I’ll be exhibiting much of my work from the last two years travelling to Ireland. There will be sound, stories, text, large graphics and a set of twenty beautiful salt prints. To register you interest please indicate on FaceBook

See the exhibition write up by Phil Coombes Head of Photography at the BBC, BBC New in Pictures and follow the BBC’s Instagram account for a traveller Instagram story over the week.

I’ve been visiting the travellers around Limerick. A group of people isolated from society, not only physically but also culturally. There is a great sense of feeling forgotten. The elders remember freedom as children of travelling workers. Their grandchildren live behind tall concrete walls, screened from the world, on ill-designed sites. Some have created their own sites, their own worlds and communities.

Their culture revolves around horses, both on the council estates and on the traveller sites. The lack of provision for their horses on council provided sites is an ongoing issue, as is the burgeoning population on some sites.

Horses are central to many peoples lives in Ireland. They live in close proximity to their owners. Many settled (housed) people keep their horses tethered in the street in the day time and are taken through the house to the yard in the evening.

On the sites they are usually surprised that anyone takes an interest. “Nobody ever comes round here” they often say. Then they start telling stories of their lives, their aspirations and their memories.

Many travellers deal in horses, and the biggest traveller horse fair in Ireland is Ballinasloe, a whole room will be devoted to horse fairs for the exhibition.

One of the Salt Prints for the Brighton Photo Fringe

This year I returned to record the voices and sounds of the travellers. When they talk about themselves they describe their lives in ways that will challenge some common perceptions.

20 of the images in the exhibition are salt prints, expertly created from the original files by traditional wet-process printers Paul Daskarolis and Stuart Kuhn.

Brighton photo fringe exhibition traveller salt prints

Each salt print is a one off, a rarity since the digitisation. A Salt print has a distinct quality. They are unique, rough, tactile and real. It’s a traditional technique that’s survived despite technology. The antidote to mass production and speed.

Colour images and text are woven together to tell stories. These will be in abundance. Many pictures will be displayed together to describe families, relationships and culture. You will discover them from the sounds of their voices in their own words, and read about tradition and identity.

An immersive installation of sound, large graphics and salt prints.

Venue: MADE Brighton North Street Brighton

Dates: 1st October until 4th November – Preview: 7th October 2016

The post Irish Travellers Brighton Photo Fringe Exhibition 2016 appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

Head First Acrobats, Brighton Fringe City

After a briefing on what we are going to be looking for we’ll get you out taking images, thinking about and recognising opportunities as they arise. After the shoot we’ll sit down and go through some of your best. As this is a one to one, we can focus on what you wish to get out of the course.

If you are interested fill in the contact form and I’ll answer any questions or we can sort out a date.

The post One to One Photography Training appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

After my first event, I uploaded all of my images to Flickr and noticed a marked surge in activity on my account. People were searching for the images and I discovered that if my images were different or unusual they would fly to the top of flickr search for images of the event. There are so many photographers at these events, you need to come up with something that stands out if you want your work to be noticed.

This process continued for years, and soon I acquired a distinct following of people, it was my first successful involvement in the world of social media. The idea that publishing work that people have an active interest in was good for marketing.

Since then I have added Facebook and Google Plus to my armoury, and still coverage of festivals and events do much to attract followers and engagement with people.

Brighton Naked Bike Ride 2014

I do it because I love it of course, not just as a marketing tool, it’s probably shows that I love it in my work, which helps. I’ve also been doing it for so long now that I’m a lot better at it now than when I started, so I’ll share a few tips and a few images.

If you want to join me and learn in person I am holding two festival photography workshops during the Brighton Fringe Festival. The first one is fully booked but there are a few places left on 16th May, only six max per course.

You may think that festival photography is easy. After all it’s all happening in front of your eyes waiting to be captured. It’s hard, however to identify and isolate an image that will work when there is so much going on around you. Everything will be happening fast, so you’ll need to move around a lot, think and act fast to get the best shots. Also everyone has a camera, the trick is to come up with images that are unique. That are great because they are composed well, framed well, taken at the right moment.

Your first challenge will be the light. This will be constantly changing as you shoot from different angles, shooting into the sun, and then shooting away from the sun. Flash is my solution. I use flash constantly during events, unless there are reflections I am trying to capture as part of the image.

I use the ETTL setting on my speedlight, this ensures a perfect exposure of my subject even if I take a number of shots in quick succession facing in different directions. It fills in the shadows when someone has strong sunlight on their face, and fills the whole face while exposing the sky or environment well when shooting into the sun. (Note this is best for outdoor daylight photography). I use the camera in P mode, using the top dial on the camera to change the aperture or speed.  P Mode is like auto but you can still change anything you like using the buttons and dials. This mode will ensure that any flash pictures are taken at shutter speeds fast enough to avoid blurs with ordinary subjects. EOS cameras in P-mode will set shutter speeds with flash between the camera’s fastest x-sync speed, down to 1/60th of a second. So balanced fill-flash is possible even in sunlight.

It’s best to use matrix metering in this case. Spot metering will cause haphazard effects if your camera selects a particularly light or dark area of an image to calculate exposure.

The things I concentrate on are:

The background

Often I’ll isolate my subject by shooting upwards, if you are not surrounded by close tall buildings or trees, it can provide a great simple sky to highlight your subject.

Sometimes I’ll find the right background and move my subject to the background I like. Other times I’ll see a great background and someone approaching and I’ll frame the image and wait for my subject to be in the right position to take the image.

