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Please check out this article on the British food industry with pictures contributed by myself. Here. 
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OK OK, I dont actually mean for you to go. But I hope it got your interest.!?
I want to talk about websites that you can join as a retail or freelance space for photographers where by the site grows to so many users that you or I as an individual cannot be found on it easily and therefore is lost in the sheer number of people contributing. I was recently contacted by The Pixie Group. A new site where photographers can advertise their portraiture/ wedding and other photography services etc. The fastest & easiest way to find the perfect photographer for you! I was contacted directly on LinkedIn by the founder wanting to add all photographers to the site so that we could get work based on our professional skills. Fair enough I thought but then after thinking about it, I realised that this isnt the best option for anyone to get regular work and is actually a negative net result at the end of the day. The problem I find with sites like this and others such as the retail Redbubble where you can add art and have mugs etc made or fine art america where you can get prints made etc even stock photo sites like Shutterstock is that the client base gets so big that an individual gets lost in the sheer number of people offering things on the site so the chances of anyone actually selling things or getting the commission gets smaller the more people join the site. So in theory joining a site and the site itself being successful has the net result of me getting less business in the long term. For example, if I advertise as a portrait photographer and today there are 10 adverts for other competent photographers but in 3 months there are 300 adverts, my chances are clearly much smaller in being discovered. As the site grows and I advertise for work, even though I may be better value, nearer to the client or have a better output at the end, the site wouldn't promote me to someone looking, you would just be a passive passenger in a list and as long as the client gets a portrait photographer, the website would get a processing fee and the 299 others who are equally or arguably better, get no work.... If the business model was revised to match clients and suggest matches based on profiles that would possibly be a better solution. The adverts I've looked at for photographers already listed and the profiles I've seen are vague and dont sell the person very well and if I were a client were looking I wouldn't be too impressed by the descriptions. But if I were the client, how long would I want to spend sifting through vague, badly written profiles until I found someone who looked like they would fit the bill? It honestly looks to me like this particular site is happy to take anyone regardless of whether they are any good or not and their profile sells them or not and the client may not get the best person for the job as a result. So ultimately these sites are not in the interest of anyone contributing to then and only serve to make money for the service provider masking the real intention and conning the photographer that the site is for them. Best stay well clear.  “We define the most important moments of our lives by the songs that we are playing at the time”
So for an article written from a photography point of view, why would I start it with a quote relating to music? Well I think that photography and music are intrinsically linked in our subconscious to invoke memories and passions lost in the sands of time but on the photography side of things this might not be such an obvious point. Let me explain. If like me, like the vast majority of you reading this, you have been listening to music most of your life. We cant escape it, we even embrace it daily. Now, try this as a thought experiment. Think of a tune you liked in the past. Lets say the song was your first wedding dance. The radio is on in the car and the song comes on. You are instantly taken back to that day when you and your partner took to the dance floor and proudly (if not slightly embarrassingly) danced to your favorite tune. That song has defined a moment in your life that will be forever linked to that tune. Listening to music that was played during a significant life event many years ago can trigger a deeply nostalgic emotional experience. The feeling is not in the music, but in what it reminds us of. The power of music to evoke reminiscing is shown in the movie Casablanca, where Rick forbids his bar pianist Sam ever to play “As Time Goes By,” because of the unbearable feelings of sadness and loss recalled by the song. Over the decades I have worn out tapes, bought CD’s, lost CD’s got MP3’s and gone through all sorts of various ways of listening to my favorite tunes. Led Zeppelins ‘Stairway to Heaven’ defines the end of my school days visiting North Wales. The Beatles ‘Sgt. Pepper’ album reminds me of my cool drama teacher at school