Innholdsfortegnelse for 22/03/2022 i Amateur Photographer

Fine art photography has become an increasingly popular genre over the past few years, but there is still some confusion over what it means in practice. In our main feature Peter Dench gets some insights and advice from three accomplished photographers who define themselves as fine art practitioners. As you’ll see, ‘fine art’ covers a wide range of different approaches and styles but therein lies its beauty, so you’ll find lots of diversity and creative inspiration. Staying with the artier end of photography, we also reveal some of the wonderful images on display at the Tate’s Modern’s latest exhibition on surrealism. Our big review is the eagerly awaited Nikon Z 9, the company’s flagship full-frame mirrorless model. Andy Westlake looks beyond the hype to see if the camera delivers in…

Fishing Nets of La Trinité-sur-Mer by Josh Lomen Nikon D3300, 18-55mm, 1/60sec at f/5.3, ISO 320 ‘I took this image in La Trinité-sur-Mer in Brittany, France, which is famous for its sailing races and great fishing spots. I took this photo because I like the detail and shapes within the fishing nets and they are all different in their own way. I’m currently working on a project where I hope to capture as many different fishing nets as possible to showcase the different shapes and details. When editing I added a bit of sharpness to really show off the detail of the nets and I created a slight vignette to darken the corners of the image.’ Josh is from Somerset and currently studying for a degree in Photography and Visual…

LOMOGRAPHY has announced two new DigitaLIZA film scanning kits that allow you to scan a variety of film formats, using either digital cameras or smartphones. The Lomography DigitaLIZA+ and DigitaLIZA Max are all-in-one film scanning kits that allow you to scan 35mm negatives, 120 film and 127 negatives. Both include 35mm and 120 film holders, a built-in backlight panel, a removable spirit level and scanning masks for regular 35mm and 127 negs. The £65 DigitaLIZA+ is designed for use with DSLRs or mirrorless cameras. It features an advancing knob that lets you roll on, centre and scan 35mm frames. The £84.90 DigitaLIZA Max kit includes a Smartphone Stand that’s said to be compatible with any smartphone. Both kits are available to order now from the Lomography Online Shop and selected…

Jovana Rikalo Jovana Rikalo is a fine-art and portrait photographer from Serbia. She has a degree in law but diverted to a career in photography in 2013. Her dreamy and emotion-packed imagery, often shot outdoors using soft, natural light, has grown her reputation and Instagram followers to over 219k. Commercial clients include Hugo Boss Serbia, Miss Yu and watch companies MVMT and ZINVO. https://jovanarikalo.com or Instagram @jovanarikalo FINE ART means there is a story behind an image. It’s not only a person standing on location. It is much deeper. Each element tells some story – the colour of the dress, the facial expression of the model, details in her hair, each detail speaks something. Telling a story is the whole point of photography for me. I love people to see…

Etive Mòr A few years ago I took a road trip with photographer Jeff Schewe to visit the Highlands of Scotland, where we spent a couple of days in the Ballachulish area. Our hotel was not far from Castle Stalker, made famous by Monty Python and the Holy Grail (known as Castle Aaargh). Just East of Ballachulish is Etive Mòr waterfall, where the River Coupall meets the River Etive. This is a really easy location to access by road and if you make a visit to this spot you’ll find that there are several great views you can get of the waterfalls, and all within a short distance of each other. I took this photo of the Etive Mòr mountain using a Hasselblad 50MP H4D camera with a 28mm wideangle…

With its 45.7MP sensor, the Z 9 can record an impressive amount of detail. Among its full-frame competitors, it’s only appreciably surpassed by a few 61MP models. At ISO 64, there’s no visible noise, making for exceptional image quality. By ISO 1600 luminance noise becomes apparent, but you have to stare at files at 100% onscreen to see it. Fine detail starts to blur away at ISO 6400, but it’s only when you hike the sensitivity to ISO 25,600 that noise really has a major impact. At this point, Nikon’s JPEGs do a better job of suppressing noise and retaining colour than Adobe’s raw processing. The ISO 51,200 and ISO 102,400 settings are best avoided.…

WHILST the headline feature of the Sony Xperia PRO-I is its 1in image sensor, it’s disappointing to find that the camera only uses 60% of its area, giving 12MP images instead of the full 20MP. Whilst this is not what I had hoped, it does give us a sensor with larger pixels than most. You’ll also find a camera with a variable aperture, which is potentially a nice feature to have. But personally I’d prefer a brighter aperture, something you’ll find on every other flagship smartphone. There’s a reasonable ultra-wide camera, albeit a little soft at times, and again, a reasonable telephoto camera, with a 50mm equivalent lens. But considering the high price, I’m disappointed that these cameras aren’t as good as those on other flagship smartphones. In particular, the…

