Website Design Blog - Mark Goddard » Photography

10 Amazing Stereographic Projection photos on Flickr

Mark Goddard — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:29:55 +0000

Stereographic Projection is an art-form which I’ve been eager to try for quite some time now. It’s one of my new years resolutions for 2010. The execution is very difficult to get right but the outcome of such a photography style is simply astounding. Here’s 10 to get your creative juices flowing.

Business Card design, how to do it right!

Mark Goddard — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:26:07 +0000

We’ve all been there, with an opportunity to impress only to fail by handing out a scrappy piece of paper with your name and number on. Is anyone likely to find that piece of paper again once they’ve put it down? Are they likely to pass it along to another potential client? Or are they more likely to throw it in the trash?

A business card is an important piece of promotional material. Something that is unlikely to be thrown away if it does it’s job properly. It must be memorable, easy to read and contain all the information needed in a short amount of space.

Making an impact…

A business card usually comprises of two separate sections, and these two sections give you ample opportunity to get your point across quickly and concisely.

Section 1 – The imagination

The first section (namely the front of the card) is your canvas to create whatever you like. Try a doodle on your Wacom, write a funny line or even pop your tag line on there (mine for example is Artfully Illuminating Design, something I’ve stuck with from day one). It allows you to show a bit of personality, a bit of creativity and create something more eye catching than a scrap of paper.

The above design is quite eye catching using a bright blue (my trademark colour). Someone is unlikely to throw it away and is likely to remember the card. The little tag-line of “all your design are belong to us” probably won’t be understood by most clients as it’s a rip off of a humorous online phrase. It can however add that little extra in allowing the potential client to remember you.

Try drawings, jokes, fancy patterns, cartoons, phrases, photographs or even Haiku. It can really make a boring piece of card interesting.

Section 2 – The details

So you’ve got your potential clients attention, how do we hammer home the contact details?

It’s all about organisation and importance. You need to gently organise your details according to what you want on there. Obvious details are telephone number, email address and website (if you have one). Additional details you could apply are (depending on your industry);

Address
Work & Mobile telephone numbers
Social networking links (such as Twitter)
Alternative contact details such as Skype
Fax number (not so common lately)
Your job title
Your skills/attributes

Don’t overload the card with details, only list the important stuff and make sure the important stuff is the largest test on the card. Also ensure it’s readable when printed before you go an order 500 business cards. You have to bear in mind that just because it’s large on your 27″ monitor, it’s not when it’s printed only 3 inches wide.

Free Photoshop Template (UK sizes)

I’ve drummed up a few free templates for you to use. Simply pop in your details, print them and see how the look!

Please note these are set at 85mm x 55mm which may need changing before printing depending on which country your in.

Please also make sure your guide lines are on by using the shortcut Ctrl+H/Apple+H or clicking View>Extras. The outer border is your cropping area and the innder border is your bleed area. The inner rectangle is your safe zone. Try to keep everything in there. Happy designing!

Section 1 – The Imagination | Section 2 – The Details

Manchester United vs Chelsea – Community Shield 2009 Wembley

Mark Goddard — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 20:58:21 +0000

Update 6th Nov 09: My panoramic wembley photo has been used in Main Event Magazine (Thanks Ky for sorting this)
Update 12th Oct 09: This photo is now part of the Wikipedia page on Wembley Stadium as the header image

The game was full of controversy, foul play, substitutions and of course, goals. Chelsea finished up beating the Champions 4-1 on penalties and I took along my trusty SLR to photograph some of the action and I got some pretty good shots! Note: all the photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence which means they are free to use along with attribution to this site! Enjoy!

Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales

Playing with light in photography

Mark Goddard — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:34:31 +0000

Starting off in digital photography can be a very unrewarding and unsatisfactory time.

Many beginners try photographing normal subjects without actually playing with the settings on their camera. We hope to quash any questions you may have with what your settings mean and what you can do with them as a beginner.

For this article we will be using light trails as a starting point as you can produce beautiful looking images while at the same time working out what each setting does. Please also note that each image used in this article will also display the settings used. Every image is taken using a Canon EOS 400D (aka Rebel XTi). Please also note this is an article for digital beginners.

Shutter Speed
This is simply the length of time the shutter stays open for. It is quite often the reason behind blurry or under lit photos. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less light enters the lens and there is also a smaller chance of blurry photos. This can have a massive impact when taking photos of moving objects as the results can mean a dramatic difference.
If you set a faster shutter speed (for example, photographing a formula one car) you will capture a sharper image with little light. This is when you need to change your ISO setting and your f-stop/aperture (see below) to let in more light to the lens.
F Number/Aperture
This area of the camera quite often confuses people the most due to its name. Many different terms and phrases are used throughout each camera but usually it is denoted with an F in front of a small number (often decimal).
Basically, the higher the number, the more detail your camera will capture. For instance, if your photographing a close object the background maybe blurry with a small f-number.
However, by upping the f-number you lose light in the photo, so to counter-act this we need to raise the ISO-Speed and/or the shutter speed to bring more light into the photo.
ISO/ASA Setting/Film Speed
An ISO/ASA setting can have undesirable effects. This needs to remain a low number in order to produce a clearer picture. Quite often you may find yourself in a low lit area with no flash and an unsteady hand. This means your shutter speed will be slow (to let in more light) your aperture will have a small number (to also let in extra light) but you will be shooting something moving or will be getting regular blurred shots. This is where ISO/ASA may come in handy. It simply makes the camera more sensitive to light when the photograph is taken.
It can be a big help, but in digital photography it will cause your image quality to degrade significantly. You will see a lot of noise in the image due to the sensitivity. The higher the ISO/ASA, the more light you will see but then more noise you will capture as a consequence.

These are the three main setting we will need when photographing our light trails. You will need a tripod (or a flat surface where your camera can sit) and some sort of moving light source, such as a motorway/highway/road or a small torch.

First of all we need to decide how long we want to capture the image. For this example we are using a busy motorway. We are setting our camera up for a 20 second shutter speed (which means 20 seconds worth of light and cars will be captured) and will set our ISO as low as possible (ISO-100 is good enough). We also need to ensure our Aperture is also a low number (around F-5) as we are not photographing a close subject and need more light.

Once we are setup we take the photo. Ideally we need to have a remote control to stop the camera moving or even setting the camera to the self timer mode (counts down 10 seconds and takes the photo itself).
Once all this is done bask at the glory which is your light trail!

Get playing and see what you can create with a bit of imagination!