Shooting up towards the sky allows you to get a clean background. Beware though, it can be a very unflattering angle

The frame

With so much paraphernalia around, it’s often possible to frame your subject with an interesting foreground.

Smokey Sausages – Brighton Fringe City

The spectators

It’s easy to get so caught up with the action that you forget to look around at the public. The best images tell a story. If you can see emotion in the audience it can often make a more interesting image that the performers themselves. Relationships can be created in your images by capturing performers and the public together in unusual situations.

Watch the audience

The performers

It’s often impossible to get to the front of a crowd to get a clear view. Sometimes I’ll sit and wait at the front before an act begins (sitting will allow the kids at the front to see!). During the festival though, there are performers wandering around, getting ready or advertising their festival shows. This is my favourite time to capture them. It gives you the opportunity to position them if you wish, sometimes, if they are off guard and just being themselves it can lead to more interesting shots too. It’s often easier and more interesting to photograph around the performances rather than the performance itself. You will also give yourself a better chance of coming up with something original.

It’s often better to capture performers when they are not performing

Watch your focus

I usually use a wide angle lens. This means that most of my image will usually be in focus including my subject. If I have time I will prefocus by pressing the shutter button down halfway while you compose the shot focusing on the subject, then recompose and shoot without taking my finger off the half compressed button. Sometimes it’s impossible because I shoot blind. Sometimes, as I’m shooting in P mode because of the speed with which I need to react, I’ll use the dial on top of my camera to set a narrower aperture (bigger f number), the flash will fill in any extra light I need.

Watch your focus

That’s it for now. If you want to join me on one of my festival event photography workshops you can book through Silicon Beach Training or call them on 01273 622272.

There is also more information about the event on their blog.

The post Festival and Event Photography Workshop appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

I recently won an award at the British life Awards, I had 4 images in the exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. There are 12 of my images in the book.

This was the category winner – “Brits on Holiday”

Brits on holiday british life award winner

It was taken on a camera club day out, I was trying to get another shot but couldn’t get Mehrak to look natural, so I told her she was a ‘ham actor’. Sheema and Mehrak  laughed and I moved the camera up to her face as she leaned in and then took the image blind. It’s good to get into the habit of just shooting blind when the better image is somewhere you can only reach with your hand. With practice you can start to imagine what will be in the frame and it allows you to move the position of the camera very quickly. Had I been looking through the lens I would have missed this shot.

The were three other images in the exhibition and also in the book

This is an image of Sheema, Mehrak’s friend, also in the exhibition, highly commended in the portraiture category.

Sheema

I noticed one day the great silhouettes that were created by the strip lights in front of the cupboard doors in the garage. I was also thinking of ways to create interesting animations for the Saatchi/Google animated gif competition. I asked Mehrak and Sheema again to come to the rescue dressed up as “working girls”. I had to explain to Mehrak that – No I didn’t mean her pinstripe suit.

I shot it in jpg in burst mode, the idea being to try and capture two almost identical poses in a sequence so that I could create a small stop frame animation or gif. I going to write about this in another post.

The result was loads of jpgs to choose from, too many in fact, but some of them make nice still images so I selected one for the portraiture award.

This image of the Brighton naked bike ride also made it into the exhibition. I did ask this gentleman’s permission and he stood and posed for me for this shot.

Can you see me now? – Brighton Naked Bike Ride

I’ve been taking pictures at Brighton events for years now and have been honing my event photography skills for very long time. I am planning to offer two event photography workshops in May – working on the outlines and presentation now. If you are interested in booking let them know at Silicon Beach Training 01273 822272, and they will send you the dates as soon as I provide all the paperwork.

I will only be offering 6 places on each of the event photography course so if you were interested the sooner you register your interest the more likely you will be to get a place. Just phone or email Silicon Beach Training.

Another Brighton event image that made it to the exhibition in the portraiture category. This image was taken after the parade on my way back home. He was having a break in the pub and I asked his permission for the shot, persuading him to keep smoking for the image. The effect is enhanced by the wide angle lens used, but you do need to be very close to get this effect when shooting wide.

british life awards Brighton Pride portrait

Another event image that made it into the book is this one taken at the Goodwood Revival. Shooting wide again, I asked this couples permission as I needed to get close with the wide angle lens. I shot the first one blind but didn’t quite hit the spot, so I lay down on the grass and tidied up the area of modern items, and shot using fill flash against the sky. In post process I have darkened the blues and lightened the oranges (skin tones).

Goodwood Revival 2014

Another event image take at Brighton Fringe is in the book. Wide angle again using the sausages and smoke to create that frame, fill flash.

british life awards – Brighton Fringe

Five of my Naked Bike ride images made it into the book in the ‘Documentary series and photojournalist category’, here are four of them:

Brighton Naked Bike Ride

I took a few shots between this mans legs but nothing great, so I showed him the images, asked him to stay a little longer while I waited for the moment, and then it happened

Brighton Naked Bike Ride 2014

Brighton Naked Bike Ride 2014

This one of my friend Chantal at Birling Gap made it into the book

Birling Gap Teapot

That’s about it, don’t forget to contact Silicon Beach Training if you want to reserve a place on the event workshops in May. I haven’t confirmed the dates or finished the outline yet although I plan only two groups of 6 people. Silicon Beach Training 01273 622272

The post British Life Awards and the stories behind the images appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

I take street images because I love it, I could make a lot more by doing weddings, product or studio work. It’s the love of it that keeps me going, if it were the income I’d have given up years ago.

