I contributed to an interesting article in this month Photo Professional magazine. The article covers what photographers are doing to harness the internet, press and blogging to promote their businesses. My contribution concerns a blog post I have that showcases some of the worlds best food photographers, and attracts somewhere near 200 unique visitors every day. The article is well worth a read – a pdf is below.

Selling Yourself – September Photo Professional

Lady Bagots Drive in the Vale of Clwyd features some wildly eroded limestone riverbed. It’s quite hard to get close to the action from the path that runs alongside the river. One day I had the inspired idea to put on some fishing waders and tie my camera around my neck in a waterproof bag and walk straight up the river bed. This was surprisingly good fun and it certainly gave me the views of the gorge I was looking for.

This shot was taken on a recent street photography workshop session in Betws y Coed. Thanks for taking the time to pose for us, and sorry I didn’t get your email to sent you this image.

A good friend suggested we take off after a busy days work for an evening yomp up onto the Carneddau Mountains. I didn’t tell him I was taking a heavy bag of camera kit with me which might take hours to carry up the hill. I did keep up and we managed to get on top just in time for a wonderful sunset. Best of all, we couldn’t see a soul from up there. We must to take a tent up next time.

Every so often one of the major Digital SLR manufactures introduces a camera that makes a quantum leap in technology, making everything easier and also making all your collected kit old-hat. The recent release of the Canon’s full-frame sensor 5D Mark III didn’t do this, it was a much needed update to very outdated auto-focus system.

Canon’s new EOS 650D Digital SLR finally does see the kind of camera innovation, that narrows the gap between dSLR camera interfaces and technology and thinking of the leading edge consumer electronics companies, such as Apple and their touch screen iOS devices.

The 650D, at the top-end of Canon’s entry-level dSLR, finally intrudes that have been missing since the introduction of HD video on SLRs and the smartphone shift to touch screen.

Continuous focus video on Canon dSLR

The canon 5D Mark II opened up a new market for dSLR’s – professional level, broadcast quality video, direct from a stills-camera. The catch? The focus on the 5D series is still manual. This either means expensive and bulky focus tracking devices or simply keeping your subject still during video recording. Somewhat limiting.

The Canon 650D finally allows intelligent, continuous auto focus during video recording. Shame this wasn’t ready for the 5D Mark III, but hey, it’s here and no doubt sure to follow throughout the Canon dSLR range. The catch? This is designed to work with Canon’s new Stepping Motor lenses which are ultra quiet in auto-focus – important  when you are recording sound with your video.

Touch screen on a dSLR

For a long while, I have been wondering why the camera’s high resolution, high contrast, full colour LCD display is still displaying a series of text based menus with fiddly little joysticks, scroll-wheels and tiny buttons, to operate the camera settings, not unlike operating a Dell laptop’s in-keyboard nipple-mouse 10 years ago.

The 650D introduces (thanks iPhone interface designers), the ability to focus on a subject by touching a preview of the image on the LCD screen. Ok, that’s not new to iPhone users, but for using liveview on a tripod for example, it’s a wonderful feature. What’s really exciting here, is not the 650D implementation of touch screen, but what’s possible in the future. Imagine shooting a video with a wide aperture lens, focused on a a flower fluttering in the wind in the foreground. Now touch the preview screen to blend the focus over a pre-set second to a tree in background. Easy, beautiful, in camera, and no expensive focus-shift professional video accessories needed. The touch screen even allows for iPhone style two finger touch gestures (zoom in/out). At last.

This image was made on a street portrait session as part of a worhshop this week. We found a great location with amazing natural light. Mainly though, thanks so much to Mom and daughter for modeling for us – I just hope you get in touch for a copy of this image!

I came across this great short film from the local Heather and Hillfort team. A great showcase of the Area of Outstanding Beauty that is the Clwydian Range. It looks mighty impressive from the helicopter view in this film – Makes me think I should hire a helicopter and run an aerial photography workshop from my home on the edge of the hills of the Clwydians – now that would be fun ;) You can see the beginnings of my Clwydian Hills gallery here.