Category: Journey

Is everything getting silly?

 Gavin   Journey, Musings

Over the last few days I’ve been having an interesting conversation with a stock library about model releases.

They’re auditing all the images they carry to see if they’ve been correctly annotated. In particular with regard to the simple criteria “if there is a person in the shot you need to state whether you have a model release or not.” It’s easy to do. It’s just a check box at the keywording stage.

My query related to a corner case where there wasn’t a person in the image but rather a body part. Continue reading Is everything getting silly? »

All the gear and no idea…

 Gavin   Journey, Musings

A few days ago I met a photographer who told me an interesting story.

He’d set up a video camera to record the visitors to his stand at a local exhibition. He had all the gear – fancy camera, nice tripod, brand new shotgun mic. He even had a beautiful assistant to to around and visit the other exhibitors and do a short interview with each on their thoughts about the show.

But, there was a slight technical hitch. Continue reading All the gear and no idea… »

Looking Forwards – Setting the Goalposts

 Gavin   Goals, Journey, Musings

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while. A very long while in fact. I want to write down my goals for the business and where I want to take it. It’s a difficult post to write because my ideas have been constantly changing and that’s a bad thing. It’s been leading to me chasing rainbows rather than concentrating on a longer term strategy. Continue reading Looking Forwards – Setting the Goalposts »

Announcing theLightMatters Photography Training and Workshops

 Gavin   Back to Basics, Courses, Journey, Strobist, Studio, Techniques, theLightMatters, Tips

I’m really excited to announce the launch of my new photography training, photography workshops photo-shoot experience days through theLightMatters Workshops.

It’s not just a photography workshop though. It’s the foundation of a local photography community, centred around Guildford, Surrey. My vision is to create a lively and exciting group with a varied repertoire of subject matter. We’ll be shooting in the studio and on location. We’ll be using many different kinds of light from pure, natural light to speedlites to studio flash and mixing them up a bit too. Oh yes, and we’ll be making some great images along the way.

My goal is to run a mixture of group shoots and workshops, Continue reading Announcing theLightMatters Photography Training and Workshops »

Skylanders – A fantastic, innovative idea

 Gavin   Journey, Musings

OK, so this post isn’t about phtography at all. It is about a really clever marketing idea though which just goes to prove that innovation isn’t dead. With a little latteral thinking, incredible things are possible.

My children came home from school the other day, raving about Skylanders. Not knowing what it was and given that my daughter’s birthday is just aroud the corner I thought I’d look it up to see what all the fuss was about. It’s a video game but takes the concept to a whole new level. As a marketing idea, it’s pure, undiluted brilliance. You buy the game and the kids can extend it with add on figures that unlock additional levels and features. I’m guessing that the figures must use some kind of rfid technology to read a code that’s unique to that figure and then download additional data from the interweb or the figure contains the data it needs. Which ever way they do it, it gives incredible potential and presumably longevity to the game. Creating something that is a “must have” on any child’s wish list is also the mark of genius.

Sheer brilliance…