Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i Australian Photography

By the time this copy of AP reaches you, the 2017 Photographer of the Year presented by Panasonic will be open for entries. Photographer of the Year is now Australasia’s largest photo competition for amateur photographers and this year has a prize pool worth over $25,000. If you’ve entered before you will hopefully be pleased to see a few small changes this year – the most significant of which is a new single image category, Pro Photo of the Year, that will run alongside the other categories. The winner of this category won’t be eligible for the overall title, but we’ve included it to give people who don’t fit our definition of an amateur photographer an opportunity to take part for the first time. Last year saw a record-breaking 2,000…

NEW PHOTOGRAPHY COURSE BRIDGES PHOTOGRAPHY AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLDS PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIES COLLEGE Melbourne (PSC) has announced the introduction of a new photography course – the Certificate IV in Photography and Social Media. The new course teaches students how to master photography and video production with a specific focus on social media. The managing director of PSC, Julie Moss said: “For over 40 years PSC has adapted to the changing nature of photography and visual communication. Entering the world of social media is a natural extension of the photographic education our college provides. It is a highly relevant and in-demand area for today’s business and an exciting area to pursue a career for creatively spirited people”. The course’s learning outcomes include smartphone photography, how to photograph any subject, how to use…

We have all seen those landscape shots that are simply perfect - shot from the perfect angle with the best light. Images that make us want to plonk our tripod down in the exact same place and have a go ourselves. While there’s nothing wrong with doing that, I think it is also important to try to go to these places with the intention of composing something ‘new’ also. There’s not one great secret to taking great landscape photographs, but there are some things you can do that will improve your images really quickly. Let’s take a look. 1 THINK ABOUT YOUR FOCAL POINT In almost every landscape photograph there will be a main focal point or subject that stands out in the image. This is what draws the viewer…

I believe how we look at something greatly affects the way we perceive it. Two people experiencing the same event from two different locations can have quite different recollections of what they think happened. Photography is no different and the camera’s viewpoint makes a big difference to the shot’s perspective. We see the world predominantly from eye level and looking through the camera lens, all immediately before us is compressed into a narrow band where ‘up’ is mostly the sky and ‘down’ is mostly the ground where we are standing. As soon as we raise the camera’s viewpoint, the sky becomes far less dominant because the camera has to tilt down more, sometimes excluding the sky altogether. The foreground consequently extends down and away from distant objects, more clearly separating…

For many years shooting out of a moving vehicle was difficult. How do you get your shutter speed high enough to freeze the movement? However in the past several years this has changed as we can now increase our ISO (sensor sensitivity) with little drop in image quality. With more photographers also using faster lenses, this means there's a better chance than ever that if you're prepared, you can get great shots. Take the image directly above as an example. It was shot in Namibia in 2006 from a light plane. My old Canon 5D handled everything very well, but as it was an older sensor and we did not have as good noise reduction ability, I kept the ISO low to 100. I was lucky as this meant the…

As Earth spins under the sky, the stars appear to move. When a camera captures that movement with a long exposure, it is called a startrail. It is a cool technique that every photographer should try at least once. In this tutorial I will show you how it’s done. Lets get started. THE GEAR Firstly, you’ll need a camera that has manual control over exposure settings and the ability to connect an intervalometer (or a built in intervalometer). Any basic external intervalometer will do. I recommend avoiding the in-camera intervalometers as configuration options can be a bit limited. The Nikon ones for example are limited to exposure times of 30 seconds or less. You will need to choose a camera with reasonable noise performance as one of the critical parts…

WITH CHERYL MARES I am drawn to the Kimberley for its landscapes, boabs, beautiful skies and birdlife and fortunately am able to regularly find a reason to visit there. My interest in wildlife has always taken me to remote places and joining APS has given me a venue to expose my images. This in turn has improved my skills, both in photography and presentation. As a member of the Australian International Group Exhibitors here in Brisbane, I have gained excellent information for exhibiting and applying for APS honours. It is stimulating for me to be acknowledged for my passion and to further develop skills by exposure to great images within the APS. Without it, most of my images would just accumulate on my computer. ABOUT THE S HOT I had…

This image of the Pisces Star shipwreck was taken near Carpenter Rocks in South Australia. I was hoping to get a long exposure here but the lack of clouds brought up other possibilities. I decided to go for a sunstar over the wreck and took a set of three bracketed exposures two stops apart, and a second set with my hand blocking the sun to remove lens flare, all at f16. I then combined the images in Photoshop using the majority of the water from the sun blocked exposure and the majority of the sky from the middle exposure. I used the brightest exposure for the wreck and the darkest exposure for the very centre of the sun. This is something I knew I could do with Photoshop and knew…

L OOK ING D OWN Shifting your perspective is a sure-fire way to give your photography a new lease on life. For this month’s comp, we were hugely impressed by some incredibly creative interpretations of our theme. But there can be only one winner. Read on... BEVELLEE BRYCESON Landing EDITOR’S COMMENT Bevellee Bryceson says this beautifully expressive shot came from a flight she took last year. “I was lucky enough to travel down the Oodnadatta Track and whilst at William Creek I had a flight over Kati-Thanda/Lake Eyre,” she says. “The plane in the image did not belong to William Creek Airport. Apparently  a pilot from Adelaide decided it was a good place to land but as you can see it was an expensive landing!” Well you know the saying,…

Up until recently, I'd never been tempted by drones. It was a simple choice really - the photographic image quality of the onboard cameras had never been quite good enough, unless of course you plan to remortgage your house and buy one that could carry a large payload like an SLR. Then in early 2017 drone company DJI announced the Mavic Pro. A compact, foldable drone with amazing bang-for-buck appeal, I decided to take the plunge. I had one on order, and then soon after DJI announced the Phantom 4 Pro, the successor to 2016's Phantom 4. It came with a 20-megapixel, 1-inch, CMOS censor, roughly four times as big as the one in the Phantom 4 and significicantly bigger than the 12-megapixel sensor in the Mavic and Phantom 3.…

WITH PETERS MAN CHESTER My desire to be a photographer was sparked by seeing other photographers taking photos with ‘quality’ cameras and carrying around big camera bags. In those bags were lots of lenses, filters, and myriad accessories – it defied reason to believe they were all used. Even so, I decided to buy a good DSLR camera with a big camera bag to hold all my equipment. New photographers mostly take landscapes, sunsets, family portraits, with the odd wedding thrown in. That’s a diverse range of subjects that probably calls for an equally diverse choice of lenses and accessories. However, shooting the same things over the years, you start to reassess the type of subject matter you really like to capture. For me, I was inspired by photographers like…