RT @fzzpop: Still time to register for our TTV #photography #workshop on Sept 10th with @peteashton

RT @SixEightKafe: Birmingham Loves Photographers - Meet up & Guest Lecture at 6:30pm 22nd June #birmingham #photography

@carolinebeavon This was helpful for me though might not relate to Illustrator.

The cameraphone has taken over the point and shoot as the most popular camera on Flickr because it's always there in your pocket. I can attest to this. Now my iPhone takes good-enough photos I never use my lovely Lumix with the Leica lens. It's either the Nikon DSLR or the iPhone. I even took my holiday snaps with it last year.

They might not be the cheapest but they do a nice range of sizes.

As usual an amazing collection of photojournalism. Shame the large versions are ruined with a watermark...

Intriguing photo stories website with a lovely design.

Nice collection of photos of people painted to merge into the background, including Liu Bolin who uses the technique to protest in China.

Loads of snowmen in one back garden. Why didn't I think of this? Because I'm not Mooncat. "Not a patch on gormley, but fun for me." Indeed.

A beautiful and informative (I learned stuff!) slideshow of photos of trees.

Photos of American (on the whole) kids dressed up as superheroes. Better than it sounds and it sounds great.

I have it on good authority this is the cheapest place to get black and white films developed.

Laura Kicey crowdsourced the funds for a photo tour of Iceland. In return funders got prints and she wrote up the journey in this fantastic piece of travel blogging.

Chap hunts down and photographs plane crashes in remote places. Lovely photos.

"The emulsion is spread on a support, such as paper, and allowed to dry. A negative or matrix is then laid over top the emulsion and exposed to a UV light source. Usually a contact printing device or a sheet of heavy glass to ensure even, constant contact is employed. The light source will harden the dichromate in proportion to the densities of your negative. After exposure, the paper is placed in a series of plain water baths and allowed to develop until the unhardened portions of the emulsion have dissipated."

The inspiration for my TTV grids. I saw his work in a gallery window in Bloomsbury circa 2002 and have always wanted to replicate it. Could never manage the scale he manages though.

Possibly the best thing I've read online this month, if not this year. Lovely photo essay using the automatic, neutral eye of Google's Street View cameras. The technical and artistic angle is interesting but it really hits home with the social stuff. The people who mostly appear on Street View are the poor since they mostly live on the street. Highly recommended.

Great interactive demo to teach the basics of photography. Move the controls to see exactly what the difference between f1.8 and f11 is.

Handy for when someone posts a link to the image file and you'd really like to fave/comment/blog with a proper linkback.

The Guardian is running an online photography club using their picture desk editors to help readers develop their skills. It integrates with a Flickr group. Worth investigating how they're running it and any issues that emerge.

Photos from BARG

Rather inspiring post comparing the limitations of cheap compact cameras with those used in the pre-digital age when film was slow and f8 was the standard aperture. I have to say shooting with a manual SLR where I had to set the exposure and focus for every shot probably taught me more about <i>seeing</i> than anything else, although that was more about slowing the fuck down. A compact doesn't force you to do this so you have to force yourself. <i>via <a href="http://www.kottke.org/09/02/a-poor-photographer-blames-his-tools">Kottke</a></i>

For managing and embedding Simpleviewer photo galleries in Wordpress blogs

comes from Karen Strunks who's gone out shooting at 4am a few times now. I copied her example the other week and she's decided that April 4th at 4am will be an international day of getting up bloody early / staying up really late and photographing that which is seldom recorded. More on this nearer the time but if you fancy having a test-run tag your photos on Flickr with "4amproject" and they'll appear on the site.

iPhone camera apps are like rabbits but this one takes the fact that, if we're honest, the iPhone camera is really shit and works with it, taking up to 8 shots in succession with gaps between 1/4 and 3 seconds. There's an <a href="http://labs.artandmobile.com/quadanimator/">animator</a> to make stop-motion gifs from your shots which I haven't played with yet. Loving the lo-fi aesthetic. See also the obligatory <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/toy-camera/">Flickr group</a>.

