you enlarge a negative in the darkroom the more the quality suffers. The rule also applies to digital photography. Your camera may have 10mp but if you crop a small part out of it you could be left with a 1, 2 or maybe 3 mp image, w...