News, News, News - All photographic of course.

I have finally managed to catch up on all the news stories that came in while I was away (they always seem to come in a rush when I am gone?).

Anyway the brief synopsis is as follows:

Sigma wins an EISA award.
Olympus win EISA awards.
ILFORD announce creative project with Chrome-Camera.
Olympus announce new compact camera.
Olympus announce new Ultra Zoom Camera.
Pentax announce new X-5 camera.
Sigma announce new DP1 camera.

So a busy week!

I'm guessing with Photonica coming up soon I will have loads more news stories, so keep checking back.

Oh and a couple of new book reviews will be up as soon as I get around to posting them.

Nearly two full weeks posting again.

It has been pretty much two full weeks of posting since starting back up posting to the blog (well 13 days consecutively). Unfortunately this will be my last for a little over a week, as haveing some well deserved R n R.

Off to visit http://www.fatbirder.com for a week of rest and beachside fun. I'll get back to work, populating and publishing as soon as I'm back.

In the mean time, be sure to read our other posts and have a good look at the site, and don't forget if you see something there you like, a Like, tweet or +1 is always appreciated (and helps us to get our message out to those who have yet to find us.

Oh and I am always happy to hear any comments you have.

Ashley

New Jersey page updates

We have now populated New Jersey page:

http://www.fatphotographer.net/links_geo/america_united_states/new_jersey.html

An awful lot of camera clubs there! Haven't had time yet to go through them all for links (but I will do over time). Bit of a confusing area though for me as some places may well be in New Your city rather than New Jersey (some areas are more complicated than others to populate).

Further page update

Our New Hampshire page has now been populated with loads of links (not as many as other US states).

http://www.fatphotographer.net/links_geo/america_united_states/new_hampshire.html

We are now well over halfway through the states of the US.

Other ways to hear about fatphotographer

As I think I have proven, I'm not great at updating this blog (I know a recent flurry of activity, but will it last?) however I am quite good on other ways of passing on information. As with most people these days I/we are on a number of social media sites or networks so feel free to follow us on those as well:

Facebook - Page - regular updates of what is happening on fatphotographer.net.
Facebook - personal - I'm always willing to make new friends.
Facebook - My photography - Beolens photography
Twitter - Tweets about our site.
Google+ - posts about fatphotographer.net and my own ramblings.
Linkedin - For those looking for more networking.
Flickr - Fatphotographer group.
Flickr - Personal - You'll get to see my photographic work here.
Pintrest - Yes I pin, and it isn't just fatphotographer.net stuff.
Stumbleupon - Again not just fatphotographer.net stuff.

I think that covers most of the places we post and share information about http://www.fatphotographer.net join us there for much more.

Another review added to our collection.

I mentioned previously that we had a few books currently under review, well we have written our next review.

Landscape Photography: From Snapshots to Great Shots by Rob Sheppard - Review 

Anyone who has seen my Flickr stream will notice it lacks landscape photos, this isn’t because I don’t like the genre, it is just that I am poor at them, for some reason it is a subject I struggle to capture well. So when I saw Landscape Photography; From Snapshot to Great Shot by Rob Sheppard, I thought I would give it a read and see if it would help.

Well written, with great assignments and a cool Flickr group to boot, combined with lots of examples of great landscape photography and photographs with mistakes (a great learning tool) I think this book is a great read.

Visit the review page and read the full review. Oh and feel free to let me know your thoughts.

Page updates

As well as a number of US states (too many to list at the moment due to my lack of posting. I WILL GET BETTER AT UPDATING THIS BLOG!) we have populated the New Zealand page:

New Zealand Photography

We still need an introduction, and representative photo. Please get in touch if you are interested.

Short, but sweet, post today.

Another page populated

Today we have populated another page with hundreds of links.

Minnesota Photography by the Fatphotographer.

Plenty of links to Camera clubs, courses, wedding, event, portrait, fashion and a whole host of other photographers. Plenty of galleries and studios for hire. But we always want more, so if we have missed any please let us know.

As you can see (well if you take a look) we still require an introduction to photography in Minnesota, written by a local photographer. If you are interested please contact us via the feedback link at the top of the page.

We have just launched a new page dedicated to camera filters that describes what they are etc. This is part of our technical terminology section, but is much more as we have launched pages from this one all about different filter types (all have their own page).

The full list of filter types covered is:

UV Filter
Skylight Filters
Polarising Filters
Neutral Density (ND) Filters
Coloured Filters
Special Effects Filters
Warming Filters
Cooling Filters
Infrared Filters

We hope they will be of use to you all, and maybe for new photographers they will help make access into this wonderful hobby that little bit easier.

Please fee free to share this around, we want it to help as many people as possible. 

How to post process...

