'Hi there, we're looking for a photographer to cover our promotion. We don’t have a budget for photography, but we think that doing this job for us would be great exposure for you.'

For every request I get to quote for a job, I would say I get three asking if I would work for free, from profit-making businesses. The reason given is usually that it would be great exposure for me. click to load the rest of this article...

This week photographers have been up in arms. It doesn't generally take much to get photographers up in arms and most weeks something, whether it be digital manipulation or an art critic claiming photography isn't art, has photographers up in arms. On this occasion the issue is copyright theft… or rather it isn't copyright theft but people are up in arms over copyright theft anyway. The photo sharing site, Flickr, has drawn the ire of many of its members by selling prints of member's photographers, for profit, with no money being paid to the photographer who took it. click to load the rest of this article...

There is a time of day that photographers love more than any other, they call it golden hour. It is not just golden in terms of colour, though the light does have an attractive golden hue, but it is also valuable and highly prized. As well as a gentle warmth in the colour of the light at this time of day, the lower angle of the sun can lead to more interesting pattern of light and shade, both in the sky and across the landscape. The angle of the sun also makes polarising filters more effective at darkening the sky close to the horizon (whch is the part of the sky you're most likely to see in your photos), and portraits are less likely to have unflattering shadows from a high light-source and squinting subjects. click to load the rest of this article...

Oh no, not this old debate again! I too thought this argument had run its course, we've had photographs appearing alongside paintings (and other forms of art) in galleries for decades now. Surely no serious art critic still wants to peddle the hoity-toity notion that photography is not art. Then I read this article from the Guardian's chief art critic Jonathan Jones. click to load the rest of this article...

As we get into November, you may look out of the window, and seeing the terrible weather, decide that you won't be going out with your camera for some weeks. Rain is pretty miserable, but that doesn't mean that any photographs taken on rainy days will be bad ones. You just have to think of the rain the way you would think about any other object in the scene. It's impossible to ignore it, it makes it harder to use your camera, and as a subject it is less 'traditionally' pretty than sunshine, but it has a certain photogenic quality of its own. click to load the rest of this article...

With the clocks going back and darker nights upon us, many photographers will start thinking about taking photographs of the night sky. It can seem like a daunting subject, perhaps because it requires settings that mean switching your camera into full manual mode; but in truth the sky is a simple subject. click to load the rest of this article...