Beyond the obvious

Wagon wheel in Normandy, France. Regular readers of my blog know that I'm generally against buying equipment unless it is absolutely essential. There's a lot to be said for keeping things simple and focusing your attention on creativity rather than lugging equipment around and fiddling with it. Give me any camera, with any lens and I'll come up with a shot that's interesting. It's a bold claim but I have every confidence in following the creative process. Each photographic opportunity can be approached in a million different ways. It's up to the photographer to find their own artistic interpretation with the equipment at their disposal. If my image is not all that it should be then I certainly will not blame the equipment. Now having said that; buying a new piece of kit can unlock a new creative experience. A good macro lens can open a whole new world to you as a photographer or a reflector panel can inspire you to explore doing different things with light. So y...

Two railway men in driver's cabin of their steam engine, Pickering, UK. Till soon, Paul www.indigo2photography.co.uk

Watching the Winter Olympics I was constantly amazed by how small the difference was between the top athletes. Less than three seconds separated the top three in the men's Olympic 30-km Cross Country skiing where Marcus Hellner of Sweden finished first, with a time of 1:15:11.4; Tobias Angerer from Germany placed second, at 2.1 seconds behind, and Swede Johan Olsson took the bronze, just 2.8 seconds after the winner. That’s over a 30km race lasting one and quarter hours! In most of the Olympic sports only 1/100’s of a second separated the winning contestants. Take a typical shutter speed of 1/60 second. It could mean the difference between winning or losing a race in the Olympics, or the difference between getting a great shot and an average one. If you think about it most photography is about picking that perfect moment, when light, subject and all elements fall perfectly into place. It takes a lot of work (and a bit of luck) to either make those moments happen or allow them to ...

In layman's terms photographic plagiarism occurs when one photographer copies the work of another photographer, by making a new image that is so similar to the image being copied that any viewer looking at the two images is struck by their overwhelming correlation. You'll soon see what I mean when you look through the examples in the articles below. Having seen blatant plagiarism of my wife Magda Indigo's work on Flickr I decided to write a blog on the topic. However I soon discovered that the subject of photographic plagiarism has been covered extensively, so I refer you to a selection of articles which I found interesting... Getty Images wins plagiarism appeal Visual plagiarism Plagiarism in photography Visual plagiarism strange case of Rosie Photographer gets plagiarized then censored When does similar become too similar Plagiarism in 2008 Madonna turns to Cowboy Kate for ‘inspiration’ There is nothing better than coming up with something new. To stand out from the cro...