1 ST  PRIZE €1500 & EISA Maestro Trophy 2 ND  PRIZE €1000 & EISA Maestro Trophy 3 RD  PRIZE €750 & EISA Maestro Trophy HOW TO ENTER Entrants should provide five to eight photos on the theme of ‘Joy’. All entries must be in digital format (camera or scanned film originals) and must be taken by you for the purposes of this competition. Existing portfolios are excluded. NATIONAL DEADLINE: MAY 1ST 2022 AP is running this EISA contest in conjunction with our friends at Photocrowd. To enter your portfolio, go to photocrowd.com/maestrouk. All entries must be received by 1 May. The top three will be chosen by AP and be published in a June or July issue. The winner will receive a one-year digital subscription to AP…

Ladies Race by Jack Garnham Racing driver Pat Moss (1934-2008), winner of the Ladies Invitation race at Goodwood, examines the helmet of a competitor whose car overturned during the race. Pat, the sister of Formula One racing driver Stirling Moss and the daughter of race car driver Alfred Moss, was one of the most successful female auto rally drivers ever, recording three wins and seven podium finishes in international rallies. Pat and her husband, Swedish rally driver Erik Carlsson, wrote the book The Art and Technique of Driving. This image is from a 1955 Picture Post story, which celebrated the first women’s competition to be held at Goodwood. The Getty Images Hulton Archive is one of the world’s great cultural resources. Tracing its origins to the founding of the London…

RICOH has launched the GR IIIx Urban Edition Special Limited Kit – a limited-edition version of its 24MP GR IIIx camera with new exposure and focus modes, and updated external styling. The new modes are Snap Distance Priority mode, Auto Area AF (Centre) focus mode, Enable AF mode shutter-release capability and Snapshot mode. Existing Ricoh GR IIIx owners will be able to add the new modes via a firmware update. The Urban Edition kit features a metallic grey finish, a blue ring around the lens barrel and matching accessories, including a leather hand strap and a metallic hotshoe cover. It will be available to purchase from April 2022 but no UK pricing has been confirmed.…

MANY imaging companies are responding to the conflict in Ukraine by ceasing sales of products in Russia and donating money to humanitarian aid. Among the first to do so were US accessories company Peak Design, who ceased gear sales to Russia, and Canon, who suspended deliveries into Russia. ZEISS UK told us, ‘All deliveries to Russia have been stopped, except for medical equipment and products for humanitarian use exempted from sanctions.’ Meanwhile, Fujifilm UK said, ‘We have pressed pause on several of our business dealings in Russia, apart from those that are indispensable to medical care.’ Sigma Japan told AP, ‘We have stopped all shipments of Sigma products to Russia.’ Panasonic told us, ‘Due to the economic, logistical, and other practical challenges, we have in principle decided to suspend transactions…

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022 25 March to 12 June 2022 £5, Photographer’s Gallery, London. See thephotographersgallery.org.uk Work from the four shortlisted photographers for the annual £30,000 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize can be seen at The Photographer’s Gallery until June. The winner of the overall award will be announced in May, with the three runners-up each receiving £5,000. Each of the projects focuses on subject matter linked to a specific region or community. All of the shortlisted projects shares the fact that their approaches have been large in scale or ambition, whether that is from a personal, practical, philosophical or political viewpoint. Jo Ractliffe explores post-Apartheid South Africa, while Deana Lawson aims to reframe and reclaim black experiences. Anastasia Samoylova explores her personal experience of climate change in…

I suppose that when most of us think of surrealism, pictures of the lobster-shaped telephones and flying cats of Salvador Dali spring to mind. Those in the know, of course, will realise that the roots of the movement take us back to 1920s Paris. There are the famous names of the movement, such as André Breton, the man who defined surrealism in his Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, as well as the photographers we may know such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Brassaï and André Kertész. For the most part, people associate surrealism with a relatively small band of artists based in Europe, but an upcoming exhibition at Tate Modern intends to expand our appreciation a little more by exposing us to the pockets of surrealists that sprang up all…

FEW CAMERAS have arrived to quite as much excitement as the Nikon Z 9. It is, arguably, the first mirrorless model to put itself forward as a complete replacement for any professional DSLR. You could argue that the Z 9 doesn’t actually do very much that the Sony Alpha 1 doesn’t already offer, but the big difference is its chunky, robust build, integrated vertical grip for shooting with large lenses, and the familiar design and handling for long-term Nikon users. Not to mention the fact that it’ll work with their F-mount DSLR lenses via the FTZ2 adapter. In practice, the Z 9 delivers excellently on its considerable promise. It combines high resolution, breathtaking speed, and professional handling in a body so solidly built that it feels like it could stop…

● £160 - £629 (64GB - 512GB) ● www.lexar.com AS CAMERAS have got faster and higher in resolution, the demands on memory cards have increased. This has resulted in a progression of card types over the years in a bid to keep up. The latest standard is CFexpress, which confusingly comes in multiple physical sizes that aren’t cross-compatible. Sony uses the smaller Type A cards in its recent cameras, but the other major manufacturers have adopted CFexpress Type B. These cards are the same size as the older XQD format, but while they’ll work in many cameras originally designed for XQD (often via a firmware update), you’ll need a different reader to transfer images to your computer. In terms of headline speed, Lexar’s top-spec CFexpress Type B cards promise to…

