General tips for an awesome time!

General rules for an awesome time:


01 Take your camera everywhere

You never know when the perfect photo will appear.

02 Its a part of your life not an interfeance

Going out on purpose to take photos is cool, don’t get me wrong even I did that but sometimes its just nice to catch those random moments around you.

03 find the awesome

Go out and find those places in your world that make you think wow, I live here and show it to us!


04 Shoot at a jaunty angle

One of the joys of film is you never know exactly what your taking photos of, so why not surprise yourself and take the photo at the hip?


05 don’t think

The photos that happen by chance are amazing because they’re a time capsule of what was happening at that moment.

06 think big

Some of the greatest photographs in the world are works where the artist has spent a long time crafting the piece, setting up lighting, adding props and dressing models. If your going to plan a shoot think big.

07 have fun!

Seriously what’s the point if you don’t?

Learning the limits of the camera!

Using the camera

Disposable camera were designed to be easy to use in a pre digital age which meant that they tried to design it so that almost everything was done for you which as a result means that were using a very limited medium but if we learn more about the cameras then we can push those limits.

So what do we need to keep in mind?

A disposable camera uses a fixed focus lens, its focusing distances is roughly 4 or 5 feet away from you’re subject to infinity.

With a disposable camerayou cant change the focus which means that if you try to shoot any close up’s they will appear blurred but you’ll have no way of knowing because you cant check the photos.

So what does this mean?

Well disposable cameras do tend to favour landscape shots but as long as your careful and keep the subject 4 or 5 feet away then you’ll be fine doing portrait shots.

Understanding film

Film speed is a measurement of how sensitive a film is to light. A film that is highly sensitive to light is called a fast film, a film with a low sensitivity is a slow film.

The most common way to quantify film speed is according to its ISO speed (international standards organisation) rating.

A film with a higher ISO number needs less light to properly capture an image that a film witha lower ISO number .

For example ISO 400 film is more sensitive to light than ISO 100, it will take 4 times more light to properly expose ISO 100 film as it will take to properly expose ISO 400 film.

Things to consider:


ISO 400 tends to be the most common film speed we see in disposable cameras because it’s the most versatile; it’s good for dimly lit outdoor conditions and in doors.

If your doing night time photography be aware that you’d normally need to use at least a 1600 or even 3200 speed film to capture night shots without using a flash and when you do use a flash it only captures the object directly in front of the lense.

Pic it forward we are good to go (once you've read this)

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Well were almost ready to get this round of pic it forward started, sorry about all of the delays, getting things going has proved a little bit more challenging than I thought it would but anyway lets get things started!

But before we get going there are a few things I need to clear up to make the project easier for everyone.



really need you guys to put together a list explaining the photos:


Who took which photo
What you’re calling the photo
When you took them
Where you took them

And a little bit about them , doesn’t have to be anything too huge and I realise a lot of this is covered in the above description but I’m basically working on the idea that the more you can tell us about each photo/set of photos. Maybe something interesting happened when you took the photo or maybe the place you took it has some kind of emotional meaning to you, I just think it’ll be something cool to read.

I’ll take photos of the notes and uploaded them as well as type them up (to the best of my ability for everyone to see.

How many shots do we get each?


Well there’s no set answer but the rule of thumb is the amount of exposures (the amount of shots) divided by the number of people on a route.

If a camera has 27 exposures and there’s 5 people in a route (roughly average for a route) then its 5.4 which of course doesn’t divide very well but it means each person has five photos with two left over.

These are my flickr favourites what are yours?

These photos are my favourites what about you?

Pic it forward roud 2 route 3!

Photos by NomadSlim:

NomadSlim and Grandma



Superman statue



Great deal on earrings!



3-Wheeled motorcycle



No dinosaurs here.



Photos by midi-chlorinated:

Part of the Ultimate Frisbee team



Kitty!



Giant hotdog that holds some kind of oil



Bar with good bands



Display toilets at Menard's



Photos by Jet Approves:

My dad's cat



Dino at the museum



Park square fountain



Alley leading to city hall



Photos by squeegebeckenheim:

Tiger lily in a bush



Gnome in tomatoes



Gnome in green apples


Vine growing up shed door



Part of my backyard



Photos by asfi235:

Vine growing through window



Truncated cathedral (1)



Truncated cathedral (2)



Mother nature wants her creek back



Honest Ed's



Bumblebee (blur) with coneflowers

Pic it forward the traveling camera club round 3 is a go!

