Innholdsfortegnelse for 22-Oct-2016 i Amateur Photographer

Many a photographer has extolled the virtues of exploring possibilities close to home before wandering further afield. This week, we go one step further and look at what you can photograph within your home itself, for those days when the conditions outside are not conducive. I’ll bet your home is filled with knick-knacks that, when carefully arranged and lit, would produce an interesting still life. Even water droplets can be a source of potentially great imagery, as depicted on this week’s cover. Once the weather has picked up and you can head out, try shooting a time lapse. We show you how on pages 34-36. We also put the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV through its paces to find out if it offers enough to entice newcomers to full frame…

London Image Festival winner announced Chinese photographer Yuqing Lai has won the grand prize in the London Image Festival (LIF) Award for Excellence in Photography with a surreal shot of fish heads (above). The LIF photography competition aims to be a showcase of the best photography from across the world, from both pros and amateurs. Lensbaby announces lens for mirrorless Lensbaby has revealed the Trio 28 – its first lens targeted at mirrorless users, with an emphasis on creative photography. Available from 26 October, the lens features three selective-focus optics controllable with a rotating dial, for three visual styles: Twist, Velvet and Sweet. Visit lensbaby.com for more information. Firmware update for X-Pro2 AF A free update for Fujifilm’s X-Pro2 promises a large boost to autofocus performance by borrowing the AF…

THE ASSOCIATION of Photographers (AOP) has revealed the winners of its 2016 Awards competition, which is now in its 33rd year. One of the most prestigious contests for photographers in the creative sector, the awards are broken up into commissioned and non-commissioned categories, including advertising, portraiture, editorial and fashion. Pictured above is the winner of the noncommissioned portrait (Single) category, taken by Kevin Murray. The full list of winning shots will be exhibited in London and published in a book. All 276 finalist images and moving image entries from the Photography and Open Awards, as well as 2016 Student Awards, will be exhibited during an event in London, and included in the 2016 AOP Awards Book. For more details, visit www.the-aop.org/events.…

Twitter Vincent Laforet @ vincentlaforet Vincent Laforet is a photographer known for his incredible aerial images taken above major cities throughout the world. Here we find one of San Francisco in the USA. From this scale, the city looks like a lit-up circuit board. It’s dizzying and bordering on psychedelic. Join the conversation @AP_Magazine Facebook Cindy Goedel In this beautiful image from Cindy Goedel taken in Yellowstone National Park in the USA, we find a red fox suspended in the air just before taking the plunge into the snow to capture a spot of dinner. The colours of the brilliant fur against the cool tones of the sky and ground can’t help but hold your eye. Like us www.facebook.com/amateurphotographermagazine Instagram Brian Murphy @photocrowd Buildings are a visual playground for…

Corrie White A few years ago, Corrie discovered the liquid sculpture work of Martin Waugh, which inspired her to begin her own experiments in the genre. To start with, she used a medicine dropper, but later invested in an electronic timer. Corrie is the author of The Ultimate Guide to Water Drop Photography, available through her website www.LiquidDropArt.com. BASIC water-drop photography is something you can do at home with a few pieces of relatively inexpensive equipment. Each artwork is unique. Many of the images on my website (www.liquiddropart.com) were produced using a cheap medicine dropper, but the more complex forms were made using an MJKZZ Water Drop Kit (see www.mjkzz.com). This kit allows you to create intricate shapes and figures, such as the one on the right. Patience and a…

1 Arrange the still life Arrange the items for your still life face down on the glass bed of the scanner. Leave the scanner lid open all the way. In this instance, I propped the sunflower stems against the upright lid to hold them in position. Once you have arranged your items, turn on the scanner and connect it to your computer. 2 Set the parameters Open the scanner software and set the parameters for colour type, document size and resolution. Hit the Preview button and the scanner will open a window showing how the scan will look. At the bottom of the window you will see the final file size, which is based on the document size and resolution you selected. 3 Turn off the auto scan You can…

Tim Gartside Tim has been taking pictures professionally for more than 25 years. Throughout his career he has worked for many property companies, shooting interiors and exteriors, and he has written four books on photography as well as countless magazine articles. To find out more, visit www.timgartsidephotography.com. THERE are objects, places and people that we encounter every day, but fail to really notice. This lack of attention is due to overfamiliarity. But if we make an effort to look at things with fresh eyes, even household objects can make fascinating photo subjects. There are always bits and pieces floating around the kitchen, bathroom, garage or living room that can be shot in unusual or exciting ways, and most require only basic equipment and a little bit of thought. Look for…

