Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2019 i Australian Photography

Since when did photography become a popularity contest? Well that would be just about the first time a camera was picked up I reckon. If you consider that people are still shooting locations that Ansel Adams shot way back in the 1940s and 50s, or more recently the overnight popularity of drone photography, then I think it’s fair to say that what is popular will always influence the things we photograph. But it’s only due to social media we’ve been able to measure the effect of this in any great detail. I mention this because another form of popularity, followers on social media, has become a hot talking point in photographic circles once again. US photographer Yvette Roman says she missed out on ‘the biggest job of her career’ because…

While questions about finding your own style may seem like a modern phenomenon, in fact it is an age old issue for all creatives. I have been asked about finding a style since the early 1980’s and my answer then is still very similar today. Be passionate about photography, have a short term and long term plan and be prepared for knocks. A style, your style, will happen naturally and most likely it will change over time. What has changed in the last decade is the sheer number of photographers and the impact of social media on photography. Overnight, a young photographer can post one outstanding image and become world famous - well in a way at least. Yet they may have no depth of work and even little idea…

One of the best places to hone your photography skills is at home. After all, you can usually find a willing subject or two, and there’s something about the familiar that’s great for challenging yourself. We loved the diversity this month, from astro, to kids. to wildlife. Here are our favourites. THIS MONTH’S WINNER JAIME STEFANAC After school cool down EDITOR’S COMMENTS Jaime Stefanac posed a question this month with his entry: Are you even an Australian kid if you haven’t had a slip and slide on your back lawn? We’d like to propose another – are you a photographer if you haven’t photographed your kids on one? All jokes aside, this is a great action shot of an iconic childhood moment (and memory). That slightly rakish angle and washed…

A New York Times article once stated that to view the collected work of Joel Meyerowitz was to view a recent history of photography itself. While this statement might seem a tad hyperbolic, it actually isn’t as far fetched as it sounds. After all, Meyerowitz has spent the majority of half a century with a Leica in hand, re-writing what photography meant to both the fine art world and to society in general. Some five decades after coming under the spell of Robert Frank and paving the way for street photography to be considered a legitimate art form, Meyerowitz’s new publication Where I Find Myself is the first major single retrospective of his work. Organized in reverse chronological order, the book spans the photographer’s career, from his works on trees,…

Creative motion blur images started with the very first images shot over 150 years ago. In the days of daguerrotype and wet plate photography, images with blur happened almost by default as the sensitivity of the capture medium was very low. Shutter speeds ran anywhere from several seconds up to minutes for subjects like people or a cityscape. It was not that different for myself with film in the 1980’s and 90’s either. I often used 50 or 64 ISO film, so stopping motion was always challenging. It got worse-imagine adding a polarising filter and losing a further two stops of light! The digital era started the same way. My Nikon D1X in 2003 was best shot at 125 ISO and not higher. Now, we can shoot and push our…

During winter we had water pipes burst and, as we were away from home for four days, by the time we returned there was considerable damage. One of the areas affected housed our three bookshelves and as a result it was time to consider the books we wanted to replace. As I started going through the shelves I found lots of tutorials for early versions of Adobe Photoshop long since superseded. Just like the encyclopedias we had for our children are now obsolete thanks to the internet, so are these, and out they went. However I did discover a number of photography books that deal with technique, composition, colour and lighting that will never become obsolete. Of course you can look some of this content up online, but the information…

DYLAN GIANNAKOPOULOS Melbourne based photographer Dylan Giannakopoulos has set out to capture all that inspires him. See more at dylangiannaphotography.com.au. MATTHEW GRAHAM Matty Graham is a photojournalist and former mag editor based in the UK. He specialises in landscape, portaiture and video. See more at mattygraham.com SAM EDMONDS Sam Edmonds is a photographer, writer and antarctic expedition guide focusing on issues of ecology and conservation. See more of his work at samedmondsphoto.com ANTHONY MCKEE A regular contributor to AP, Melbourne’s Anthony McKee was named AIPP documentary photographer of the year in 2014. See more at anthonymckee.com.au…

OLYMPUS CONFIRMS DEVELOPMENT OF 150-400MM F4.5 PRO LENS WITH BUILT-IN 1.25X TELECONVERTER OLYMPUS has announced the development of a new super telephoto zoom lens, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS Pro. With a standard focal range of 300-800mm equiv. on Micro Four Thirds bodies, the built-in 1.25X teleconverter will increase its range to 375-1000mm equiv. The upcoming lens will also be compatible with Olympus’ new MC-20 2X teleconverter. As you mighy expect, the lens will work with the 5-axis IS systems built into modern Olympus cameras like the OMD E-M1X for extra shake reduction. It will also be fully weather sealed. You can expect to see the new lens in 2020. DJI UNCOVER ‘EXTENSIVE’ FRAUD ESTIMATED AT $150 MILLION THE world’s largest drone-maker, DJI, has reported that it…

