Few Words from ‘The Beach’

Trust me, it’s paradise. This is where the hungry come to feed. For mine is a generation that circles the globe and searches for something we haven’t tried before.
So never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience.

And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it..
And me, I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know it’s not some place you can look for,.. ’cause it’s not where you go.. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something.
And if you find that moment… it lasts forever. -The Beach (2000)

When to Ditch the Day-Job and Follow Your Dreams

We have been planning for this moment for over a year and a half.

On June 17th of this year, I said goodbye to my colleagues and
well-paying job to follow our dreams to do wedding and portrait
photography full-time. We finally replaced our entire household
income with income from our photography business.

Most people who start photography businesses do so part-time and only dream of this day.

Eventually your business grows to the point where it consumes all your
free time and you’re faced with a hard but exciting question:
Do you go for it and leave the day-job behind, or do you scale
back and start reclaiming a bit of your life?

Don’t Quit your Day Job (How to Become a Pro Photographer)

When Darren launched the new dPS ebook – Going Pro recently, he said that the majority of the emails he gets are about how to start making money as a photographer. Ditto, Darren! The eBook is amazing and gives you so much of the information you may be craving. What I’d like to talk about today is the realities of going pro and the one thing you need to do to safely quit your day job. With the proliferation of affordable DSLRs, photography has quickly become a business-in-a-box for many. Although camera equipment is expensive, this can be a relatively low overhead business to run once you have acquired your gear and this makes it appealing for those who see it as a great way to finance a very expensive hobby

3 Stupidly Simple Reasons Why Most People’s Photography Does Not Improve

by Darren Rowse

Image by Darwin Bell

I’m presuming that this article will not apply to most of us… but after 3 conversations in the last week which revealed the same photography problems in 3 different people – I thought I’d better jot them down.

Warning: none of this is rocket science sometimes the basics need to be said!

5 Lessons for Photographers from Memoirs of a Geisha

by Darren Rowse

A Guest post by Andrew Gibson

I’ve just watched the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. The director went to great lengths of recreate the world of pre-war Japan – the movie is beautifully filmed and successfully evokes the atmosphere of a time and place that no longer exist.

It’s one thing to do this on the set of a high budget movie, but there are lessons that photographers can learn from the director’s approach. You can use the same techniques to create moody, evocative photos of your own.

Composition: Not Just About Positioning Your Subject, But About Positioning Yourself Too

by Darren Rowse

Composition is not just about positioning subjects in your shot – but sometimes is more about positioning yourself as a photographer in order to make a more pleasing arrangement of subjects in your frame.

I learned this principle for myself back in a high school photography class where my teacher pointed out that every portrait I took was taken from a standing position. This meant any time I took a shot of someone seated – I was looking down on them – not always a flattering and engaging look.

Top 10 cities for artistic inspiration (by Lonely Planet)

Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2011 brings you the cities where history’s best artistic talents had their imagination fired – and left a legacy of their inspiration behind.

1. Edinburgh
Scotland’s literary output is phenomenal and most of its notable writers have been influenced by the capital. Famous resident Robert Louis Stevenson enthused that Edinburgh was ‘what Paris ought to be’. Off the Royal Mile, the Writers Museum presents a personal side to the lives of Scotland’s authors: exhibits include Robert Burns’ writing desk. City writers had fingers in other bowls besides the inkwell however: Sir Walter Scott even helped rediscover Edinburgh Castle’s Crown Jewels. Native artist Harry Raeburn preferred the city to both London and Rome: his The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch is one of Scotland’s most iconic artworks. More recently, JK Rowling spent time in cafes such as the Elephant House drafting tales about a certain boy magician.