Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/7/2023 i Amateur Photographer

What images are selling best and how do you price your work? This is a question we get to grips with this issue, talking to a range of photographers who are making money from photography – they also share tips for working out how to price your work for profit. It’s another varied issue, so other highlights include a look at how wildlife photographers are using their images to raise awareness of climate change, and a fascinating project to identify the soldiers in a recently discovered haul of First World War photos. Whatever their fate, we salute them. Meanwhile, pro press photographer Andy Blackmore delivers a long-term test of Fujifilm’s flagship mirrorless camera, the X-H2S, and we review Canon’s latest 15-30mm lens. Enjoy the issue. This issue’s stunning cover photograph…

AP picture of the week In the Garden of Small Things by Richard North Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro and Raynox DC-250, 1/3sec at f/5.6, ISO 200 ‘A slime mould, Comatricha nigra, festooned with cobwebs, which I found growing in the “must shred sometime” pile in the garden. It is small, about 3mm high, so I added the Raynox to increase magnification. As depth of field is so shallow I use focus-stacking to get front-to-back sharpness. This was made from 52 images focus-bracketed in camera and stacked in Helicon Focus using B rendering algorithm.’ Instagram: @rnorth500 Website: rnorthphoto.co.uk #appicoftheweek Win! To congratulate the AP Pic of the Week winner, Fujifilm is giving the winner a £25 voucher* to spend on any photo prints or gifts at…

Testbench IN THE FIELD At a glance ● 26.1MP stacked BSI X-Trans CMOS 5 HS sensor ● 15fps (mechanical shutter), 40fps (electronic shutter) ● In-body stabilisation rated at up to 7EV ● 5.76m-dot, 0.8x OLED EVF, up to 120fps ● 3in, 1.62m-dot vari-angle LCD touchscreen ● Weather-resistant body ● Fujifilm X mount It’s a funny old world; one where perception and reality are so often worlds apart. Take press photography for instance. Imagine the reader, bingeing such films as The Bang Bang Club, Blow-Up and Minamata. By now, they believe that life in this universe is a dangerous, exhilarating and glamorous cocktail, an intoxicating combination of dodging bullets, bouncers, and annoying PR types, while romping through the Colorama alongside models juggling Leicas. As, flash, bang, wallop, one (conveniently) always seems…

Photo Critique It’s a strange one this… Photographically it’s sort of nothing. A snap. A young couple with nothing to connect them to anything. No background. No context. The lighting is harsh and the face of the man can scarcely even be seen. A young couple on the beach. Nothing more, nothing less. And yet… Knowing the history it is so moving, so poignant. Knowing as we do now that JFK was profoundly affected by the wounds he received during his service in the US Navy during WW2, that he was a rampant womaniser, and of course his assassination. I’m old enough to remember that day. My mum, who had always had a soft spot for him, broke down in floods of tears in the kitchen. The first time the…

COSINA has announced the new Voigtländer 75mm F1.9 Ultron VM lens, a Leica M-mount, manual-focus lens which is available in single coated and multi-coated (SC and MC) versions. Nikon Z-mount versions of its Voigtländer 15mm F4.5 E-mount, and the Nokton 50mm F1.0 M-mount lenses, were also announced – the latter being a very fast lens choice for Z sytem users. All three lenses can be pre-ordered online and are expected to be released in late February. The Voigtländer 15mm F4.5 is priced at £849, the Nokton 50mm F1.0 is priced at £1,699 and both versions of the Voigtländer 75mm F1.9 Ultron VM are priced at £699. For more details see www.robertwhite.co.uk…

PREVIOUSLY unseen images taken by Paul McCartney as The Beatles shot to global fame are a highlight of a new series of exhibitions to mark the reopening of The National Portrait Gallery on 22 June. ‘Paul McCartney, Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm’ includes some of the best images the former Beatles bassist recently discovered in his archive. ‘This exhibition provides a uniquely personal and never-before-seen perspective on what it was like to be a “Beatle” at the start of “Beatlemania”,’ the organisers explained. A 336-page book, 1964: Eyes of the Storm, is being published to coincide with the exhibition. Other events to mark the reopening include an exploration of the life and career of the photographer Yevonde, who pioneered the use of colour in the 1930s, along with celebrations…

