Technique on JVQ.net: Just Very Quick

Looking Past the Crowd: David in Florence, the Basque Museum, Beach Photographers, a Woman with Binoculars and a New York Mall

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Some pictures work because of what’s in them. Others work because of what’s around them. Crowds, weather, architecture, and the simple act of waiting all shape the frame. These five images, pulled at random from the Pixel Effects feed, each deal with a different kind of surrounding noise.

David, Florence

The copy of Michelangelo’s David that stands in Piazza della Signoria is never alone. Tourists, scaffolding, and the heavy stone of the Palazzo Vecchio all compete for attention. Shooting in black and white strips away the competing colors and leaves the statue’s gesture clean against the sky.

Photographing Through Obstacles: Museum Armor, Aquarium Glass, Vienna's Plankengasse, the Holy Sepulchre and Wrocław at Night

Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Most of the photos I like best weren’t taken in clean conditions. There’s almost always something between me and the subject: a pane of museum glass, a tank of water, a dark street, a church lit by a few oil lamps. These five pictures all have that problem in common, and each one got solved a slightly different way.

Armor Behind Museum Glass

Armor is a gift to photograph. Polished plate throws light back in long, clean highlights, and the shape reads instantly even in a small frame. The glass is the enemy. Stand back and you get the room, the ceiling lights and yourself reflected across the steel.

Trade Show Floor Photography: Isolating One Conversation in a Crowded Hall

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

An exhibition hall is a bad room to photograph in. The lighting is mixed, the backgrounds are visual noise, and the thing you actually want, which is people talking to each other about something they care about, lasts about four seconds before somebody looks up at the camera.

The frame above is a delegation working through printed material at a booth. Nobody posed. The useful part is the pointing hand and the two men reading, and everything else in the picture is there to say “trade show” and then get out of the way.