keeping track of new posts more easily...

Hi, In reply to an earlier question (on the mail). It is possible to subscribe (with your favourite rss-feed reader; e.g. google reader) to the ATOM (RSS) feed (there is a tiny link at the bottom of the blog page) for the ESAC Photo Club and then you can keep up (more easily?) with the new items posted. Good luck, Nick

Travel Photography Inspiration...

The 'Canon Digital Learning Centre' is currently hosting a series from the well know travel and nature photographer, Art Wolfe, here on its website.

As I know a lot of you enjoy this type of photography, I thought you maybe interested.. There's lots of info and advice mixed with a fair amount of Arts' stunning imagery..

P.S How many of you spotted the seagull in the image above ?

Mark Tucker...

I have long been a fan of the imagery of Mark Tucker, a prominent portrait and lifestyle photographer.

His use of tilt-shift lenses , overlaying of textures, compositional techniques and humour never cease to amaze me..

His website has recently been updated so if you have a few minutes to spare mosey on over and take a look...

Latest Flipbook from George Lange...

We've seen the work of George Lange in the past (see March entry), and I admit I'm quite partial to this type of presentation.

This time the images are from Israel and he promises that he has more in the pipeline. Anyway, check out the movie here if you feel so inclined.

Maybe I'll try this for the next Photoclub presentation, at least people can't complain about the amount of time it takes to show all the images..! ;-)

HDRI Updates....

Remember in the past we have talked about High Dynamic Range Imaging, which had its origins in CGI Graphic artist industry and is now finding its way more and more into photography.?

I just discovered a new website "HDRI News" which is dedicated to the theme, and that also offers software, news, an online community and lots of inspirational images...


You might also want to take a look at "Digital Outback Photo" as well, which is pioneering new HDRI techniques using DSLRs with fast frame rates (> 5fps), thereby eliminating the need for a tripod and opening up the opportunity for using HDRI without limitations...

Adventures in Greenland...

It would seem that the list of 'windswept and exotic' locations to which our photoclub members travel continues to grow, the latest being to Greenland.......

Benjamin tells us about his latest adventure :

"I would like to share with you an image of one of the most impressive and powerful landscapes I have ever seen. This is a glacier at the south of Greenland. Its name is Eqalurissit. It is about 2.5 km wide and the ice walls are about 100 meters tall. The ice tongue enters towards the interior of the island in what it is called the 'indlansis', a word of scandinavian origin that means any glacier field of the type 'continental ice' with extensions of more than 50.000 squared km. In this case, the tongue merges with the ice platform that covers around 85% of the surface of Greenland"

We're back.........

The blog entries have been a bit sparse recently, but the summer is almost over and we have had our latest presentation of Photojournalistic and Holiday images..

Head on over to our galleries page and take a look. I know writing comments can be difficult but if you feel inspired I do urge you to do so as they are very motivational.

Also, if comments aren't your thing, hover your mouse pointer over the images you like and click the green thumbs up that will appear.... Why you ask.?????.... Because smugmug will then tell me what are the favorite images (I can't see who clicked on what by the way), and I thought it might be a good excuse to hand out some prizes at the end of the year... (Don't forget to give your 'thumbs up' in the other galleries as well...)

Anyway, here are a few of the images that got the most wow's during the presentation...... Go to the gallery page to find out who the culprits are...

PHotoEspaña 2007 has started....

The annual image festival in Madrid has started and being as it is the 10th Anniversary there even more exhibitions and activities than normal.

I have already been to see the images made by Sebastião Salgado in the BBVA (AZCA) building and they are stunning.

I've also downloaded the press kit in pdf, which contains all the info on which exhibition is where. If anyone wants a copy let me know.

Anyway, head over to www.phedigital.com for all the details.

Another exhibition...

As a further addition to the blog entry from Ricardo, there is also another tattoo related exhibition at the 'Casa de América' in Madrid, called 'Maras'. Providing a insight into the world of young prisoners in El Salvador jails who use their tattoo's as a form of self expression.

Its free to enter and is on until the 27th May, further details can be seen by clicking the link above.

Nice photo exhibition

FYI:
Javier Ortiz, "Pachi", exhibits a series of photos portraying tattooed people called "Tattoos Tuus".

You can have a look at it (and a beer :) ) at La Maripepa, c/ Jesús, 7, in the Huertas area, Madrid.

I visited it last weekend and I found it quite interesting.

Theme 2 - 'Architecture'...

Once again an excellent turnout for our second theme presentation of 2007. Nine members showed their interpretations of 'Architecture', and above is a choice selection of some of the photo's (click image to see larger). There was a lot of discussion regarding technique and composition and I think we all learned a new thing or two.

Don't forget that you can see all the images on the clubs Gallery webpage (link is at the top right of this page). Please do leave comments as it is always helpful and motivating to get a bit of feedback every now and again...

Finally, you all chose an extremely difficult theme for next time... 'Photojournalism'. It is going to be extremely interesting to see what images everyone turns up with...

