Paul McCartney isn’t the only famous Macca in his household, his younger brother Mike is an accomplished and skilled photographer who this week unveiled his latest exhibition, Liverpool Life, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Mike McCartney stated about the exhibition:

It’s the story behind the story of that magical era.

The exhibit is already receiving excellent reviews. Combining his unique photography style with his gift for being in the right place at the right time, Mike McCartney’s work is a celebration of artists who played in Liverpool over the years. He also was on hand to take some stunning shots of his brother’s band ‘The Beatles’ as they were first starting out on the road to success in Liverpool.

Included in the exhibition are shots of such legends as Jerry Lee Lewis and the Hollies. Sadly the images of the Beatles are not included in this exhibition.

The exhibition will be running until September 21st and is part of the city’s ‘Liverpool City of Culture’ theme that is running for 2008.

When choosing your photos for printing on canvas you should always try to pick the best pictures you have. You’ll want photos that are sharp and in focus, free from dirt and scratches, devoid of red-eye and well lit; these will make for the best canvas prints.

However it doesn’t matter so much if you can’t find any photos that are quite perfect. If you have a picture that looks great and you think it will look wonderful printed on canvas, don’t discard it just because it has red-eye, or there is a small hair on the picture caused from the camera lens. In these digital times one can perform minor miracles with photo editing software, and getting your pictures ready for printing on canvas is no exception.

We can edit your pictures using our photo editing software to take out any blemishes, errors or even red-eye; ensuring that you have the best quality canvas print possible.

Remember, it’s no so much the technical quality of the photo that matters, it’s the compositional quality that’s more important. A good photo is a good photo, you can always improve minor blemishes later, you can’t improve a bad photo, even if it’s technically perfect!

When you’ve taken that special photo that you want to show off to everyone, whether it be of your children, your holiday, your pet or even of yourself, there are many different ways you give it the special treatment to make sure you present it in the best way possible.

The most common way is to blow it up to anything over a 10×8 size and have it framed. This a time honoured way of displaying your favourite photographs. Other ways include having greetings cards printed, printing it on mugs, t-shirts or even jigsaws; all of these simple little gifts can be done by most photo developers.

However the best and most regal way of displaying your best photographs is by printing your photos on canvas. This allows you to display your best pictures in your home as if they were works of art, which of course to you and your family they are; only of course they’re much cheaper than paying gallery prices for artwork!

Transforming your photos to canvas is a simple and quick process that enables you to show off your best pictures in the best way possible, plus it’s a far more interesting method than simply framing them.

If you’re looking to take better photographs that will look great when printed on canvas, you could look into the latest technique in photo editing that’s currently being used in a wide variety of different mediums.

High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR) is a brand new technique for taking stunning photographs and utilising computer graphics to improve the pictures. High dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a technique that uses a much greater range of exposures, which represents the difference between the light and the dark areas of the picture.

HDR Photography techniques have existed for the some time, and they give a better image of the real tones such as the contrast between the sunlit areas and the dark shadows.

It has existed since the 1930s and was created and developed by Charles Wyckoff. His technique was used to produce the famous photograph of a nuclear explosion in the 1940s, which was used on the cover of Life Magazine.

What was difficult to produce back then and solely the domain of the expert professional photographers is today more commonplace thanks to the popularity of digital cameras and photo editing software.

HDR is now a commonly used term within photography.

Just to show that not all exhibited photographers are professionals, an exhibition at the end of the month has been scheduled to celebrate two amateur photographers from Southampton. ‘Through the Lens’ is an exhibition of the amateur photographers Phil Green and Helen Plant. Both photographers are members of the Camera Club in their hometown of Southampton.

Usually to become a professional photographer you’ll need to complete a degree in a course such as documentary photographer or photo art, and will be required to possess at least a 2.1 or 1st, holding a Bachelor of Arts. However neither Helen nor Phil have any such qualifications, as they are both self-taught photographers. They have both been awarded the Distinction from the Photographic Alliance of Britain though.

Helen Plant talks about her passion for photography.

I am fascinated by the shapes, colours and textures of nature in close-up as well as on occasions a more abstract approach to the wider landscape.

My preference is for subtle colours and lighting and relatively simple compositions.

Phil Green’s love of taking pictures came about through his use of a traditional SLR film camera, though both Phil and Helen now use digital cameras.

Most of my photographs are of nature subjects taken within twenty miles of home. I cover my local patch with an emphasis on the welfare of my subject. This is a major factor and one of which I am fiercely proud.

