About

Posts by :

Xiaomi 13T Series Android smartphones have Leica cameras for professional-level photography

By in Photography

Xiaomi 13T Series Android smartphones have Leica cameras for professional-level photography

Xiaomi has unveiled its new 13T Series smartphones, made with the help of Leica to help customers take great photos. These phones aim to capture the classic Leica photo experience.

The Xiaomi 13T Series makes professional-level photography accessible. Both the Xiaomi 13T Pro and Xiaomi 13T have a triple camera setup with lenses made with Leica. This includes a 50MP wide angle and telephoto camera, and a 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera, suitable for panoramic shots and landscape photos. The cameras support high dynamic range shooting and have a wide color range for capturing detailed and vibrant photos.

They come with two original Leica photographic styles, Leica Authentic Look and Leica Vibrant Look, for striking images with natural color, contrast, and shadow definition. There are also six Leica filters including the latest Leica Sepia and Leica Blue. Under Pro mode, users can adjust Tone, Tonality, and Texture before shooting, saving these settings for future use.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro enables advanced video recording with 10-bit LOG 4:2:0 H.265 and 8K video shooting capability. The phone’s 50MP wide angle camera supports both OIS and EIS for steady videos. The Xiaomi 13T rear cameras support 4K video recording at all focal lengths. The phones come with a video editor feature for easy editing, captioning, and soundtrack addition.

The phones sport a 6.67″ CrystalRes Display with up to 144Hz refresh rate and 1.5K (2712 x 1220) resolution. They have high brightness and support 68 billion colors, providing HDR10+ compatibility for enhanced contrast in images. They also support Dolby Atmos with built-in dual speakers for a rich audio experience. Users can enjoy 100GB Google One cloud storage for a 6 months trial and 3 months of ad-free YouTube Premium.

The Xiaomi 13T Pro is powered by a MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ chipset and the Xiaomi 13T by a MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra. Both phones have enhancements for power efficiency and performance, ensuring a smooth and long-lasting smartphone experience. The Xiaomi 13T Pro supports Xiaomi 120W HyperCharge for quick charging.

Available in Alpine Blue, Meadow Green, and Black, the phones come with IP68 ratings for water and dust resistance. The Xiaomi 13T Pro and Xiaomi 13T will include four generations of Android OS upgrades and five years of security patches. The 13T Pro starts from EUR 799 and the 13T from EUR 649, available in various storage options.

What’s behind China’s spate of museum closures and downsizings?

By in Art World News

What’s behind China’s spate of museum closures and downsizings?

The Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou fired the first salvo: in August 2022, the institution, which is backed by a property company, announced the cessation of its exhibition programme. The museum, which opened in the comparably optimistic climes of 2003, is one of the most influential, academic and experimental independent institutions on the Chinese mainland. But, in recent years, it has been forced to operate in an increasingly hostile environment. Its loss, nevertheless, has shaken a Chinese art community already reeling from pandemic restrictions.

Other shocks soon followed: the OCAT chain of property-backed institutions in Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an and Shenzhen abruptly closed in 2022, Yuz Museum relocated this summer from its enormous converted airplane hangar in Shanghai’s West Bund to a much smaller facility in a remote suburb, and the Shanghai Centre of Photography (SCoP) will close in November after eight years due to the retirement of its founder, the photojournalist Liu Heung Shing. In August, Shanghai’s Long Museum announced a Sotheby’s Hong Kong autumn sale of almost 40 works from its collection, with a value estimated to be between $95.9m-$135.5m. A sale of further works is planned with Sotheby’s New York.

“It does feel like a boom-and-bust process, which is a reflection of the larger economic situation,” says Colin Chinnery, an artist and curator who this year co-founded Beijing’s Sound Art Museum. “Most private art institutions don’t have a solid financial model, especially if they rely on a parent company to pay their bills. The current model seems to be based on the ‘seven fat years’ premise, without considering the lean years that inevitably follow.”

China’s museums face an increasingly chaotic censorship regime as well as the fallout from zero Covid policies, a global downturn and a collapsing property market. The country’s reopening early this year failed to mitigate the damage done by long lockdowns. “Covid caused economic havoc in 2022, which led to a lot of financial stress,” Chinnery says. “The links of the economic chain seem to be broken, which has brought a lot of economic movement to a halt. You can’t move if you don’t have cash to make things happen.”

In the 2010s, China built new museums with a frenzy rivalled only by its urban construction programme. According to the China Museums Association, 1,563 new museums opened between 2009 and 2014. These figures are likely misleading, commentators say: only a fraction of those listed are recognisable as art museums by any definition, and most of those are public institutions backed by national, provincial, municipal or district governments. China, though, was able to boast up to 100 noteworthy art museums by 2020, each launched by private enterprises, primarily in the property industry, or by individual collectors.

Property crash and political upheaval

But the pace of museum investment slowed well before 2020, and some attrition, like the 2019 closure of Redtory Museum of Contemporary Art in Guangzhou, was due to redevelopment. Then came China’s long-anticipated property crash, starting with the 2021 insolvency of the mega developer Evergrande, which eviscerated the life savings of customers who had invested in never-completed constructions. Evergrande’s share price plummeted this August, an event that coincided with the collapse of another industry giant, Country Garden.

Political upheaval is also taking a toll. Censorship is notoriously difficult to document in China, due to fears of repercussions, but, anecdotally, it has been inching up since 2012 and tightened in particular during the Covid years. Unconfirmed tales are whispered over glasses of wine at openings, suggesting that the old adage of simply avoiding the “three Ts” of Tiananmen, Taiwan and Tibet—plus sex—no longer holds true. Material rumoured to have crossed the blurred lines now includes even the art market darlings of 1990s Political pop, as well as references to the Belt and Road Initiative, Sino-American relations, the Second World War or even title mistranslations deemed unpatriotic. Private museums have purportedly been instructed to display more pro-government and patriotic shows around anniversaries like the October National Day.

