SNAPPY BACKDROPS!

This time around, we decided to take a look behind the scenes of photographic shooting and, not surprisingly, we found backdrops! 

Backdrops for photographs, from natural outdoors surroundings, impromptu arrangements with readily available items, to reusable pop-up backdrops of any kind and theme, may not come as convenient when you need something, let’s say, more “at hand” for a quick response. Back indoors and particularly with still photography that may require much smaller, lighter and yet versatile backdrops, we have some easy-to-use ones at SNAPPY BACKDROPS! It made obvious sense to mention them on SnapSquad!

Say Goodbye to the Same Looking Photos

Snappy Backdrops ideas for convenient to handle, carry and store 50 X 70 cm thick and durable matte paper sourced from Japan, came from the experience of posting product pictures on social media channels. After a while, all the content started looking all too similar.

Priced to be affordable, the website’s catalogue offers a wide range of attractive solid colours and creative prints. Perfect for affordable and compact photoshoot requirements, all that is needed is for the backdrop of your choice to lay flat on a surface with your own display on it, and for you to set up your lighting and CLICK! Yes, that easy!                                                                                

If like me (I am not a professional photographer), you need to keep up with the promotion of your product, those convenient and versatile backdrops will certainly add an attractive story behind your photo and will come as the right answer to keeping your audience both interested and engaged. If like me, again, you enjoy taking portraits of your product or designs but never seem to find the right spot for a background effect, these Snappy Backdrops will probably feel like heaven-sent.

Now that the scene behind the shots does not have to always be the same for lack of convenient choice, we can even have fun working on the next social media posting!

Interested, visit www.snappybackdrops.com or on Instagram @snappybackdrops

You have an old film camera that’s been in a closed cabinet for aeons now. You are still holding on to it, somehow (assuming you are not just a hoarder) perhaps for sentimental reasons: you were a member of your school photo club and you always travelled everywhere with it. It’s your dad’s camera and his pictures still fill the family albums. Whatever the reason is for that camera to still be in your possession, you’d like to do something with it other than just placing it back into a box till your next big clean-up. Still, unsettled? We have put a few ideas together for you which we hope will help you in your decision. Just to be clear, the last place for a camera to end up in the rubbish bin!

CAMERA DECO

I trust you are creative enough to find a visually satisfying way to display your vintage camera in your home. Sometimes though, any one of us could do with a little looking around for different “options”. There is, of course, the obvious shelf option, closely followed by the study desk. If you only own one camera, you could also choose to hang it, casually, from the corner of a poster?

If you happen to be so lucky as to own a few vintage cameras, you can definitely indulge in being more creative with you style, playing with materials and volumes with all sorts of shelf combinations: rustic, industrial, minimalist… horizontal, vertical… up on the wall, on the floor… across a large board displayed together with lenses… individually housed inside pigeons holes… Let’s not forget how awesome a camera looks on its tripod; I am getting carried away here, visualising a 19th-century plate camera! Sigh.                                           

Who knows, once you start displaying, your family and friends may just want to surprise you with more vintage cameras as gifts?

Camera for Sale

Displaying your old camera as part of your home decor is not your taste and you are not sentimentally attached to “things”; you’d rather sell it to buy a digital camera or simply collect a bit of cash.                                                                 

The first step for you to take is to find out the actual value of your camera. Can you expect to sell it for 50 US$ or a few whooping hundreds for a rare vintage? A few online camera trading sites such as https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/ (also the US) can put you on the right trail, and of course, you can check out auction sites such as eBay and KEH https://www.keh.com/     

Lots of people are still wary of online trading and rather deal person to person. For those, you could drop an ad. at the local photo club or shop or place one in a magazine or your local paper. Interested buyers would then be able to make an appointment to meet you and look at the equipment. To trade your camera, you could check out the internet and join photo forums and clubs. You’ll be surprised to find out how many people are looking for film cameras!

Cameras for Schools

And what if you donated your camera equipment to a school or a charity? Not only will schools that offer photography as part of their art program welcome your donation for their students but some charities who organise photo tutorials will also be thrilled to have your gear. Photography may have turned digital but students still learn to develop films and see first hand how an older camera worked. Some non-profit organisations even collect cameras to be sent all over the world. They are easy to find on Google. Who knows, you may even end up with a tax deduction?

