Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-Jul-2017 i Amateur Photographer

‘Check the frame for distractions before you take the shot’ is one of the golden rules of photography but there are times you simply can’t avoid people and things creeping in. It’s a particular problem when you are trying to take discrete photographs in unfamiliar locations – yell at a public security officer in China to get out of the shot, for example, and it probably won’t end well. So this issue takes you through common problems and the best tools for fixing them. We’re not suggesting you should rely on post production to fix lazy composition, but these are skills well worth knowing. Of course, one way of avoiding distractions is to zoom in with a long lens – how apt, then, that we’ve also got the UK’s first…

Wet Plate Collodion course This course provides an introduction into the wonderful world of wet-plate collodion photography. The course will provide you with all the practical information and contacts needed to begin the rewarding journey into creating wet collodion images. 29-30 July, www.streetlevelphotoworks.org/ course/wet-plate-collodion Edward Jonkler Jonkler’s work examines the role of men in refugee camps, and the shifting power dynamics that can often lead to mental illness and acts of radicalisation, with once patriarchal figures becoming ‘lost’. Jonkler’s powerful portraits show a series of men torn from their established notions of masculinity. Until 9 August, www.saatchigallery.com Local wildlife Wolverhampton Art Gallery is on the hunt for Wolverhampton’s very own wildlife filmmakers and photographers. The competition is open to anyone living, working or studying…

VOLVO has teamed up with award-winning photographer and artist Barbara Davidson to create an unusual photography collection – captured using the on-board safety camera of a Volvo car. Photographed in Copenhagen, Denmark, Davidson has created a collection of about 30 photographs using the Volvo XC60. Davidson, who is a multiple Pulitzer Prize-winner, holder of an Emmy Award and a former staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times, chose to work with Volvo based on her own history with the brand – reportedly, as a teenager, the safety features of her Volvo vehicle saved her life in a car accident. Davidson's photographs were first exhibited at Canvas Studios gallery in London's Shoreditch at the beginning of July and the exhibition will then travel to other countries in 2017.…

All change I notice that in recent issues one of my favourite features of AP, namely Inbox, has been reduced from two pages to just one. Is this policy or simply fewer people contributing? Andrew Cathcart Well it's certainly not the latter, Andrew – we've never had so many contributions, particularly via our Facebook page, which is why we've shifted the emphasis to that – Geoff Harris, deputy editor Up in the air Having just picked up AP I was particularly interested in Moose Peterson's airshow photography feature (Flying High, 1 July). Many years ago, I used to do quite a lot of this using film, when getting exposure right was crucial as there was no means of checking! I haven't done any for quite a while, but I am…

1st EISA Maestro competition winners The theme of the 2017 EISA Maestro competition was street photography. The winning entries from each of the 14 participating EISA countries were judged together at the Association's General Meeting in June 2017 and the final results will be revealed at the EISA Gala in September. The overall winner will take home a cash prize of € 1,500 and the EISA Photo Maestro 2017 Trophy. The overall winner from the UK, as selected by the AP team, is Tony Sellen and we see his work here, as well as that of the two runners-up Trevor Cole and Feldore McHugh. Tony Sellen, Essex ‘I love travelling, I always have,' says Tony. ‘After returning from so many trips I thought it would be nice to have these…

Resolution Our tests tell us the lens is at its sharpest when it’s used at the wide end of the zoom and gets progressively less sharp as you zoom in. For the sharpest results at 18mm you’ll want to use the lens around f/5.6, whereas at 70mm you’ll want to close down to f/8 to see an improvement in corner sharpness. The level of sharpness drops off quite noticeably when you push towards 400mm, with diffraction softening images from f/16 onwards. Shading Use the lens at any point in its zoom range at its maximum aperture setting and you’ll notice the corners appear darker than the centre. Vignetting is noticeable at 18mm, but improves by f/8. Stop the lens down from f/6.3 to f/11 at 400mm and you’ll see the…

Construction The filter is made from high-quality Japanese glass with a metal surround that ensures it is robust and durable. Boxed contents Supplied in a circular cardboard box, there’s also a leather case and lens cloth to keep the filter in pristine condition. Step-up rings The large filter includes 77mm and 72mm step-up rings, while the small includes 58mm and 52mm step-up rings. At a glance • Available in large (82mm) and small (67mm) sizes • Supplied with two step-up rings • 5 to 10-stop exposure-adjustment control THERE'S no shortage of long-exposure neutral-density (ND) filters on the market, but for those who'd like to cut down on time spent changing filters in varying light, and who want to take control of how much light passes through the lens directly from…

