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Oxford School of Photography
insights into photography
Monthly Archives: June 2012
100 Awesome Photography Links and Photographs
Posted by on June 29, 2012
From the truly excellent Lightstalking
An absolutely wonderful week passes us by, and Toad Hollow Photography has been busy online seeking out tutorials, great photography and interesting blogs to share with everyone here. This weeks list is a comprehensive selection of some of the best pieces encountered, featuring some really wonderful photographs captured by truly talented artists. We really hope you enjoy viewing this list as much as the Toad did in compiling and bringing it to you.
Click Here: 100 Awesome Photography Links and Photographs
‘the true wonder of bloody everything, no less’ – Jane Buekett
Posted by on June 28, 2012
The Photographers Workshop was originally a darkroom and studio hire centre. We opened in 1982, and at that time we were the only privately funded darkroom hire centre in the country. Our ethos was access to equipment and access to knowledge. The equipment when we started was better than many colleges of photography had and our tuition was given freely and on a 121 basis. we later ran courses but the most important part of what we did was to teach everyone at their level and at the speed they wanted to learn. In the subsequent years we went through transformations due to the rise of digital. We no longer have darkrooms and our teaching is now exclusively through courses and weekend workshops. One of the best things about the Workshop was seeing the development (no pun intended or otherwise) of people and their technical skills. People would come with a desire to make pictures and we made that happen for them.
So I thought it would be a good idea to track down some of the photographers, both amateur and professional (some started as one and became the other) who used our darkrooms in the distant past.
Today I would like to introduce you to Jane Buekett. I consider her pictures to be some of the most beautiful and mature images. Taste is an interesting thing, what some love others hate, no don’t even think of Marmite this is much more important than that.
Jane was to be found working in the darkrooms every week, either in the evenings or on a Saturday, quietly going about making gems. As she quotes “I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” Gary Winogrand
She has a blog with a small selection of the thousands of images she must have made and some of her writing which like her pictures is a joy to read if not always joyful. Here is a link to her blog
I asked those alumni who responded to my requests for pictures and words, pictures from the past as well as pictures from now. Here are some of Jane’s images and later her words. The older work shows first
“I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.” Gary Winogrand
When I joined the Photographers Workshop in the early 1990s I knew nothing about black and white photography except that I wanted to do it. On my first evening Norman McBeath showed me how to load and process film, make a contact sheet and a basic print. He was kind and encouraging, the process was magical, and I was hooked.
The workshop was very male: rather spartan, with loud music playing and a constant teasing and banter between staff and regular customers. All day people would be calling in to chat or have a coffee. I sometimes felt the place was more like a drop-in centre than a darkroom. But it became somewhere I felt very much at home.
I took classes there, I learnt to print from evening after evening of working at it and getting advice from whoever was on duty. I became obsessed with making pictures, with the silver print, and, like Gary Winogrand, with photographing things to see what they looked like. I had exhibitions at the workshop. I met people who became a big part of my life, I developed a passion, I learned to see.
I liked those Saturday afternoons in the darkroom, wearing my horrible printing shirt stained with hypo, and my yellow rubber glove, when my prints would be sharing the developer with wedding photos, professional portraits, a snapshot of someone’s cat, an artist’s photograph of the moon. Often it was frustrating – trying to make exhibition-quality prints with other people poking at my fibre-based paper or contaminating the chemicals with dirty tongs.
Today I have my own darkroom. The music is more tasteful. There is no-one accidentally pouring stop into the developer. I don’t have to compete to get my favourite enlarger. But I miss having someone to ask, ‘Does this print look OK?’
Jane Buekett
Die bleierne Zeit
Trüb ists heut, es schlummern die Gäng’ und die Gassen und fast will
Mir es scheinen, es sei, als in der bleiernen Zeit
(Gloomy it is today, sleepy are the pathways and lanes and it seems as almost, we are, in the leaden times.)
(Friedrich Hölderlin)
Wish you were here
I hope you have enjoyed these and would like to see and read more, you can do so here
Canon EOS 7D Firmware update
Posted by on June 28, 2012
If you own a Canon 7D you need to update it’s firmware, detail have just been announced by Canon and they promise enhanced features.
