Date: Saturday, November 3

Time: Noon

Place: Starbucks (where else?) in Camden. There are a few, as always, so please be sure to meet at the one right on the lock: 289 Camden High Street. Camden Town stop on the Northern line is nearby, or Chalk Farm which is also on the Northern line.

Why you should come:

• It’s always nice to meetup with fellow photobloggers
• Your camera arm needs a good workout
• Camden market has all sorts of cool shops
• The food at Camden market is delish
• It beats sitting at home on a Saturday

So, the photobloggers.org network are chatting about how we can improve the various photoblogger city sites and make it a better community and experience for photobloggers. I’d love to get your thoughts on what you’d like to see us do here on London Photobloggers. Do other city sites offer something that we don’t and you’d like to see? Is there something new that we’ve never done that we really should? How can we improve the site so it’s more useful to you and a better, stronger community?

The Budapest photobloggers have a forum setup which is doing extremely well. How would folks feel about having a forum added to the site?

Be honest. What works and what doesn’t? What should we be doing? Feel free to post comments or email me directly.

Mark your calendars! The next meet up will be on Saturday, November  3rd. More details to follow soon. If you have any great suggestions, or any suggestions really, feel free to comment here.

Also, you may want to signup for the LPB Google Group to keep up-to-date on meet ups and events. You can choose how often notifications are sent to you.

A film on a photography website? Well, in this case I think it is more than justified.

This weekend I saw Control, a film about the life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. The actors and story are great, but the real gem is that it was directed by Anton Corbijn, the famous Dutch photographer. He is renown for his black-and-white photos of artists like Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, U2 and Nirvana.
The main reason for seeing this film was because I wanted to know if it would show that it was directed by a photographer. And boy, was I in for a treat! The whole film is shot in black-and-white (although more monochrome than straight b&w if you ask me) and every shot is like a photograph. It is a great example of ’seeing in black-and-white’, which Corbijn must manage very well, because he utilizes light, textures and depth of field in a stunning way. Who needs special effects if you can see it in b&w?

Starting from next week BBC Four will follow the story of photography from the very start until the current day, under the very fitting title of The Genius Of Photography.

“For the first time on British television, BBC Four chronicles the history of photography, in a major landmark series The Genius Of Photography. The series considers the importance of photography as an art form, looking at a multitude of the world’s greatest photographs, interspersed with exclusive interviews with renowned photographers such as William Klein and Martin Parr.
The series conjures up a picture of just how the camera has changed the way in which people view themselves and the world around them.
Continuing the photography theme comes an incredible nine-part series, Archive Of The World, in which thousands of stunning colour photographs from the early 20th century are unveiled. They were commissioned by French financier Albert Khan as one of the most ambitious photographic projects ever to be undertaken, and the documentary series charts his amazing photographic journey across continents.”

The first program is called Fixing The Shadows and will focus on the start of photography with people like Abe Morell, Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre, through to the age of mass photography after the creation of Kodak.
Fixing The Shadows will be broadcast on BBC Four on Thursday 25th October at 9pm.

I’m sure Lor won’t mind if I take this opportunity to briefly detract from the hot topic of photography and image manipulation in order to wish our English Rugby team the very best at attempting to pummel the Bokke into the Parisian dust.

Have at them, Boys!

I think someone with four years of photoblogging history can be called veteran. Jim Green of jimbus.org definitely is.

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Thank you to Tom for getting the last meet up organised. Unfortunately I’d just got back from Italy that week and couldn’t make it. I hope folks had a good time.  I realise our meet ups have been rather sporadic, so I’d like to start prepping now for the next one. As you’ll see the poll over on the right has been updated, so cast your votes. I would suggest not opting for October 20th unless that is your only day available, since that is the World Cup Rugby final.

Also, please leave your thoughts/suggestions on where to meet. I’d love to hear from you guys.

Lastly, do you think we should just set our meet ups as the first Saturday of every month? That way, we know the dates already and it’s just a matter of organising the place? Let me know your thoughts. Getting myself down to London nowadays is a bit of a mission, but I’d love to have more regular meet ups and hang out more often.

Summer is definitely over. But October also brings some beautiful light and a very photogenic nature. Time to get some inspiration from one of the following exhibitions. (more…)