The principle attraction of the micro four thirds system, and compact system cameras in general, is that its products are small, light and highly portable – and none come smaller, […]
When something catches our eye and we draw for the camera, like John Wayne in a Western, our attention is usually focused firmly on one spot. We watch the subject […]
Excitement in the spotlight Just as there is gold at the end of a rainbow, so a beam of light in a shady zone will lead us to riches. Where […]
Café, Prague In my head street photography is architecture with people in it, so I am constantly on the lookout for ways to show how humans and buildings come together […]
If smartphones are the new compacts why don’t camera brands make them too? Broadly speaking there are two types of people in this world – those who make things happen, […]
Making a digital camera with no rear screen is a pretty dumb idea. Isn’t it? The Leica M Edition 60 declares bells-and-whistles-free zone for those who can easily afford bells […]
Why do camera manufacturers insist on taking ISO settings upwards instead of down? It was by a series of great achievements that by the end of the 1800s photographic ’emulsion’ […]
A lens that carries all the glamour of the 85mm f/1.2, but with the ease of construction of the 50mm standard is an exciting prospect. Damien Demolder tests Panasonic’s Leica […]
How many pixels is enough? I guess that many of us have programmed ourselves to want more of a good thing, and perhaps also to not know when we have […]
What’s the best camera for street photography? When we consider what might be the best kind of camera for street photography we should think less about ultimate image quality and […]
This is an exert from an opinion piece I’ve written for DP Review on the Nikon D810 There is a rule in the cruise ship business that you never go […]
Does Adobe have a gun to your head? No, thought not. No one HAS to sign up for the Photoshop subscription package, I’ve been looking at buying a car recently, […]
Article about optical filters I wrote for TechRadar: The idea of filtering light before it enters the camera has been around for almost as long as photography itself. In the […]
Shooting in Raw format will allow you to get the very best from your camera’s sensor, but the benefits have to be weighed against the extra time spent processing and how involved you want to get with working in software. There is a lot of mystery about Raw files and what they are, but there really doesn’t need to be.
Decisive moments: timing in street photography We have all heard of the ‘decisive moment’, and we know it relates to the split second in that which the multitude of disparate […]
A gallery for students to show off pictures taken during courses in foreign cities I hope you like the gallery, and that it will encouraged you to go out and […]
Smoking at the Bank – Tonal contrast for emphasis If you asked twenty people in the street ‘What’s the best colour to make a white object stand out?”, they would […]
Using street lighting and composition to create a sense of depth and 3D in your photography.
Photographing graphic shapes – creating a frame Most built-up areas are created using three basic shapes and the variations on them; rectangles, triangles and circles. Alongside those basic shapes we […]
One-to-one photography and CAMERA-SKILLS CLASSES WITH DAMIEN DEMOLDER One-to-one tuition for all levels of experience. Sessions fully customised to your needs £499 – including lunch and refreshments My […]
A small selection of Damien’s street photography work I hope you like the gallery, and that it will encourage you to go out with your camera in any weather and […]
Taking pictures in the rain – let the details tell the story You would think there was a law against taking pictures on a rainy day, as hardly any photographers […]
How to use the white balance settings on your digital camera for shooting under fluorescent lighting in the street at night while maintaining atmosphere. This also covers exposure compensation and high ISO settings
Student gallery from one-to-one photography courses The gallery shown here is made up of pictures taken by students during Damien’s one-to-one photography courses that are tailored to meet the specific […]
Gift vouchers for photography courses A voucher for one of my street courses or a one-to-one learning day is the perfect gift for any photographer of any experience level. There’s […]
When we talk about pictures we are taking, have taken or are going to take, most often we do so in terms of what that picture is of. We talk […]
Silhouette of a running girl – Exposure, coincidence and making your own luck A silhouette can be a powerful graphic element in a photograph, but to work well it needs the right […]
artificial light for atmosphere – white balance and metering You don’t have to travel to the city to come across a wide range of different coloured artificial light sources, or […]
Student gallery from the one day London street photography course The gallery shown here is made up of pictures taken by students during Damien’s one day street photography course that […]
Street photography – long shadows and shooting at night An evening shooting by the light of the setting sun, and then the multi-coloured lights of the city after dark £180 […]
Reading exposure in a scene and then deciding how to deal with it
London street photography one-day courses Improve your seeing and photography skills in a single informative and entertaining day. Suitable for all levels £180 How to book See our previous students’ […]
I had been asked to take pictures at a First Holy Communion by the father of the boy in this picture. I’d done all the usual shots and had more […]
Man walking into a streak of light early in the morning. Here’s a simple but effective way of making a small subject stand out from the background. Early in […]
