Project Type: Anthology

D is for Depth of Field, (DOF) the amount of sharpness in the image from the front to the back, and depends on the aperture used in camera and the distance from the camera to the subject. A full explanation can be found here in A Guide for Beginers.

D is for Digitalab, an award winning online photo printing company, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, but used all over the world. You can order and pay for your film to be developed online, send in the film and it’s a quick turnaround. They also make quality prints from digital files with lots of different media to choose from.

D is for David duChemin, a Canadian world & humanitarian photographer, author, adventurer, and entrepreneur. He is a great teacher, not so much about the technical aspects, but about creativity and how it’s applied to photography. He makes excellent photography courses, and free PDF’s for tips on photography, has an interesting podcast and there is a Youtube channel that has 80 or so videos that discuss creativity and photography. Check him out HERE.

D is for Bruce Davidson. Born in 1933 Davidson is an acclaimed American street photographer, known for his dedication to the documentation of social inequality and part of the famous Magnum collective. He started taking pictures at the age of 10 in Illinois, and is still going strong today. His biography is worth a read, he has an interesting life. In 1960 he travelled to the UK and produced a great body of work, travelling from London to Scotland and places in between well worth a look HERE along with some of his American travels.

C is for camera first and foremost and there are more to choose from than you think. Film, Instant, Digital, smartphone, compacts, DSLR, SLR, full frame, Bridge, 360 degrees, CatCams (see below) mirrorless… I have a few of them :). You can read about them in this article which explains the differences. One of the first cameras ever to become public was made by Susse Frères to the specifications of Louis Daguerre in 1839, and called a Daguerrotype. Very rare to find one outside a museum, but in 2007 one was sold at auction for £500,000, and another in 2010 for about £700,000.

C is for Cats. Cats of Instagram, cats on Facebook, Twitter, cats on Youtube, cute cats, Grumpy cats, and (my favourite), philosophical cats. In 2007 a German-American dude called Jürgen Perthold turned his cat Mr.Lee into the photographer by inventing the CatCam, a small lightweight camera on the cat’s collar that takes continuous photographs for 2 days in a row. The cameras are now commercially available from Mr.Perthold’s website, and here’s an article about him and Mr.Lee, with links to the cameras, and videos and pictures taken by Mr.Lee.

C is for Cameron, Julia Margaret (1815-1879). When most pioneers of early photography were men, along came Julia Margaret Cameron. At the age of 49 she was given a camera by her daughter, and she embarked upon producing a huge body of work. Not one for technicalities she had a strong vision for portraiture and composition, and became well known for soft focus portraits of famous Victorian men, illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature and for producing sensitive portraits of women and children. The collection of her work in this link to the Victoria & Albert Museum is well worth a look.

C is for Carter, Keith. (1948-still here) is an American photographer known for his dreamlike photos of people, animals and objects. His work is beautiful and whimsical, and he sounds such a lovely person. His website with galleries of his work is a joy to look through. He uses many mediums, wet-plate, collodian, silver gelatin and digital to great effect. And here is a short documentary with him that is worth a watch.

B is for Bokeh. It is a Japanese word, meaning senility or dizziness, but has been adopted by the photographic comunity to refer to the out of focus areas in a photograph when a shallow depth of field is used. Not just blurry bits, but also distinctly shaped out of focus highlights, usually circular, but that depends on the aperture blades within the lens itself. You can make filters to go over a lens to change the shape of the bokeh and some instructions how to do that are HERE but you can also buy sets on Amazon though I think I’d rather make my own.

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B is for Beaton,Cecil. Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beacon (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was an English fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, and an Oscar winning stage and costume designer for films and theatre. Famous for photographing icons of the 20th century he was less well known for his work for the Ministry of Information during the war, but they are well worth seeing and you can do so HERE .

B is for Black & White. Black & White is the oldest form of photography, starting back in the 15th century when Robert Boyle, an Irish scientist discovered that silver chloride turned dark when exposed to air in a dark room.  Click on this link for a short history of black & white photography.

B is for Bailey, David. (b.1938) Bailey revolutionised fashion and portrait photography in the 1960’s, photographing musicians, artists and capturing ‘swinging London’. He shot for Vogue, produced TV documentaries and did album covers, and continues to have a prolific career.

A is for abstraction, not a genre of photography I usually do, but I enjoy seeing others work and I try now and then. Some great examples are shown here. Penelope Umbrico is doing some great work and her Suns from Sunsets from Flickr is an interesting concept as is her Full Moons project. To read about famous abstract photographers and see examples of their work, this article is a good read.

A is for Ansel Adams. One of the most revered photographers in the world, his beautiful black and white landscapes taken at Yosemite are stunning and have inspired more photographers than you can shake a tripod at. I don’t have a book of his (yet) but there is a wonderful, comprehensive website where you can read his biography which is really interesting, and see a lot of his work.

A is for one of my absolute favourite photographers, Richard Avedon. He had an amazing career photographing across genres, encompassing portrait, reportage, and fashion. I love scrolling through The Work, on the Avedon website, it is so eclectic and fascinating.

A is for Analogue, and I still love shooting film. I have a blog called Fragglefilm dedicated to my analogue adventures. I buy film from a company based in Buckinhamshire in the south of England. They are a small company but stock lots of interesting films, their website is called Analogue Wonderland and it’s a great resource as they don’t just sell film and accessories, but have tips and guest posts, loads of interesting stuff to see on their site. They post all over the world and at a reasonable cost.

A is for aperture.org Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multi-platform publisher and center for the photo community. They publish books, magazines, have a blog, do exhibitions,competitions et al.

“I never know in advance what I will photograph, … I go out into the world and hope I will come across something that imperatively interests me. I am addicted to the found object. I have no doubt that I will continue to make photographs till my last breath.” – Ansel Adams

Anthology, a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs, films or excerpts by different authors.

I’m starting my own anthology, mostly about photography, and made in alphabetical order to more easily organise my thoughts and resources that I like to use. I will be linking to photographers of note, dipping into Pring’s Photographer’s Miscellany, discussing photography books and musing on any aspects of photography I fancy!