On the CPN website you can find out all about a new firmware update – 7D Firmware Version 2 – that will add a raft of new features to the EOS 7D DSLR. There’s also a technical article that explains all of the features of the EOS 7D, plus full information on all the key specifications, technologies and benefits of Canon’s flagship APS-C format DSLR. To read CPN’s latest EOS 7D articles, watch films, and view images shot with the 18 Megapixel SLR, just click here
Is the end of camera based photography in sight – Google Glasses
Posted by on June 28, 2012
The much anticipated arrival of the Google Glasses with augmented reality and inbuilt camera/video have been shown at the I/O event. Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage to showcase the firm’s Glass project – augmented reality glasses that are still in development.
ABC have a further report on these new glasses and as well as overlaying information on your specs these glasses also have a camera that will record stills and video as we learn here…
Isabelle Olsson, a senior industrial designer on Google’s Project Glass, wears the Google Glasses at Google I/O 2012. (Joanna Stern / ABC News)
They are about the same weight as my pair of Ray Ban sunglasses. (Olsson wouldn’t let me put them on, but I was able to feel them and take a look at the buttons.) And it’s hard to believe that in the spectacles lives a tiny computer. She explains that they have taken the parts of a smartphone — the processor, battery, etc. — and put it in the left leg (or right depending on which way you view them) of the glasses.
On the front of the glasses, in the top left (or right depending on which way you view them) corner is a small camera and a small glass-looking box, which is a tiny display. On the top of the glasses is a power button and a camera button. You control the screen’s interface with the touchpad on the leg of the glasses…..Olsson’s glasses weren’t powered on, but she explained to me that she typically takes pictures with the camera and then uploads them using the WiFi or Bluetooth in the glasses. You can connect the glasses to a phone via Bluetooth and use the phone’s 3G or 4G connection. Olsson and the others wearing the glasses at the conference wouldn’t discuss battery life.
So in the future will we need cameras? Now so many people eschew compact cameras for their camera phones, will these go the way of film too, consigned to museums.
All I ask is that the new specs be called Goggles
Read the full ABC news report here
This is what Google have to say about their “Project Glass’
Project Glass
Yesterday 7:35 PM – Public
We are always pushing the limits of our technology, and Project Glass is no exception. It is designed to help you live in the moment — even when you’re falling from the sky.
We’re still in early development days, but at Google I/O this morning we wanted to do a product demo in a way we’d never tried before. We worked with some of the world’s top athletes, combined skydiving and mountain biking, and shared the experience — through their eyes — with the world.
If you missed it, we’d love you to be able to see how we put this together, so tune in live tomorrow (weather permitting!) at roughly 11am at https://developers.google.com/events/io/ to check it out.
And you may just catch another Hangout in Air.
BJP’s 2012 International Photography Award is open
Posted by on June 27, 2012
You could win a framed, printed exhibition at London’s Foto8 Gallery by entering BJP’s 2012 International Photography Award writes Diane Smyth in the BJP
Chloe Dewe Mathews won the 2011 International Photography Award (series category) for a project called Caspian, which included this shot of two sisters running down to the underground mosque in Beket-Ata, Kazakhstan. Image © Chloe Dewe Mathews/Panos Pictures.
…What do Chloe Dewe Mathews, Edmund Clark and Peter di Campo have in common? They’ve all won London exhibitions in BJP’s International Photography Award. Enter now and you could win a framed, printed show at Foto8 this November. …….
Photographers may enter projects on any topic, and there are two categories to choose from: one awarding the best series of images, and the other the best single image. Both winners will be exhibited at Foto8 for two weeks and will be able to keep their print or prints after the show.
The IPA has been running since 2005, and previous winners include Edmund Clark, whose series Guantanamo: If the lights go out went on to be published by Dewi Lewis; and Peter di Campo, who won the series prize in 2010 with a project on Life Without Lights in Ghana. Facundo Arrizabalaga won the single image prize last year with a shot from the student protests of November 2010, and Walter Astrada picked up the single image award in 2008 with an image depicting a victim of matricide in Guatemala.
The IPA is judged by a rolling panel of photography experts, which last year included Alexia Singh, editor-in-charge of the Wider Image Desk at Thomson Reuters, and Monica Allende, picture editor of the Sunday Times Magazine. The prize is generously supported by Spectrum Photographic, one of the leading photography labs in Europe, and by Foto8 Gallery in East London.
The closing date this year is 15 September 2012. For more information, and to enter online, visit www.bjp-online.com/ipa.
