ANDREW MIKSYS . PHOTOGRAPHER

L1GHTB1TES is the blog place of our friend György László. He has the simple but wonderfully perceptive idea of talking to photographers whose work he likes. Every so often he finds someone that intrigues him and he interviews them. I recommend you make  L1GHTB1TES one of your regular book marks

GL: How did you meet this girl in this disco that more than anything looks like a set from a David Lynch movie?
AM: The problem with photography is that you never know what’s going to work in a picture and what’s not. I find it impossible to plan a good photograph. It’s more about getting into interesting situations and environments and then just seeing what happens. I asked this girl if I could photograph her. The location was kinda good because it was in the lobby of the disco and not too chaotic. Then I tried a few different things from photographing her standing near a wall and then near this column. When I was photographing, I can’t remember seeing all the guys in the background in leather jackets, but when I saw them on the contact sheet I thought the contrast between the girl and the them looked great.
GL: How long work you working on this series? And how did you know that you were done with DISKO?
Andrew_Miksys_DISKO_03AM: I spent about 10 years on and off working on DISKO. It was really difficult to finish the series. I wasn’t exactly chasing after individual photographs. There was something more in the mood and atmosphere of rural Lithuania on empty back roads that I wanted to come through in the book and in a series of photographs. At one point a few years ago, I decided to stop photographing and look through every roll of film and start choosing images that worked together. There were about 75 images that seemed to fit the them which I later edited down to 45 for the book.
GL: What attracted you to the disco?
AM: I like projects that have many layers. In DISKO there were the teenagers growing up in a new post-Soviet reality with more influences from western Europe and the US. But the discos took place in Soviet-era cultural centers that were basically unchanged since the days of the USSR. Past, present, and future were all mixed together in one room. Lots of material. Photographing was always a bit cumbersome. I use a studio style flash on a stand. It’s pretty easy to move around, but I was rarely out on the dance floor trying to photograph. Instead I worked around the edges.

Interested to read more, go here

Abandoned Amongst The Olive Groves Of Idlib Syria

Our great friend John Wreford is now based in Istanbul having extricated himself from Damascus. As well as being a great photographer he is a writer and here is something from his blog

“The scene is messy and chaotic. Water carriers and foam mattresses are being unloaded, an ambulance screams past on its way to a Turkish hospital with a newborn child. A moment of panic and everyone scuttles for cover as a Syrian warplane is spotted.” John Wreford has visited the Atmeh refugee camp.

Atmeh camp clings to the side of a hill on the edge of the Syrian-Turkish border. Colored plastic bags flap like flags trapped in the rolls of razor wire that separate the two countries. Turkish soldiers watch from a guard post on the hill above. And just to be clear, Atmeh camp is on the Syrian side of the border, part of Idlib province now under the control of the opposition.

As we enter the camp the scene is messy and chaotic. Water carriers and foam mattresses are being unloaded from a couple of small trucks, an ambulance screams past on its way to a Turkish hospital with a newborn child. A moment of panic and everyone scuttles for cover as a Syrian warplane is spotted in the distance, a truck mounted Doshka swivels and scans the sky, the danger passes and people re-emerge, a black plume of smoke rises from across the valley.
As first impressions go, Atmeh does not feel like a place of refuge. More than twenty thousand Syrians are living here, the largest camp for the internally displaced in Syria, the decision to come would not have been taken lightly, driven by fear and desperation and with nowhere else to go.  READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE

Canon EOS 70D: Canon’s Newest DSLR Game Changer

ShutterStoppers think this new Canon released in the summer has some important new features.

