Invited Speaker - Carlos Borrego Iglesias (Part II)...

The recent presentation of Carlos Borrego to the club was our first photographer of our 'invited speaker' initiative. The club hopes that this will provide the members with the opportunity to understand and improve their creativity in photography by receiving first hand knowledge from advanced and professional photographers explaining their particular process.

Carlos' presentation was a fantastic mix of presentation of his photographic muse's, the reasoning behind his fascination with abstraction, along with a fun exercise in exhibition preparation and sequencing, topped off with some unusual camera techniques demonstrated with his very own equipment.

I came away from the presentation highly motivated and ever more appreciative of the amount of dedication and passion photographers proportion to their art.

Carlos promised to pass on his list of muse's which you will find below:

• Rania Matar - (A girl and her room)
• Maite Caramés - (Ausencias)
• Israel Ariño - (Estudio sobre el arte de enmascarar) 
• Aline Smithson
• Tanyth Berkeley - (The Special Ones)
• Georges Rousse
• Jose Ramón Bas - (Ícaro)
• Antoine d'Agata
• William Klein - (Life is Good...New York!)
• Juan Manuel Castro Prieto - (Viaje al Sol)
• Masao Yamamoto
• David Nebreda
• Isabel Flores
• Robert ParkeHarrison
• Joan Fontcuberta
• Ansel Adams
• Harry Callahan
• Eugene Smith - (Deleitosa)
• Otto Steinert
• Diane Arbus
• Stanley Kubrick
• Sally Mann
• Isa Marcelli
• Francesca Woodman
• Henri Cartier-Bresson
• Richard Gibson
• Jim Goldberg
• Atelieretaguardia
• Paco Elvira - (Manifestación)
• Albert Gusi

That's a lot of homework to get through !

Thanks Carlos, hope to see you again next year !

Susan Burnstine...

During Carlos' presentation last Friday I was very much reminded of the work of Susan Burnstine, that I have enjoyed ever since I started to investigate the world of plastic camera's a number of years ago.

Susan's superbly ethereal images are produced entirely in-camera, well really, in any one of her 21 home made camera's, she has even gone as far as moulding her own lenses.

She has her own column in the UK magazine Black+White Photography and has exhibited extensively, she will also shortly release her first monograph 'Within Shadows' at the The Venice Biennale International Art Exhibition next month.

In the video below, Susan explains a bit about her technique and why she produces the images she does.

Stephen Dupont...

Stephen Dupont an Australian born Photojournalist and portrait photographer has received many international awards for his amazing work over the years.

Not only is he a great photographer he also produces hand made books of his images and exhibits extensively.

His passion for Afganistan, a country he has visited for over fifteen years almost cost him his life with a suicide bomber attack outside a police station he was visiting at that moment.

He also appears to have an amazing ability to connect with his subjects and project a level of trust and compassion which allows him to get close to people often in the most dangerous and marginalized regions of the world.

In the video below you will see him taking polaroids of people in the middle of Kabul with a Polaroid Land camera, his approach with respect to his book making and some of his portraits of members of the notoriously dangerous and violent 'Red Devils' gang from Papua New Guinea, an image of which you can see above.

Stephen Dupont Profile - ABC Sunday Arts from Stephen Dupont on Vimeo.

Everything you wanted to know about lens cleaning but were afraid to ask...

Do you clean your lens with your T-Shirt or any old cloth you have lying around ?, then you might want to check out this video if you want to see how the professionals do it.

Apparently, we should clean our lenses twice a week, maybe we should ask Timothy Allen what he thinks ;-) (see below).

Time Lapse Photography...

The Mountain from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Time Lapse Photography is a cinematography technique which allows the viewer to see time passing at an apparently accelerated rate.

There are many examples out there on the web, but the one above by Terje Sorgjerd has to be the best I've ever seen. You will see that he must also have had his camera mounted to a motion control rig which adds yet another dimension to his video.

Take a look at this wikipedia page just to see what things you have to take into account, now imagine the amount of work Terje had to do, pre-planning each shoot, lugging around all the equipment, setting it up, choosing the composition and just being around in the right place at the right time... really impressive !!

Albert Watson...

Albert Watson is one of the worlds most successful Fashion/Commercial/Art photographers. Born and raised in Scotland, he moved to the United States in the seventies and took up photography as a hobby. His career effectively started after being introduced to a Max Factor art director who eventually bought a couple of shots from him after a test session.

Watson's distintive style caught the eye of many fashion magazines and he began working in both Los Angeles and New York. His first celebrity portrait was of Alfred Hitchcock which is one of his most famous images to which he has added literally hundreds of  well-known iconic photographs of movie stars, rock stars, rappers, supermodels, presidents and royalty. In 1976 he finally settled in New York where he has remained until today. 

Now having reached almost 70 years old he continues working and exhibiting all over the world.

RETV recently interviewed him to discuss his life, career and what he thinks it takes to make it in the photo industry today and the answer is not to be a equipment lover as you will see from the video below.


Fall 2010 Feature: ALBERT WATSON from RETV from Resource Magazine on Vimeo.

Newborn Photography...

Cute no ?...

How on earth could you get a newborn only a few weeks old to pose like that ?...