Most street photographers have jobs that sustain them; street photography is what they do for love. If you were to give up your job for the art, consider this. To generate an income from your art will require you to do more promotion than photography. This comes as a shock to many, the amount of hours you need to put into the marketing side is far greater than the time required to get out shooting, if that’s not for you then you are unlikely to make it. Even if you do make it it’s unlikely to make you rich and hard just to make a living.

You need to be visible. That involves creating and publishing a constant flow of fresh material. Accumulating a following takes time, sometimes years, your followers though, are the ones that may possibly be your customers.

Customers for what though? You need products and services. Your products will be prints and books, your services commercial shoots and possibly teaching and workshops (if you are interested in my courses click here). Teaching though is another art to master, not all great street photographers make great teachers.

If you develop a particular style, you can attract commercial work from those who love your style. These commissions may not come often but for me they are a joy. I get a thrill out of taking images of people in my own style and getting paid for it. I get asked to do portrait shots for business people and personal portraits in my own style.

Client portrait shoot

I was commissioned to cover people at Chelsea Flower Show last year, again in my own style. It’s very competitive though, there are so many photographers out there now, and many are prepared to sell themselves cheap to get the job. You have to work out what you think you are worth per hour and stick to it. Work out realistically how many hours it will take you to prepare, travel, shoot and post process the images and stick to your rate. Do not undersell yourself; even if all those around you seem to be willing to do it, you will only get disheartened.

Commission by RHS Chelsea Flower Show

As mentioned before, selling photography products and services will depend on how you promote yourself. With so many photographers out there competing for business, you need to be the one that stands out.

First of all you need a great website, one that shows your images off to their best potential. It should rank well in Google so you will need to learn the basics of good SEO, although that has changed radically in recent times. The site needs to be fast. Google loves a fast site. The fastest sites are custom built but most photographers do not have the budget for that. WordPress is often the answer, but WordPress is notoriously slow. If you are using WordPress, use a theme by a reputable theme designer/developer, one that gives great support if you have any problems. Keep the plugins to a minimum; these will slow your site down. There are WordPress dedicated servers you can use. I am going to re-host my site soon to take advantage of the speed gains. They will store your plugins and some of the functionality elsewhere on their server, greatly improving site speed.

Take care with your titles and urls. Have a good think about what you are offering and what people would type into Google to find a service like yours. Make sure that these keywords are prominent on your site, in headings and titles as well as body text, but it must not seem un-natural, write like a human.

You need other sites to link to you. Link building used to be a dark art, now it is white as the driven snow. Google is looking for natural links, people who are linking to you because you are relevant, interesting, creative etc. It’s not easy, the quality has to be really good. Think about what your potential customers would like to see or read, what they would find inspiring or useful to share with others.

Google knows if you are using a CMS system like WordPress. If you are, they expect frequent updates and will reward you if you do this, but be careful. Remember what I said about quality; if it isn’t worth publishing don’t publish. Gone are the days when publishing for the sake of an update did you any favours, it’s about quality not quantity.

Your site should also be designed to look good on mobile. That means it should be responsive (change appearance the smaller the screen). There are some great responsive themes out there to choose from, if you need something tailor made, expect it to be expensive. Search results on mobiles are different from the results on a desktop; good quality responsive sites will usually outrank un-responsive ones.

Note: don’t forget to add alt tags to your images. Also make sure all of your Social Media profiles are easily accessible, and that you have visible share links to all the biggest networks on your posts.

That’s your website sorted! Now you need a strong social media presence. Again it’s about quality not quantity. Basic rules are, don’t take on more than you can chew. Decide which platforms will be most useful to you; maybe choose ones you already have a following on. If you take on too much it can take up all of your time, you need to be able to respond to people. Only post you best stuff or share things that you think your audience will be interested in. Never post for the sake of it, it’s OK to take time off now and again. If you want to join lots of photography communities try Google+, if you want to build relationships try Facebook and LinkedIn. Flickr is a lot less popular than it used to be but it is all about photography, so if you are posting a constant stream of good images it’s worth updating. Instagram, however, is on the up and up so it’s worth having a profile there.

If you need to build links the only valuable way is to offer really good content to the best photography sites. They will be inundated by people trying to get published with poor quality content, so you will need to be personal with your approach and let them know you have something worth publishing. Be different with your approach, I’ll leave that up to your imagination. If you can show examples of great content you have written it will help, and if you can demonstrate that you have a big following that might help too. Publishing the best content on your own site works too, by using social media to put your content out there, you are more likely to attract organic links to your site.

You may be thinking that it’s the photography itself that will determine how well a photographer will do financially. To a point that’s true, you have to be a good photographer to make it, but consider Andreas Gursky’s image “Rhine II” which sold for $4.3 million back in 2011.

Andreas Gursky’s image “Rhine II” which sold for $4.3 million back in 2011

It was a record back then but has now been surpassed by Peter Lik’s image Phantom sold to a private collector for a $6.5 million last year.

Peter Lik’s image Phantom sold to a private collector for a $6.5 million last year

I doubt that if I took identical images I would be able to sell them at all! It’s a fact, to make any money out of photography you have to be well known. I’m not saying you need to be as famous, but you need to be well known for your art, and that takes time and perseverance.

