The book Merchant Adventurers by James Evans was launched last night in London and I’m pleased to say that the book features a fabulous portrait – a painted portrait that I photographed over the summer – of the Tudor era Arctic explorer Sir Hugh Willoughby.
So if you’d like to see the portrait of the rather dashing Sir Hugh, who helped establish the first trade routes to Russia, why not buy a copy of James’ book. It’s a fascinating read.
Maps at the ready
Mobile phones have dramatically changed the way we view and take pictures. We now have the ability to capture and share images with our friends and family easily. Even photojournalists have started to embrace the phone as a imaging making tool. There is even a photographic project on this very website produced using an iPhone.
We often post images to the web, but a recent post on a friend’s website in the States put me onto a service called Printic who can deliver photographic prints to you via their iPhone app. The Printic app contains all you need to order prints direct from the camera roll of your phone. Just select the images you want, crop and edit the images to suit, select an address you wish the images to be shipped to and then pay using a credit card or paypal. Simple.
So what are the results like? Well I’ve used the service twice to have nine of my Scotland photos printed and the results have been excellent. The prints you get back are in a 3×4 inch Polaroid Instamatic type of style with a square image at the top and a holding strip at the bottom. Image quality is excellent with the tones, colours and gamma just like the original and the paper weight is similar to any normal photographic paper. The prints sizes and shape are perfect for getting prints from Hipstamatic or Instagram but if you shoot anything other than square, Printic doesn’t offer that paper size option. Hopefully more paper sizes will become available soon.
The cost of each print is $0.99 / 0,79€ and a minimum of three prints is needed for each order. I received five prints for £3.50 within five days of ordering. One nice touch is that you can send prints direct to another postal address making it simple to deliver prints to friends and family. Not only does the service have uses for producing prints for the family album, it’s also a great way of getting great quality work prints for pro photographers shooting project work.
I will certainly use the Printic service again and the great thing is you can order from where ever you are so the prints can be waiting for you when you get home. As for my prints, well I’m going to mount and frame a few of them and hang them around my editing area.
More information about Printic can be found on their website at http://printicapp.com
The Commando memorial at Spearn Bridge, Highlands
As usual with the start of a new year it means that the websites get some extra attention and have an early spring clean. I’ve already been through the main photography blog and tidied up various aspects of the site. Old links have been removed and a few design issues have been corrected. As i stated on the blog not long ago, this year i do intend to blog more after noting the rather low number of posts for 2012.
The portfolio section of this website is also in line for a few tweaks with the Speedway gallery to receive more work during the next few weeks. Last year i updated the Territorial Army gallery to include new images and produce a definitive final version of the project. It is my intention to do exactly the same for the Speedway project to complete that gallery on the website and bring the final tally of images to over forty. Other galleries will also see new work added included the recently added Scotland project that will continue this year. The gallery, which is very much a work-in-progress, will have new images added to it throughout 2013.
The final site to get updates will be the Photography Print Shop where a new sales format is to be introduced after parting with the FOTOMOTO e-commerce engine. All sales are now handled by me personally with an excellent series of professional print artwork options being made available. The winter will see me set up a simple pricing structure before adding a wider range of print finishes later in the year.
