I’ve been playing with Photoshop the last few days, trying to get a decent black and white portrait, but none of the conversions I was trying came up with very good results.

Then I came across this tutorial on creating high-key black and white portraits over at DPhotoJournal. It’s a very simple but effective technique and I’m getting much better results with it.

The rest of the site looks pretty good too – a mix of reviews, tutorials, free downloads and photographs. If you’re interested in photography it’s worth having a look around.

Is it just me, or is the expectation of family outings so much nicer than the reality?

I am sure that when I’m in my 50s, I’m going to look back at all the photographs I have of my smiling children out on spring-time walks, or on trips to the park and I’m going to have a wonderful rosy-glow memory of outings with my offspring, delighting in every moment of their company and wonder why I didn’t do it more often.

Conveniently, I will have forgotten about the constant bickering, about the argument over the ownership of a random stick from the ground, the “my legs hurt, we’ve been walking for YEARS” whine and the realisation that they’re DESPERATE for the loo just as we’re at the furthest point away from the nearest public convenience.

I will also have failed to recall the frog-march across roads with their wrist in a death-grip hold as they’d just tried to run off into direct traffic. I will have consigned to oblivion the military operation that was needed just to step out of the front door only to return three times because they haven’t got their jumper, their shoes or a favourite toy.

I will be able to completely blank out the fact that the snapshot in question was the only 30 seconds on the entire trip where they were even vaguely happy and co-operative.

After all, this is why I take photographs. Family outings are just so much more pleasant in retrospect, especially with judicious use of Photoshop’s clone brush.

No tooth!

Oh, and …

… new glasses!

Okay, I may have a New Year’s Resolution.

On the first of January, according to Naan family tradition, we went to visit a zoo with the kids. It’s a good choice – they get to run around and see lots of interesting animals, we get to take lots of photos. It’s a win-win.

What’s that got to do with resolutions? Well, now I’m starting to work my way through all the photographs I took and process some of them, I realise that I haven’t a clue what most of the poor creatures are.

So, next time, I’m going to remember to take a photo of the enclosure label after each and every animal shot. It would have made my life so much easier.

The thing I really love about Flickr is its groups – this is where the community of Flickr can be found, where I’ve made new friends and been inspired.

The problem is, one of the aspects of Flickr culture seems to be to join as many groups as possible. In order to get images the biggest audience, it’s common to see photos posted into multiple groups and it easily becomes the photographic equivalent of a hit and run.

I’m ashamed to say that my participation in most of the groups I belong to is simply to add a photo now and then. I don’t participate in any discussions. I rarely comment on other’s photos unless they’re on my contacts list. I’m not the only one, there are many many groups who have thousands of members, but their discussion boards are like ghost towns. The group becomes anonymous and loses its community.

So, I’ve had a prune. I’ve culled masses and masses of groups from my list and have got down to nine. Nine groups which have got a great community and I want to participate in. I’ve subscribed to their RSS feeds for both discussions and photo pools. I’m going to be an active member of just those nine groups.

I can do that.

So, it’ll probably be that most of my photos disappear into obscurity because they don’t fit neatly into any of my groups any more. It’ll also be interesting coping with a vastly extended RSS collection which was already fairly hefty. I’ve probably sabotaged any chance of my pictures being “interesting” enough to hit Explore ever again.

But at least I’ll feel part of a community again.

Quite honestly, he looks as if there was never a time he didn’t wear glasses. My handsome little man.

The snap in the air seems to have progressed to full autumnal chill.

I stepped out this morning with jumper and coat, expecting to be surprised and swelter as it looked so sunny outside, but was soon zipping up my coat and forcing the kids to walk more briskly to generate some heat. Still, as long as its sunny, I don’t mind the autumn – it’s the thought of dreary days ahead which makes my heart sink a little.

Its not just my mood that suffers when the light is low. I feel like I’ve hardly picked up my camera the last few weeks and I want to get back into the habit of it, without the inspiration or enthusiasm to go with it.

Worse, I seem to be filling up the memory card with photographs, then having to discard all of them due to basic stupid errors such as camera shake, poor focus and dismal composition – all of which are exacerbated by the poor light conditions. Not so good when I’m supposed to be writing photography tips for the Fotonomy blog. Don’t do what I do guys, do what I say.

But today I went out (not far, just my back garden) with a tripod and a plan. I took a total of eight photographs and I was pleased with three of them. Maybe I’ve broken past my photographer’s block.

Now all I have to do is keep the momentum going. Oh, and get back on track with the tip writing.

For those readers who are more camera-minded and might want to take a look, I’ve just contributed a mammoth post over at the new Fotonomy Blog entitled 8 Tips For Taking Great Aquarium Photos.

The idea behind the blog is to give useful camera and photography advice, discuss photography-related hardware and share tips. It’s primarily the companion blog to the Fotonomy photo sharing site, but will hopefully be useful to everyone interested in photography.

There is worrying new legislation being proposed here in the UK to prevent people taking photographs of children in public places – even if they’re your own children.

I can’t even begin to express just how ludicrous and ill-considered this legislation is. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if further restrictions on amateur photography in public places followed suit – probably to save us all from “terrorism”.

Of course, I’m guessing that councils and the government will continue to be able to store images of children and us in public places via CCTV. Silly me, they’d make sure the new law didn’t apply to them, wouldn’t they?

The e-petition is here. I strongly believe that if you even so much as own a camera and are a UK citizen you should sign this and publicize it as much as you can.

Update: with further investigation, it appears that the petition itself may not be about what it first appears. This article in Amateur Photographer details the confusion that has been caused and states that, on the contrary, the UK government has no such plans to restrict photographers’ rights.

The petition creator, Simon Taylor, explains on his website more about what he intended with the petition and also has a link list of rights violations in the news which make for interesting reading.

Either way, I apologise if I inadvertently mislead anyone with the above blog entry. I’m leaving it as it stands (other than this addendum) as I hate post-event editing at the best of times, and if it shows me up as an idiot then that’s my problem not yours!

But also, the spirit of the post still stands true – our rights are gradually being eroded in the midst of media panic of terrorists or paedophiles and it’s worth being vigilant for those erosions.

It’s also worth reading today’s post on the Digital Photography School blog about Photographers Rights and Photographers Privacy Advice.

However, if you do decide to sign the petition, you should know what you’re really signing for.

Sorry.

Something arrived in the post yesterday that gave me lots of childish excitement – the Moo MiniCards I ordered.

For those who don’t know what minicards are, they’re a half-sized business card – you can use images directly from your Flickr account, set up the crop you want and then you have six lines of freeform text on the back – contact details or whatever you want, really. I had a terrible job working out which images I wanted and ended up with 25 different designs and as a result, not many repeats.

I bought them because Akra had received some of the free ones a while back and they really are rather gorgeous. I thought they’d be handy for internet meets, or to hand out if I got any queries photographing in public. Of course, the reality is they are so lovely (I keep taking them out the box, admiring my handiwork and saying “my precioussssssss”…), I’m rather loathe to give them away.

I don’t have to give them away, do I?