Our how to post process needs help! In order to become a world class resource in post processing techniques we need more articles. I am no expert in post processing (it is something I am still learning) but we have a few articles already published:

How to post process

But we need more (and if I'm honest, better) articles. If there are any experts out there who would like to contribute articles (especially on programmes other than photoshop) we would love to hear from you. All articles contributed are accredited to the author with links back to your site.

Help others to greatness.

Some stunning photographs

We have been blessed to have a number of photographs submitted to fatphotographer for use by amazing wildlife photographer Glenn Bartley (his photographs are seriously incredible). Glenns website http://www.glennbartley.com is well worth a look (please do visit it).

The submitted photos can be found on the following pages:

North America
USA General
Canada General
Alaska
South America
Ecuador
Peru
Central America
Costa Rica
Trinidad and Tobago

As you can see his photographs are wonderful.

We are always looking for more submissions of photographs, please get in touch if you can help.

Other How to shoot pages

A few other how to shoot articles we have uploaded (all in the nature category):

Nature - Photographing Dragonflies And Damselflies

Nature - Nature Photography In Extremadura - byGertjan de Zoete

Nature - Photographing Tigers In India - By Michael Daniel Ho
Nature - Photographing Whales. - By Michael Danile Ho

We are always looking for more, please contact me if you think you could add an article to our expanding range. All articles are accredited to the author with links back.

Photographing Dragonflies can be syndicated should anyone wish, as long as links back to http://www.fatphotographer.net are included.

Technical Terminology update

We have spent the last few days working on our Technical Terminology area adding a few new pages giving detailed descriptions of a number of terms (this will grow over the coming weeks/months/years). So far we have the following:

Aperture
Bokeh
Bounced Flash
Bulb
Candid
Composition
Depth of Field
F/Stop or F/Numbers
Focal Length
HDR
ISO
Noise
RAW
Vignetting


As you can see these are some of the most common terms found in photography (we have many more planned, just need to spend some time writing and coding them). Hopefully they will be of use to some people.

As always we are always open to more submissions and feedback so feel free to get in contact.

Great news

Recently Pearson publishing came on board with Fatphotographer and are now supplying us with books to review (if only more publishers would join in). What this means is that you can expect our reviews section to grow more over the following months.

Currently under review:

Exposed: The Life and Images of a Pro Photographer by Michael Clark.
Landscape Photography: From snapshots to great shots by Rob Sheppard.
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4 Book by Martin Evening.

With more to come soon.

click here to read our Exposed by Michael clark review

I'll be posting each time new reviews are posted.

How to shoot... Basics

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, we have a new series in our how to shoot section, about the basics of photography. So far we have seven (7) tutorials:

Basics - Adjusting Viewfinder Dioptres
Basics - Back Button Focusing
Basics - Composition
Basics - Understanding Aperture
Basics - Understanding Exposure
Basics - Understanding Shutter Speeds
Basics - Understanding Your Light Meter

Hopefully they are pages that people will find useful and come back to as they learn or want to learn more.

I hope you enjoy them, or find them useful, and as awlays I'm happy to recieve feedback on these articles and also happy to allow them to be syndicated (with links back appreciated).

I would also like to invite anyone out there, who is interested, to submit similar articles, we want a great resource for new photographers.

It's been a while

I have always wanted to be good at blogging, but time stops me keeping up with it, there just aren't enough hours in the day. With that in mind, sorry it has been so long since my last post, much has been done since, many pages have been updated and new pages created, over the next couple of days I hope to explain some of what has happened.

I'll start with telling you about our latest reviews.

Firstly we reviewed the stylish looking Pentax Q (micro 4/3 camera): http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=26 a cracking camera that in the right hands will take excellent photos. It looks great (very much like an old school SLR, and is really small so great as a pocket camera, even with interchangable lenses.

Next up was the Lastolite direct to flash strobo kit: http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=27 This allows you to attach coloured filters or gobos to your flash units. It works very well. but is a tad expensive.

I had a Mac user review the bundled Macphun software (I am a PC user): http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=28 the three pieces of software were; Color Splash Studio, FX Studio Pro and Snapheal. You'll have to read the review for better idea of what they do and how well they work.

The next review was a bit of an old one I re-hashed and is for the Canon 50mm f/1.8 Mark II lens (or Niffty Fifty): http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=29 Now I love this lens but others are not so keen, so take a look at my review and see what I said.

I thought it might be time for a bit of consumer reasearch next, so took at look at a number of the consumer online printers (sorry UK based only at the moment): http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=30 take a look and see who came out on top. Also cost and how many free pics you could get.

Finally the latest review was for Exposed: The Life and Images of a Pro Photographer by Michael Clark: http://www.fatphotographer.net/reviews/index.php?article=31 I liked this book, it was a very different take on a photography book, and gives a great insight into a photographers life, how he takes certain images and his post production techniques.

Anyway that brings me up to date with the latest reviews (quite a bit of news has come out so be sure to look at our news section as well).

My next update will be about a few how to shoot articles we have launched, a new Basics of photography range.