I'm really looking forward to seeing all your photo's in June and hoping for an even larger participation..!

one web album I like :-)

I was browsing the picasa web albums a bit (for inspiration) and thought this guys pictures are quite good, so I thought I share this link with all you photography lovers :-)

I find it amazing how many good photographers there are out there....

http://picasaweb.google.com/bholfeltz/FlickrPretty

Looking forward to see everyones pictures tomorrow :-)

Nick

Pulitzer 2007

Hi everybody

As all of you probably know, the Pulitzer prize awards relevant works in journalism. This year, the prize in the category of "breaking news photography" has gone to Oded Bality for this picture.

A sin the previous post about photography and ethics, I will say nothing else about it and let you judge by yourselves. The picture is impressing anyway.

You can read the full record in

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2007/breaking-news-photography/works/

Vulture photo

I have read an article that is not about techniques or filters. I am almost sure you all can recognize the photo of a vulture behind a near death girl in Africa. It gained a lot of prizes (Pulitzer for example) and it showed a real situation in that continent.

But reality can have several faces. In this article we can see a bit about... ethical photography? It is lawful to show only what you want, or should your photos reflect the real situation?

In this case, the photographer decided to show a terrific, but not very truthful, photo. Instead of gimp/photoshop he used a "legal" camera technique.

It is up to you to decide.

Link - Enlace



PS: The articule is in Spanish

So true...

Always looking for inspiration...

This has popped up on a few different photographic blogs this week and if you really like people photography and are striving for that contemporary look with feel-good factor and have 3 minutes to spare, go and check out this flipbook presentation by George Lange.

It will leave you with a smile on you face and have you thinking how can you apply his techniques to you own images. Just look at the wonderful quality of light that the images exude...

...and if you still have the time afterwards, and are suitably inspired, take a look at the rest of his website.

A box with a hole... the fascinating world of the pinhole camera...

With the modern digital camera its very easy to become complacent about making images... the camera can focus, meter, judge colour temperature, sharpen, add contrast etc.. etc... perfect photo's almost all the time no..???

How about a camera that uses film (oh no not the f word..!), has no shutter button, you can't focus it.. hell... it doesn't even have a lens... just a very small hole... welcome to the world of the pinhole camera.


Exposure times in bright sunlight with a slow film can be measured in tens of seconds and as the sun goes down you could be talking hours to expose the film correctly... issues with Reciprocity failure, colour shifts, grain... and you can't even see what you got until the film comes back from the lab...!.. Why oh why would anyone use such a god forsaken contraption... Because you can create wonderful ethereal images, images that no amount of photoshop trickery can produce, they are not perfect and that's exactly their beauty...


If your a bit of a DIY expert you can even make one yourself (like this guy who built one from a 150 year old child's skull !!), if not, then you can go to Zero Image who have an entire range to choose from...


And for those of you who can't bear the thought of having to use film, you can even turn your digital SLR into a pinhole...

Recommended Galleries and reading :

Isabelle Lousberg...
Zeb Andrews...
Mackeson...
The Pinhole Resource...

Nuri Bilge Ceylan's stunning imagery...

I highly recommend that you go and take a look at the 'Turkey Cinemascope' portfolio of Nuri Bilge Ceylan, a film director from Istanbul, whose panoramic images capturing both landscapes and portraits exemplify the stunning use of light to create a three dimensionality that is so difficult to achieve and often the holy grail of many photographers.

I draw a lot of inspiration and motivation from viewing outstanding images from other photographers and then trying to achieve the same. I personally think that to become a better photographer you have to look at photographs, understand what you like and don't like and try and put those feelings back into your own photography...

These images must look stunning in print (you can get a idea from the photo below of his exhibition in Thessaloniki)... looking at his website I see that he will exhibit in Granada during the Cines del Sur Film Festival which is from the 9th-17th June...

Should we organise a club trip..??

Lens Hoods...

Lens hoods are good... they keep that straylight out of your lens and prevent something called 'flare', which is even more important to prevent if you permanently have a UV filter stuck on the end of your lens (we'll leave the filter or no filter debate for another time)...

If you lens comes with one already... great... make sure you use it... but with a lot of lenses nowadays its an optional extra... and often an expensive one... well.. lenshoods.co.uk comes to the rescue with free printable lenshoods which you can make out of paper or thin plastic... I'm certainly going to give it a try... I'll let you know how I get on...

Virtual collages...

A few people have asked how I did the collage effect on the Torres Kio image I presented recently.

Basically, you have to choose a spot where you see the entire scene you want to capture. Select a focal length, not so long that you need 200 photos and not too short that you only get 3. Set your camera to manual (if you can) so the exposure doesn't differ between each photo and start clicking away.. but don't change your position and try and move the camera around a bit so the images are not all on the same plane (and don't forget to re-focus as you go along).

Then you need any image manipulation software that allows you to resize, rotate to any angle, and change opacity of your images... and then you basically start overlaying the images on top of each other to build up the complete scene... adjust contrast and saturation to taste and there you have it...

It can be a bit time consuming depending on the amount of images you have and how precisely you want to match them up... but it can make an otherwise touristy shot turn into something a bit move interesting...

There's a tutorial over at Photojojo that describes the technique in detail that you should take a look at, there also other examples that may inspire you further...