LAUNCHED 1950 PRICE AT LAUNCH £78 GUIDE PRICE NOW £80-100 FOR COLLECTORS, the Contessa is an interesting and historic piece of Zeiss workmanship; for users, it's a 35mm camera with a rangefinder for accurate focusing and an in-built meter for measuring exposures. It also folds, measuring no more than 12x8x5cm when closed. Pressing a tiny stud allows a bed to drop down at 90° to the body as the lens moves forward along it to the shooting position. Unlike most rangefinders that work on a two-mirror principle, the Contessa copies a style previously used by Zeiss in the Contax. Two rotating wedges of glass are placed so that, at infinity, the thick end of one wedge falls against the thin edge of the other, and light passes straight through without…

NEW YORK-based photographer Sebastiano Tomada has beaten thousands of submissions to claim the Grand Prize of the tenth iPhone Photography Awards competition with his photo titled ‘Children of Qayyarah' (see right). Tomada will receive a new iPad Pro as his prize. Captured in Iraq, the shot shows children roaming the streets of Qayyarah near billowing columns of smoke created by Islamic State fighters burning oil wells. It was taken on an iPhone 6s. Tomada has previously won a World Press Photographer of the Year award and the 2013 Humanitarian International Red Cross Visa d'or award. First, second and third-placed photographer of the year awards went to Brendan Ó Sé (Ireland), Yeow-Kwang Yeo (Singapore) and Kuanglong Zhang (China) respectively. The iPhone Photography Award is, as the name implies, a competition for…

When summer arrives, my Sunday morning routine is seriously disrupted. No more lie-ins or leisurely conversations over the cornflakes; I am up early and out of the door in search of a car boot sale. Over the years, I've picked up some fantastic bargains: tripods, bags, filters, props, and countless objects for still-life compositions. However, among my greatest finds are albums of old family photographs. It might seem odd to rifle through pictures of a stranger's wedding or birthday celebration, but I find it fascinating and, at times, moving. I look at some of the subjects and wonder if they are still alive. I look at the clothes and think of my own grandparents wearing their Sunday best on the beach. Most of these pictures were created to mark high…

You answered… A Who knows? It’s impossible to predict that far 42% B The standalone camera will have disappeared – cameras will be built into everything 26% C Whatever the tech advances, there will always be a need for high-quality, dedicated cameras 22% D The only cameras will be broken old replicas in a blasted post-apocalyptic landscape! 10% What you said ‘I selected the “Impossible to predict” option, but if I had to make up my own answer I’d go for the possibility of retinal implants that allow photographers to take a capture of whatever they’re looking at, with the ability to edit the image by simply thinking about how they wish it to look. My vision of the future does, however, still include a number of people who maintain…

THERE are two tricky aspects to object removal: first, working out what you can realistically fix and what you can't, and second, working out the best tool to use. This picture is a good example because it has a number of objects requiring different techniques. As you can see from this before and after comparison, there is a window at the top right with a nasty air-conditioning unit (copy and paste), some ugly dangling cables at the top left (Spot Healing Brush), the edge of another object in the paving at the bottom right (Spot Healing Brush/Healing Brush) and, trickiest of all, a big bollard to the right of the tree (Clone Stamp tool). We even took the liberty of pinching the oranges from the tree (Patch tool). You're unlikely…

RIKARDSEN'S glittering array of awards has come at a price – last year, he lost three cameras in as many weeks. First was a Canon EOS-1D X, the victim of a heavy snowfall. Then, while snorkelling with his Canon EOS 5D Mark III, photographing killer whales, he noticed his home-made housing was full of water. ‘One of the clamps wasn't shut,' he recalls, ‘so it flooded. Killer whales were feeding on herring in shallow water and it was all there in front of me! It was a dream situation and my camera broke. I didn't have any other cameras. I was so pissed!' He then bought a replacement EOS-1D X but lost that on its first outing when it fell into a pool of seawater, oil and fuel on the…