Film Camera Renaissance

If you are a photographer, even an occasional one, chances are extremely high that you will regret selling or parting from your camera. Here is the obvious happy ending for both yourself and your vintage gear: use it! You are worried about finding films? Fear not, they are still available online. There is even an actual renaissance of film photography lead by Kodak that’s bringing back black-and-white films; there is also the Ektachrome film coming back on the market. You may not want to use a film every time you’re out to take pictures but you may find it most enjoyable during holidays, for home fun projects or while travelling? You could even refresh your memory or learn from scratch how to develop your own prints with online tutorials? Digital photography is easy and we take our computer for granted when we want to edit our shots, yet, it will feel exciting to actually see the picture your took reveal itself slowly on paper as you are holding it.

Whatever fate you decide for your film camera, displaying it in your living room or your office; donating it if luck would have it to a little kid who may one day turn out to be a Magnum star photographer; selling it or going back to using it (which you could combine with displaying it), your vintage equipment is still precious and deserves love and respect, yours or a photography lover out there. a vast range 

Sadly, with such terrible events, no-one is exempt from danger, from being injured even killed while wearing a “PRESS” armoured jacket. Since the dawn of times, there has always been a war somewhere as have natural catastrophes destroying communities but if we had to feature a particular Annus Horribilis, 2020 would be a top contender: wars (as always…), earth-quakes, cyclones or typhoons, volcanic eruptions, gigantic floods, unstoppable fires, social up-risings, just to mention a few and not last or least, the coronavirus aka COVID 19 and the American “black revolution”. 

Armed with only their camera photojournalists are always present amongst those who have lost everything, those who suffer, those who hope that pictures will spread awareness and empathy through the world and that the world will listen, react, help and change the course of their history for a better and fairer one. The purpose of this post, in all humility, it to pay tribute to the work of those reporters who risk their life by sharing with you the stories of a few (too few) brave photographers.

June 2020 – Yemen War

Nabil Hasan al-quaety was killed while driving his car in an attack by gunmen. He was an award-winning photojournalist (2016 UK Rory Peck) and AFP contributor. Sadly, he is but one of many Yemeni photographers to fall victim of a civil war that has been raging in their country since 2014. Ruply Agency reported his death as “a stark reminder of the dangers facing all journalists throughout the world for simply seeking to tell the truth and report on the horrors faced by millions of people.”

May 31^st 2020 Minneapolis and other cities in the USA - Protests

Linda Tirado, a freelance photographer covering a protest over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was hit with a rubber bullet and left permanently blind in her left eye. Linda is also a news media activist and an author who has published her memoirs: Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America.                   

A few hours after leaving the hospital, she twitted that she would continue to work. Here is a message she posted on the 31^st of May:

“I am permanently blind in my left eye, and the docs absolutely refuse to let me go back to work for they say six weeks. I’m definitely not allowed to be near smoke or gas.”

According to Linda Terado, during those demonstrations, several reporters were hit with rubber bullets (shot by the police) in the eyes and more in other parts of the body.

February 2020 – Syria War

During a Russian airstrike over Ma’arat al-Naasan on the 20^th of February. Photographer Abdul Nasser Hamdan was killed while doing his job.

January 2020 – Philippines Volcano

Erupting volcanos in some parts of the Philippines are part and parcel of life. Photographer Ezra Acayan had already covered the Mount Mayon eruption in 2018 and he had a good idea on what to expect and how to prepare himself when he rushed from his Manilla home to cover the eruption of the Taal volcano last January; or did he?

Under zero visibility Acayan drove as close to the volcano as he could to meet stranded residents left with no food or water. Equipped with a gas mask to protect his lungs and eyes from burning ashes and a giant umbrella to shelter himself and his equipment from mud rain he later recalled how challenging and probably nerve breaking it was to wipe his lenses without ruining the glass. Acayan came back from the Taal with amazing heart wrenching pictures. His though umbrella did not survive the ordeal: “My umbrella is destroyed now, but I got the pictures.”

June 2020 – Still Going on. Covid 19 in Italy

Taking on reporting and shooting what happens during a pandemic is a completely new danger to photojournalists, a never before situation, where they must constantly be on their guards to anticipate something no-one has experienced before in in their lifetime, in order to protect themselves, respect guidelines and people’s pride and privacy while working. The challenge is to work, stay safe and not bring the virus back home to the family.

While Italy was being devastated by the coronavirus, Alex Majoli, photographer for Magnum was documenting the pandemic in Italy for Vanity Fair. Majoli usually covers wars and conflicts; this time he had to be constantly aware of an invisible danger that could placate him at any time if he failed to respect a draconian discipline. While morgues were overflowing, hospitals were submerged, Majoli kept going out to the streets but also the hospitals, recording unfathomable pain but also courage, resilience and solidarity. Of his surviving the assignment he recalls his constantly sanitizing hands and equipment, throwing away a lot of things rather than reusing them and doing that systematically.

Alex Majoli is only one of many photographers who have documented with courage the pandemic in their countries.