Holga and the New York Times...

Came across this nice article in the New York Times 'Lens' section about the Holga, a 120 film, medium format plastic toy camera made in China.

The camera has a cult following due to its ability to give you results that you weren't quite expecting, say goodbye to digital perfection and hello to light leaks, soft edges and a complete lack of control..... all very liberating don't you think ?

Randy Smith of Holgamods fame gets a mention for his inventiveness when it comes down to modifying these cheap plastic cameras. I bought mine with a waist level finder from him a number of years back. Real nice guy to deal with, honest and open, does it because he loves it not because he is on some sort of get rich scheme.

There are mentions of a number of photographers who actively use this camera and I have to admit I liked a lot the work of Richard Sintchak whose image you see above.

The Holga world is a big one and there is a lot to explore, if you are tempted to buy one, get it from Randy who will make sure you get something just to your liking.

Invited Speaker - Carlos Borrego Iglesias

The club is very pleased and honoured to announce that Carlos Borrego Iglesias, will be visiting us on the 13th May to give us a talk on his photography and creative vision.

Carlos from Barcelona, already has a number of exhibitions under is belt and is a passionate and creative artist and advocate of analogue photography.

A very big thank you to Miguel for organising everything and I think that this is an amazing opportunity for all of us to experience close up, the work of a fellow photographer.

You can see more of Carlos' fantastically creative work on his web site and Flickr page.

Mark Tucker and his latest project...

We've seen Mark's work in the past and I recently dropped by his web pages, just to take a look at what he's been getting up to.

He images still continues to amaze and inspire me and its great to see he still maintains his passion for homemade camera's. In this case, not made by himself but by John Minnicks, whom I'm trying to find out more about, but if like me, you don't have a Facebook account your going to be out of luck.

You can see the camera in action above and its a custom design using as its base, the Graflex RB Camera from the early 1950's. You may also notice that the lens attached is the famous Kodak Aero Ektar often used by David Burnett.

I have to admit that I really want one of these camera's as the thought of having a 4x5 reflex camera (meaning that you don't lose the viewfinder image of your subject when you load the film into the back) is really appealing, and it looks like a quite compact package as well.

Anyway Mark has set up a new blog to show the results of his new project to photograph special people in the Nashville area.

If you don't remember Mark from our past blog entry his web page is here and his 'normal' blog here.

Winners of Sony World Photography Open Contest announced...

The Open contest specifically devised for amateur photographers has ten categories in total; Action, After Dark, Architecture, Arts & Culture, Fashion, Nature & Wildlife, Panoramic, People, Smile and Travel.

.. and its James Chong's image from the Travel category you can see above.

More than 51,000 submissions from 148 countries were made with the Asian entrants scooping up almost half of the available prizes.

You can see more of the entries over on the World Photography Organisation's web page.

Madrid Foto announces dates...

MADRIDFOTO starting on the 5th May will be in Pavilion Number 1 at IFEMA.

With more than 5,000 sqm exhibitors from as many as seventy international galleries, publishing houses and journals will participating.

MADRIDFOTO is the only international fair in Spain specialized in contemporary photography, and is designed to encourage new private, corporate and institutional collecting.

THIAPS produces book...

produced and edited by Frans Peter Verheyen

THIAPS, the International Analogue Film Society who are strong advocates of Analogue Photography, have recently released a book which is comprised of many images that have been shown on the Society's web page "Film is not dead it just smells funny" over the past three years.

It took them 6 months to create a short list of photographers who they wanted to participate in the UNLIMITED GRAIN project. They also had so many images that they decided that one book would probably not be enough, so hence a series of books will be released of which Portrait Photography is the topic covered by the first one. Following books may cover landscape, urban, street and nocturnal photography.

Based on the 'preview' you can see above, this looks to be a worthwhile series of books to collect and will be a motivation to any analogue photographer and maybe even encourage the digital users out there to give film a go as well.

Blurb's Storytelling Video Series...

Storytelling Series: Daniel Milnor from Blurb Books on Vimeo.