who made us tapes to listen to and lent us 7” vinyl of stuff that we must get into. I could go on but hopefully you get the idea. These tunes are as important as the point in time that they define as they allow the mind to see those moments more clearly than if I tried to just reminisce from memory. There’s something about what the music is doing that shapes my memory in a specific way so that each time I hear the tune I can relive that memory. This is the power of music. It triggers hopefully wonderful memories and can be as good as being there again. So now try to think about the above points in a visual context. Photography is equally as powerful a thing in my opinion and I hope you agree. Recently in my garage I came across an old box of printed photos still in their original retail developer envelopes that you used to pick them up in back in the day before digital. Super Snaps or Max Speilman were 2 that I obviously used.! After a good hour of looking through them, I realised that these are some important moments in my life captured on photographic paper. Equally as vulnerable as the tapes or CD’s of the past, these memories are fragile in the physical form that I find them in but in my mind a more permanent record is held somewhere. People in them who have grown up. People who are no longer with us are there and so on, but instantly im transported there with them in that time. The emotions were there, the conversations, the good times all were brought back from a single image. That’s what pictures can do just as well as music, they allow the mind to almost time travel to another space another moment that can never been visited again. So as a photographer I feel it is my aim somehow to create future memories and emotions for me as a viewer but also for you. Ansel Adams was a musician as well as a photographer and arguably more well known for the latter and my ambition is to have someone look at one of my photographs, perhaps one that hangs on their wall and have a memory of the place they were or a time that was significant to them when they bought it or the event that the picture invokes. I guess I’ll never know that for sure unless I get a social media post from someone but the feelings that we can create from being out in a landscape or indoors shooting a portrait of family will buy me future memories. So hopefully you as a photographer or musician or both may read this and have a new realisation that emotion is an element of your work that you may not have appreciated or considered is happening with your photography pr music and hopefully you will consider that in future shots and compositions and the memories you can make.  So lately I've been trying my hand at shooting images specifically for stock photography. Doing this type of photography opens endless possibilities as to what you can shoot and I highly recommend any photographer uploading work to these sites as a small stream of income comes in handy. Stock images are all around us every day and used by a lot of big companies like for the BBC news app on my phone for example. Companies like that probably have a lot of photographers on their books but sometimes when a story needs an image, more and more people today are turning to the stock images sites for an easily grab-able image that they may not have the time to compose and shoot themselves. I like to try to use natural light as much as possible, so recently I decided to try to shoot some images with a gambling/poker theme. Luckily where I live has some amazing light coming through the rear doors that are south facing. So in a morning this time of year my kitchen is bathed in lovely spring morning sunshine and I'd be crazy not to use this to my advantage.
So out came the cards, the poker chips, dice and even a few tenners all on a little green foot stool that we have acing as the cloth for a poker table and of course the camera. I also invested in some thick art paper at around 240gsm which gives a really nice grain texture to the background from the paper to use on some images and my '4 Aces' shot is an example of that. (Below) I set up the tripod and started experimenting with different angles. At around 45 degrees I could get some interesting DOF changes and focus only on specific parts of the image such as the Queens head on the money. I mostly used my 75-300mm lens as this allows an almost macro look to the shots but I also experimented with my 28-80mm lens to give some variation to the shots and the tripod down at a lower setting. There are some interesting combinations of shot that worked and the Queen of Hearts with the Queen on the £10 matched well. (also below)  Playing with partial shadow and full sunlight I managed to get around 60 images of all kinds of card/chip variations. Once in Lightroom I can then add many other styles and colour changes if I want to to mix it up a little but definitely check for dust spots and straightness or just use minimal editing as with the set up as I had it, the shot is pretty good as it gets into the camera anyway.
