holy crap New York City Municipal Archives Online Gallery has released 870,000 photos of new york city dating back to the mid-1800s. Its kind of crazy, some are photos of buildings (Every New York City building in the mid-1980s can be viewed in this collection) but there’s also a lot of crime scene photos its just insane/awesome. 
Daniel Lawrance was super awesome and did a write up of the photos he took for the travelling camera club, I love hearing about the moments that led to these photos, Thanks Dan!
22 – Mawson Lakes, South Australia
The theme for this route was to “Summer”, but on the other side of the world here we were in the middle of Winter.
The day I wanted to start the route it was pouring with rain, so I thought I’d buy a “water proof” camera. Ha ha.
I was out at the Mawson Lakes campus of UniSA (University of South Austalia) and it had rained so much that the roads were flooded. The clouds parted just long enough for me to take this shot.
21 – Adelaide, South Australia
In the Summer time these trees would be bright and full of leaves and flowers. Today though, it’s all gloom and doom.
Although the water damage looks like stars in the night sky, this shot was taken in the middle of the day with sun directly behind the tree.
20 – Adelaide, South Australia
This was a shot of some angry, stormy clouds… but I guess they must have just had a case of the measles.
19 – Adelaide, South Australia
The Night Train Theatre Restaurant sign was an Adelaide icon, which had adorned the West End skyline for as long as anyone can remember.
I just had to take this shot which looked to me like a vampire sizzling in the sun. Little did I know that this was an omen of the theatre’s demise, and within a week of taking this shot the sign was ripped down and replaced with a god-awful community mural. We miss you buddy!
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Want to see the rest of the route? click on the thumbnails to go to the larger pics!
Which photo did you like the best? tell us on Facebook! and twitter ! (Or dont)
11 by travelling camera club on Flickr.
Show us your photos: Brandon Bertram!
Sup?
I’m running a new section called show us your Photos where I post all of your amazing work on the blog! If you’d like your work to get featured head over to the club house (Our messageboard), sign up and start posting:
Without further ado heres the photography from the awesome Brandon Bertram! from Canada!
Here are some pics I took with a disposable at the Winnipeg Folk Fest last summer…
It involved a lot of sitting around in the sun…
smoking cigarettes…
lying in the grass…
and eating.
Don’t forget to be awesome.
Show us your stuff 2
A couple of days ago I asked members of the site and the forum to post their creative out pourings (for some strange reason I get the feeling a lot of us are creative) wether its photography, art, film or music.
I’m going to be running a new section called show us your stuff where I post all of your amazing work! if you’d like your work to get featured head over to the club house (Our messageboard), sign up and start posting
Heres the photography from the awesome Daniel Hironaka from Hawaii!
“Well, I’m not really an accomplished photographer or anything. The most I know about taking pictures is the pointing and the clicking. Regardless of my lack of skill, I like taking pictures of moments and friends on my Lomo Fisheye, Instax Cheki, and Kodak black-and-white disposable. These are amongst my favorites.”
On our way towards the highest peaks on Oahu’s majestic Ko’olau range: Konahuanui
Bread mask picture taken at a camping ground on the west side of Oahu’s north shore
Fisheye taken at the same camping ground a year prior
Taken en route towards Maunawili waterfall (the waterfall in Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” music video)
On our way back to civilization from daring jumps from the waterfall
From Challenge, California’s beautiful Camp Woodleaf
Ending a beach session at Waikiki beach
Ambushing my friend with a fisheye closeup before playing hide-and-seek at the local Wal-Mart
Single Use Cameras 101: how to take Bad ass(MF) photos every time.
Film is amazing and unpredictable and produces images that digital simply can’t but it’s also challenging: you have limited number photos, you can’t review them and you can’t delete them if you get it wrong and you’ve wasted a shot.
Single Use cameras are even more limited than most film cameras but understanding how they work is a sure fire way to help you get the best shot possible
So without further ado, the travelling camera club presents Single Use cameras 101: how to take Bad ass(MF) photos every time.