Blurb have been running these short video stories for a while now on authors that they consider to have an inspirational story to tell.

They really are quite a nice insight in to the motivation and thought process behind the creation of a book. The series covers authors of many different styles of books, but the video you see above, of course, is about a photographer (in this case its Daniel Minor who also has a very interesting blog you might want to take a look at as well).

You can check out the whole series so far over at Vimeo.

Angelo Musco...

Angelo Musco and his team spent an amazing 2 years of 8-15 hour days putting together this image called 'Tehom'. Using tens of thousands nude bodies the image you see above is just a small part of the final artwork which you can see below.

'Tehom' refers to the 'great deep' of the primordial waters of creation, mentioned in the Bible, and biblical/mythical references appear to be the inspiration of a lot of his work which you can see on his website (Although I consider these images to be Contemporary Art, other work colleagues may not agree, so I give prior warning that these may not be work safe).

Angelo recently had his first solo exhibition in the States and it took one week just to mount all the individual images that make up the final huge art works, see the video below.



(credit 500 Photographers for bringing this to my attention)

Red Bull Illume Quest 2010 Winners...

Red Bull has been running this great competition to celebrate and honour the best action and adventure sports photographs on the planet.

Below you will see a few of my favourites, if you would like to see all the finalists you can go here.

I know it doesn't have much to do with photography, but while we are on the subject of Red Bull activities, you might want to check out the video at the bottom which is just incredible !

Overall Winner and Illumination Category Winner - Chris Burkard

New Creativity Winner - Eric Berger

Energy Winner - Stuart Gibson

Tourist photo's, an artistic approach...

Saw this pop up on the Online Photographer the other day regarding the work of Corinne Vionnet a Swiss based photographer and her use of readily available tourist snaps on the web.

Corinne 'collects' hundreds of these images and then artistically blends them all together to produce the final art work.

Do you happen to have any online images of the Alhambra, maybe they form part of the one you see here.

Apart from the copyright discussions that ensued on the Online Photographer I find it fascinating that so many people take the same image of the same thing from the same place.

There are more examples over at My Modern Met of all the typical tourist spots.

Phase One IQ180 Back...

With an incredible 80Megapixels the Phase One IQ180 Medium format Back will be available in May this year and once again raises the bar for image resolution and quality.

I would really love to have one of these for the club, but its slightly out of our price range at more than 30,000 Euros.

However, if you do have the means for such an item, you may want to head over to the Luminous Landscape for a hands on report to tempt you even further and it will also give you the perfect excuse to upgrade you computer as well, handling 480Megabyte 16bit TIFF files is not something to be scoffed at.

Anyway, the video above which shows Jens Honoré on the Sitges Terramar Racing Circuit with an IQ180, is worth a look (check out what happens around 0:55 for a good example of photographer/subject trust !)

There are some more 'In Action' videos over on the Phase One site if you also want to see what Fashion and Architectural Photographers have to say.

Selection of Themes for 2011...

Poll will close 7th March.

Something to make you smile...

DIY Beauty Dish...

The Chinatown Special: The Best DIY Beauty Dish from The Browyoungs on Vimeo.

The Beauty Dish gets it name for a very obvious reason... the quality of light it produces is very flattering in portrait photography.

The above video, gives a quick overview of how to build one and here you will find one of the best and most detailed tutorials I ever seen.

This is one for that weekend when you can't find anything to do :-)

FujiFilm FinePix X100...

This little camera is causing quite a stir at the moment and looks like being one of the hottest sellers in 2011.

It's retro on the outside and cutting edge on the inside.

For more information go here and for a pre-release review check here.

Danny Santos, Weekend Warrior...

Danny Santos II is a self confessed weekend warrior who likes to shoot strangers in the streets of Singapore. 

He's been shooting street photography for about 2 years and is a graphic designer by trade.

In this article, Danny explains his motivation and exactly what he goes through when he spends his weekends wandering up and down Orchard Road asking strangers if he can take their pictures. Would anyone dare to do this on Gran Via in Madrid ?, maybe we should put it as a theme ?