As I have been in the digital marketing business for so long, I have always advocated using digital marketing for photographers. Often I hear the same mantra, I don’t do all that stuff, I hate Facebook and Twitter, I won’t get involved. A few might get lucky but most will fall behind. It’s one of the few things in our grasp that we can learn to control, that we do have access to. Anyone rejecting it completely is, in my opinion, putting themselves at a huge disadvantage.

It can be overwhelming; it’s difficult to know where to start, (see my last post Being Human in a Digital World). I recommend taking one step at a time. Set yourself goals and deadlines. Be mindful of the trap of continuous notification checking and addictive update making. Use social media a networking tool to find and communicate with potential clients, publishers, galleries etc.

Getting out there is not just about being online though; nothing beats seeing your art on a wall. Consider organising an exhibition, this is something you can do with other people. Look around for exhibitions; see what other photographers are doing, and think about how you might approach your own or shared exhibition.

Some awards and competitions are well worth entering. Winning the RHS photographer of the year 2014 competition was the best bit of marketing I think I ever did. I was linked to and mentioned (Google will note mentions as well as links) all over the world. The front page of MSN and Yahoo, magazines and newspapers, even a TV appearance the list is so long I won’t even bore you with it. Beware of some competitions with an entry fees though, check out their credibility, I see a lot of awards run by dubious organisations these days.

foxgloves and bee RHS Photographer of the year 2014

Magazines are often crying out for great content, most will have an email address to contact for editorial. Don’t send them jpgs though, better to send a link to your work, images clog up their accounts, a link to a dropbox folder is usually good. Make it tidy, interesting and to the point, the easier it is to publish it the better chance you have.

In short, you cannot wait around to be discovered, you have to work out what time you have, set some goals, make a plan, and use every way you can to increase your exposure, on-line, on walls, in magazines, and in books.

The post Can you make money out of street photography? appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

With Google being the centre of the digital universe, that’s where most businesses will spend their time and money. It’s always been about gaming the system. At first we learned that links equalled ranking, so the world started generating billions of superfluous links from dubious sources. It lead to link rings and microsites, software that enabled you to swap links with others. Google’s reaction was to use its algorithms to identify these pointless links and devalue them. That in turn lead to negative SEO, at Silicon Beach Training we would get them all the time, even now we still get them, cowboy SEO companies who add links to your site from seriously bad sites.

All this pointless activity on the Internet needed to be addressed by Google to keep their results relevant to searchers. With time they developed ways of detecting how relevant these links were by the content and quality of sites in which the links were placed. So far so good, but what that lead to was the continuous flood of poor quality, keyword rich content with links to sites. Sites were established for businesses to connect with other business sites that would publish their content with backlinks. The result was lots of pointless, poor quality content. So Google developed ways to detect content for the sake of content, it slammed down hard on these sites and began to penalise the businesses that used them.

Google began to use location as a factor in search too. Google’s local search algorithm update put a lot of people out of business. Local physical businesses with services that cannot be provided over the network, that have (or had) a national or international customer base could no longer appear in search results when searchers were out of their area. This has resulted in many businesses setting up virtual offices and fake Google business locations in areas they want to reach. More pointless activity.

When businesses realised that social media allowed them to connect with the wider world it lead to another wave of Internet activity. Businesses tried to connect with an audience using Social Media, and some did it, and still do it well. But this too opened a can of worms. We are encouraged to get friends and followers; we are still playing the numbers game.

Now the only way really to improve ranking in Google, or even your general online visibility, is to produce content that actually matters enough to others to make them want to engage with it. That should be a good thing, but algorithms are not humans, no matter how clever the engineers are. With almost every business in the world trying to clamber to the top, there are no sure bets anymore, no matter how good your business, your product or content is. You still need to structure your site in an SEO friendly way, to make it load as fast as you can, to use micro data and keep the content quality high. You still need to write content in the right way, with good titles and some keywords. You still need to engage somehow with your clients, using social media and mailing lists, promotions and incentives. Your content must be interesting, useful or entertaining. It should be better, our on-line experience should be relevant, tailored, personal, a joy to use. But it isn’t.

It’s a constant flood of distraction; pointless messages from people we don’t know, spam emails, and spam Facebook posts, endless updates we don’t have the time or energy to sort. We are not physically or mentally capable to connecting to all the (so called) friends and followers we collect. We tend to pick out a few that we recognise, or some that may interest us, but it’s just not possible to take in and respond to the incoming avalanche of messages in a meaningful or human way.

We are bombarded with our own data. What we have liked or looked at online pops up everywhere on our screens. I am constantly unsubscribing to email lists to which I not consciously joined. I friend people on Facebook as I use it for marketing primarily, only to find they put porn on my page at night while I’m sleeping. We spend more time filtering crap than consuming the information we really want. There is just too much data in the world already, and the flow is still accelerating. We spend our lives creating that data. Every purchase, like and comment is collected and used to create more data and content which is then thrust upon us in a never-ending stream.

What about choice? Algorithms decide what we want. In fact ‘decide’ is the wrong word, it suggests humanity. There is nothing human about a machine, it does not make decisions, it makes calculations. We give Google and Facebook endless amounts of data about ourselves and they use this to reconstruct the data to throw back at us weather we like it or not. I read a really heart wrenching article written by a man who lost his young daughter last year. The Facebook machine sent everyone their animated year in pictures. There on the front was his daughters face, he didn’t share it of course, it hurt to even look at it. But even after he had decided not to open the file it was pushed and presented to him every time he logged on with no way of switching it off. A machine is just that, it does not think it merely calculates, and sometimes it gets it very wrong. We are connected or not, and unless we withdraw we have no choice.