Little Egret in Flight Across the Dee Marshes by Jeff Kirby LRPS, CPAGB, AFIAP Nikon D500, Sigma 50-600mm C lens, 1/8000sec at f/6.3, ISO 800 ‘Whilst waiting for short-eared owls on the marshes of Dee Estuary, I concentrated on the egrets flying by. I wished to be able to show the elegance of these birds that are a very welcome addition to the British bird scene, recalling that they were once a very rare bird here in the UK,’ says Jeff, a keen wildlife and landscape photographer based in northern England. You can view more of Jeff’s work on Facebook www.facebook.com/jeffkirbyphotography, Twitter and Instagram @Jeff_Kirby1…

LEXAR has launched a 256GB-capacity card in its Professional 2000x SDHC/ SDXC USH-II Memory Card GOLD Series, which is said to, ‘dramatically accelerate workflow from start to finish’. Said to be for ‘DSLR and cinema-quality video cameras’ the key features of the 256GB card include UHS-II technology for a read transfer speed up to 300MB/s and the capability of capturing high-quality images and extended lengths of Full-HD and cinema-quality 8K video (when paired with an SD UHS-II reader). The Lexar Professional 2000x SDXC UHS-II Card GOLD Series 256GB is available this month online with an MSRP of £374.99.…

16 March 1914 JUST weeks away from the biggest global conflict the world had ever seen, an oblivious AP presented its latest annual round-up of photographic news from the colonies. Editor FJ Mortimer missed no opportunity to show off his own photos – his imagery graced both the cover and the centre-spread, where his naval vista offered the issue’s only hint that perhaps all was not so well in the British Empire. Elsewhere, the greatest peril faced by readers appeared to be the threat to their cameras and consumables from the heat and humidity of the tropics. In Concerning Photography in India, George Cecil advised the use of mahogany cameras, and wrapping the lenses in velvet in an airtight case when not in use. ‘Another point to bear in mind…

Your 1st February issue dedicated to the therapeutic side of photography touched many nerves for me. As a 13-year-old boy who was bullied incessantly I was encouraged by a brilliant teacher at school to take up photography. It gave me a reason to attend school rather than avoid it, and a safe sanctuary (the darkroom) where I could concentrate on producing positive things rather than just feeling bad and cowardly. Later I joined the military and they discovered I could use a camera so I was channelled into it being my trade of choice. During those years I took publicity, technical and training images and even intelligence pictures in times of conflict. I also witnessed numerous high threat situations which, if I’m honest, scared me to death. Unbeknown to me,…

George Allen ‘Slim’ Aarons was a photographer with style. He dressed with style, he styled his shoots beautifully and his images of high society simply ooze style. So, it’s incredibly apt that the latest book of his work is named Style. Aarons, who died in 2006, actually served as a war photographer during World War II when he was in the US military. With typical Aarons wit, he’s on record as saying that shooting combat images taught him the only beach worth landing on was ‘decorated with beautiful, semi-nude girls tanning in a tranquil sun.’ Throughout the 1950s Aarons gained a reputation as a photographer, and a man, who could be trusted. He was welcomed into the inner circles of Hollywood and high society in the US and Europe. His…

Power Nikon has used the same EN-EL18 type battery as the D6, with the ‘d’ version supporting in-camera USB-C charging. It’s rated for 740 shots, but can deliver many more in burst mode. Storage Dual card slots accept either CFexpress Type B or XQD. They can be used sequentially or simultaneously, or raw files can be recorded to one and JPEGs to the other. Remote release A 10-pin socket for Nikon’s MC-30A wired release is placed just below a PC-sync flash connector on the front left shoulder. Connectivity An RJ45 ethernet port is built-in,along with 5GHz Wi-Fi. There’s also a full-size HDMI, a USB-C port, and microphone and headphone sockets. F-mount compatibility Nikon DSLR lenses can be used via the £249 FTZ 2 adapter, complete with autofocus (when using AF-S…

There’s something quite evocative about the sight of a Twin Lens Reflex camera. It conjures up the mid-20th century in a way that few other styles of camera do. As the name suggests, these cameras have two lenses, one that takes the photo, and one for the viewfinder. They’re mounted one above the other with their focusing linked together, in this case by some rather vicious toothed cogs. The upper viewing lens throws its image via a mirror onto a screen which is viewed from above. This view is not quite identical to that of the taking lens, but it’s an improvement on a simple viewfinder or wire frame, and the big advantage is that accurate focus can be achieved. The camera project that I’ve set myself for this is…

I first came across Jesse Alexander’s work after fellow Final Analysis columnist Paul Hill introduced me to his excellent book, Perspectives On Place, in 2015. It’s an insightful survey on landscape photography in which Jesse explores the genre in a historical, contemporary and philosophical context. He delves into ideas and concepts that transcend the chocolate-box, arcadian vistas that blight the genre. Jesse talks about the New Topographic photographer Robert Adams in an early chapter. Adams also speaks eloquently on landscape photography, and in his book, Beauty in Photography, he suggests three verities of a successful landscape photo: geography, autobiography and metaphor. By geography, Adams refers to the record of place, what makes it unique, such as the topography, the light and the weather. By autobiography, he’s suggesting that the photographer’s…