If you want to know more about Danny, who is very articulate as well as an excellent photographer, you can check out the following sites:

His Flickr page
His Webpage

Pep Bonet...

Found out about this guy from the 500 Photographers website (by the way this is definitely one of the pages you should visit daily), and what really struck me was his approach to photography, travel and I suppose in a way, life in general.

Whilst War/Disaster photography is always difficult to view and digest, and almost always leads to questions regarding the morality of the photographers involved, I think its worth to see the video above and take a bit more of a look into the work and philosophy of Pep Bonet.

GIGAntic PANoramas

Panoramic photography is surely one of the areas having gained most from digital photography. Some people push it to the limit - or beyond, regarding the capacities of normal PCs. At the GigaPan website one can find images with hundreds of gigapixels, stitched together from thousands of individual images. Via the Web interface one can zoom into the images and find details invisible in the full image. See, for example, this nice panorama of Prague at dawn or this (relatively low resolution) sunset shot of Madrid.

These photographers are helped by the hardware sold by GigaPan which moves the camera around automatically. Should we consider a GigaPan EPIC Pro for the Club to create such special images ourselves? Since Neil is now with Gaia, he should soon know everything about dealing with enormous datasets :-)

Yearbook 2010 published...

yearbook 2010 by esacphotoclub | Make Your Own Book

Firstly, congratulations to Silvia whose photo graces the cover of our fourth edition of the Yearbook as the most popular image on our gallery pages in 2010.

This year we have reduced the number of pages to take advantage of the new premium lustre paper, which I think really adds a lot to the look and feel of the book.

Above you can take a quick look at the 'Book Preview' which hopefully gives you an idea of what to expect.

I may be biased, but I think this years edition is our best yet and if it wasn't for you all taking the time and effort to produce the images you do throughout the year, the club could not produce such a high quality product. Many thanks to all of you for your time and enthusiasm !

In the bag with David Burnett...

In The Bag with photographer David Burnett from PhotoShelter.com on Vimeo.

We've spoken about David Burnett in the past, recently I came across this series on Photoshelter which gets various photographers to open and explain what they have in their camera bags. Always interesting to have a nose around in the bag of a professional photographer.

Blog Overhaul...

As you may have noticed the blog has been given a new look and a few new additions.

Firstly, you'll see the previous slideshow panel for our featured photographer has been changed for a very nice 3D Cloud style widget (many thanks to Roy Tanck for making this available).

Also, all the blog posts have now been labeled/tagged and you can now select entries based on their labels by using the label widget over there on the left. If you post remember to choose one of the already existing or add your own.

I'll also tidy up the links lists over time.

Hope you like it..
 

Best of the Best Of's...

Life Pictures of the Year 2010
Reuters Best of Year
BBC Pictures of the Year 2010
New Scientist 12 Best Pictures of the Year
LA Times 2010 The Year in Pictures
mnsbc The Year in Pictures
NY Times 2010 The Year in Pictures

...if you've got any more add them as comments.. Happy New Year by the way ;-)

Simply Beautiful

National Geographic's mails contain almost too much self-advertising for my liking these days. But the link in of the last ones drew my attention: Simply Beautiful Pictures has nothing revolutionary, but shows some nice specific examples of how choices can lead to a beautiful picture. Now I only should remember better, when in the field.

Composition 101...

Rule of thirds, Golden triangle, Golden Spiral and Golden Rectangle Division are all ways of attempting to define perfect composition.

Alfie Goodrich over at Japanorama has recently published an article on compositional rules, very interesting and well worth a look.

In addition, the long number you see above is the 'Golden Ratio' or Phi and has the habit of defining rather well images/paintings that appear to be attractive to the human eye.

Here's how to construct a 'Golden Rectangle'

1: Draw a square (here marked in red).
2: Draw a line from the midpoint of one side of the square to an opposite corner.
3: Use that line as the radius to draw an arc that defines the long dimension of the final Golden Rectangle.

Now start dividing up your favourite image with these rectangles and see what happens. Here are a few examples:

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer is Maxi, who I assume is from the north of Spain.

