Clyde Butcher.. inspirational landscape photographer...

Clyde Butcher is a photographer that I admire not only for the beautiful images he takes, but also for his no nonsense approach to photography.

He never gets weighed down with technical issues, he keeps everything simple.

As you can see from the image above he uses large format camera's (that one looks like a 12x20 and thats in inches !). Only recently using digital technology to scan his negatives to produce inkjet prints along with his hand printed photo's.

If he can't find the equipment he needs, he builds it, he has no problems wading around the everglades completely oblivious to the snakes, mosquitoes and crocodiles. He's straight talking, unpretentious..... a real pioneer...

Have a look at this article over on 'double exposure' which gives a brief insight into the man.

Then if you want to find out more you can visit his own site here.

World Press Photographer of the Year Winners...

This image of a US soldier in Afghanistan was chosen over more than 80,000 other images to win the World Press Photo Contest for 2007.

'This image shows the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation,' said Gary Knight chairman of the judging panel.

Apparently this year more than 5,000 photographers entered.

All the images of all the winners can be found here.

PDN 'World in Focus' Winners...

PDN recently published winners of its 'Ultimate Travel Photography Contest' with more than 80 images showcased.

Images submitted were as diverse as Hammerhead sharks waiting to be groomed near Cocos Island, Costa Rica to a Solar Eclipse in the Libyan desert.

The contest was divided into six categories: Human Condition, Extreme Exploration, Urban Landscapes, Snapshots, Wilderness and Open Series.

As I know a lot of you enjoy travel photography, click here and prepare to be amazed.

Geometry Theme Presentation...

The club members got off to a strong start in 2008 with a total of 12 members presenting images for the 'Geometry' theme set late last year.

As we have come to expect the images presented covered a diverse range of subjects and idea's.

We also welcome Alberto and Raymond who presented images for the first time..



The discussion was lively and jovial and you really must come along even if you haven't presented any images as it really is a lot of fun, to look at, and hear the comments regarding the images, plus the off the cuff anecdotes of Jose Manuel.... and of course to see if I can get through a presentation without messing up the slide show.... :-)



All the images are on the gallery pages and please give your 'thumbs up' to the those that you most like.... remember it all counts towards the Yearbook content. Of course comments left on the gallery pages are also very welcomed.

OK then, next theme is 'Whatever you want 2008', presentation is provisionally set for 10th March... As you may guess this is a completely 'open' theme, the only requirement being that the image(s) must have been taken this year...

Thank you all for your participation, and if the way you all started is anything to judge by... this is going to be a good year for the club... hasta la proxima..!

Report: the ESAC photo club Nikon D80

I had the pleasure to borrow the club's new Digital-SLR, a Nikon D80 over the holiday period. It was my first hands-on experience with a single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera. In principle anyone can start using it without any prior experience by selecting the AUTO mode (or one of the selectable scenes: portrait, macro, night, landscape). For me this worked pretty well in most circumstances. In fact, it became quickly evident that the basic quality of the images is already better than your average point-and-shoot compact.

Compared to a point-and-shoot the Nikon is quite heavy and I was forced to use a tripod in low light situations (which I would normally never have thought about! ;-p.



The focal ('zoom') range for the current lens (18-44mm) is not very large but it is quite sufficient for first use.

After a few hundred pictures (mostly taken in RAW format, which I now need to post-process. more on that experience later) I tried using the semi-manual functions (P,S.A on the program dial). This I found quite a challenge. To get a better feeling for aperture/shutter-speed combinations and the effect on e.g. you depth of field (blurring of background) you can use the depth-of-field preview button located on the front of the camera.

Competition success...

Congratulations to Manuel and Jose Manuel (again !) who recently both got second place in Photo Competitions with their respective companies Deimos and INSA.

The image above from Manuel show locals crossing the river to go to the Sunday Market in Kashgar, China...

And below from Jose Manuel is the road leading to Monument Valley, USA...

As always you can view all the images from club members by clicking the link over on the top right of the blog...

Our first book is published ....!

As you probably all know already the club has published what we hope will be the first of many books representing the images of its members.

Congratulations to José Manuel for getting the cover image with the 'most popular' photo of 2007.

If anyone would like further copies you can order them directly from Blurb in either hard or soft cover editions.

Thank you all once again for your efforts this year, because without you all we could not have achieved what we have... you should all feel very proud of yourselves...

The Marlboro Marine...

Mediastorm have their latest presentation of the effect that the Iraq war has had on Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller.

The presentation documents both his time in Iraq and his coming to terms with what he did and saw upon his return home. Plus the coming together of a soldier and photojournalist under extreme circumstances...

Autumn Theme Presentation...

Although not with as many images as normal (maybe the cold weather starts to take its affect), we battled against a badly focusing projector and blindless window to present our latest theme 'Autumn'.

There was plenty of lively discussion with the two images you see here generating the most comments regarding composition and post processing technique.

As a side note, we also got plenty of good resturant recommendations from José Manuel and I finally got to use my slideshow software.

Anyway, all the images in their glory can be found on our galleries webpage, please go and take a look and if you like any of them click the 'thumbs-up' symbol that appears when you hover your mouse over the image, so we can all see what are the most popular images.

You might want to check back on your own images as well, as since I have taken the password off the site, we have started to receive comments from outside of ESAC !

So... next theme is 'Geometry' and you get a break over Christmas as well, hope to see the number of images presented next time back to full strength.....!

6 Billion Others...

Yann Arthus-Bertrand of 'Earth from Above' fame, has put together this very interesting project which aims to create a sensitive and human portrait of the planets inhabitants.