I took this portrait of Alice [right] as part of my ongoing personal project ‘Being Inbetween’. I submitted four portraits from the series to the 159th Royal Photographic Society (RPS) International Print Exhibition, and to my surprise, all were shortlisted. My studio set-up for Alice’s portrait was very simple: a hand-painted grey canvas backdrop, one single light (with a beauty dish) and a second that I rarely use. I love the simplicity of using one light, and I move it around until I get the right quality of light on my subject. When Alice arrived at the studio, I was struck instantly by her stillness, composure and intelligence. She has a timeless quality – she could almost be a child from Tudor times. She arrived in clothes she had chosen…

Camera You can use phones, tablets or mirrorless cameras for time-lapse photography, but Mark favours DSLRs. He says: ‘The Nikon D750 and D810 offer a high-quality time-lapse mode and the bodies are great, too.’ Lenses ‘I often use a prime lens such as a 20mm or 35mm f/1.8, but if I don’t know how to frame a subject I will take a 16-35mm f/4,’ says Mark. ‘You can screw filters on easily and it’s so sharp. I also like the 24-70mm and 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms.’ Editing ‘To edit the time-lapse sequence, which comes through as a .MOV file, I use Final Cut Pro,’ Mark adds. ‘It’s been my saviour and is not that expensive, either.’…

Paul Hobson After more than 20 years working as an environmental-science lecturer, Paul took up wildlife photography full time. He enjoys travelling, but definitely prefers working in the UK – the demands on the photographer are harder, but the rewards are greater. www.paulhobson.co.uk THE ANCESTORS of the fallow deer we see today date back to the 11th century, during the time William the Conqueror who kept these animals ‘for the chase'. Many of our royal forests were created to preserve these deer. During the past 500 years, fallow deer have been bred as living ornaments to adorn large Capability Brown-inspired estates and we now have white and black as well as the normal fawn-coloured deer in many parks. Habitat There are a number of deer parks around England and a…

Canon EOS 7D error message Q My Canon EOS 7D has stopped working after reporting an ‘Err 30' on the rear screen. What does this mean and how can it be fixed? Alice Robinson A The short answer is that your camera’s shutter is jammed. The most sensible approach is to book it in for repair. Some owners have reported that they have been able to un-jam the shutter by manually moving the curtains or by using the sensor-cleaning function. The former is not recommended, as the shutter mechanism is inherently fragile, while the latter probably won’t work. Often it’s just a foreign object that has become trapped in the mechanism and you may only need to pay a labour charge. A new shutter is a different matter. Ian…

The Society of International Travel & Tourism Photographers (www.sittp.com) has announced the winners of its ‘My Voyage of Discovery' photography competition. Entries ranged from beautiful vistas and stunning cityscapes to traditional village life. Bruno Graciano was a runner-up with his incredible image of a tightrope walker (left), taken with a Canon EOS 6D and EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM. ‘This picture shows my friend Marcio Cardoso balancing on a slackline 200m above the beautiful landscape of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil,' says Bruno. ‘To take this picture, I had to go into a favela [slum] and walk for one hour to get to the top of Morro do Cantagalo. We didn't stop working, even as night drew in, and this resulted in some stunning sunset photos. I also got an…

Published by Thames & Hudson Price £45 202 pages hardback ISBN 978-0-50054-461-7 Edward Burtynsky belongs to a cadre of photographers who have made their name by creating large-scale and often awe-inspiring works that record manufactured landscapes and the results of humanity's impact upon the world. Also in this group you'll find Andreas Gursky, a German photographer notable for his ability to present scenes from an almost dizzying elevated vantage point, although, as he himself admits, it's a method aided by digital manipulation. But where Gursky's images are, as The New Yorker once said, ‘splashy' and ‘entertaining, Burtynsky's work is more frank and sober in its approach. Distinct themes are present throughout, such as water, the oil industry, shipbuilding, mines and quarries. Each of these themes had distinct projects to represent…

‘The iPhone 7 Plus is the first smartphone… that allows optical zooming’ Dual cameras on smartphones are nothing new. In the past few years we have seen several types of dual cameras designed for different purposes. The HTC One M8's camera was one of the first, and it was capable of producing a range of 3D effects, including a shallow depth of field simulation. The LG G5 added a superwideangle to its standard lens, allowing users to switch between focal lengths, and the Huawei P9 digitally combines the images of a colour sensor with those of a monochrome chip to increase image detail and contrast, and to reduce image noise. However, none of these systems has been a game changer for mobile imaging. The HTC's slightly gimmicky 3D effects lost…

1 Frame the whole drop Suspend your medicine dropper approximately 30cm above a tray (or bowl) full of water. Set your camera on a tripod and position it to face the tray. The distance between the camera and the tray will depend on the lens you’re using. Ultimately, you want to be close enough to frame the whole of the drop. 2 Add some food dye Fill the bowl with tap water. Add a few drops of Jet-Dry. Fill the medicine dropper with tap water and a few drops of glycerine. If you don’t use glycerine the water will be too ‘splashy’. If you want the water to be a specific colour, use a small amount of food dye or acrylic paint. 3 Squeeze out the drops In order to…