To be honest I couldn't find out anything more than the obvious fact that he is a very good surf photographer.

Enjoy...!

Previous featured photographers:
October '10 - Gary Newman
September '10 - Martin Stranka
July '10 - m_i_n_o_r's
June '10 - AndersonImages'
May '10 - Siprico
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

HDR Video - FACT or FICTION?

Right, I'm going to sneak this in before Neil takes away my posting rights... this one aimed at the videography wing of the club. Maybe some of you saw this when it rolled up on Slashdot a few months ago:



Now if you happened to have a pair of 5Ds and a beam splitter lying around the house I guess you could do this at home if you had enough patience. But I have to say that it does really look quite unreal. The clip of the man just looks like he's just lost a fight with a bag of icing sugar.

I think we've just trained to see pictures and film in a certain way and it will take some time to untrain our brains to accept HDR as soemthing which corresponds to our perception of the world.

A Challenger Appears

TalkUrbex is one of the sites on the urban exploration scene that caught my attention; a mainly British group of borderline lunaticsintrepid explorers who spend their free time mooching around decaying asylums, hospitals, factories and military bases.

Much of their time is spent into and around places with unsafe floors, walls and roofs, without much light to see with and all the time playing Hide and Seek with security guards and/or police. However they are also pretty decent photographers. Their shots are shooped to hell and back and they do appear to have an indecent love of HDR pictures but there is a pretty stark beauty to their work.

There does appear to be similar Spanish scene, for example Rutas Abandonadas has a nice showcase of locations (it appears that the Vicente Calderon does not qualify yet but surely just a matter of time).

Holidays 2010...

Always a popular theme and this year was no exception with almost 40 images presented.

Once again the club members have travelled far and wide with images from Iceland, Cuba, Patagonia, France, Bulgaria, Germany, Holland, Spain and the list goes on.

Daniel and Marion presented images for the first time and below you see the epic 'man conquers mountain and satiates his thirst' shot from Daniel and a clever shot from Marion with the jet aircraft contrails mimicking the bridge supports.

Above you will see Celia's iceberg image which drew a lot of comments from the spectators.

If you want to see more (and I can't believe you don't...) head on over to the gallery pages to check out all the images. And whilst your there if you feel like leaving some comments and giving some thumbs up, it's always greatly appreciated.

Next theme is 'Landscapes', so, until then...

Happy shooting..!.

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer is Gary Newman, who is from Bristol in the UK. Most of the photo's on his Flickr stream have been taken in the Bristol and West Country area.

As you can see he dedicates his time to landscape and cityscape imagery and there really is a great collection of inspiring photographs.

Enjoy...!

Previous featured photographers:
September '10 - Martin Stranka
July '10 - m_i_n_o_r's
June '10 - AndersonImages'
May '10 - Siprico
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

Latest Leica...

Leica M9 Titanium Special Edition.

500 only.

Price €23,400.

Ouch !!!!

Best Photography How-To Books...

I found this interesting entry over at The Online Photographer regarding recommended How-To books, plenty of the readers have also left comments adding to the list originally suggested by Mike.

Could be useful .?

Frank Ockenfels 3...

Camerabag.tv recently put up their latest entry regarding one of my favorite photographers Frank Ockenfels.

Frank, who appears to be an all round good guy, as you can see from all the comments written by attendees of his presentations and workshops, has the amazing talent of being able to do everything photographic, and do it well.
 
There has been much discussion over the need for professional photographers to specialise in order to survive in the commercial world, but Frank is a clear case that there's always an exception to the rules.

As you will see in the video interview on Camerabag.tv he is the owner of an amazing selection of analogue camera's that he uses to create the various effects you see in his images and his studio/home looks like a place I could spend hours looking at all the photographs, books and journals he has everywhere.

Apart from the video interview on Camerabag.tv, this blog entry on A Photo Editor will give you a very good insight into this fascinating character from the world of photography..!

