When his nephew took over the company in the 1850s, he looked for way to develop the efficiency of the production process and bought up two plots of land alongside the river in the small town of Saint-Imier, in the Chasseral region of the Bernese Jura mountains. The piece of land was called “Les Longines”, which was adopted as the name of the company. Since the early part of the 20th century, Longines has become synonymous with timekeeping in the sports world and for measuring the accuracy of world records; not least, the first non-stop solo crossing of the North Atlantic in 1927 by Charles Lindbergh.

Pictured:
Bank Of Scotland Special Award (undated); Scotland in Bloom Premier Award 1997; Britain in Bloom Winner 1998; Premiere Award Reserve Scotland 1999; Scotland in Bloom Winner 1999; World in Bloom Winner 1999; Nations in Bloom Finalist 2000; Scotland in Bloom Winner 2000; Permanent Landscaping 2001; Scotland in Bloom Winner 2001; Cleanliness Award 2002; R.H.S. Gold Medal 2002; R.H.S. Outstanding Contribution 2002; Scotland in Bloom Winner 2002; A.I.P.H. Award for Horticulture 2003; B.S.I.B 2004 Horticultural Excellence; Britain in Bloom Winner 2004; Scotland in Bloom Premier Award 2004; Britain in Bloom Winner 2006; R.H.S. Gold Medal 2006; Scotland in Bloom Winner 2006.

The brief for this shot, of a group of mature students who had received their awards earlier in the evening, was to gather them together between the cocktails after the award ceremony and before they all headed for transport to the evening event. Using the entrance hall to the university building was a given, so the opportunities for alternative shots were non-existent. I was photographing during the afternoon and evening prior to and after this shot, so I didn’t have much prep time at all.

My only main goal for group shots is to ensure that the group is evenly lit, that everyone’s face is visible, and that the photo is in focus. It’s very difficult to achive much more than that in such a short space of time. For this shot, I had a total of 20 minutes to set up the environment, light it, get everyone organized and in position, and take the shots. Hence the simple lighting setup: two big white umbrellas containing flash guns to the left and right of the camera, set to manual exposure and using green gels to match the ambient fluorescent lights.

Then dial in an appropriate exposure to ensure that the ambient light (in the background of the shot) was still visible: without this, the photo would’ve been of a flash-lit group in a huge dark cavern. As the ambient light was so dim, and there was too little time to put a set of secondary lights around the room to illuminate the entry hall, a high ISO (800) combined with a low shutter speed (1/20 at f/5.6) and a steady hand was necessary: not ideal, but good enough for the circumstances. I would also have aimed to have raised the umbrellas higher to eliminate the shadows better, but time and equipment meant that I needed to stick with the end result seen here.

Once the lighting was sorted out, the more difficult part of the shot came. Coralling people in a group shot like this – particularly mid-celebration – is like herding schoolchildren. You have to get their attention quickly, by speaking loudly and clearly. Look at individuals and speak to them directly: if there’s someone talking, interrupt them politely but firmly, and only start asking the group to do what you need when you have everyone’s attention. Once you have the group’s attention – which is often easier if you are excessively friendly and smiling – then ensure that you look at every face in the crowd to ensure that they’re not hidden behind someone else. Try and keep people of similar height together: in this instance, I asked the taller people to stand around the sides of the group, to echo the amphitheatrical surroundings.

Once you have everyone in position, tell them what you need them to do: be smiling or not, look into the camera or not, according to the photograph. Always warn the group of the precise moment when you’re pressing the button: “three, two, one” always helps! If you do this, the chance that everyone will have their eyes open and will be looking at you at the right moment will be higher. However, you’ll have to get used to the idea of missing out on perfection: this was the best of 10 shots and there are still four people amongst the group of 26 who aren’t looking at the camera.

A final word of advice: try not to have someone next to you who is co-organizing the group when you’re taking the photograph. A surprising number of people will look at this second person for reassurance (or just because they know them) instead of looking into the camera. People who are less self-assured will seek out a reassuring face instead of concentrating on the photographer, which will spoil the details of the photo.

On seeing them crossing the road a little way ahead of us, we parked up quietly and watched them watching us through the snowfall. A truly wonderful experience.

In the example of the image accompanying this blog post, one would expect that a smaller aperture like f/22 would be the right one to use; ensuring that everything is sharp, detailed and in focus from the snow in the foreground to the mountains in the distance. However, I decided to take a range of shots between f/4.5 (the widest possible using the Sigma 10-20mm at the zoom level I chose) and f/25 (the smallest aperture). As you can see from the following comparison, which shows a crop at 100% of the same view photographed using f/5.6 and f/25, there is a very wide difference in sharpness.

Demonstration of the sharpness issues between f/5.6 and f/25

My test has shown that for the Sigma 10-20mm EX DC HSM used here, an aperture of between f/4 and f/8 produces the best results. Combined with the extreme wide-angle view, and consequent exaggerated depth of field, this only presents a problem when I need to gain an unusually larger depth of field in a landscape. (For example a foreground rock a couple of metres away and a distant mountain range.)

I’d recommend that if you’re using an SLR – whether digital or not – you do the same tests with each of your lenses in turn. If image sharpness is important to you, try to use the optimal aperture for that lens whenever you can.

When I started my current job as Technical Manager of !frappant, one of the first tasks we discussed was the long-overdue relaunch of the company website. Frappant is the web division of Satzart AG and stands alongside Satzart Prepress, !flabs and book4you as part of a single company covering all the bases in creative development. The new website was to reflect that; the design coming from the Prepress division to me, where I would again bend and shape WordPress to create the new company site. Where each division of the company had presented itself individually, each division would be visibly part of the whole company, promoting each of the other divisions and presenting itself under the new online company identity. The project was slotted in amongst our client projects this year and we went online with the new website around a week ago.