I once walked across London (Waterloo to Camden) on Christmas morning and it really is as eerie as this. <i>via <a href="http://www.kottke.org/09/01/abandoned-london">Kottke</a></i>

My attempts at buying dirt cheap medium format lenses on eBay that could be bodged into a tiltshift lens for my SLR came to nothing. I have no patience to do it in Photoshop. So this three step online tool will suffice marvelously should I feel the desire to turn my photos of cities into photos of toy cities. <a href="http://abrinsky.livejournal.com/88946.html">Abrinsky has more</a>.

Bidding on eBay for a medium format lens as I type...

Great series of articles on setting up and, more importantly, lighting your own photography studio. Flash photography is still a mystery to me. This helped explain a few concepts. <em><a href="http://www.d-log.info/?p=4467">via D'log</a></em>

Not a huge number but it was also his stag do so he can be forgiven. Some nice experiments in there too.

Some films shot on a Nikon D90. What's really exciting about this is being able to shoot films on a relatively affordable piece of kit with a f1.8 lens. Depth-of-field-tastic!

For £500 you can spend a weekend with Britain's top ironic photographer taking the piss out of ordinary people. No, seriously, this looks kinda interesting.

"Staying in Parr’s favourite seaside hotel, you’ll join him for visits to the Brighstone holiday centre, the Needles, Ventnor beach and other landmarks of the Isle of Wight tourism scene. Parr will discuss his photography as well as his collections of souvenirs and postcards, and train your eye to see the ugliness in beauty and the horror in leisure."

Damn good job I didn't go buy a D80 then! This looks nice. Video on a DSLR is particularly interesting. Reckon I'll save up and get one sometime next year.

"This was my senior thesis project at the hartford art school this past year...i took apart used cooking/cleaning appliances, and arranged their interior parts very systematically on a white sheet of bristol board. my intention was to explore the hidden "brains" of these appliances; allowing us to view these everyday objects from a new perspective." A lovely set of images that would work really well as prints. I love this sort of stuff.

A tutorial that manages to be simple yet advanced on a subject that is surprisingly complicated. Personally I tend to let Lightroom do the dirty work these days but, and it's a big but, it's important to understand what's happening here. <i>via <a href="http://www.mattmurtaghphotography.com/?p=30">Matt Murtagh</a></i>

Potentially useful iPhone app that helps you calculate exposure settings for your camera. Not the iPhone camera, naturally. A real camera. Looks pretty useful.

What it says.

Runs from Monday 11th to Sunday 17th August. Which, by golly, is next week.

A breakdown of new features in Adobe's photo processing app. Looks good and probably worth a $99 upgrade. (Assuming that transaltes to a fair price in £s)

Rather nice photo gallery plugin for Wordpress

3D photo montaging thing that was featured in a TED video a while back. You need Windows to run the demo. Looks super cool!

Taken in the summer 1979.

A very brief overview of his current show and link to some of his work.

26 April ­ 12 July 2008

D'log introduces us to the photography of Lara Jade, currently studying at BIAD and set for big things (not just giant birdcages!)

Thomas Moronic takes photos of his creative chums at a party.

with photos and materials from his Sites of Special Social Interest

covering the whole spectrum of his work. Compliments his blog well.

A nice photo by Bill Phillips pretty much succeeds.

Ben Neal reports on Billingham's talk at his alma mater Halesowen College where "he talked about his early paintings, and the photos of his family, urban exteriors and zoo photos and videos"

Caroline Griffin of Audiences Central explains all.

Photos from the first night of Richard Coldicott's show at Studio 4.

"Activities include: Organising local, national and eventually international photography excursions, Social evenings around the West Midlands, Meeting people with similar interests, Exchanging tips, ideas and information, Collaboration on artistic project

Seems obvious but I never realised there was a blog-type part of the Big Picture site. I'd imagine they'd be interested in contributions from other photographers in the region...