Using the camera
Single use 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 Single Use camera uses a fixed focus lens, its focusing distances is roughly 4 or 5 feet away from you’re subject to infinity.
With a Single Use camera you can’t 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 can’t check the photos.
So what does this mean?
Well Single Use 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.
Single Use cameras aren’t good at close ups!
Understanding film
Photographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive chemicals, when the emulsion is sufficiently exposed to light, it forms an image, made up of the visible light, meaning the thing you took a photo of.
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.
e.g ISO 100 or 200 aren’t very sensitive to light meaning it takes a very long time for the film to absorb the light and capture the image. The higher the film speed, e.g 400, 800, 1600 or 3200 the quicker it absorbs the light.
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.
Low ISO speeds are really great for using in conditions where there’s a lot of light (e.g a summers day) because you can still use a high shutter speed and capture images that aren’t over exposed (lots of white areas on a photo), but their bad in low light conditions such as night clubs, hell they’d probably struggle in a house at night with the lights on.
The higher the ISO speed the better the camera is at taking a photo in low light conditions, 1600 and 3200 being the best.
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 you’re 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 lenses.
Try to take photos during the day, in environments with a lot of light or use the flash, you don’t want your photos to look like this:
Understanding shutter speeds
Shutter speed is term used to define exposure time meaning how long a roll of film is allowed to absorb light, the longer the shutter is open the more light the camera lets in.
A fast shutter speed such as 1/1000 second is really good for taking action shots such as snowboarding because the photo is taken so quickly the person does not blur.
However fast shutter speeds are really bad at capturing images in conditions where there’s not a whole lot of light, there are ways to work around this problem, such as using a higher ISO speed film but there are limits and it’s a balancing act.
Conversely slow shutter speeds are really great at taking photos in low light conditions because they give the film a lot more time to absorb the light but slight movements make the photos blurry so the subject and the camera have to stay perfectly still.
Single Use cameras shutter speeds are fixed at 1/25th of a second which is a fairly fast shutter speed, you won’t be able to do anything as extreme as an object falling but for general use it’s a fairly decent speed.
For reference this photo was taken at 1/25 of a second:
Tell us about your world!
So the travelling camera club is almost completely under way, most of the routes are completely planned and you’ll be getting the emails soon but I forgot to ask everyone to do something really important and thats:
don’t just show us your world tell us We want to know the stories behind the photos, who was in them, when you took them, the lengths you had to go to to get that great shot, why you took them, and, perhaps most importantly, tell us what they mean to you (if anything). The more you add the better!
So write a note giving a little bit of info about each photo you took, then when the photos get developed and uploaded to the site I’ll add the notes as comments under each photo!
Pictures say a thousand words but sometimes it helps to have a bit of context!
Thanks
Phil
travelling camera club route 11!
- Stephanie Gray Australia
- Eleanor Jenkins Australia
- Shannon Kaminaga Hawaii (USA)
- Chrissy Wise LA (USA)
- vania chavez Mexico
Introducing travelling camera club route 11! these super awesome people stepped up to the plate and are helping to make the project possible!
Dont Forget To Be Awesome! DFTBA
If your interested in taking part in the travelling camera club and havent signed up yet drop us an email at
travellingcameraclub@googlemail.com
In the subject, write travelling camera club sign up name your name, tell us your address, if you’d be awesome and be willing to buy a camera or if you’d be down for shipping internationally.
Please note we get a lot of americans signing up, whilst thats awesome, it does mean if you live outside of the states its harder for us to make up routes that travel within your country.
North Americans, if you are signing up it would be a major help if you can post the camera internationally, I’m the last person on a route (even if I’m not taking photos I hold all the negatives and scan the photos) and unfortunately right now I’m UK based so I always need someone from North America to post it to me.
Thanks
Phil