So if you are looking for a stock image to do with poker or gambling then look out for some of my images on Getty, iStock and Shutterstock now. You can link to them here.     If like me you have found it difficult to get your signature watermark along the bottom of your prints by using one of the online print manufacturers then read this blog that will tell you how you can achieve it in Lightroom 5's develop module. So I was contacting the main print manufacturers here in the UK about getting the watermark in the border surrounding my pictures. I assumed that some of the print companies would allow a photo to be uploaded, you choose a border size and add your logo all online and hey presto, a glossy print will be complete. Once I started looking into this I realised that its not possible, at least with the 2-3 companies that I spoke to recently. One guy suggested using the print module in Lightroom as a solution then upload the bordered/watermarked version to them then they print that. After a bit YouTubing and experimenting with my version of Lightroom 5 in the print module I was still getting frustrated with the lack of exact customisation that I was looking for in my prints. I decided to see if there was an alternative. So I went back to the develop module and started to play around with the lens correction section and manual mode that I had used on a print I did recently when I was trying to make a geometric building bend..  In the lens correction section you will find a slider called scale. Pulling the slider to the left began to reveal a white border around the picture effectively reducing the scale of the main image within the screen size. Here it is exaggerated.  In conjunction with the crop tool, you can move the image around and pull in the border sizes to suit your particular image. Once you are happy with the border size that you are aiming for simply begin to export the picture and under the watermark section, tick the box and choose edit watermark from the menu. You will need a .png signature ideally which is transparent and resize-able and position this in the lower larger margin section you have created. Choose the size and opacity to suit.  Once this is set, save the watermark and continue to export the picture. You will now have a watermarked signature in a white border.  Hope you have found this useful and please follow me on Twitter @mikemolloyphoto
 Light is the single most important thing that photographers need to understand and how much of it to let in your camera is essential for good photography and getting a great image. But given this, I would say light is closely followed by getting the sharpness, focus and clarity in the image as the next most important thing to get right. In my pursuit of trying to capture birds its been the single most frustrating thing to look at in the edit suite at the end of a shoot. The bird you have spent minutes, hours even several days following in the case of a local Kingfisher, to try to get that perfect shot can be spoiled by the image not being perfectly sharp. Understanding the basic settings of your camera can be key to getting successful action or still bird shots. To begin with, knowing a birds behavior and having a feel for the environment you are in are hugely important for getting that perfect shot of your subject in focus and lit so that the image is properly exposed. All birds behave differently. Some will flee at the sight of you others may look at you curiously and potentially see you as a food source. Others will just go about their business high above you. So your proximity to the bird during its behavior can be the biggest benefit to the type of shot you want. Too close and the bird may scare but also the bird may suddenly spread its wings in readiness for flight and a closely cropped image because you’re too close may cut off some of the wing. You may need to back off a little in your proximity so the image has room to breathe. Only in post production edits will you find that in the 10 shots you managed to get of the Swan taking off, the one that is sharply in focus is the one with half a wing missing. So understand the behavior and take time to observe it and judge through experience where its best to locate yourself to give you a framed shot that will work for the location you are in. I have spent many thousands of hours doing photography and the list of things I have photographed is large. With landscapes for example, the subject conveniently stays in the same place for long periods in order for me to get the shot I want. I can take my time getting the right lens fitted, focus on a spot that I want to highlight, go to live view on my camera screen, select manual focus and zoom in so that the image is pin sharp on my display. All this while the camera is resting on a steady tripod and using a timer or trigger to release the shutter that removes all movement. As I first began photographing birds, I quickly realised most of that technique was being thrown out of the window! When I get to the location I’m shooting in I may not have an idea where the bird is going to be initially, will it be near or far so what lens should I attach. Is the bird going to flee when it sees me so if I do manage to get a shot, are my settings correct on the camera so that the light that reaches the sensor is ample and the shutter has opened and closed fast enough that my hand movement wont be picked up by the camera. Most birds in flight or their sudden movement will need around 1/1000th sec shutter speed to freeze their movements sufficiently. This needs to be pretty quick to avoid any possible camera shake or blur in the image. Remember I’m not going to be using a tripod as I don’t know where the bird may be. Waiting in a hide maybe one exception to this as there is a small window of direction where you know the birds will visible and using a tripod can be an option here. Some camera set ups allow a mono pod to be attached which can also greatly help reduce movement in all