Lighting Up the Night

My other go to place for great photography is The Atlantic, another one you should bookmark for the future. This week they have images on the theme of Lighting up The Night

Around the world, people are using light to paint, perform, honor, work, and play. In villages and cities alike, lanterns and candles are used to celebrate and commemorate events. In Berlin, famous landmarks are currently being illuminated for the annual Festival of Lights. In Florida, a private spacecraft climbed into orbit atop a pillar of fire, and around the globe, dozens of buildings were bathed in pink for breast cancer awareness month. Gathered here is a handful of recent images of humans pushing back the dark and lighting up the night

Magician David Blaine performs his “Electrified: 1 Million Volts Always On” stunt in New York, on October 7, 2012. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

Paper lanterns float on the Motoyasu River in front of the Atomic Bomb Dome (center) in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 2012. Tens of thousands of people marked the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, as a rising tide of anti-nuclear sentiment swells in post-Fukushima Japan. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)

Runners and walkers wearing light emitting suits and holding light sticks make their way up Arthur’s Seat as part of a dress rehearsal of a mass participation public art piece called “Speed of Light” on August 8, 2012 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The piece which forms part of the annual Edinburgh Festival is set to illuminate the iconic natural monument as hundreds of people make their way up and around, creating streaks of light as they go. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Go here to see another 30 of these special images

Tokyo photobloggers gallery

The Guardian has a whole Tokyo thing going on at the moment, so this is also from their pages, the full set of images can be seen here

“As part of our Tokyo city guide, we asked locals photo bloggers and photographers to pick their two favourite images of the city. View their selections below … from ninjas on the metro to snowfall in Shibuya.”

From Lee Chapman of the Tokyo Times blog: “It’s true that Tokyoites work hard, but in a country of hobbyists, they are often equally committed to the more pleasurable things in life too, and of all the amateur painters, musicians and sports lovers I’ve seen, the dedication of this particular man was a genuine joy to see.”

Adrian Storey/Uchujin: “The city that invented the term ‘karoshi’ (death from over work) and a culture of alcohol abuse takes it’s toll on another salaryman”

From Lee Chapman of the Tokyo Times blog: “Despite Tokyo’s much-touted modernity, it’s often a very thin veneer that masks a surprisingly traditional city, and this lovely old lady in some ways embodies that, as well as highlighting the ageing of Japanese society as a whole.”

Manga Dreams

Manga Dreams is a new exhibition at Hamiltons Gallery in London, combining striking photographs with digital painting to explore the concepts of identity, culture and costume. Manga, which literally means “whimsical pictures”, consists of highly-stylised comics and prints dating from shortly after World War II, although the origins of Manga and Anime, or animation, begin much earlier in Japanese art. The exhibition is a collaboration between British-born photographer Jonathan Anderson and Chinese-Malaysian photographer Edwin Low, whose last major exhibition, The Athlete, was staged during the 1998 Commonwealth Games Cultural Festival.  Manga Dreams is at Hamiltons until 5th March. You can see more pictures here

Anderson and Low have colaborated on a book called Athlete/Warrior, here is the Amazon link

Snow Photography Tutorials

So Oxford finally has a dusting of snow, not the knee deep stuff our good friend and photographer Norman McBeath has reported from Edinburgh but even so snow. Every time it snows in the UK photographers are compelled to go out and photograph it, once snow was a rarity but now it seems a too frequent occurrence. Well that is my take on the stuff. Here are a series of tutorials you might like to look at before stepping out into the cold, they may make your intrepid adventure more rewardinging.

Why Is The Snow In My Pictures Blue – a tutorial about white balance

This is from Canon and is about metering- and although aimed at Canon users is very informative

Snow Photography in Japan – slightly more technical and with details of equipment recommended

5 Tips, simple and untechnical – for those who don’t like to read much

If you need more search photographing in the snow, there are lots more tutorials although they cover much of the same ground as the above. Stay warm, stay safe. I will be staying indoors.