Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2019 i Australian Photography

Is there really anything else I could have written about this month? The saga over allegations of plagiarism against prominent photographer Lisa Saad has held me, and many others in the photographic community, transfixed. On the surface, it’s a story that has it all. A well-known illustrative photographer accused of both image theft and using stock imagery in a number of her awardwinning images, a very public trial by social media, the age-old ‘that’s not photography’ argument, and, surprisingly considering the widespread criticism, silence from the subject of the accusations herself. All this adds up to a story that has generated considerable anger. Anger about stolen opportunities that come with winning awards, prize money and potential sponsorships. And there’s an element of disbelief too, that someone could have got away…

Have you ever heard the expression ‘a photo is not a photo until it is printed?’ We live in an era where a phone is pulled out, a shot is taken and the image is filed away again. But when we’re exposed to so many images, like we are when we scroll through instagram or an online gallery, the brain simply ‘clicks off’ as it receives too much information. Yet consider what happens when you show someone a print - the viewer will most often stop, take their time and study the image: It it more tactile and has a real sense of reality. Of course I love to look at images on my phone, computer and TV, but I really enjoy looking at a printed image on my wall…

UPCOMING COMPETITION THEMES 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 OCTOBER ISSUE WILDLIFE July 31, 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 may be submitted up to midnight on the evening of the specified deadline.…

Take your photography to the next level as you explore Western Australia’s new creative frontier with Australian Photography, World Photo Adventures and your own personal photo guides. Join Australian Photography editor Mike O'Connor, TV presenter and pro photographer Darran Leal, and Adobe and Sony ambassador Mark Galer on the photo trip of a lifetime. Just two hours north of Perth lies Cervantes and Nambung National Park. Boasting some of the most photogenic locations on the planet, the area is notable for the spectacularly surreal Pinnacles Desert, the towering pearl-coloured sand dunes of Lancelin, native plant species and wildlife, and the stunning white beaches and emerald waters of the Coral Coast. You'll not only have the opportunity to capture these incredible locations in the best possible conditions, your personal tutors will…

Filters fall into two major categories, screw on filters and square filters, and there are pros and cons to both systems. I prefer to use square filters as it allows me to use the same set across all my lenses by switching the adaptor ring, and I can also stack multiple filters, something screw-in filters don’t allow. In January Haida released their new M10 Filter Holder System which supersedes their existing 100-Pro Series Square Filter System. For this review, Haida sent me their new M10 Filter Holder Kit ($195 USD/$272 AUD), M10 Drop-In 10-Stop ND Filter ($110 USD/$153 AUD), Red-Diamond 100mm 6-Stop ND Filter ($139 USD/$193 AUD) and Red-Diamond 100mm x 150mm 4-Stop Medium-Edge Graduated ND Filter ($189 USD/$263 AUD). THE SYSTEM The M10 Filter Holder System consists of three…

Thanks to Fujifilm, Craig McKenzie has won a brilliant Fujifilm Finepix XP130 camera valued at $299. Integrating four rugged protection features, the XP130 is waterproof to 65ft/20m, freezeproof to 14°F/-10°C, shockproof to withstand drops from 5.8ft/1.75m, and dustproof to keep out sand and other foreign particles. Inside you’ll find a 16.4 megapixel 1/2.3”-inch BSI-CMOS sensor. The camera automatically adjusts shooting settings according to the scene, and features 10 frames per second high-speed continuous shooting. The widest setting of 28mm on the versatile Fujinon 5x optical zoom lens is perfectly suited to close up action shots and beautiful natural scenes. Clear portraits are easy using the 5x optical zoom and you can get even closer using the 10x Intelligent Digital Zoom. The XP130 also features a large 3-inch high-definition 920K-dot LCD…

FUJIFILM ANNOUNCE THE X-T30 FUJIFILM has announced the X-T30, a new APS-C mirrorless camera that inherits many of the features of its big brother, the X-T3, including the same 26.1 Megapixel X-Trans sensor and X-Processor 4 Quad Core-CPU, wrapped-up in a smaller and lighter body. Beyond the sensor and CPU, the X-T30 features a number of autofocus improvements over the X-T3. There’s a hybrid AF system with 425 points across the entire frame, along with a newly improved face detection system. It’s worth noting that the autofocus improvements on the X-T30 will be added with a firmware update to the X-T3 shortly. The other features of the X-T30 include a smaller and lower resolution viewfinder, 0.62x and 2.36M-dot to the X-T3’s 0.75x and 3.69M-dots, a 3’ touchscreen and a drive…

Mountains have long been a dominant theme in my landscape photography. They not only present the most magnificent landscapes on the earth, but also set great mental and physical demands for photographers to climb and to take pictures of them. In June 2018 I visited two spectacular mountain areas in California – Ritter Range of the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite National Park. In this tutorial article, I’ll share my experience making two unique mountain night sky images: from the planning, to the field shooting techniques, to the post processing and finally, exporting. While this tutorial takes two specific cases to demonstrate my techniques, it can be applied as a general night photography guide in other mountainous environments too. Let’s get started. THE PLANNING Before our trip even began, we realised…

