Beyond the obvious

Joe McNally shares stories and layouts from 25 plus years of shooting for the world’s premier picture magazine. Anecdotes from the field, discussion of editing, layout and how pictures have to succeed emotionally, pictorially, and informationally to grace the pages of National Geographic. At the start there's a minor glitch where Joe's photos do not appear full screen but that gets soon sorted out, so just persevere. This is a fascinating account and the interviewer opens the floor for questions from the audience during the last 30 minutes. Joe is one of my favourite photographers and it is fabulous to hear how he thinks about creating the images that tell the stories in National Geographic. Enjoy. Till soon, Paul www.indigo2photography.co.uk (this is the hub of my photographic world with links to all my social media homes, exhibitions, info and portfolios) PS. My thanks to Manfrotto School of Excellence (my favourite tripods) for producing this excellent vide...

How do you criticise photographs and what does a good critical comment look like? Food critic by Paul Indigo. Note the discarded  plate, his expression and the  piece of baguette. Social media enables amateurs, enthusiasts and professional photographers to publish their work to a wide audience, who can then openly comment and criticize the images. I would hazard a guess that 99% of the comments are fairly superficial positive expressions of appreciation like, "good shot", "nice work", "great composition" etc. Social media is not really a good forum to give and receive criticism on your photographs. When I upload an image I don't expect to get an in-depth critique nor do I give them very often. This does not mean that I don't look at images critically, and as with many photographers I am most critical of my own work. Do you look at images critically? What approach do you use when analysing how good an image is? For me the most important ...

New reportage. View in HD with the volume turned up! In 2012 the Leeds West Indian Carnival celebrated its 45th year. The festival is one of the largest of its kind in the UK, second only to London's Notting Hill Carnival. For a number of years I photographed the carnival and in 2010 we photographed the people behind the scenes. They put in a tremendous amount of hard work to make those fabulous costumes.  This slide show follows the process through from the preparations to Carnival day itself. Carnival founder, Arthur France, is enormously pleased with the on-going success of the event and says the Leeds carnival continues to improve year on year. "What distinguishes the local event", says Arthur, "is the fact that it remains traditional in terms of the costumes and music which are central to the spirit and character of the carnival." My thanks to all involved in the Leeds Carnival and particularly those that organised access and the friendly people a...