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer is Martin Stranka from Prague and to be honest I can't describe his photography any better than is written in his Flickr bio: 

"The work of Martin Stranka exists in that space between dreams and waking, those split seconds when a person has a foot in both worlds. Light like the first rays of twilight filtering through a curtain when even the dust seems to glitter with some sort of hidden purpose or meaning.

The language of stillness.

The solitary sound of your own footsteps echoing down the streets of a deserted city. And on every building the flickering image of a silent film like faded memories.

Martin's images.

So personal yet somehow universal they seem like your own memories. Your moments.

And maybe they are..."

If you would like to see more than his Flickr stream, you can find his website here.

Previous featured photographers:
July '10 - m_i_n_o_r's
June '10 - AndersonImages'
May '10 - Siprico
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer is Xavi Fuentes from Barcelona, Spain. In his biography he explains that he discovered photography a 'bit late', which doesn't seemed to have stopped him from creating such beautiful imagery.

You will see that he mainly concentrates on black and white photography with his wonderfully composed seascapes.

He is also winning awards for his photography having recently collected two 1st places at the PX3 Awards in Paris for 'Book Proposal' and 'Nature'.

If you would like to see more than his Flickr stream, you can find his website here and his blog here.

Previous featured photographers:
June '10 - AndersonImages'
May '10 - Siprico
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

PHotoEspaña 2010...

The 13th edition of this international festival of photography began on the 9th June and will finish on the 25th July.

This year the common theme is 'time' and there are 69 exhibitions with works from 372 artists from 41 countries, along with various events to promote photographic art amongst the populace.

More details regarding artists, venues and events can be found on their website.

Macro...

Despite many absences due to holiday/mission/World Cup season, many photographs were still presented (even by those who couldn't attend).

As expected for a macro theme, the primary subjects for our cameras where insects and plants, two of which you can see here.

However, a few of the members found more non-conventional subjects with Nacho's images generating many comments from the audience.

As always, all the images are available on the gallery pages, so go and leave some 'thumbs ups' and comments if you feel so inclined.

Its summer so time to take a well earned rest and we will return with our usual theme 'Holidays', sometime in September.

Enjoy the holiday period and once again thanks for all your efforts in presenting photo's.

This months featured photographer...

For this months featured photographer, I've looked for some landscape photography that will impress anyone.

Michael who hails from Colorado, USA, travels a lot and has accumulated a top quality portfolio. Apart from his Flickr photostream you can find out more about him and his work on his website.

Previous featured photographers:
May '10 - Siprico
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

A cute trick

Reading some lens reviews I stumbled about this cute trick to create your own creative highlight shapes. In the digital age, you could also use the tool of your preference, but it still would be much more work.

Embarrasingly enough, it took me a moment to figure out how it works - you are effectively replacing the closed aperture of your lens by a frontside aperture, while keeping the normal aperture wide open. I might give it a try some day.

MADRIDFOTO 2010...

MADRIDFOTO, is the only fair in Spain or Portugal specialising exclusively in photography and audiovisual art and opens today at the Palacio de Deportes in Madrid.


The fair will consist of more than sixty stands installed in a total space of 4000 m, apparently, special attention has been made with respect to the functionality of this area, and I quote, "ensuring that it is easy to negotiate and dotted with areas for taking a rest, socialising and exchanging opinions".

The 12th is VIP/Media day, with the rest of its duration being open to the general public, entrance fees are 15 Euro's at the box office or 13 Euro's if you buy online from the MADRIDFOTO website.

Looks like it could be worth a visit..

Marc Silber TV...

Marc Silber, a successful professional photographer is now interviewing many other professional photographers and hosting the video's for all to see, in an attempt to gather what is needed to take great photographs in various disciplines.

Apart from the gratuitous SanDisk advertising in each one, they are really quite interesting, plus it always helps to listen to a professional describe how he/she works.

Take a look at the latest videos here.

This months featured photographer...

For this months featured photographer, I had a hunt around for someone whose main work was in the field of macro photography, to try and provide some possible inspiration for next months theme.

The one that impressed me the most was Siprico, and judging by the number of comments he receives on his images on Flickr, I'm not the only one to think so.

