Okay, look: I’m not going to pretend I’m more than a halfway competent amateur (trawl through 500px.com for perspective), but there is one lesson I feel I can impart about photography….

People constantly tell me, “You have a great camera!” Usually, they mean, “You take good photos, and if I had a camera like yours, so could I.” That’s only partly true.

All you really need from a camera body is something that works well in bad light, than turns on instantly and takes a photo the moment you press the button. Using a good prime lens (like my beloved 1980s-era 105mm) is guaranteed to make your pictures clearer – provided that you know how to focus, what to focus on, what settings to use and… what to put in the frame.

But you can get a decent camera body and a great prime lens for less than a thousand bucks now. You can get a nearly comparable setup from a decent phone, too. This sunset shot was taken with my Samsung Galaxy SII.

You can take bad photos with a good camera, and good photos with a bad camera. But only one of those scenarios involves spending a lot of money. So before you dive in and blow your savings on equipment, spend a few days or weeks walking around with a phone or a cheap digital, taking photos of everything that catches your eye. Examine each image carefully. Before long you’ll realise that a lot of things that look appealing just aren’t that photogenic. Then you’ll realise that some details that don’t seem startling to your eye positively jump when seen through a single lens. This sunset, for example, wasn’t nearly as impressive to the human eye, but it did make for a nice photo.

Once you’ve developed a knack for knowing what’s going to look good in a frame – THAT’s when you want to go shopping for kit. Because by then you’ll know how much of your time (and money) you’re willing to spend making pretty pictures.

… Oh, and I’m proud to say that gallery.imagicity.com now hosts over 3000 photos for your delectation. Nastrovye!

We’re almost home, folks. Lots of new code in the background, just to make the whole thing run more smoothly. And pretty soon we’ll have some cool new features to share, too!

From now on, the preview pages in both the Categorical and Historical listings will feature thumbnails that are a full 100 pixels larger than before. That’s a 50% size increase at no extra cost.

As always, we at Imagicity combine state of the art technology with a centuries-old tradition of craftsmanship and care. Our pixels are individually nurtured to their full brightness in an environment that embraces diversity and self-expression, and only when they’re fully actualised are they selected for inclusion in our lush, vivid images.

Imagicity: We flipped that digit because you’re worth it.

Same goes with any thumbnail in the gallery listings.

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Home Internet:

Twelves inches of PVC tubing, a cast-off length of half-round bamboo lifted onto the roof via a ladder made of tacked-together, mixed-length timbers and fastened into place with a couple of feet of baling wire. Cables hanging out my kitchen window and stretching around the corner of the house.

The professor would be proud.

Added a few new photos to my Favourites collection. Go look.

This is just one of hundreds of candid portraits taken by a friend of mine in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This is the essence of documentary. It captures the million-faceted mundanity of life in one city and, without editorialising, creates a compelling polemic for the inherent dignity of every human being.

Go and look at all of them. All of them.

Draft cover design for an upcoming book. (Nonono, not my book; my photo. Silly peoples.)