Lawrence Ripsher

Regular visitors to this blog may already be aware of a photo community site I run called Lost in Focus (www.lostinfocus.org). It’s a site that I started a few years ago to get away from the typical photosharing sites that I had grown frustrated with and has quietly grown to a dozen or so wonderful contributors.
It’s been about a year since I made the last major improvements to that site and this time round I thought it’d be a good idea to solicit ideas from everyone (and not just current …

A photographer I know recently commented that they didn’t like any of their shots from 2009, and were hoping for a better 2010. I really liked that comment. That sort of reflection is rarely performed by photographers… we take sooo many pictures (usually several thousands per year) that it’s often easy to hide behind quantity, rather than quality. It reminds me of another conversation I was part of previously. A great photographer I knew had come back from New York and said that he was gutted he only had a …

Lots of chatter online lately about how the UK (my home country) and London in particular, are clamping down on photographers.
On the 8th Dec, The Guardian ran a story about a chuch photographer getting stopped under terrorism powers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/08/police-search-photographer-terrorism-powers
On the 9th Dec, The Independent wrote about Police searching a photographer using anti-terror laws:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-search-photographer-using-antiterrorism-laws-1836683.html
And at the end of last month, there was a BBC photographer who spoke on UK television about his run in with the law:

I’ve heard reports of friends who still live in London about how photographer is getting harder …

A recurring theme has been coming up a lot recently with photographer friends of mine – about the importance of photo projects.
Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned professional who just happens to be stuck in a slump, my best advice to get things going again is to pick a project. The idea of a project can be extremely simple – even just a single word (e.g. “happiness” or “rain”). Once you’ve chosen it, shoot that, and nothing else, for a month. A project has the effect of constraining what …

I opened a flickr account recently to keep in touch with some photographer friends who are very active there For some reason (UI or otherwise), I’ve never really gotten on well with Flickr. It also suffers a little from the…

I’ve been asking myself this question for some time… or rather it often takes the form when I’m asking Akuri “why do i bother with all this?”. To put “all this” into context, in 5 years, photography has cost me…

Here’s an entry I posted on my revamped Lost in Focus site earlier today. Thought i’d share it here too. “2008 was great for photography for me in some respects. I had the Contender Asia final, the Contender Season 4…

It has been weeks since I last picked up a camera with a serious intent to take really good photography. Last year turned out to be a hugely exciting time for me with my cameara work, but in contrast, the…

The past few weeks and months have been an interesting time. Due in part to a very hectic work schedule and lots of other things going on, I’ve not had as much time for shooting. Having said that, that’s never…

The last time I posted, it was about one our dogs. Ume, our adopted female Rott, had recently gone into surgery. A few people asked about how things were going and because of that (and also because I think our…