Infrared photography used to be a firm favourite of the darkroom user in a days of film supremacy, but with the advent of digital photography the popularity of infrared capture […]
I took this picture of palm trees reflected in a swimming pool on the last day of a two-week trip to The Dominican Republic. For the whole fortnight I’d been […]
Try something out. Put your camera in its bag, and put the bag over your shoulder. Now, pretending you are Clint Eastwood in a cowboy movie, see how quickly you […]
There is a difference between obvious subjects and those we have to search for. Obvious subjects might be a dramatic sunset, a lit fountain at night, the Eiffel Tower at […]
Give yourself choices • adding depth • simple or complex • when it all comes together There’s too much reverence attached to Cartier-Bresson’s mystical Decisive Moment – the moment […]
A polarising filter is used in photography to reduce the effects of reflections and glare. When these distracting forms of light are removed from a photograph it allows colours to […]
• Using neutral density filters • white balance for dawn light • Balancing the brightness of sky and land is a regular problem at any time of day, but first […]
Using bold colours · making a colour stand out · low light photography · having patience · shooting raw I’m not a great fan of black and white images that […]
Backlighting • Graphic shapes • Channel mixer • Cropping The best way to show graphic shapes is to reduce the scene you are photographing to its most basic and fundamental […]
Just as with wildlife photography it is the shots that show behaviour, rather than the pure record pictures, that work best in street photography. To show that behaviour clearly, so […]
Using filtration in male portraiture • channel mixture conversions • shooting in colour for a black and white result We automatically think about using channel filtration to create black and […]
Creative white balance – simple composition – previsualisation – looking The sun had well and truly gone at this stage, and its setting had not brought the spectacle I had […]
Improve your on-line presentation – add titles to your images Pictures should be able to stand on their own two feet without embellishment, but there are few that don’t […]
Using layers in your compositon • low angles to show the foreground • selective focusing for emphasis It’s hard to create a sense of depth in a photograph, as we […]
Seeing relationships • using humour • the importance of straight edges • catching a moment There is nothing new in street photography about targeting how the world of advertising compares […]
Recognise the importance of colour • Use ambient colour casts to demonstrate atmosphere • communicate emotions to your viewers What we see and what the camera sees is not always […]
Low angles – using puddle reflections – keeping a clear message – dynamic composition Most photographers would agree that reflections are the number one tool for those looking to add […]
Using artificial light • Beating camera shake • Using walls for support • Shooting at an angle We are used to seeing flowers in daylight, and that is how we […]
Cameras are machines, and although they do feature a certain amount of artificial intelligence, ultimately they can only do as they are told. Knowing how your camera is likely to react in any given situation is the key to understanding when it is destined to get things wrong and that it is time for you to take control.
There are plenty of places all over the world that have been photographed again and again in exactly the same way from exactly the same place. Often there is a […]
They say you should never shoot towards the sun, but I have never really understood why.It’s true that when you take pictures with the camera facing the sun you get […]
I spotted this character in the foyer of Warsaw’s Philharmonic Hall (Filharmonia Narodowa w Warszawie) on a rainy day in early winter. He looked really interesting anyway, but stood in […]
This ship’s propeller really caught my eye as I walked around in Warsaw, Poland, as its curved form is surrounded by a mass of squares and triangles. Much of Warsaw’s […]
Patterns, and pictures, are everywhere, and of course we all know we need to keep an eye open for them in the most unexpected places. It seems though that the […]
If you have a picture you’ve already taken that has slight converging verticals the effects can often be corrected using the features contained in a number of popular software applications. […]
When we look up at a tall building its sides slope inwards to form an inverted V shape. We are so used to seeing in this way that we hardly […]
The idea of street documentary is to show the viewer what it is like to be in the place you are shooting – and to experience the things you are […]
A method of avoiding converging verticals that is open to everybody is shooting wide and cropping the result. In short the camera is fitted with a wide angle lens and […]
Colour images converted to black and white using the green channel have quite a distinctive look that is great for creating the feel of all classic images. In the days […]
This shot is part of a series I made of street pictures taken from ground level. We are so used to seeing street scenes from the normal standing position that […]
It’s often the case that I ‘see’ a picture, or at least a potential picture, in a split second, but it then takes me more than a few seconds to […]
This is a fairly simple idea for making macro or close-up shots more interesting and more unusual. I know I have spent ages in the past trying to get close […]
These are not my bamboo plants – they belong to my wife. But I’m the one who chats to them, waters them and feeds them. They’ve grown really tall, and […]