Well you have to do no more than take a look at the video below from [FRAMED], which features the work of Laura Farris and Amanda Andrews, for a wonderful insight into the world of Newborn Photography and to get an idea of the huge amount of creativity, attention to detail and patience that's required to get these sort of shots.

A very big thank you to Laura who very kindly granted us use of her fantastic image above.

Simplicity...

Simplicity... its really quite difficult to take a'simple' image isn't it ? Does simple mean a single element, a single colour, a single theme or a combination of the above ?

Looking at the image above it looks like Benja had no problem in facing up to the challenge with his deceptively simple image of tyre tracks in the sand. The club would also like to welcome Richard who presented for the first time.

Have a look at the galleries page and you'll see the varied interpretations, please leave comments and a few 'thumbs up' wouldn't go a miss either.

Next theme is 'Contre-Jour', looks simple right.. lets see how easy it is to come up with something original !

Until next month, thanks for all the images and the attendance to the presentation.

Ryan Muirhead...

I've just discovered a rather nice web page called [FRAMED] who provide a free weekly broadcast hosting different photographic talents who share a piece of their wisdom, work, processes and art.

Whilst looking through the content I came across the video on Ryan Muirhead a young photographer from Utah in the States. As he is a film addict and you all know that I have a bit of a soft spot for that sort of stuff as well, I'd thought you might appreciate the heads up.

You will see that he is a lover of natural light portrait photography and he doesn't tend to venture too far from his home to make his pictures and just to round things off he's also a bit of nutter.

Life in Frame

Enrico Mignotto is an Italian photographer with an interesting project (who doesn't?). He just puts an old frame in the middle of the street in different European cities and takes pictures of what happens around. Simple as it seems the results are extremely interesting (at least for me :) )
You can visit the exhibition in Bologna, but if it falls a little bit too far for you it can still be viewed at his web site Life in Frame. I hope you enjoy.

Seeing with Sound...

| Artists Wanted | In Focus : Pete Eckert from Artists Wanted on Vimeo.

Watch this video, I'm not going to say much here, I think Pete Eckert deserves to tell his story all by himself.

Basic Lighting Setups...

Do you know what Rembrandt, Split, Broad, Butterfly or Loop lighting is ?

Do you know your key from your fill from your rim ?

Well in the video below Jay P Morgan will not only explain what they are, he will show you exactly how to set up your lights as well (what a nice guy he is !).

Zip on over and take a look at his blog and youtube channel as there are many more examples from the simple to the complex... enjoy !!

David Bailey interview in the Telegraph...

David Bailey the only remaining member of the 'Black Trinity' from the 60's (made up of Donovan, Duffy and of course Mr Bailey himself), has recently given an interview with Andrew Graham-Dixon of the Telegraph.

Whether you love him or hate him he is always controversially consistent with his comments and wit, see below for a great example :

AGD: Is there such a thing as a great photograph that’s been touched up? 

DB: I think so. I mean Raphael used Photoshop didn’t he? 

AGD: Did he? 

DB: Of course he did. When Medici said to him: “I fancy that bit of stuff over in Portugal, can you go and take a photo of her?” he didn’t show her dandruff and her scabby skin and her black teeth and the spots, did he? He used Renaissance Photoshop.

'Renaissance Photoshop'... fantastic !, if you want to read the rest of this very entertaining interview you have to do no more than click here.

Whatever you want 2011...

Taken by Michele

As always the club started its thematic presentations with the always very popular 'Whatever you want'.

18 members presented images and we welcome Michele, Viney and Helen who presented their photographs for the first time.

While the actual turnout was still not quite up to standard, we still managed to have a lot of lively discussion and pass on a few tips and tricks between us.

All the images are available in their glory on our gallery pages, so take a look, leave some thumbs up and make some comments as its alway motivating to see that other people have took the time to look and comment on your hard work.

Next theme is 'Simplicity'.. see you all again soon..!

Studio for 70 Euros...

This is not the first time we have featured Bert Stephani on our blog.

This time the photographer from Belguim shows us that with a couple of halogen working lights, shower curtains and old blankets you can produce shots like the one over on the left.

What are the disadvantages, you may ask.... for a start the lights generate a lot of heat, so you have to be a bit careful about placement and in the end the amount of light you have to play with is not that much, so expect to be using a tripod and slow shutter speed.

Well, in the end thats not so bad, the fact that you are forced to use a slow shutter speed along with a wide aperture is something I really like, it just gives a look that is more analogue and it this case fits the moody portrait perfectly.

Anyway, I'll handover to Bert to explain further in his video below and you can always check out his blog which is an absolute goldmine of information (and yes, if you like the idea of using an iPad to see each image instantly after its taken, he has a blog entry for that as well !)

Mickey Smith Surf Photographer...

Mickey Smith is a Cornish surf photographer who now lives in Ireland. The video above gives an insight into the mindset of these photographers have and you also get to see that you need to know what your doing in big waves, and even if surf photography isn't your thing, if you love the ocean, you're going to enjoy the video... a lot.

If you do like what you see above you might also want to check out a short film with Mickey and a few other surfers which is set in Ireland (see here)

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