By the way, while I’m on the subject of Facebook, I’d like to know who thought it a good idea to allow anyone to add you to a group you are not interested in and let them constantly message you against your will? Are they crazy!

The Internet, built to connect and improve relationships between people and businesses, is consuming us, and nobody can stop it or slow it down.

Where does it leave us? As a business that wishes to connect to consumers we have to take part to compete.

In some ways people subconsciously and consciously filter out the constant noise, I rarely see the ads, I begrudgingly spend time unsubscribing and deleting spam comments, Facebook posts and emails. What the world needs now are human filters.

I want to be a filter. In order to stay sane and engaged, there will be no content for contents sake; I will only write what I might be interested in reading myself. Already I only publish what I consider my best images. I will be more selective with whom I friend. I will not worry if I haven’t updated for a week or two (another of Google’s algorithmic ideas that has backfired is a preference for those who update often). I used to update Google+ once a week because some people use machines to filter out those who do not update so often, but who needs followers that only connect with the constantly connected, using machines not minds to connect. I will endeavour to be the filter that people crave. The one who doesn’t spout for the sake of an update.

Sure I will use these platforms to sell my street photography workshops, where I meet people in person and talk to them, to sell my images, which I constantly create because I love it so much, and to share them online. However, I wish to attract customers, not by pushing, but by pulling them in.

I put my new site out there for critique. The Internet is great for that! I was amazed at how much great advice I received. I posted in creative and marketing circles. The creatives loved it and the marketers kept telling me, I am not a blog, where was my marketing strategy, what was I selling, it is not clear, what about my ROI etc etc. However, right now, I am a blogger and a photographer, I just create, and I believe that that is what people want. Online, I want to create useful and interesting content first and foremost, my writing and my images. When people buy my images and workshops they are buying some of the creative part of me. This is what I want to share online.

Of course for larger businesses and brands, it’s another story, they need to work out how to become perceptibly more human, the ones that achieve this will be most successful. The rest of us need to stop peddling so hard and start enjoying the ride, focus on connecting with genuine people, rather than trying to use the machines to improve numbers.

For me, and self-employed people such as myself, who are providing a craft or service I believe that this is the way forward.

If you got this far, thanks for reading  and if you have anything to say please post here and share your thoughts

The post Being Human in a Digital World appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

Sometimes the process of photography starts with a concept or idea which I plan and create. Though the sweetest moments for me are those when real life presents a moment when everything falls into place.

Sweet Moment in Rome – the best moments are when everything falls into place – click to purchase image

I LOVE wide angle photography and the way it distorts reality.

I get in really close necessitating the need to communicate with my subjects. A wide angle lens adds drama to an image, sometimes it creates caricatures of people, and sometimes it allows you to portray a piece of everyday life as if it were happening on a stage.

SHOOT WIDE – Crawford Market- Mumbai – click to purchase image

The equipment you use will have a huge bearing on the outcome. You’ve heard it said before that good photography is not about equipment, most people now have the technology to get a great image in their pockets – on their smart phone. It’s also true to say though, that some images (or looks/styles) are reliant on the type of equipment you are using.

I use my canon 16-35mm on a full frame camera most of the time. On a full frame camera that’s a really wide lens. Favourite situations are Brighton events, where everybody is dressed up, happy willing to chat, laugh and have their photograph taken. It’s like Christmas for a photographer like me.

Brighton Pride 2012 – Don’t be afraid to ask people to pose for something you can visualise – click to purchase image

Often people show me their images, they say “I tried to take pictures like you, but it came out like this, what am I doing wrong?  The answer is often the same. Your lens is not wide enough, you were not close enough, you were not low enough (I have a penchant for images taken from a low viewpoint).

Try pointing your camera upwards – creates a clean background, adds drama, and f22 may give you a little star-burst if positioned at the edge of something – click to purchase image

Often the images look flat; they ask me how I get my subjects to pop out of the frame. I’m not ashamed to say (and neither is Martin Parr BTW) that I use P mode for most of my event photography and I always have a speed light on my camera set on auto. Fill flash is perfect for enhancing colour, saturation and avoiding underexposed subjects and dark shadows on the face. Even if you intend to process the image in black and white, the subject can still pop out of the frame with a bit of flash.

Brighton Pride 2011 – Flash can make your subjects pop, underexposing your background can help too – – click to purchase image

Couldn’t I just put the camera on Manual, select an exposure for the background, set an exposure for the flash, show some understanding of balancing light?

Well I can, but if any of you have seen me at an event like this, they will appreciate that I run around like a headless chicken, shooting from above, shooting from below shooting into the sun or my back to the sun. All I want to do is capture that moment that I see happening, or in some instances just about to happen, in an interesting way. For me it’s about seizing opportunities and quick thinking. Photographer friends of mine have given up trying to talk to me at events, because I’m so focused and excited about seeing and getting the shots, that nothing else exists for me in that moment.

I can quickly dial down the exposure using exposure compensation on the camera, it will add drama to a sky (darkening it), or will subdue a bright or distracting background, but my subject is correctly exposed with ETTL flash switched on . This is particularly useful when it’s really bright and you are close to your subject with a wide lens, you want your subject to be the main focus of the image but you may require a small aperture to avoid overexposing. Everything will be in focus but the views eye is drawn to the brightest part of the image – your subject.