“MAKE SURE YOU EXPOSE FOR THE HIGHLIGHTS TO PRESERVE THOSE BRIGHTER DETAILS…” They say a poor workman blames his tools, and I can’t count the amount of times where there’s been a good photo opportunity and I didn’t have my trusty Sony with me. So, why not just take one with my phone? I kept telling myself that my phone would never do the shot justice, so I didn’t bother. I blamed my tool, when it was my technique that was lacking. I had an epiphany – if my phone is the camera I always have on me, why haven’t I bothered to learn how to use it properly? So, that’s what I did – here’s 10 ways I improved my smartphone photography game. 1 SHOOT RAW If you’re a…

During the Australian Photographic Society’s annual convention in 2018, a number of speakers discussed conceptual photography. Marian Drew, one of Australia’s most influential and significant photo-media artists, gave a presentation, and there was a panel discussion about conceptual art. The panel discussion elicited considerable discussion revealing a lot of interest in conceptual photography. So when the new Management Committee of the Society met for the first time, it resolved to establish this new initiative and charged me with the responsibility of managing it. So, what is Conceptual Photography? Some readers may not be certain. If so, like me, they might find the material at these websites helpful: • lightstalking.com/how-to-shoot-conceptual-photography/• wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_photography• tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/conceptual-photography The image illustrating this article is, in my view, conceptual. Let me attempt to justify that claim. There is…

Some years ago I heard about a tree growing in Tasmania’s north east highlands. This tree is a spectacular example of a Tasmanian Myrtle or Nothofagus Cunninghamii. The forerunners of these trees existed during the time of Gondwanaland some 100 million years ago and they still grow in Tasmania’s highland rainforests. A couple of hours walking through the bush brought me to this magnificent tree. Conditions were perfect for photography, calm, a light mist drifting through the forest, and damp. Nothing brings out colours in the forest like moisture. I used a polarising filter to reduce the reflections from the vegetation and increase colour saturation. My camera, a medium format Mamiya 7 rangefinder film camera, was loaded with Fuji Velvia slide film. Velvia gives beautiful, heavily saturated colours and really…

It may seem a bit of a tall order to ask you to send in your best shots of the rain considering how little we’ve had of it in the last year, but we were pleasantly surprised by the diversity of entries regardless. Here’s the images we liked the best this month. THIS MONTH’S WINNER AMANDA HITCHENS Perfect London Weather EDITOR’S COMMENTS Amanda Hitchens captured this image, surprise, surprise, in London, and from the window of a double decker bus no less. “It hadn’t stopped raining all day,” she explains. “Being a tourist I had to take a photo of the iconic Harrods building, but I wanted to get the feeling of the day in the photo also. Light was pretty much non existent except for the christmas lights from…

Ask any photojournalist, and they’ll tell you. When that phone call from the picture desk comes in, there’s rarely time for niceties. Preparations are hasty, and packing a kit and essentials have to quickly become routine. Yet from this hurly-burly world, Photojournalist Brian Cassey has forged an extraordinarily successful career. As a freelance photojournalist, a rarity today, he has worked for every big wire-service around the world, AP, Reuters, AFP, Getty, AAP, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. His work has been recognised at the highest levels with countless awards, as well as exhibited all over the world. But for all this, the measure of success is the impact of his work and the number of memorable images he has captured. Many of these are from moments in our history…

Most photographers who have tried to photograph wildlife behaviour or ‘action shots’ will agree that capturing THE shot can be quite difficult. It is easy to miss that pivotal split second moment when trying to achieve great shots of wildlife behavior. So in this article, I have compiled a list of wildlife photography tips and techniques that if followed will greatly improve your chances of getting stunning shots. 1 OBSERVE YOUR SUBJECT One of the most important parts of getting decent shots of wildlife ‘action’ is to observe the subject you are about to photograph. If it’s a bird, does it fly regularly in a certain direction? Does it bob its head before flying? Do you notice a certain ‘pattern’ of behaviour, that the bird repeats over and over? Once…

My photographic journey started in late 2012 with a holiday to Kenya and Tanzania. At the time, I had no experience in photography besides the use of point and shoot cameras to take snapshots. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of capturing the memories of the trip, so a few months before departure, I purchased the latest entry level camera (Canon 1100d). It came with an 18-55mm kit lens and I also bought a Tamron 70-300mm lens. On reflection, these were possibly the best purchases I could have made given my limited knowledge at the time. This holiday was the catalyst for my future photographic journey. I wanted to learn and be able to produce all of my images to the same high standard that I saw in…

MANUAL FOCUS FOR BEST RESULTS This was taken by Craig McKenzie at Sawtell, Southside, NSW. He wrote: “Watched this surfer on the rocks picking his entry time. He timed it well and hopefully so did I.” While the surfer and spume are great elements for a shot, that out-of-focus dark rock right in the foreground is a spoiler. The surfer subject is sort of sharp - but being even sharper would definitely be a bonus. The surfer’s foot is the sharpest part of him. When you know that someone is going to do something, it can be worth pre-focusing manually. By selecting a point that the subject will pass through, focusing on that and hitting the shutter just before the subject reaches that point you can get a sharper subject.…