LETTER OF THE WEEK Too London-centric? As much as I enjoyed the recent article on the new Centre for British Photography I really have to ask once more – why is this in London? This says to me that the capital is the only place where people can visit, and the rest of the country is to be ignored. I did visit the old Photography Museum in Bradford, not long after it was presented as the place to go, but even then I was made aware that this place was going nowhere as it was running with a severe lack of funds – no interest by the government it seems were the comments and that proved true. I’ve visited photography exhibitions in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, over the years. They…

IN MORE competition news, the 2023 round of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is now open. Now in its 15th year, the annual contest invites entrants of all ages to submit up to ten pictures, with the chance to win the grand prize of £10,000 Categories include Skyscapes, Aurorae, People and Space, Our Sun, Our Moon, Planets, Comets and Asteroids, Stars and Nebulae, Galaxies, and Young Astrononomy Photographer of the Year. Astronomy Photographer of the Year includes two special prizes, the Sir Patrick Moore Prize for Best Newcomer and the Annie Maunder Prize for Image Innovation. Closing dates for entries is 3 March, and the winning images will be showcased in the exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, London in September. Enter at apy.rmg.co.uk…

7 daysA week in photography £25, Hoxton Mini Press, 320 pages, hardback, ISBN: 9781914314254 THE ANNUAL collection of Portrait of Humanity is starting to become a real event to look forward to. Although this book is now a few months old, if you haven’t yet picked up a copy, now’s as good a time as ever. Among the sitters featured here are teachers and students, parents and children, artists and scientists, close friends and strangers, but each with their own special story to tell. This volume comes with renewed hope after the ‘end’ of the pandemic, but with fresh fears for a new set of problems – war, rising prices and of course, the constant threat to the climate. It’s the kind of the book that one can flick through…

Millions of homes in Britain have them, displayed on mantlepieces or forgotten in attics: faded photographs of their grandfathers or great-grandfathers freshly enlisted in Britain’s army, standing to attention for the camera in their new uniforms. Mostly taken in studios, these portraits tend to be formal and the men often look proud and full of anticipation. The contrast with the candid shots taken by Louis and Antoinette Thuillier, a French farming couple who charged a few francs for souvenir portraits that the soldiers could send home, is striking. By the time the soldiers posed for the Thuilliers in the small northeastern town of Vignacourt, a rest centre less than 40km from the front, the horrors of the First World War were etched on their faces. Many look exhausted and have…

● £89 ● shop.lomography.com/uk IT’S easy to get hung up on digital perfection, so sometimes it can be nice to have fun with ‘lo-fi’ analogue cameras. The demand for these remains strong, especially amongst younger photographers, and it’s against this background that lo-fi stalwart Lomography has brought out the LomoApparat – a simple 35mm point-and-shoot film camera that features a 21mm f/10 lens and a built-in flash. As well as that unusually wide lens, the big selling point is the ability to add a range of flash and lens filters, as well as Bulb mode for long exposures. The LomoApparat is built from plastic, and powered by a single AA battery. Although the build quality seems fairly durable, we doubt the film winding mechanism would withstand over-eager manipulation, so care…

Olympus Tough TG-6 ● £369 ● www.olympus.co.uk Olympus’s Tough compacts have habitually won our underwater camera group tests, and this latest model is still the best of its type. It’s waterproof to 15m, shockproof against a 2.4m drop, crushproof and freezeproof. The 25-100mm equivalent lens is paired with a 12MP sensor, and viewing is via a 3in LCD. This is also one of the few rugged cameras that can record raw files. Canon PowerShot G1 X Mark III ● £1,139 ● www.canon.co.uk This unique zoom compact offers excellent image quality by employing the same 24.2MP APS-C sensor as several of Canon’s DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, along with a 24-72mm equivalent lens. A central viewfinder, fully articulated touchscreen and comprehensive external controls round off a superb little camera for enthusiast photographers.…