Posted in Arts and Crafts, Craft Classes, Craft Supplies, Crafts, Folk Square
Folk Square is a useful online resource for anyone interested in a wide range of crafts.
It’s described as, “An online primitive magazine released monthly. We showcase talented artists from all over while featuring dolls, patterns, folk art, primitives, raggedies, stitcheries and so much more.”
They have a Craft Fair from June 1 to June 15, so check in if you want to participate or take space for your own crafts.
Crafting is a major niche topic on the internet and this site has links to a large variety of subjects and features. Worth a browse.
Check it out.
Posted in Crafts, Digital Cameras, Digital Photography
Continuing with our new theme of the craft of digital photography, Darren Rowse of Problogger fame has a very useful site called, Digital Photography School.
Darren has a lot of experience in digital photography and has virtually made his living from his main digicam blog.
Now he’s offering keen digital photographers a chance to contribute to DPS directly :
One of the aspects that I’ve been loving about Digital Photography School over the last few months is that among the DPS community are a growing number of digital photographers who have some amazing gifts and abilities when it comes to their photography. What’s more, many of them are willing to share what they know with the rest of us - helping us all to learn more as a community.
If you’re one of these people with some great experience to share I’d love to invite you to do it more formally in the weeks ahead.
Catch the offer here.
Posted in Crafts, Digital Cameras, Exhibitions, Photography, Publishing
Photographing a city is made much easier by the new generation of compact digital cameras. They are light and easy to strap to a belt, have their own zoom and flash facilities built in, and you only need some spare batteries to be in business, without having to lug heavy camera bags around with you.
Photographing your own city is a good way of building an archive of a rapidly changing cityscape, or just recording historic buildings for posterity. The local press may also be interested in using your collection from time to time, so there’s even the possibility of a future business.
At Syntagma, we’re beginning a photo exercise around our headquarters in the glorious city of Exeter, Devon, England. Here’s an example :

The Cathedral Close at Lunchtime — April
We are building a photo archive of Exeter over the summer months, in different lights and from different angles. The whole is designed to convey the gorgeous picture-book quality of this very ancient town.
I’ve found the best way to approach this project is by walking rather than driving around. When you walk, you’re free to divert down any interesting byway that may be impossible in a car.
I’m using a good quality compact digital camera : Advent 8MP, which I can slot onto my belt, plus a spare set of batteries.
Two things I’m looking for : the picturesque and the quirky. Both yield interesting images that others will want to look at. Here’s an example of the picturesque :

Lunchtime in an Elizabethan setting
The next pic is definitely quirky. It’s Parliament Street, Exeter, which is little more than 2 feet in width. There hasn’t been a parliament in Exeter for a good many centuries, but the Council still keeps it up — just.

Super-slim Parliament Street, Exeter
Why don’t you try photographing your own home town?
You can see the whole of this set of images on our Flickr Photostream.