The 70D isn’t called the game changer without merit, and you’ll quickly discover why. Intelligently engineered as a more refined replacement to the successful Canon EOS 60D, the 70D has a few new tricks up its sleeves. It is made for enthusiastic photographers, and comes with a variety of improvements that will create a buzz. The legendary Canon EOS is all grown up…

Canon EOS 70D: Canon’s Newest DSLR Game ChangerThe 70D improves from the 60D in many ways, a major one being within the sensor. It comes with the newest Dual Pixel CMOS sensor which is capable of capturing 20.2 MP images. The technology behind the sensor allows for a faster focusing during both Live View and video mode. 70D also has 19 cross-type AF points which is similar to the one present in the more expensive 7D. READ MORE HERE

 

for a more in depth consideration of this latest mid range Canon DSLR DP Review adds this

During the early days of digital SLRs, Canon was pretty much the undisputed leader in CMOS image sensor technology. Almost every new EOS model came with an increase in resolution and high ISO range, and when the EOS 7D appeared in late 2009, the company had progressed from 3MP to 18MP, and ISO 1600 to ISO 12800, in just over nine years. But since then Canon’s APS-C cameras have all sported variants on the same basic sensor design, to the extent that you could be forgiven for wondering what on earth their engineers were doing all day. Now we know.

The EOS 70D is a mid-range SLR for enthusiast photographers that from the outside looks like a sensible, indeed desirable upgrade to the EOS 60D. It borrows many of the best bits from Canon’s existing SLRs, including the autofocus sensor from the EOS 7D, the fully articulated touchscreen from the EOS 700D (Rebel T5i), and built-in Wi-Fi from the EOS 6D. But on the inside it sports an entirely new sensor that is, potentially, revolutionary. It offers 20.2MP resolution, but uses a ‘Dual Pixel CMOS AF’ design in which every single pixel is split into two separately-readable photodiodes, facing left and right. This means that in principle they are all capable of phase detection autofocus in live view and movie mode.

On-chip phase detection is nothing new – we first saw it in the Fujifilm F300EXR back in 2010. Since then it’s been adopted in one form or another by most manufacturers, with arguably its most successful implementation coming in Nikon’s 1 System mirrorless models. But because until now it’s used relatively few active pixels scattered sparsely across the sensor, it’s had practical limitations, often only covering a restricted area of the frame and struggling once the light drops below outdoor daylight levels. Canon says that its Dual Pixel AF system, in contrast, works across an area 80% of the frame width and height, in light levels as low as 0 EV, and at apertures down to F11. This means it could well be the most capable live view autofocus system we’ve yet seen on any type of camera.

We’ll look at the technology behind the EOS 70D’s live view AF in more detail later, but let’s not forget that it has to work as a conventional SLR too. To this end it uses the same 19-point AF sensor as the EOS 7D for viewfinder shooting, but with slightly simplified control options in firmware. It can rattle shots off at 7fps for up to 65 frames in JPEG or 16 in RAW, and its standard ISO range covers 100-12800, with ISO 25600 as an expanded option. Image processing is via the DIGIC 5+ processor first seen in the EOS 5D Mark III.

In terms of control layout the EOS 70D is a logical evolution of the EOS 60D, adopting many of Canon’s intervening updates and improvements. So it offers a full set of external controls to operate most key functions, and Canon’s well-designed Quick Control screen to cover pretty much everything else. It also adopts the superb touchscreen interface that debuted on the EOS 650D (Rebel T4i), which we’ve found to be more useful than you might at first think. The 70D also regains an array of features that disappeared between the EOS 50D and 60D, such as AF microadjustment.

Canon EOS 70D key features

20.2MP APS-C ‘Dual Pixel CMOS AF’ sensor
DIGIC 5+ image processor
ISO 100-12800 standard, 25600 expanded
7fps continuous shooting, burst depth 65 JPEG / 16 RAW
‘Silent’ shutter mode
1080p30 video recording, stereo sound via external mic
19-point AF system, all points cross-type, sensitive to -0.5 EV
63-zone iFCL metering system
98% viewfinder coverage, 0.95x magnification, switchable gridlines and electronic level display
Fully-articulated touchscreen, 1040k dot 3″ ClearView II LCD, 3:2 aspect ratio
Single SD/SDHC/SDXC card slot
Built-in Wi-Fi
Single-axis electronic level
Built-in flash works as off-camera remote flash controller
AF microadjustment (can be set individually for up to 40 lenses, remembered by lens serial number)
In-camera High Dynamic Range and Multiple Exposure modes (JPEG-only)
‘Creative Filter’ image processing styles, previewed in live view

 

Currently Amazon have this for a shade under £999