Amy Drucker Amy is a professional child and family photographer. After embarking on a daily photo project seven years ago, she fell in love with documentary photography and now runs workshops showing parents how to photograph their families. She is the author of Real Life Family Photography: Capture Love and Joy Through Ages and Stages. Visit www.amydrucker.com. MUCH of our life is spent indoors, and in many parts of the world there are long stretches when children will not, or cannot, play outside. The benefits of being able to photograph children indoors cannot be overstated. But shooting indoors can intimidate some photographers, because they have been trained to believe that the best light is always outside. What’s more, they find the idea of supplemental or artificial light sources quite frightening.…

1 Look for suitable subjects Scout around the house for suitable subjects to shoot. Look for objects with an interesting texture, shape or colour. Kitchen utensils are ideal because they are usually small enough to shoot on a tabletop, but you could try brightly coloured straws, rusty screws, drinking glasses, pegs, bottles or jewellery. 2 Control the light For the shot of the cheese grater I used material to diffuse the light from the window, as I knew that the metal would create too many specular highlights if I lit it directly with a point light source, such as a lamp or a flash. I draped the material several inches above the grater, and used daylight as my light source. 3 Consider a burst of flash If you’re setting up…

You answered… A DSLR 34%B Film SLR 5%C Mirrorless (compact system camera) 41%D Smartphone 7%E I don’t do street photography 13% What you said ‘I regularly use a variety of different cameras including DSLR, SLR, mirrorless compact (fixed lens), phone and medium format.’ ‘The Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark II is the perfect combination of image quality, weight, unobtrusiveness for this type of picture taking – never travel without it, but still keeping fingers crossed that a Mark III version might appear one day with a more advanced sensor.’ ‘I use my little Fujifilm X30, but then I use it for about everything these days.’ ‘Mirrorless Sony NEX 6 normally with an old Pentax 28mm lens, giving an effective 42mm focal length. Occasionally with a sigma 19mm, equating to 28mm…

Framing the key elements THE MAIN focus of interest in this photograph by Ana Caroline de Lima is the child who is looking out the train window and into camera. It therefore makes sense to crop the image more tightly and use the train window as a framing device. The arm on the left is a little distracting. If the original file were bigger it might have been possible to crop the photograph more tightly and focus on the child's face. For example, I could have cropped the photograph to show just the right half of the final image and zoomed in more to apply a portrait mode crop. 1 Crop the image The first thing I did was to select the Crop tool and apply a tight crop to…

DURING Dual Pixel Raw (DPR) shooting, a single raw file saves two images into the file. One image consists of image data from both photodiodes, while the other image records image data from just one set of photodiodes. This means the Dual Pixel Raw files contain a normal image as well as parallax information, which can be measured and the subject distance information extrapolated. When a Dual Pixel Raw file is processed through Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software, photographers are given the option to perform one of three types of image adjustment: image micro adjustments, bokeh shift and ghosting reduction. Image micro adjustment allows users to fine-tune the position of maximum sharpness. Imagine you've shot a super-shallow depth-of-field portrait where the eyes aren't quite as pin-sharp as you'd hoped…

1 Canon EOS-1D X and Canon EOS-1D Mark IV The Canon EOS-1D X offers the perfect blend of quality and speed, and is ideal for action and low-light photography. I travel to pretty extreme environments and I can’t afford to be too precious about my gear. This camera has taken quite a beating and it has never let me down. I carry the EOS-1D Mark IV as a back-up. 2 Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS USM The Canon 500mm f/4 is my main workhorse lens. It’s a bit heavy, but the quality of the glass is superb, and with a maximum aperture of f/4 it’s perfect for knocking foregrounds and backgrounds out of focus. When I’m carrying it, my back doesn’t thank me, though! 3 Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS…

Philip Collier’s pictures are immediately engaging, and you can find him under FlipPhotog on Facebook. I have chosen one of his older shots, from 1975 in New York, because this is the image that caught my attention at the Salle de la Major at the 2016 Arles photo festival in France. It was difficult to choose just one from the two or three dozen pictures he was showing. My other choice would have been a child at a drinking fountain, but this one seemed to sum up a time and a place so well that I chose it instead. Purely compositionally, I like the way the content bursts the boundaries of the picture: half a car on the left, the end of ‘Leaders’ chopped off on the right. I am…

GOOGLE has now produced smartphones of its own: the Google Pixel (£519) and Pixel XL (£719), available from 20 October. Both feature a 12.3MP sensor, with an f/2 lens on the front and 8MP front-facing camera. Both are capable of shooting 4K at 30fps and 1,080p video at 120fps. ‘The best smartphone camera – ever,' claims Google. ‘The Pixel camera is not only the best smartphone camera we've ever made, it's the highest rate smartphone camera anyone has ever made.' Google hopes to set itself apart on the software side, and users are offered unlimited cloud storage on Google Images for photos and video. For the latest news visit www.amateurphotographer.co.uk…