Previous featured photographers:
April '10 - Lucie Debelkova
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

Unusual/Extreme Perspective...

What I thought would be a difficult theme with a low number of images, turned out to be easy for many of you with more than 30 images being presented. Well done to all of you.

Silvia and Ivan presented images for the first time, with Silvia's dramatic image of a tower in Aukland and Ivan's Fake Tilt/Shift of a village in Bulgaria going down well with the members attending the presentation.

Thanks to all of you for putting in the effort and presenting so many high quality images.

All the images are available on the gallery pages, so go and leave some 'thumbs ups' and comments if you feel so inclined.

Our next theme will be 'Macro'... so I hope to see another big turnout for all the images of little things... see you all in June for the presentation..!

5 Photographers a week for 100 weeks equals....

Pieter Weisse has come up with this great idea of show casing each working day a photographers work for the next 100 weeks building up a fantastic resource of reference material of 21st Century photographers. Check it out here...

Amazing images of Eyjafjallajokull volcano...

The Boston Globe have a fantastic gallery of 35 images from the recent Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption in Iceland, well worth a look.

David Fokos...

David Fokos on Plum TV from clifford reese on Vimeo.
I came across David's work recently and being a fan of the long exposure and good old analog Black and White Photography, I thought he warranted a mention on our blog.

You can quickly draw parallels between his work and that of Michael Kenna and Josef Hoflehner and it was extraordinary to note that he can spend up to a hundred hours post processing each image, he appears to be an absolute perfectionist ensuring that every image that makes it into his portfolio is of the maximum possible quality.

His artist's statement is also very interesting with respect to his reasoning of why he does what he does :

"Using long exposures, ranging from 20 seconds to 60 minutes, I have worked with the camera’s unique ability to “average time” in order to examine and understand the mechanisms of human perception and to reconcile our differing subjective and objective views of the world.

I believe that our sense of experience is built up over time - a composite of many short-term events. For example, if you meet someone for the first time, your impression of that person is not a snapshot in your mind of the first time you saw that person, but rather a portrait you have assembled from many separate moments. Each time that person exhibits a new facial expression or hand gesture, you add that to your impression of who that person is. Your image of that person - how you feel about that person -- is formed over time, rather than upon a single expression or gesture.

Likewise, I believe that our impression of the world is based upon our total experience. For example, the ocean has always made me feel calm, relaxed, and contented. If I were to take an instantaneous snapshot of the ocean, the photo would include waves with jagged edges, salt spray, and foam. This type of image does not make me feel calm - it does not represent how the ocean makes me feel as I stare out over the water. What I am responding to is the underlying, fundamental form of the ocean, its vast expansiveness and the strong line of the horizon, both of which are very stable, calming forms.

With this series of images I have used the camera as a scientific instrument, the way a biologist might use a microscope or an astronomer a telescope, to reveal what is felt but often unseen."

The video also provides a unique insight in how he works and its always interesting to see a professional in action.

For more information and more of his stunning imagery you can check out his website.

Chase Jarvis and creativeLIVE...

Chase Jarvis has recently announced his latest initiative of offering training/workshops via a GoToWebinar environment completely free. You can watch any of the presentations free when they are broadcast live, if you would like to view missed presentations or keep them on you local hard drive then you have to pay.

There is a wide variety of topics from "Fundamentals of Digital Photography" though to "DSLR Cinema", plus many well known photographers and instructors such as Art Wolfe and Vincent Laforet involved.

You can also participate live in the class via GoToWebinar and twitter technologies.

I've seen a couple of the classes and there not too bad, and they are broadcast at reasonable times for the Europeans as well.

Anyway, watch the video above for a short overview and hop on over to creativeLIVE.com to see the current course availabilities and schedules.

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer originally from Prague, but now living in Kuwait, is Lucie Debelkova. Her travel imagery is absolutely wonderful and she has now visited 78 countries, so there is plenty of variety in her photo's too.

In her Flickr profile she explains her evolution with respect to her equipment choice, plus you should also visit her website which gives a bit more of an insight into what makes her tick.