If I want a star burst effect shooting in to the sun but want light on my subject I can dial my aperture down to f22 with my finger, without even looking at the camera.

So even when I choose P mode to enable me to capture each moment I see as an interesting opportunity, I don’t always let my camera decide everything. I may choose to turn the flash off if my image is about a shadow or reflection, I can underexpose the background, and I can change the aperture for individual images without even looking at the camera.

Other advice I’d give to those wishing to get similar images to mine:

Be bold and talk to people, most will be happy for you to take their picture, start with big events where most people expect to get their picture taken, then build up courage to talk to people in the street. If you take picture like me with a wide angle lens you are rarely going to be able to take pictures incognito.

Chat to people and get as close as you dare – click to purchase image

Take loads of pictures, be quick on your feet and chase that image. There is a very small window of opportunity for many images.

The more familiar you get with your equipment the better and faster you will become. For example some of my better known images are taken from very low or high vantage points. I am not looking through my lens; I would have to be a double jointed super hero to get these types of images of moving subjects.

I know my lens so well that I have a good idea of how low to hold the camera and at what angle I need to hold it. I still need to check the screen occasionally and chase people for an action replay if I have chopped off an essential head or foot!

Practise, practise and have fun, the more you do it the better your hit rate. See you at the Beach of the Dead event – Brighton Zombie Walk.

The post What Makes Me Click by a Brighton Photographer appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

I’ve been taking pictures on the streets of Brighton for years. People are my thing, whether candid or street portraits, although sometimes just colours, lines or strong compositions are enough to catch my eye. I have a reputation for coming back with something a bit different whatever the event and I’ll be talking about that.

I take inspiration from many photographers, some contemporary street photographers like Matt Stewart and David Gibson, some photographers who just take simply stunning black and white images like Alain Laboile. I also have my old favorites like Elliott Erwitt, Sergio Larraín and Bruce Gilden. The list is too long to mention here, I’ll leave that for another post.

Bournemouth Oceanarium – click to purchase image

The day will begin at Silicon Beach Training just minutes from Brighton railway station, where we’ll look at some images, and discuss what makes them great. I’ll talk about the kinds of things to look for. Great images are everywhere. We’ll start thinking about the relationships between people. things and the environment around them. Tricks for creating dynamic compositions and interesting viewpoints. I’ll keep it brief and to the point, I want to inspire you but having been in the training business for 15 years, and been on so many workshops I’ve lost count, I know that the best way to learn is by doing, so not too long, we have all day to chat, I want you to feel energised and to have fun.

We’ll have lunch together in Brighton, it’ll be somewhere nice but simple (you will need to pay for your own lunch but I’ll book the tables and see if I can negotiate a good rate).

If you need advice of where to stay we know all the best places.

Arles Photo Booth – click to buy image

More shooting after lunch and then back to Silicon Beach Training to review your work. We have enough computers here for everyone with Photoshop and Lightroom, although I almost exclusively use Lightroom for my images now. If you have a laptop and wish to download your images on that ready to take home that’s OK too. I will show you all some of my killer black and white conversion techniques to get really punchy images, as well as some colour tricks I’ve picked up. The rooms are secure so you can leave any kit you don’t want to carry around with you.

Exhibition at the Archbishop’s Palace les rencontres des arles – click to purchase image

I‘m only going to take on a maximum of 8 people, because I want time to talk to you all during the day. I’ve only just mentioned this workshop on social media so far and have taken bookings in the first few hours, so if you are really interested get back to me quickly. I will, though, be running more of these in the future.

So fill out the contact form if you would like to book and I’ll send you more details, the day is £125.

The workshop is suitable for all abilities and ages. I won’t cover how to use the settings on your camera in the morning brief because many of you will already know. However I will be available to answer any question all day. Any camera will do, I get some of my best shots on my compact. I still go on workshops for fun and I’ve been taking images for decades!

The post Street Photography Workshop in Brighton appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

Entering competitions, and winning them is great for your profile as a photographer.  It gets your images seen by new people, not just your followers and friends. It gives you something to talk about on your blog and social networks. It gets you talked about, shared and mentioned. It gives buyers the confidence that you are good at what you do.

So yes, I’m going to mention it again, sorry, but it’s relevant:)

RHS Photographer of the year

foxgloves and bee RHS Photographer of the year 2014  – click to purchase image

One month when searching for photography competitions that were ending soon this one came up. Now and again I search for “Photography Competition (put month) 2014” to find current competitions. At first I didn’t think I had anything good enough or appropriate for the theme. It’s important to choose something that really fits the theme, don’t try and squeeze an ambiguous square peg into  a round hole. Then I remembered the foxgloves image. It ticked all the boxes to be a contender, it was a good quality image and it would stand out, few garden images are taken this way, most being macro and few use flash.

It was important to make a reasonably objective decision as to wether your image a chance when there is an entry fee. I only pay to enter after careful consideration otherwise it could become an expensive hobby rather than a means to get exposure, kit or cash.

How can you tell which are the best images to enter?

Choose ones that get the most attention online. Watch your stats and work out which have the widest appeal, I covered some of the ways to do this in my last post.

Of course you don’t always win. People are always saying to me “You always win competitions, I never win” to which I usually say “when did you last enter one?”. You need to be in it to win it. The more you enter the more chance you have of winning. Although I seem to win things all the time, I actually loose a lot more often. Competitions that have online entries are very simple and quick to enter. The wider you cast your net the more likely you are to catch a fish.