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2185843/bjps-2012-international-photography-award#ixzz1z0tWCgVE
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Exploring Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s photography archives
Posted by on June 27, 2012
In the BJP this week there is an very interesting article by Olivier Laurent about photographic archives found in Libya after the fall of the tyrant Gaddafi. The images shown are effectively copies made by the photographers working for Human Rights watch who found them, this leads to a debate about the ownership of the images and the considerations of copyright, some comments arguing that the copying of images and crediting them to the copier feels a bit wrong because the original photographer has rights too. Anyway if you read the article you will be able to read the debate and the comments and add to the discussion if you wish, this is how the article starts
Colonel Gaddafi in air force uniform at an Arab Summit in Tripoli, Libya December 02, 1977. Image © Courtesy of Michael Christopher Brown/Human Rights Watch.
For the past year, Human Rights Watch has been compiling documents and images found after the fall of Libya’s authoritarian regime in a bid to secure an important passage of the country’s history. Now a selection of these artefacts – named The Gaddafi Archives – is set to go on show at the London Festival of Photography. Olivier Laurent reports……
In the first months of last year, as Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s stronghold on Libya slowly crumbled, staff from Human Rights Watch came upon hundreds of discarded documents, including images from the regime’s secret police’s archives, as well as the dictator’s own family albums. “When we arrived in Benghazi in February 2011, we found that many of these documents were being burned,” the NGO’s emergencies director Peter Bouckaert told BJP last year. “Almost all of them had been burned already,” he says, so it was a race against time.
“One day we were approached by a Libyan man who had rescued some images from the State Security Services buildings,” photographs that literally smelled of smoke, Bouckaert recalls. “They had been taken out of the building as it was being burned down by the rebels.” Mindful that his organisation could not remove the images from the country, Bouckaert set about documenting them with the help of photographers such as Thomas Dworzak, Michael Christopher Brown and the late Tim Hetherington. Now, eight months after the fall of Tripoli and Gaddafi’s death, a selection of these photographs, documents, artefacts and videos will go on show in the UK at the London Festival of Photography. Curated by Susan Glen, the exhibition aims “to look behind the ‘grip-and-grin’ smiles of the political photo-op propaganda to reveal what was really going on” in Libya, she says…….MORE
Colonel Gaddafi and Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Soviet Union, holding hands in Moscow, April 27th, 1981. Image © Courtesy of Michael Christopher Brown/Human Rights Watch.
For more information, visit www.hrw.org and www.lfph.org.
Read more: http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/report/2179232/exploring-colonel-muammar-gaddafis-photography-archives#ixzz1z0pvTTOZ
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Magnum’s Professional Practice event comes to Bradford
Posted by on June 27, 2012
Magnum Professional Practice: Bradford
Workshop
Jul 28 – Jul 29 2012
Jul 28 – Jul 29 2012
by Mark Power
Originated as a response to the changing nature of the photography market, Magnum’s Professional Practice events deliver impartial guidance from a wide range of visual imaging industries. With access to key individuals working in editorial, commercial, cultural and publishing industries, Magnum is well placed to advise the next generation of photographers.
In a series of weekend lectures, leading figures of the photographic industry will deliver presentations and advice on the best means for engaging with and working in these sectors. Eight speakers from a variety of industries, including the advertising & corporate, editorial, gallery, NGO, museum, publishing and rights sectors will each give presentations on their subject of expertise, with plenty of time for questions and networking opportunities.
This event is aimed a wide range of photographers at different stages of their career: professional photographers working in a particular discourse but wanting to explore other avenues; emerging photographers who require practical, vocational training; or semi-professional photographers wishing to make the commitment to full-time practice. Each of Magnum’s Professional Practice lectures is tailored to deliver the best impartial advice and provide the opportunity to meet with key industry specialists. Places on Magnum’s Professional Practice course are limited and successful candidates will be chosen on the perceived benefit to the applicant’s career.
The next seminar will take place at the National Media Museum, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ on 28-29 July.
Magnum’s Professional Practice events are produced in collaboration with their educational partners, IdeasTap. Through the generous support of IdeasTap, 10 photographers under the age of 25 are given the opportunity to participate in this event for the heavily subsidised rate of £50 plus VAT. If you are eligable for a bursary, apply here.