As I know there are a lot of travel photography fans in the club, hopefully these images will provide further motivation and inspiration in your own images.

Previous featured photographers:
March '10 - Kent Mercurio
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

Jane Bown...

Whatever you want 2010...

We started the years presentation's with the usual 'Whatever you want' theme and 15 members presented a total of 43 images. Not a bad start to the year if I do say so myself.

As we have suffered a lot with the weather this winter there were a number of 'snowy' images, with this one by Debbie catching the presidents eye due to its composition and great usage of depth of field.

There was a fair variety of images presented as you may imagine, and the participation to the presentation itself was lively, with lots of discussion and questions.

As always, you can view all the images over on the gallery pages, where you are encouraged to leave comments on fellow members images, plus an explaination of your own, and don't forget to give a thumbs up to all those that you like.

Next theme is 'Unusual/Extreme perspective', until then... happy shooting !

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer originally from Guam, but now living in San Diego, is Kent Mercurio with, amongst many others, his wonderful landscape images very reminiscent of Micheal Kenna and Josef Hoflehner.

A master of the use of film and long exposure with a number of different medium format camera's, spend sometime browsing his Flickr stream or his webpage, it's well worth it.

Previous featured photographers:
February '10 - Midnight-Digital
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima

The Man Who Shot the Sixties...

THE MAN WHO SHOT THE SIXTIES from CHRIS DUFFY on Vimeo.
Brian Duffy one of the 'Terrible Trio' of British photographers from the sixties, probably not as well remembered as David Bailey and Terence Donovan, is often considered the more talented. After deciding to 'chuck it all in' he took most of his negatives from his studio and burned them before leaving photography completely to pursue other activities.

Recently his son Chris has put together what remains of his father photographic legacy and also staged Duffy's first exhibition in decades. The video above is absolutely fascinating as Duffy explains his entrance into the photographic world and features people like David Bailey and Joanna Lumley who explain what he was like all those years ago. It's almost an hour long but well worth a view.

More details about Brian Duffy can be found on his website here.

Yearbook 2009 published...

As you already know, our yearbook has finally been printed and most of you have already received your copy.

The yearbook has increased once again, this time from 160 to 200 pages. With a new style cover which shows all the images presented in all the themes throughout the whole of 2009.

You will also see a blurb badge on the top right of the blog, just in case you would like to buy more copies for friends and family (just click it and it will take you to the shop). There is also a 'book preview' with a selection of images to give an idea of what the books about.

As always, thank you all for contributing and making the club the success that it is, we could never really hope to produce this book if it wasn't for your enthusiasm and participation in the club activities...!

Club 'Themes' Poll...

Poll will close on the 10th February...

NatureScapes Images of the Year 2009...

NatureScapes has just posted its 'Images of the Year 2009'.

Follow this link to see all the winning images.

This months featured photographer...

This months featured photographer is Chris Dessaigne a.k.a Midnight-digital, he has a very complete profile, a part of which I include below for you to get a feeling about what sort of art he produces :

"Christophe Dessaigne is a French artist who lives in the south of France, in a small town called Perpignan, near Spain on the Mediterranean coast. His creations are open doors to fantastic and dreamy horizons where digital photography serves the fanciful imagery of surrealist photo-montages. His universes are desolate, vast and insubstantial. Gigantic scaled structures rule the landscapes, dwarfing human beings to the size of ants. His post-apocalyptic kingdoms, equally poetic and terrifying, are visions of the end of the world. His work has appeared in cover art book and CD covers in Europe, and has recently been featured in Advanced Creations and PSD Photoshop Magazine. His photographic visions are invitations to remote and chimeric territories. A travel into a mysterious journey."

Previous featured photographers:
January '10 - Art Libre
December '09 - Ray maï
November '09 - *6261
October '09 - Vladimir Longauer
September '09 - LJ
August '09 - alex.alexander
July '09 - falsalama
June '09 - micmojo
May '09 - orvaratli
April '09 - ArTeTeTra
March '09 - Tom Hoops
February '09 - Strobist Favourites
January '09 - Tommy Oshima