UPCOMING COMPETITION THEMES MAY ISSUE COLOUR February 28, 2019 JUNE ISSUE MINIMALISM March 31, 2019 JULY ISSUE TRAVEL April 30, 2019 AUGUST ISSUE THE NIGHT May 31, 2019 SEPTEMBER ISSUE PORTRAIT June 30, 2019 EMAIL DETAILS • Send your entry to yourbestshot@australianphotography.com• Include the name of the competition theme you are entering in the email subject line, for example ‘Rain’ or ‘Abstract’.• Please include the following details with your entry: your name, image title (if there is one) and 100-200 words about how you created your image. Please also include technical details including camera, lens, focal length, shutter speed, aperture, filter (if used), tripod (if used) and details of any software manipulation.• Entries maybe submitted up to midnight on the evening of the specified deadline.…

1. Be prepared to act on impulse “The street is a place where you can expect the unexpected, so [be] prepared. Walk the street with a camera in your hand, cocked and ready to go. When any suggestion or instinct arises, move to it as fast as possible. Don’t stop to think ‘should I, or shouldn’t I?’ because any hesitation is the loss of an unexpected opportunity.” 2. Ask yourself: ‘What am I doing out here?’ “I have the thrill of being conscious. Most of the time we’re walking about daydreaming, hoping something interesting thing will happen – and then it does: unexpected visions that come from the mess of everyday living. Suddenly, my mind is alive and I’m aware of everything on the street: from the play of light,…

Olympus is not a company that does anything in a rush. Consider the Japanese company’s newest camera, the OM-D E-M1X. It’s been more than two years since the last Olympus flagship pro camera was announced, the E-M1 Mark II, and in the intervening years we’ve seen a big change in the industry. Almost all the other major camera brands now offer, or plan to offer, full frame mirrorless cameras, yet Olympus has doggedly continued to commit to the smaller Micro Four Thirds format. But in a way, this just makes Olympus’ newest camera even more interesting. After all, Olympus was the first camera company to bring live view, in-body image stabilisation, in-body sensor cleaning and a host of other technologies to market, and it has always focused its attention more…

OUT OF LEFT FIELD The subject of Ross Sonter’s image is his grandson who, at the age of three and a half, “loves to play with my old Canon point-and-shoot. I have batteries and a memory card in it for him. He actually takes some pretty interesting shots, maybe I should’ve sent one of his instead. The shot was quite impromptu. I saw him walking toward me with his eye up to the viewfinder of the point-and-shoot. By the time I focused on him he had taken his eye away from the viewfinder and was looking at me over the top of the camera. I’ve cropped the image tighter around his eyes and the top of the point-and-shoot. I’ve tried to create an image of a child photographer contemplating a…

One of my most heartfelt experiences as a photographer was capturing this special moment between three monkeys and their infants in Bali last year. My wife and I had ventured to the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud which is home to roughly 600 Balinese Long-Tailed Monkeys. Whilst researching the location, I had learnt that infant monkeys spend the first few months of their lives in constant contact with their mothers, rarely leaving their side. I hoped to photograph this precious and finite period of time between the two. I was shooting with the Sony a7II and the Sony FE 70-200 F4 G OSS lens which was ideal for photographing monkeys that were at a close range. The mothers and their infants however, tended to stayed away from humans and the…

Photography is all about making creative decisions, so when it comes to file formats, there should only be one choice. Selecting JPEG takes the majority of power on how the image will look away from your hands because when shooting JPEGs, the camera makes important decisions about saturation, sharpness and general tonal look. However, it doesn’t have to be this way because the RAW file format will come to the rescue. WHAT IS RAW? The vast majority of today’s cameras feature RAW, but how much do you know about this file format? As its name suggests, a RAW file captures raw, unprocessed picture information captured from your camera. One comparison that’s often made is that a RAW file is like an old film negative; it may look flat and unprocessed,…

Do you remember when and where you saw your first digital camera? Chances are it was over 20 years ago in a computer store, and you weren’t rushing to buy one. Compared to film cameras, the first digital cameras were toys; most could only capture a 640 x 480 pixel sized image, which was just large enough to make a business card sized print at 300-dpi. Over a relatively short period of time though, the technology evolved. By the late 1990’s, news and catalogue photographers were using $20,000 digital cameras to meet time critical deadlines and in 2004, as Canon and Nikon began selling Digital SLR cameras for less than $5000 a body, almost every other professional photographer in town joined the digital revolution. The reason professionals embraced digital about…

I am always looking for new ideas and new compositions that are outside the square, and I also like to take photos with emotional appeal. I think you can see in my images of the street performer “Heart and Soul” and also the chimpanzee family in “The Kiss”. I enjoy producing images which present an altered reality. Today, there are many post-production programs available to photographers. Recently, I started using Luminar in conjunction with Photoshop. This opens up another incredible range of filters and features. I started in photography with a Canon 35mm film camera, but now I shoot with a Panasonic GX85 Lumix. One of the 4K video features in the Lumix allows you to shoot a short video of thirty frames and then you can select one of…