From a technical point of view, design decisions such as typography and layout for the new website had already been made. That meant I had free hand to concentrate on the conversion of the layout into a functional website. My primary goal – aside from producing the website to match the high hopes of the management team – was spurred on by the fact that our agency is a creative one: that our portfolio had a place online which showed our best work in a way which would in itself be a portfolio work.

I’ve written about responsive design before and am a strong believer in the principle that if the project allows for it, every website we produce must be viewable on the widest range of devices possible. Back in 2010, when I produced my own portfolio website in preparation for job interviews, I made my first flexible website. Flexible in the way that the layout adjusted itself automatically to be viewed in an optimal way on a range of devices: from the small screens of iPhone and Android smartphones to the iPad and on up to the desktop web browser. It’s easy to say, as a web agency, that you have a good basis of experience of producing mobile solutions as part of a web portfolio, but a working example is the best piece of portfolio work one can show.

I’m not going to go into all of the technical details here, as I’ll be writing all night and you’ll doze off long before I’ve finished! Suffice it to say that the single version of the website is not just the regular desktop version, but also the iPad version and the smartphone version in one. For an excellent introduction to the techniques used to create the responsive layout, check out the book “Responsive Design” in the A Book Apart online bookstore.

The attendees were all experienced photographers so we worked together to try and achieve images which each of the attendees had wanted to work on, whether rim lighting or freezing movement. Thanks to all of those who attended, in particular Sara for being our model for the day. There’s more information about my photographic training courses here.

Since 1978 the former monastery has been in the possession of the Hanns Seidel Foundation, an organisation closely associated with the political party the CSU in Bavaria, and is used as a conference centre.

On 5th April 1945, four German soldiers were sentenced in this courtyard of the former jail before a court-martial on suspicion of desertion, and executed by firing squad. Six days later, the Americans arrived in Ebern.

Karl Bojaworsky (49)
Friedrich Fleischer (42)
Otto Konstanzer (43)
Alfred Sadlo (24)

Right is a temporal thing, which must end in the long run. Conscience is eternal and never dies.

Adobe (and previously Macromedia), who developed the browser plugin Flash, have done an admirable job over the past fourteen years or so to create software for a rich and useful multimedia environment, without which cross-browser and ubiquitous solutions for playing video and games wouldn’t've been so easily possible.

Microsoft followed suit with a fairly huge delay and launched Silverlight as the latest in their lengthy list of proprietary pieces of software. I have far less experience of Silverlight and as a primarily website- and web-app-based developer, I have had next to no need to delve into the complex code required to create solutions with either Silverlight or Flash. I have brushed up on enough ActionScript to understand Flash basics, for the rare instances when I’ve needed to update legacy tools for existing clients, but that’s about it.

Flash has been pre-installed on modern computers for some years now, but this bit of “plugin” software has always had its problems; not just with an endless number of release versions, as bugs and problems have been fixed, but also patchy in its level of cross-platform support and optimal use of desktop PC memory. (I know this well, as a long-term Mac user.) Silverlight has had similar problems and I’ve given up installing it on my computers, as the hassle of the software outweighs any benefit I might gain from the experience.

Adobe have today announced their decision to drop their plans for a version of Flash which will run on mobile devices, and Microsoft are also reputed to be planning the phasing-out of Silverlight after the next version. This comes after a long period of wrangling and mud-slinging, in particular around the lack of acceptance of Flash by Apple for its mobile devices. The basis of the decision was concisely summarized in an article posted to the Apple website in 2010. Steve Jobs wrote masterfully about how Apple saw the future of mobile web development without proprietary plugins. He explained, long before any other major players did, why the standard of HTML5 (as defined by those who have developed the ultimate front-end core scripting language of the web) is the way forward.

By taking the core units of HTML for page structure, CSS for layout, Javascript for interaction and common video and media encoding standards for web implementation, the future of the technical backbone of the web as I hope to see it will be simplified. My internet experience began when Microsoft and Netscape were kicking lumps out of each other for dominance in the online world. Today, a little over fifteen years later, I can finally and realistically see that the companies who provide the browsing experience you use every day are working in your favour and actually, indirectly, working together to improve the core of the online world.

After more than fifteen years, the king geeks are finally listening to the guys who wrote the rule book. Whilst Flash in combination with AIR continues to be a viable solution for enclosed, device-specific apps, the future of web development is standards-based. Statistics from 2010 show that there are already more mobile internet browsing devices being sold than non-mobile versions. This means that the touchscreen as a means of website interaction together with optimized versions of websites for small screens and low bandwidth requirements are already key goals. That’s why I and the team I work with primarily implement a Mobile First, cross-browser, cross-platform and almost exclusively plugin-free concept for every project at the concept phase.

Adherance to a set of guidelines which are there to make sure that everyone’s life is improved makes things easier: from a user’s point of view because bugs and incompatibilities are reduced. From a developer’s point of view, the requirement to jump through hoops and create multiple versions of online solutions to suit manufacturer-specific specialities or workarounds will be a thing of the past.

If you’re a web developer, checking that you use the standards of the web and valid code will make your life infinitely easier. By planning now for a standards-based future and focusing on HTML5 and its associated technologies, you’ll be building for the future: not just saving yourself time, but also making sure that the work you do can be completed efficiently and with less fuss. As any developer knows, this is the most valuable aspect of any plan for the future in their eyes.