situations. At around a 1000th second there’s not much light being let into the camera so in order to overcome this I need to make the aperture wide enough to let some more in. The f number on a camera will allow me to dictate the width at which the lens opens to let the light through for our fraction of a second. There’s always a trade off between movement, light and exposure. This is the second thing to remember when in location. Your settings. Once you have seen the bird then you’ll want to move in closer so ensure the camera is on, an exposure setting is chosen and you are in a position to take the shot. The last thing you want to be doing is adjusting settings as you approach the subject as your movement may frighten the bird. If the bird looks frightened remain still until the bird thinks the threat has gone. Move towards the bird and begin to take shots and the bird will get used to the sound of the shutter. But remember to always check if your position is the right place for you to be. Use auto focus at first and as you take a few frames, quickly look at the display on the camera to see if there is too much or too little light being let in through the lens. This is where your knowledge of your equipment comes in. The more shots you take in as many environments as possible and learning the behavior of animals as I mentioned earlier is key to being able to adjust settings live in the field to get the shot you want. The last thing you want to be doing is reaching for the instruction manual as to how to speed up the shutter speed. The moment will be lost. Adjust the settings based on what the screen is showing you. Viewing through the viewfinder will provide you with information based on what the camera can see. To tackle the issue of sharpness and focus or lack of it in some cases, these are my recommendations. Start with auto focus and have the dots on your viewfinder light up where the subject is as you half press the shutter. This can in a lot of cases be the best option for focusing, but in my experience the camera doesn’t know where or what the object is that you are looking to capture.  This shot of a Grey Heron in the reeds for example looks amazing, (see a larger version here) but the only thing that auto focus may see are the reeds in front of the Heron making the bird blurry in the background and that isn’t going to look good. This is where manual focus (MF) comes in. Click the switch on the lens to MF and turn the front of the lens until you can see the bird clearly in the viewfinder this will make the reeds in front then become out of focus. Start to shoot the image. There is no problem in taking 5, 10 even 20 images of the same shot, micro adjusting the lens as you shoot each one. I really dislike the term spray and pray. This is where some photographers have to take 50 shots and pray 1 will come out right and some form of photographic derision extends from this in some quarters. Yes that might be true but 45 may also come out right and have the bird in different actions. Using the burst mode on your camera can help in the following ways. First, when you press the shutter button with your finger, it generates camera shake. When you use burst mode, however, you only press the shutter button at the beginning of your image sequence. This means that later photographs are taken with very little camera shake because the shutter button is not actually pressed just before the image is captured. Second, when you shoot in burst mode, the mirror doesn’t cause extra vibrations. You see, many cameras (DSLRs) have mirrors in front of the sensor. When the shutter button is pressed, the mirror flips up, briefly exposing the sensor to light to capture the image. When the mirror flips up, this causes small vibrations throughout the camera, another form of camera shake. Yet when you activate burst mode, the mirror only flips up only at the beginning of the burst. The later shots aren’t affected by the vibrations caused by the mirror and as a consequence, they are sharper. It can only be a win win in my eyes. So lets take a moment then to consider the focal length of the lens that you are using. You are going to need around 200 - 800mm to be in with a chance of getting a good shot in the wild and even on a bird feeder. You may get away with something lower if you are lucky enough to be at an aviary for example or bird sanctuary that have animals close by. But an extra investment maybe needed to get a longer lens if you want to try to get into the shot without the bird seeing you. OK to continue, try swapping from Auto Focus (AF) to manual (MF) as you shoot and see if this can help get the shot. But remember to not make sudden movements and to slow down your approach to the situation. Each shot situation will need a quick assessment of the conditions and the reaction the camera is having through the view finder. Again being familiar with your cameras settings and knowing where exposure compensation buttons are for example is essential in this situation If you are using a DSLR type of camera try choosing the mode that allows the shutter speed adjustment. This then allows the edit wheel to click between your thousandths of a second stops and this may influence the light and shot you are after. Once in the edit suite you will then know which one has worked for you. At the end of the day you could always hang a bird feeder in your garden, sit with a window open and a cup of tea and shoot whatever comes along but there can be no substitute for getting out there and trying it in the field. Getting a shot of a duck on a quiet lake is very different from shooting diving gannets from a boat so gaining as much experience as you can in as many situations as you can manage is essential to good bird photography. If nothing else it always going to be a life enriching experience that can only be gained by being in nature. Check out some other birds and animal shots of mine here. Canon EOS R - Canon’s first full-frame mirrorless camera with an all-new EOS RF lens mount! Just managed to watch the live feed from Maui from Scott Kelby on the new products just announced. The EOS R is available to pre-order from 12th September 2018 and available to purchase from 9th October 2018. The breakdown of pricing is as follows:
 Basics so far... Two new EF lenses - MUCH lighter than ever before - the lightest big lenses on the planet! Whoo Hoo!! (said every sports and wildlife photographer). Canon's Elliott Peck - says you're not switching to the RF-mount and Mirrorless - you're adding it to what you're already using, because of its support for the EF lenses you already have (using their adapter). Four new lenses for this new RF mount for Mirrorless. 35mm f/2 IS UM Canon say.. "The new full-frame mirrorless EOS R camera provides gorgeous results, with four RF lenses re-imagining Canon optics and three optional Mount Adapters helping to ensure you can bring your EF and EF-S lenses along. Advanced features and compact designs, all in the brand-new EOS R system that’s designed to take today’s visual storytellers into tomorrow." "Marking a new chapter in the history of EOS, the EOS R system is built for imagemakers who demand high-performance capture, a full-frame sensor and excellent ergonomics. A 54mm diameter lens mount enables RF lenses to have large rear elements, while a mirrorless design brings them closer to the sensor for bright, sharp and compact lens designs. A 12 pin electronic connection delivers fast communication between the camera and the lens, facilitating a versatile and powerful system. Plus, with a variety of mount adapter options, it’s easy to incorporate your EOS R system into an EOS system and expand your creative opportunities. A 12 pin connection between the camera and lens means communication at a higher speed with larger amounts of data transfer, enabling incredibly fast AF, high IS and image optimization. It’s a system designed to expedite operations that’s ready for future expansions. 0.3 Megapixel CMOS sensor that captures gorgeous images, to a Dual Pixel CMOS AF system for fast and accurate autofocus, to impressive 4K video recording capabilities. All this comes in a compact and intuitive design that's compatible with RF, EF* and EF-S* lenses, opening a world of creative possibilities. Ready to capture any number of subjects in many different environments, the EOS R is primed to deliver the stunning photos and videos that photographers, moviemakers and any visual storytellers need to make their stories fly." "Mount adapters deliver seamless connections between the EOS R camera and EF and EF-S lenses with all functions intact. Offering L series level weather and dust sealing, they are even compatible with EF extenders like the Extender EF 1.4x III to extend your camera’s optical reach. With an entire arsenal of EF and EF-S lenses at your disposal, these mount adapters ensure endless creative possibilities for the EOS R camera. MOUNT ADAPTERS EF-EOS R Left to right MOUNT ADAPTER EF-EOS R Lightweight and compact, the Mount Adapter EF-EOS R connects EF and EF-S lenses to the EOS R camera, exponentially expanding the list of compatible lenses. CONTROL RING MOUNT ADAPTER EF-EOS R The Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R adds a control ring like those found on RF lenses, providing the same level of control to your EF and EF-S lenses and supporting the same setting configuration regardless of lens. DROP-IN FILTER MOUNT ADAPTER EF-EOS R The Drop-in Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R enables compatibility with EF and EF-S lenses and includes drop-in filter capability for use with circular polarizing filters or variable ND filters. This enhancement enables compatibility with numerous lenses regardless of their front diameter, and makes filter use possible with lenses like the ultra wide EF 11–24mm f/4L USM lens or the tilt-shift TS-E 17mm f/4L lens which cannot accept a filter on the front. The EOS R camera features a 35mm full-frame CMOS sensor with approx. 30.3 effective megapixels for stunning results with incredible detail and clarity, even in low-light situations. It’s powered by the DIGIC 8 Image Processor, which enables an expansive ISO range, enhances Image Stabilization and turbocharges operations across the board for outstanding image quality and impressive performance. The EOS R camera has a standard ISO sensitivity range of 100–40000 for stills and 100–25600 for video (100–12800 for 4K video shooting). Combined with the EOS R camera’s remarkable low-light AF performance, still and video shooting is possible even in dark situations in a variety of places and occasions. Touch and Drag AF makes it fast and easy to select a focus point without taking your eye away from the viewfinder. Using the Touchscreen LCD, it’s as simple as pointing to the desired area of focus. The chosen AF point is then displayed in the camera’s EVF for quick confirmation. The EOS R camera features an expanded range of selectable AF modes to adapt to specific situations and subjects. For example, with Eye Detection AF, when the EOS R detects a human face, it automatically uses the subject’s eye as the autofocus point and maintains focus as the subject moves through the image frame. The EOS R camera offers advanced recording features such as 4K at 29.97 fps, Full HD at 59.94 fps and HD at 119.9 fps. Helpful functions include distortion correction during recording and Movie Digital IS. Additionally, video can be recorded during still photo shooting by simply pressing the Movie Shooting button. Canon site for more info here.  The DJI Mavic 2 Pro edition is one of the most powerful consumer drones on the market. Reaching speeds up to 45mph, and a class topping battery life of 31 minutes, the Mavic 2 Pro opens the door to creative possibilities that were previously impossible. The camera on-board is made by Hasselblad with a 1" CMOS sensor and F2.8 EQV 28mm lens that captures stunning 4K video and 12MP images.
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