Do check the rules and wether or not there is a fee before you fill it all out. There’s nothing more frustrating than getting to the end of the process before finding out it’s expensive to enter and the potential reward does not justify the cost

Enter as many free competitions you like but consider the paid entries carefully. Would it be great for publicity if you won? Do you actually want/need the prize or could you sell it?

I entered the RHS competition because it seemed like a high profile competition, it had a great prize and I had a good image.

Alan Titchmarsh Show RHS Photographer of the Year 2014

I had no idea just how good the coverage would be when I entered. I was on the Alan Titchmarsh show on Tuesday to find out who the winner was, and to talk about my image. The show went live to over one million viewers.

My win has been in the Guardian, the Daily Express, the Telegraph, the RHS site, Yahoo and MSN  home pages. I will be the front page of my local free paper (The Brighton and Hove Independent) today, maybe in the Times at the weekend, and on loads of gardening, landscaping and photography blogs, the list is growing ant not just UK sites, they are all over the world being an international competition. My personal favourite headline was in Amateur Photographer “British Street Photographer Scoops Global Title“.  Kim Wilde even tweeted and now follows me on twitter!

The internet becomes your galley.

On top of all that I’ve never been more tweeted and shared before.

What I am trying to stress is that, learning which images to enter can become a great form of on-line marketing. Well worth the effort.

Photography competition top tips:

1/ Think about what springs to mind, then send in something completely different that still fits the theme. Sometimes there are thousands of entries you’ll need to stand out. Send images with the wow factor.

2/ Enter often, I usually pick a morning or afternoon at the end of the month and look for competitions ending that month or the next.

3/ Consider paid competitions carefully – are they prestigious, trustworthy organisers? There are many competitions out there which seem to offer little more than a fee.

4/ Avoid all vote to win competitions. I know Iv’e done a couple but they were a waste of time and I promise I’ll never embarrass myself or  put my friends and family through that again!

5/ Look out for local competitions as these will attract fewer entries

Other Winning Images

holy man india jaipur – click to purchase image

Brighton Pride Pug – click to purchase image

Louis Vuitton Puerto Banus Spain – click to purchase image

Me and my shadow – click to purchase image

The post Winning Photography Competitions appeared first on Heather Buckley Photography.

“Social Media marketing is all about engagement”

You’ll hear these words over and over until you’re blue in the face. It’s obvious isn’t it? The clue is in the phrase “SOCIAL media”. Many articles are written on the subject as if it’s a revelation, without really giving any practical advice on how to become more engaged online, or how to find out what content attracts the most engagement from others.

To start with, before I get all conversational and start telling stories, here’s a brief list of useful tips. Some of these you have probably read somewhere, and hopefully, some new ideas. They form sound, practical advice, and if nothing else, will act as a reminder for those who are already ahead in the social media engagement arena.

Preparing for Brighton Pride – click to purchase image

1. Pick vibrant and relevant communities to join on Google+, Facebook, and LinkedIn and contribute your own material as well as joining in the conversations posted by others in the group.
2. Stay focused on your niche or profession, people will want to follow and engage with you because you are an expert in a particular area.
3. Monitor your brand or your name; there are various tools that will do this for you. If someone mentions you, try and respond.
4. Regularly respond to comments on your own pages, you don’t have to be tied to your computer, just drop by and respond when you can.
5. If someone comments on your work or shares your work then thank them regularly. This can be tricky if you get popular.
   Depending on how many followers you have, you may not be able to do this for every share or comment. Even a quick like of a Google+ or Facebook comment is better than nothing, it acknowledges the people who respond to your work. (I know there are many people who regularly like and comment on my work and don’t get a response, I’m sorry, I’m working on it, sometimes I make a mental note of the regulars and give them an occasional personal thank you in the comments)
6. Ask lots of questions when you are sharing your own content and when you find interesting content or comments from others.
7. Do seek out the influencers that inspire you and try and strike up conversations. You can do this by saying something thoughtful on their posts or asking them intelligent questions.

A great way to get someone’s attention is to read all you can about them, find out what makes them tick, then write your own spin on the subject inviting them to comment or asking them for a quote before you publish. The more you find out the better, remember you are trying to establish real relationships, the more you have in common the better, the more personal your approach the better. We are not talking bunny boiler here, but if someone has just posted about an amazing holiday, you could bring that into the conversation. If they have a grievance about something that you share, it can provide a good way to connect.

You can connect with me on Google+ Facebook Instagram Twitter Flickr and LinkedIn

Story from Marketeer Extraordinaire Dave Trott

Here’s a story that I love. I heard it from creative marketer Dave Trott famous for many memorable TV ad campaigns over the last few decades. My older UK friends might remember  “‘Ello Tosh, got a Toshiba?” or “Ariston and on and on” or “Lipsmackin’ thirstquenchin’ acetastin’ motivatin’ goodbuzzin’ cooltalkin’ highwalkin’ fastlivin’ evergivin’ coolfizzin’ Pepsi”. Younger readers might wonder what the hell I’m on about. Anyway here is one of the stories he told when I heard him speak. It has stuck in my mind and at the time I thought about how relevant it was to social and digital marketing today.