Scenes From 21st-Century China
Posted by on June 23, 2012
More images from the very excellent magazine The Atlantic
China, the most populous country and the second-largest economy in the world, is a vast, dynamic nation that continues to grow and evolve in the 21st century. In this, the latest entry in a semi-regular series on China, we find images of tremendous variety, including astronauts, nomadic herders, replica European villages, pole dancers, RV enthusiasts, traditional farmers, and inventors. This collection is only a small view of the people and places in China over the past several weeks
There are nearly 50 images to enjoy, here are just a few to whet your appetite
Liu Yang, China’s first female astronaut, waves during a departure ceremony at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gansu province, on June 16, 2012. China sent its first woman taikonaut into outer space this week, prompting a surge of national pride as the rising power takes its latest step towards putting a space station in orbit within the decade. Liu, a 33-year-old fighter pilot, joined two other taikonauts aboard the Shenzhou 9 spacecraft when it lifted off from a remote Gobi Desert launch site.(Reuters/Jason Lee)
A woman carries her daughter who is wearing a mask as they make their way along a busy intersection in Wuhan, Hubei province, on June 11, 2012. The Chinese metropolis of Wuhan was blanketed by thick yellowish cloud, raising fears of pollution among its nine million inhabitants, as air pollution is increasingly acute in major Chinese cities and authorities are frequently accused of underestimating the severity of the problem in urban areas, especially in Beijing. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)
Farmers herd a flock of ducks along a street towards a pond as residents drive next to them in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, on June 17, 2012. (Reuters/China Daily)
A rainbow arches over Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, on June 19, 2012. (Reuters/Bobby Yip)
A laborer works on a residential building under construction in Aksu, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, on June 17, 2012. China’s annual real estate investment growth slowed to the lowest pace since the global financial crisis, official data showed recently, stoking expectations that curbs on the property market may be eased. (Reuters/Stringer)1000 photography links, tutorials, photographers, new camera reviews – posts
Posted by on June 22, 2012
Would you believe that in the last 20 months we have made 1,000 posts about photography, wow seems like it was only a few weeks ago we dipped our toes into the world of blogging. Urged on by our favourite music blogger The Recommender to get stuck in, to share our knowledge and passion about photography; to spread the word and to bring the best photographs, photographers, tutorials, camera reviews, information about exhibitions and the wonder of the world of photography to those who care, you. Since October 2010 we have had over 120,000 views, our highest day was 957, I guess we must be doing something right some of the time.
©Steve McCurry – this is probably The Great Steve’s most famous picture but you should go and see his other work start here
We have had a look at our stats and rather encouragingly find that there is as much interest from you in the fantastic photographers we have brought to your attention as there is in cameras and tutorials. A good healthy mix we think.
Here is a list of the top 12 posts the highest has got over 6,000 views
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/03/10/top-10-compact-cameras-2011/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/light-painting/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/07/27/duane-michals-sequences/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/best-superzoom-bridge-cameras-2011/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2012/02/10/nikon-d800-review/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/cecil-beaton-photographer/
https://oxfordschoolofphotography.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/20-free-photography-ebooks/
The top aggregated photographer, that is the most views across all the posts we have made is Steve McCurry this link should get you to all the articles where we have mentioned Steve
The interesting thing we have found is how many of you are interested in the less obvious photographers, Duane Michals comes top for visits to a single post, Cecil Beaton, Nan Goldin and Dorothea Lange all feature heavily, I am sure you never thought you would see those 4 names in the same sentence.
Top camera before and after it’s release was the Nikon D800
The most viewed tutorial was on Light Painting
Our most favourite sources for finding the best photography on the web, and in no particular order are:
Lightstalking, fantastic for tutorials, tips, ideas, features
Digital-Photo-School similar to Lightstalking and also from Australia
Cambridge In Colour for the most sophisticated and intelligent tutorials
The Denver Post for some of the best photojournalism around
The Atlantic, same as The Denver Post, fantastic images from around the world
The British Journal of Photography, just the most complete magazine for photographers
The Pixelated Image blog, David DuChemin is just the man, what a photographer an eye with soul
Photo Tuts for Photoshop and Lightroom tutorials
DP Review, where you find out about cameras, the best review site
Steve’s Digicams, as DP Review a great place to find out about cameras
Tripwire Magazine, we like this for general articles on photography
Magnum, the world’s most famous photo agency, we love this bit Magnum In Motion
Photography Served, a place for finding new photographers with great work
Photography Now, such a beautiful site showcasing the works of the masters of photography
There are undoubtedly lots more we could include here but if you are a regular to our site you will know who we love as inspiration and as a source of great articles.
We have had such great response to the articles we post, the sharing is the thing, finding what is wonderful and putting it out there. We greatly appreciate hearing from you and would welcome more ‘finds’ from you, would consider articles or portfolios you may wish to share with the thousands of like minded people we reach. Here is to the next 1000 posts
Oxford School of Photography 