Joanne Urban Joanne has been a photographer for 25 years. She runs workshops covering the scanner-as-camera technique, Photoshop for photographers, and the creation of black & white prints. Her award-winning work has been published in various books and magazines. To find out more, visit www.joanneurban.com. CREATING a still life using a flatbed scanner instead of a camera is great fun, and can lead to an entire weekend of creative image making. Suitable subjects include leaves, flowers, jewellery, seed pods, shells, buttons, lace, fruit, bones, insects, toys, vegetables, feathers – the only limit is your imagination. Look for detail, texture and pattern. The light given off by a flatbed scanner is surprisingly flattering, as it’s delivered in a long thin strip that travels across the glass. If you want to take…

1 Plan your photograph Whenever possible, plan your session by finding the best light in your chosen location. Look for windows or glass doors and notice if the light coming from them is filtered and soft, or bright and harsh. If there are no windows, notice artificial light sources, for example, is there a floor lamp illuminating a particular spot? 2 Find the best position Place toys where the light is likely to fall. It’s OK to move your subject into the light. The child is still playing with the blocks and his/her expression will be no less emotional just because you moved the game. Move around the room to find the best position to shoot from. Discourage children from posing. 3 Think about depth of field Many portrait photographers…

THE HOLIDAY season is almost upon us, which means it's time for Stir-up Sunday, sentimental TV adverts, and the Amateur Photographer Christmas cover competition. This year we have teamed up with Photocrowd and PermaJet to offer you global exposure and some great prizes. The prizes The overall winner (as judged by the AP team) will see their picture grace the cover of the AP Christmas Special (17-24 December). They will also receive a top-quality A3 print of the finished design (complete with masthead, cover lines and so on), courtesy of PermaJet (www.permajet.com), and a cash prize of £100. There will also be a second winner (as awarded by the public vote via Photocrowd, (www.photocrowd.com), who will receive £100, and an A3 print of their image. If the standard of entries…

I was honoured to have been at the one-off screening of the new Harry Benson documentary, Shoot First , in Edinburgh in August. Harry has led an amazing life as a photojournalist, and the exhibition gave a good portrayal of the man and his work. A long-standing ovation followed the film, after which there was a question-and-answer session. Harry (pictured) is still working at 86 years, which is amazing! Harry also has an exhibition called ‘Seeing America', which is on at The Scottish Parliament, Edinburgh, until 3 December. Admission is free. Frank Marwick, Fife Harry Benson is one of the greats. Thanks for the recommendation, Frank – Nigel Atherton, Editor Win! For high-quality photos and 4K UHD video recording, the Samsung 16GB PRO SDHC Class 10 card offers up to…

Erwin Blumenfeld’s death was as strange and unexpected as the art that formed his career’s output. On 4 July 1969, Blumenfeld, then 71, repeatedly ran up and down the monumental 135 Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy. It was an act of exertion that induced a fatal heart attack. He collapsed and died in the company of Marina Schinz, his former assistant and lover, who also happened to be 40 years his junior. Blumenfeld’s act of athleticism was not a heroic attempt at record-breaking – it was an act of suicide. The old man had deliberately stopped taking his heart medication and had knowingly run up and down those steps in order to run himself to death. As far as acts of self-destruction go, it’s fairly creative. But then this shouldn’t…

At a glance • Panning motion-control system • Compact and easy to use • Maximum speed 360° in 33 seconds Video For videographers, the Genie Mini can be used to record sweeping pans of up to 360° with you choosing the duration of the pan. Tripod mounting The Genie Mini can be left on a flat surface or mounted to a tripod via a thread on its base. Micro USB The Genie Mini uses an internal battery that is charged via Micro USB. Syrp Genie Mini • £275 • syrp.co.nz/products/genie-mini John Huxley checks out an essential gadget for time-lapse sequences THERE are numerous devices that will rotate your camera when shooting time-lapse sequences, but you can forget about everything else – you only need the Syrp Genie Mini. The Genie…

Updated AF system Those who use lenses with teleconverters will appreciate that all 61 AF points on offer are f/8 compatible. There are also five dual cross-type points in the centre that are sensitive down to f/2.8 and 21 cross-type points can be selected at f/8 for greater precision. The AF system is the same as that found in Canon’s flagship DSLR: the EOS-1D X Mark II. Picture styles A new Fine Detail effect has been added to the list of picture styles, which adjusts the sharpening and noise reduction to improve the rendition of fine textures in JPEG images. Built-in Wi-Fi Download Canon’s free Camera Connect app onto your smartphone or tablet and you can preview your images and download them in seconds. There’s also the option to star-rate…