Football manager Don Revie (Leeds 1961–1974, later England manager) knew the importance of engaging with influencers. Instead of focusing on the opposing team before a match he would focus on the referee. Not only that, he would get all of his team to do the same. He always knew the refs name, as did all of the team players, the refs wife’s name, his kids names, where he had been on holiday and anything else that was specific and personal to the ref. In passing they would drop these references into conversation. The result – In one season his team received 80% of the referee’s decisions on penalties and the like in their favour.  Considering their nickname at the time was ‘dirty Leeds’ that was quite impressive.

I am not advocating ignoring your less influential followers, in fact less followed individuals that love what you do can be your best advocates, so respond and talk to anyone who does you the honour of looking at, sharing and commenting on your work. I am saying though, that the more time you put into customising your engagements when approaching more influential people the more like you are to get noticed and shared with their impressive following.

If you are trying to sell anything, your work, your ideas or your brand, it stands to reason the more popular the type of content you produce the more likely it is that people will engage with it.

I think you need to strike a balance between what you love to produce and what consumers might pay for. My most popular images are not my favourite ones but they help to build up an audience that may later turn into customers who may want to buy my books, workshops or images.

Lessons from Magnum Photographer Mark Power

Many photographers including me get disillusioned. The work that rocks their boat does not necessarily have a market. I was lucky enough to meet Magnum Photographer Mark Power last night. He said that after years of working for newspapers and magazines he was offered the position of Professor of Photography at the University of Brighton. In his first lecture he was talking to students about finding something that you love to photograph, something that gets you excited, then he released that he actually hadn’t done that himself for some time. He then went on to complete some amazing projects including the series The Shipping Forecast and 26 Different Endings (I’ll leave you to look them up). Although they have both been hugely successful projects resulting in sold-out books and international exhibitions, they both took him years, he did them for love and, in some respects, obsession.

If you are not as famous as Mark and you want to use digital marketing to increase your international exposure and attract new customers, I think you need to continue to take images for yourself and also publish images for a wider audience, the ones that will get shared, liked and commented on.

Insights from Editorial Photography expert Roger Tooth

I once met Roger Tooth, head of photography for the Guardian. He said that if you want a web page to go viral publish an image of a surfing dog or a panda. He was talking about images for online newspapers, and said it was called the ‘Panda Syndrome’ amongst picture editors, suggesting that images for online news sites were becoming more about hits than anything else.  Ironically a book with the same title is about society casting us into a preferred shape until we lose sight of our originality. As creative people, none of us want to loose our originality, that’s why we need a balance. If we want to sell to a global audience we need to be both original and creative, but we also need to attract a larger audience by publishing ‘popular’ content too.

This is my most shared post on Google+, sadly not my image, created by Jake Phoenix. Although created for another reason, it was used to illustrate the mass of people suddenly adding others to their circles before anyone really knew what Google+ was about. The image went viral, it was one of my first posts when invited to try the beta version.

Lemmings by Jake Phoenix

You probably have a reasonable idea about which posts and images are your most popular, though some may surprise you. It’s quite interesting to have a look statistically at the posts that engage people the most.  There are lots of free tools you can use to do this and here I’ll list a few that I use.

Free Tools for finding out what’s hot and what’s not

Google Analytics

If you haven’t already done this then set up a Google Analytics account. It will require you to add a piece of code to every page in your site. It is quite sophisticated but you don’t have to be a genius to use it and you will probably not use all it’s features. It will allow you to see what the most popular content on your site is, how people found it and what they did next.

They now show Custom Social Media reports; you can use these to monitor how your social media activity drives traffic to your site. If you have E-commerce on your site you can set it up to find out which social media activities are actually converting into sales.

Social Share Buttons

If you add social share buttons to your web pages that have number counts showing, you get an instant view of how your content is doing, obviously the more shares and likes the better.

 Klout

Klout will calculate your influence score based on their algorithm. It’s useful to work out which social networks are your most successful, and has a handy little indicator showing you which posts across all social media accounts are your most successful.

Archived Book

Take a look at this, only just discovered it and it’s quite interesting.

http://archivedbook.com/heatherbuckleyphotography/posts

You can insert your own FBpage name into the URL for your own results, then toggle the last dropdown in the menu between most liked and most commented.

 Facebook Insights

For a quick check to see what’s been your most recently successful you could try Facebook Insights. It’s a button in the main menu at the top of your Facebook Page ‘See Insights’ (note – not your personal profile) it will tell you how many people the post reached, how many clicked on the link to your post, how many shared or liked it.

Circle Count

Circle Count is a very useful tool for looking at your Google+ activity. You can view profiles by country.  Unless you are a mega star you are unlikely to show up in the listings for world popularity, but if you do things right you could start to appear as one of the most followed in your country.

There is a Google chrome extension that lets you view the statistics for any Google+ profile straight in your browser.

The dashboard is really useful and will show you your most commented on, most shared and most plused posts. It shows you what shared circles you have been included in. It even tells you when your most popular posts were posted so you can post important announcements at the most popular time.

Flickr

If you use Flickr you may be wondering where you go to find out what your most popular images are in their latest layout. You’ll find them by clicking the most unintuitive button in the world! See the three little dots, bottom right of your header, click that and select “popular”. You can then sort by most viewed, most liked and most commented.

…….

This tuned into quite a long post so I’ll save the next bit until later. Next I’ll go through my most popular posts and images and use the information to reason why they became so popular. By doing this I’ll get to learn what works and what doesn’t and why. I’ll share my insights with you all and meantime you can do the same using the tools above to find out what works for your audience.

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