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Wireless flashing: a sometimes religious experience

Using a flash with a wireless trigger drives me nuts. There just seems to be no predictability to it. There always seems to be the threat that, however well prepared I am, a demon might curse my whole operation just when I need it. And then an angel might descend from heaven and fix it. It's a sometimes religious experience. So I'm writing this hopefully as a record (if only for myself) of how I managed to get my Sony wireless radio commander (trigger) to once again speak to my Sony flash. Yesterday morning they were speaking to each other, but, when I turned them on at a gig last night, they were stubbornly refusing all contact. OK, so I'm back to the manuals, starting from scratch. First off, I hit Add on the trigger. And of course, it's beaming away finding nothing. If it doesn't find the flash straight off, it isn't going to. I go back to the Flash manual. So, Menu, wireless tab and ... scroll, scroll to 3/3 and I find a page I swear I've never seen before. I hit Pairing. Start Pairing? Yes, please. And hey presto: green lights! Yay! So we've established green-light contact. But the trigger is still not firing the flash. I realise that if I remove the trigger from the camera, the yellow Test button lights up and, yes, it fires the flash. Why goddamit!! So my camera is doing something to stop the trigger working. If I turn my camera off, the Test light on the trigger lights up again. I hunt around the menus, and I see that I have Flash Mode (Menu 1, 9/13) set on Fill-Flash for some reason. I switch it to Wireless (because, I figure, I'm shooting wireless) and, hey presto, it works. Why am I telling you this? Because one day you might need to know.

#wireless #flash #trigger #sony #off-camera flash #off-camera #a9 #sony a9 #sony alpha #sony alpha 9

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Published - but not that good

I was air-punchingly pleased to see a photo of mine in the pages of The Guardian on Tuesday morning. I literally punched the air, reminding me of comic genius, John Shuttleworth, who I got a really nice photo of at the same festival, Green Man, which was being reviewed by The Guardian. The photo they used with the review wasn't my favourite of the set of Belle and Sebastian that I filed with my agency on Sunday night. And it was far from my best photo from the festival generally - I could show you many others (see my Instagram feed) that I think are better photos. But Belle and Sebastian were the festival headliners and the reviewer liked them so they wanted a photo of that band. 

Also, a member of the audience on the front row might well have got a better picture than mine - but obviously unless it gets seen, it won't be used. Which is where you need an agency. Mine distributes to all the national newspapers so I have a fair chance of one of my photos being picked up. More so in the case of Green Man last weekend because there were hardly any other agency photographers there. Maybe they were put off by the weather forecast or were attracted by the more commercial attractions of V Festival elsewhere, I don't know, but having no competition was also a big factor in the photo being used. Many newspapers have deals with agencies which mean their picture editors find it cheaper or easier to use their pictures. 

I often open up newspapers after festivals and beat myself up that I didn’t get a better photo than the one taken by someone else of the (usually) headline act being featured alongside the review. I analyse the photo they used, try to find merits in its composition, admire how sharp it is. But now it’s my photo that’s used I realise it’s not necessarily there on its photographic merits. And I shouldn't think I'm any better a photographer for having my photo published by a national newspaper (punches air).

A better picture - but unpublished (Moonlandingz)

#green man #gig photography #concert photography #festival #photography

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who's driving this anyway? Shopping, Wheelchair, London at Ealing Broadway Shopping Centre by Richard Gray on EyeEm

#Shopping #Wheelchair #London

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The Australian street performer and the American tourist. Street, London, Streetperformer at Covent Garden by Richard Gray on EyeEm

#Street #London #Streetperformer

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Point and don't shoot with the 5s

I know the iPhone camera isn't technically a point-and-shoot. But then you have to turn on a point-and-shoot camera before you can point and shoot, so it's really a press-point-and-shoot. Perhaps you could call the iPhone a tap-slide-point-and-shoot. Except with the 5s, there's a stage missing in that description. Unless you tap on the screen before you shoot, your photo will most likely be out of focus. Check out the details from two photos below, taken seconds apart. They have the same lighting conditions (very bright so no danger of camera shake interference), from the same distance using the native iPhone camera, but the one on the left was taken without tapping and the right one was taken after a tap. You can see there's a major difference in resolution, which is clear to the naked eye in the phots at full size. The 4s didn't seem to be take out-of-focus shots if you didn't tap. I know about tapping to focus and expose on particular points of course, but the iPhone camera was supposed to auto-focus if you didn't tap, right? Let's hope Apple sorts this out for the 6. Or maybe I should use one of those camera replacement apps that I've been so dismissive of lately!

#iphone #iphoneography #5s #mobilephotography #mobile #photography #focus #autofocus

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VERSIÓN EN ESPAÑOL

Controversy has erupted in Sweden with the photographer Paul Hansen’s image, which has won the Swedish Picture of the Year Award 2011, publishes Terra de España.

In the photo we can see Fabienne, a young Haitian girl of only 14 who was killed by the police after...

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The house under the motorway. Pic for the Ricoh @BeautyBeyond_B blog:  http://bit.ly/1f7EJPj https://theta360.com/s/6B9

#theta360

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On the 18th green of Brent valley #theta360 Cold but great to blow away the Xmas cobwebs #theta360

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Is it a bit sad for a man to buy his own slippers? A couple of weeks after Xmas!  Pic for the Ricoh @BeautyBeyond_B https://theta360.com/s/5si

#theta360

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360 look inside @NPGLondon Pic for the Ricoh @BeautyBeyond_B blog @LDN https://theta360.com/s/5rL

#theta360

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A 360 take on the converging lines underground escalator shot for #theta360 @BeautyBeyond_B blog: http://bit.ly/1f7EJPj #theta360

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One man in a 360 world. First pic for a 2-week residency on the Ricoh #theta360 @BeautyBeyond_B blog: http://bit.ly/1f7EJPj. I took lots of pics of this wooden bloke looking out on a city of steel and glass a lot when I first started taking mobile pics. https://theta360.com/s/5b8

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#Kensington #architecture #pinhole (Taken with Instagram at Kensington and Chelsea Public Library)

#pinhole #kensington #architecture

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#school (Taken with Instagram at Lammas Park)

#school

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#london #londoneye #brannan (Taken with Instagram at The London Eye)

#londoneye #brannan #london

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#duck #london #londoneye (Taken with Instagram at The London Eye)

#londoneye #london #duck

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#london #bigben (Taken with instagram)

#bigben #london