Yup yup, were ready to get started!

So I wanted to take the chance to thank everyone for signing up and to welcome you to this round of pic it forward I'm really looking forward to getting this route started!

But before I send out all the emails with the address's there’s going to be some slight changes to how the projects going to be...

So what are the changes?

I'm going to be giving out everyone’s email addresses, the last time we ran the project there were times when people needed to talk but they had to go through me when it would of been easier to just email each other, its something I should of done the first time we ran it but its something that never occurred to me (doh)



Which brings me onto the second change, I'm going to be printing all the photos! (I am actually taking part in this route)

But the big change?

Well I was wondering if you'd be up for making the project a bit more collaborative? The last time we did the project I really didn’t set a theme, the reason being I wanted the photos to be your piece of work, you'd have complete control over what was in them. I still want to stay true to that idea but I realised we were missing something the last time we ran it. The projects about working together to produce a unique piece of art work, a series of photos created by strangers working together so you guys are going to set a theme!

It could be about absolutely anything, love, death or what I had for dinner, it could be as complicated or as simple as you like but I want people to work together to create a series of photos with a consistent theme running through, you know just to see what happens.

Talking through email will be very useful but it might be wise to set up a route blog to talk through all your ideas.

Finally as a side note I'll be releasing a blog with advice on how to take the best photos possible with a disposable camera, unfortunately a disposable camera is kind of a limited piece of kit (for example it has a fixed lenses that can only focus from about 3 meters away in day light and 1 meter with flash in the dark), I’ll also be explaining film speed and how it affects the type of photos you can take.

Right then, lets get this started!

P.S keep checking our twitter feed http://twitter.com/picitforward and the blog for updates http://picitiforward.blogspot.com/

cheers phil

Pic it forward 3 PREANONCING ROUTES (SIGN UP NOW)

For those not familiar with pic it forward, its an on going community art project, we get people to take photos on disposable cameras then post it to each other, then we print them and put them on our website.

For more info check out our sign up blog:

Pic it forward sign up now

Hey everyone and welcome to the third round of pic it forward revenge of the blurb, first I’d like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who’s signed up so far, thanks for making this project possible we couldn’t do it without you (literally, posting a camera to myself would be pretty pointless and lame).

So guess what everyone? I got off my lazy arse and actually built a website… I say built I set up a blogspot account and edited the coding a bit but still for me that’s pretty impressive considering I have very limited programming skills.

So whats the blog going to be used for? Its going to be a gallery showing off all our photos, its going to contain pic it forward news and other articles to read in the mean time!

Pic it forward blog

As you can probably tell, I'm not a very good programer (or graphic designer for that matter) so I'm always looking out for anyone that can help improve the site. If your interested in helping out please drop me a line at picitforward@gmail.com

Cheers

Right so onto business, we have some brand spanking new routes!

Your probably wondering why exactly I’ve said pre announcing the routes rather than a full blown announcement, well truth be told I ran into a few problems planning these routes.



1 tobasco
1 Mezo
1 Radiostaticstar
1 ekaj47
1 EFDisaster

2 Tim henton
2 AlixAri
2 asfi235
2 jet approves
2 shake the sheets



We have enough people to make up two whole routes but not enough to make up a third route.

With these routes thedarrien and FionaB are left out and I really dont want that to happen.

So I’m still looking for people to sign up to the project:

picitforward@gmail.com

User name
real name
address
willing to buy a camera (you'll be at the start of the route)
willing to print (and you'll be at the end)





in the subject put pic it forward, then put your threadless user name, this will make it easier for to work out who is who later


But failing that I’m looking for members that are willing to take part in more than one route, if your interested post in the blog.

On a slightly more positive note were considering (shakethesheets and I) are considering running a longer route. This camera would travel to a lot more places and in theory get a wider Varity of shots but because of the nature of the project and the problems we’ve had in the past this would only be open to experienced members of the group and reasonably active bloggers. We need people we can get in contact with easily.



Pic it forward sign up now