More than 6000 interviews were performed in 65 countries where people were asked for there concerns regarding family, their experience, what made them laugh or cry and what gives life meaning etc...

Its absolutely fascinating to see and hear the thoughts of ordinary people from around the world. Yann states "The idea came to me while we were taking the shots for "Earth from Above" in Mali, one day when the helicopter was out of action. The pilot had gone and I was waiting for him in a little village where I started to have a discussion with someone. I stayed there the whole day, In the evening, by the fireside, that man I'd been talking to told me his entire life, his desires, his wishes, his ambitions - they could be summed up in four words - "to feed my family". In spite of the poverty, the drought, I still thought I understood the whole situation. But in fact I didn't have a clue until that man put it to me, just like that, looking me straight in the eye, not complaining, not asking me for anything. That meeting changed me, it changed the whole way I see the world..."

6 Billion Others....... take a look...

'Antartica: The Global Warning' recently won 1st place in the book category of the 2007 International Photography Awards.

What looks like a stunning body of work, also contains a message of the affect that man is having on his own planet. This one goes on my shopping list for future book purchases.

Check out the website as well you won't regret it....

printer for photography

Hi there

Maybe this is not the channel for this, but I'd like to get some advice from you. I plan to buy a printer basicly for printing pictures, though I'd like to use it as a general purpose printer as well. Could you give me any advice about it? (models, things to be taken into account, etc etc). I'd like to learn about colour calibration and so on too, any hint?
I know printing you holiday photos at home is not a good idea, but still I'd like to work on some specific pictures and get a nice printout, what implies some trial and error etc etc you'd better make at home.

All your ideas are welcome!

Thanks

Ricardo

Star gazing......

There is a lot of information regarding Astrophotography on the web, but this article recently posted on Naturescapes.net I find particularly interesting as its a very good place to start your investigation into this potentially exciting aspect of photography...

Tips and Tricks for photographing Autumn...

Photojojo have posted 12 Fantastic Fall Photo Tips, that I thought maybe useful for our pending Photo Theme.

Its mainly 'leaf' based but could provide some guidance, even though the leaves in Madrid appear to be taking their time to change colour and fall this year.....!!!

Another dimension to Photography: Water

I like to spend my time wisely (not really but it sounds good) so I try to combine two of my hobbies, photography and diving together to do underwater photography :-)

There is lots of info out there on the web. But there is one particular very nice online magazine called Underwater Photography . It has many beautiful photos (even for non-divers!) and items on material and many tips/tricks. (no, i'm not getting anything to say that).

btw. above picture was taken by me last year in one of the dutch lakes ;-)

12 Essential Phtoto Rules from Popular Photography...

In the past we have spoken about the sunny-16 rule, but do you know the moony 11, 8 and 5.6 ..?? (steady Richard.. ;-) )

You want a new digital camera which has a least twice the resolution of the last one, did you know you have to find one with 4 times more megapixels...!

Either way check out what Popular Photography thinks are the 12 Essential Photographic Rules...

Are you a Flickr-holic...?

Flickr has always been a bit of a talking point, what with advertising agencies rocketing unsuspecting photographers into the limelight, like this for example..... or those agencies with not quite so many scruples taking advantage of the overwhelming number of low cost images (i.e. taking them for free) and using them for national ad campaigns like this case with Virgin Mobile Australia

As an image resource and source of inspiration, you can't complain too much because there are plenty of images to see, but how do you sort the "wheat" from the "chaff" and get to those 'wow' images with the maximum efficiency, Howard French tells us what he does over on the Online Photographer...

Seam carving and resizing images...

This has begun to appear on a few different websites and I thought that you maybe interested in this new way of resizing images without distorting the content. I'll let the author explain the details in the video (your going to be amazed for sure...!).

For those of you who are not mathematically challenged there's a whitepaper that explains the concept in detail.

The website is here and you can even upload a picture and try out the software online.

Apparently one of the authors has been recently employed by Adobe, so we may see this appear in future versions of Photoshop and/or Lightroom.

Chase Jarvis on Commercial Photography...

I'm a big fan of this guys photography and its good to see a top professional sharing his idea's and giving us a glimpse into the hectic world of the Advertising/Commercial Photographer...

He has a number of online videos that show us what he gets upto on his photo shoots... he always looks like he has a good time (and just like a few members of our club he gets to go to windswept and exotic destinations rather often as well :-D...).. You can find them here if your interested :

New Zealand Shoot
Hasselblad Masters
Ninja Shoot

He's also a bit of a techy and DIY man, check out what he did to create a Photographers Laptop Case...

Anyway, back to the video above, which is his presentation at a 'do' for Photoshelter (an online image library) where he explains what it takes to be a Commercial Photographer, its almost an hour long so you should probably order a pizza before hand, but its packed full of spectacular images and idea's if you have the time to sit down and watch...

"Ocultos"

Hi all.

The "Círculo de Bellas Artes" opened yesterday an exhibition called "Stellar moments of the 20th century photography" (free translation from the spanish title :) ), including pictures by Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Riefenstahl, Man Ray, Andy Warhol, Marina Abramovic and many others. I haven't visited it yet, but sounds interesting. Just for you to know.

For more info (sorry, in Spanish) : http://www.circulobellasartes.com/ag_expo.php?ele=38

El Círculo de Bellas Artes is in C/ ALCALÁ, 42, Madrid.

(The picture is 'Rituales en Haití' (2001), by Cristina Garcia Rodero.)