When taking portrait shots outside the temptation is to leave the lighting up to Mother Nature, as after all it’s the original and the best lighting source. However that’s not necessarily the best way to light your outdoor photos. Instead, you should use a manual flash on your camera to ‘fill’ your subject with light, ensuring that you don’t lose any features to the often-harsh natural light.

Fill flash is available on all of the best digital cameras. On some cameras it is known as the ‘mode’. It’s particularly useful when taking wedding photos outdoors so that the sun doesn’t cause you to lose detail in your pictures.

When you utilise the ‘fill flash’ the camera automatically adjusts the amount of light required for the flash to compensate for the amount of light in the background of your subject. This ensures that the natural light doesn’t silhouette your subject. The outcome is a much better balanced image, and an overall more professional effect.

One thing to note though is that generally the range of the flash is no more that around ten feet, so ensure that you are not out of effective range when taking your photos.

You may not realise it but the resolution of an image is vital to the overall quality of the finished photograph. When you look at a picture on a computer screen, you’ll notice very little difference to the quality of an image that’s as low as 72 dpi when compared to an image that’s 300 dpi.

So why does it matter when they’re printed?

Dpi stands for ‘dots per inch’ and represents the number of individual dots per inch within the picture. 72 dpi is very low quality, but is as high as the Internet will work on, so when you’re looking at pictures on websites you’re merely looking at images that are 72 dpi. They look fine on the web, but if you were to print them they’d look awful.

Instead for the printed media you’ll require a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. When you’re looking to buy images from professional photography websites, you’ll tend to find that the higher quality the images, the more expensive they are to buy.

The important thing to remember is that you can easily reduce a higher quality image, but you can’t increase the quality of a low-resolution image. Therefore if you’re looking to print a photograph, particularly for a canvas print, you’ll want to use an image that is as high a resolution as possible, with a minimum of 300 dpi.

Photography has always been considered a visual medium. It’s a process by which light interacts with chemicals upon film, creating an image that can be seen when printed out onto photographic paper. It uses light to create imagery using tone and colour.

However a process of photography has just been invented that allows the blind to enjoy the beauty of photography as well. Using a new piece of software the photographic image can be traced, and then outputted with an embossed finish allowing the viewer to feel the lines of the picture in a form of Braille.

This allows the blind to enjoy photography in much the same way as everyone else, allowing them to feel the imagery with their fingers.

An exhibition for the new form of photography has just been launched in the Ukraine, and pictures from the exhibition can be seen on the BBC website here.

Photography is one of the most popular hobbies around the world, largely because it’s cheap, fun, can produce great results and anyone from children to pensioners can do it. While it may be fun, and you don’t need any experience or training to take pictures, if you follow a few simple tips you’ll be able to take better photos and produce pictures that will stay with you for a lifetime; pictures that you can show your friends and family, and will even make great canvas prints.

Firstly, and perhaps the most important thing to remember, is to always carry your camera with you and have it ready to take pictures. There’s nothing worse than seeing something and saying ‘I wish I had a camera’. Those are the moments that you regret later, and if you always carry your camera with you, you can be sure not to miss those once in a lifetime pictures.

Secondly, when you’re taking photos you should always take more than one. In today’s world with digital cameras taking several shots at once is easy, and of course doesn’t cost you any more. Professional photographers always take several shots at the same time to make sure they catch the perfect moment, when the pose of their subject is just right, when they’re looking in the right place, when everything comes together.

If you just take the one picture, you could check it afterwards and realise that the perfect picture you thought you had wasn’t quite so perfect.

Finally, make sure when you take your photo that the natural light, such as the sun, is in the right place. Having the sun full on in front of your subject will bleach the colour. By the same token, having the sun behind your subject will create backlight and silhouettes. Try to position the sun so that it is to the side of your subject to emphasise the details and the tones.

Follow these tips and you’re sure to create photographs to be proud of.

American Pop Art icon Andy Warhol, famed for his canvas work, was shot 40 years ago this week. A disturbed woman who blamed Warhol for having too much control over her life, Valerie Solanas, walked into Warhol’s Manhattan studio and shot him after he had lost a manuscript of hers.

Incredibly Solanis was actually praised by women’s rights activists for this attempted murder of one of modern arts most celebrated sons.

Ti-Grace Atkinson, president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women applauded Solanis for her actions, calling her:

the first outstanding champion of women’s rights.

Although Andy Warhol survived the attempted assassination, his work was never the same again and he told friends that he felt he had died long before his eventual death some years later. Even though Warhol would go on to create some important works, such as the famed portrait of Mao, his works paled in comparison with his earlier work.

Solanis was jailed for just three years for the attempted murder of Warhol, and outlived the artist by over a year before dying herself in squalor.

Warhol was famous for his canvas paintings, films and photography. He was the complete artist.