Fukushima is a chilling example of the standoff between nature and technology. Ayesta and Bression have shot there frequently, and this image is from their book Retracing Our Steps – Fukushima Exclusion Zone 2011-2016 (Kehrer). This picture clearly shows how our response to a photograph is influenced by our knowledge of its background. After all, there are certain subjects that few photographers seem to be able to resist. Doors are one example. Dead birds are another: Edward Weston’s 1942 ‘Dead Bird, Point Lobos’ is perhaps the most famous. We start to wonder: what killed it? Radiation? A hungry cat? The tsunami, shaking the nest loose? None of it seems to make sense. We start making up stories. It seems unlikely that the photographers were able to move the dead bird.…

New gear from Novo Kit manufacturer Novo has announced a slew of new pieces of peripheral kit for photographers, including fresh filters and a monopod stand. Filters come in a variety of sizes and in neutral-density, UV-absorption and polarising variants, starting from £29.90. The MVS-01 stand (above), priced at £24.90, will fit any Novo monopod. See www.novo-photo.com Travel POTY looks for entries The annual Travel Photographer of the Year is back again, seeking entries across a variety of categories. One open to amateurs and semiprofessionals this year is Destinations – a special category in which photographers submit six different shots that capture a specific location, however they see fit. Visit www.tpoty.com to learn more. Official Irix filters available Swiss lens manufacturer Irix has officially started shipping 95mm screw-in ‘Edge’ filters,…

DENVER-based image-hosting service Photobucket has caused considerable social media outrage after its shift from a free service to a paid-for site. The service, which says it has served more than 100 million users and hosts 15 billion pictures, is now asking its users to pay $399 (roughly £309) to keep the images available online, causing thousands of images displayed on major sites such as eBay and Amazon, and countless smaller blogs, to display broken links. The company has been accused of effectively holding the images to ransom For the latest news visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk by many users, who are particularly angered by the fact that Photobucket offered no warning of the changes. Photobucket has not yet responded to calls for comment.…

I suppose you might dismiss me as an unthinking loyalist, but my adherence to the cult of Nikon goes back to the early 1960s when I was posted by the R.A.F. to Hong Kong. There I found a second-hand camera dealer. From him I purchased a Nikon S2 with three lenses. Relying entirely on others for my developing and printing, I did not make the best use of the amazing kit I now owned. But I began to read AP, which revealed a new Nikon camera called the ‘F' (above). I traded in my S2 for a camera without a meter, before rapidly upgrading to a Photomic. I was terrified of the camera and I still have it today - in almost pristine condition. I remained in Hong Kong as…

PHOTOSHOP isn't the only software capable of object removal, of course. Here are five alternatives. While the names of the tools might be different, the basic principles are the same. Many other programs offer Clone Stamp tools like Photoshop's and there are equivalents to Photoshop's Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush. It's increasingly common to find intelligent object removal tools that automatically fill-in repaired areas using surrounding image details. As with Photoshop's content-aware technology, these are ‘fuzzy' fixes that may work brilliantly or may prove to be a disaster. Despite claims made by software publishers, intelligent healing tools are still very hit and miss. In the end, you may find yourself resorting to the Clone Stamp tool, often to clear up small imperfections left behind by other tools. For successful…

Mariana Moraes, Brazil Mariana's background is in moving images. She graduated with a degree in film, so a lot of her photography knowledge was born in that field. Her favourite subjects are people, due to the ability to tell a different story depending on who is sitting in front of her lens and how the viewer decides to interpret the final photograph. Mariana generally photographs friends and family, but is also partial to photographing strangers on her travels. To see more of her work, visit www.marianamoraes.46graus.com. 1 Portrait of Adam Here we see how the combination of natural light and ring flash has come together to create a beautifully lit image Nikon D700, 35mm, 1/250sec at f/5.6, ISO 1000 2 Island Boys This image is part of a series taken…

Do you have more than one lens? What about a tripod, carry case or any additional video or audio equipment? The value of all your kit soon mounts up – but would you be able to replace it if something happened? Cameras are designed to be taken out and about, whether to shoot your next landscape, capture wildlife or travel photos for your portfolio, or just to capture those precious family moments. Plus, if you’re passionate about photography, as well as investing your time, you’ve probably invested heavily financially too. That’s why we’ve teamed up with well-known insurance provider, Thistle Insurance Services Limited, to bring you the cover you may need. Amateur Photographer Insurance Services can provide protection against theft and accidental damage for your camera and accessories up to…