“Now there is no clear red line,” says a former associate director at several private museums, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The mechanism has changed; before, you apply and you are or aren’t approved, officials will say this may not be appropriate, or will tell you to be careful about a certain aspect of the exhibition. Now censorship is based on reports by anyone who comes in and is uncomfortable with anything. It is very tricky.” In June 2021, a public outcry about Song Ta’s 2013 video Uglier and Uglier, ranking school girls, closed OCAT Shanghai for months. In 2022, at UCCA in Beijing, a visitor complaint got Li Songsong’s painting of a Japanese kamikaze jet removed.

Nevertheless, some museums report that room for negotiating with local censor bureaux remains more open than it seems from the outside. At Beijing’s Sound Art Museum, censorship is “not such an issue for us”, Chinnery says, with a museological, knowledge-based permanent exhibition. “Our contemporary shows are more abstract than visual art. Things have certainly become tighter in recent years, but it changes all the time.”

Even before the bust, short-term profit motives have proved to be the most limiting form of self-censorship. Nikita Cai, the chief curator of Guangdong Times Museum, who has remained with the now-downsized project, highlights the popularisation of solo shows and imported package exhibitions. “Wherever you see this model of less curated, mainly painting exhibitions, it is a sign of a market turning more conservative,” she says. “China has another model of exhibition, of imported package exhibitions without any local conversation or mediation. It’s dominant now.” She describes a loop where “people think imported art is good art, museums think this is the kind of exhibition visitors are willing to pay for, what they think is the Western canon. It’s more welcome and digestible, and with the opinions and histories already written it is easy to translate without any challenges”.

The cessation of the exhibition programme at the influential Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou was the start of a series of museum closures

Courtesy Guangdong Times Museum

“Never independent entities”

As in Western museums, the need for money reigns supreme. “Behind those two models is income, a certain thinking of art as a potential investment and speculation,” Cai says. “It is completely taking over.” She has observed this trend for the past five years, escalating during Covid as art became more popular as an investment vehicle.

“Private museums are never independent entities,” says the anonymous former director. These museums often have licences tied to a parent company that guarantees funding of around $275,000 a year. “The regulation defines it as a parasite, because it has to have someone feeding it every year,” the former director says. Some museums set up as holding groups, with sub-companies for things like education and gift shops, but end up with “the logic of commercial companies” focused on profits to the expense of the institution’s original mission and vision, they say. Those with deeper pockets think little else is needed in terms of staffing or strategy. “These larger institutions think they can compete with Tate, the Met or MoMA with just an out-of-the-blue plan and some money,” they say. A few of the museums are notorious, locally, for ‘flipping’ works to private collectors. While these are outliers, most Chinese museums welcome gallery-funded exhibitions and auction house partnerships and often turn a blind eye to private sales of works on show in an exhibition, often on site. “Meanwhile curated, academic, professional shows get increasingly squeezed out,” the former director says.

Private museums do get some state support, sometimes substantial, but it tends to flow to the flashier institutions that need it least. Cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen have introduced new legal categories for fine art exhibition spaces, legalising less conventional and dual-use projects, “like exhibitions in airports, or wine bars”, the former director says. “It is an attempt to offer more support for these kind of spaces”—and, invariably, more control.

The Beijing Municipal Government has started offering a special “Category Museum” status to projects like the Sound Art Museum, Chinnery says, “which isn’t quite the same as full museum status, but it does mean we are part of a system of institutions recognised by the government”. The status allows the museum to collaborate with state environmental federations to record audio footage, for example, in national parks, or to conduct research in hospitals or universities. “We need official status to work with these professional bodies,” he says.

Despite the losses of gems like the Times Museum and SCoP, most leading boom-era private museums are plodding away through these lean years, including the Ming Contemporary Art Museum and the HOW Art Museum in Shanghai, and UCCA and M WOODS in Beijing (with branches in other locations), as well as public institutions like Shanghai’s Power Station of Art and the Museum of Art Pudong. The private Shanghai venue Rockbund Art Museum, under new leadership from Liu Yingjiu and X Zhu-Nowell, has rebounded this year from a renovation closure with a series of bold solo shows by emerging queer Asian women such as Tosh Basco and Evelyn Taocheng Wang. Projects such as the Start Museum in Shanghai and the TAG Art Museum in Qingdao launched recently after long delays, while the photography institution Fotografiska will open a Shanghai branch later this year. The anonymous former director believes a new model of smaller, more specialised, grassroots entities will emerge.

“The 2008 financial crisis was a good thing for the Chinese art world,” Chinnery says. “It got rid of the investing froth poisoning the situation and cleared the way for a new situation to emerge.” Something similar is now happening, he says. “I hope this will force institutions to think of new financial models, and we can create a new art ecosystem.”

How to Start a Gallery

By in Art World News

How to Start a Gallery

The art business can be unpredictable, especially in New York. We asked several art dealers how they stay afloat — and how much it costs to do so.

​​Without galleries — the point of entry for both artists and buyers — there would be no art market. But these businesses are also legendary for their lack of transparency. Information, especially about finances, seems opaque ​and secretive by design​.

​​With this in mind, we set out to learn the ​​basic mechanics of running a gallery in New York​ City circa 2023 ​— what it costs, for everything from rent to insurance to other, less ​anticipated ​​expenses​. New York was a natural area of focus, as it is home to more than 760 galleries with at least one paid employee; that’s 16 percent of all similar galleries in the U.S., more than any other city, according to a 2020 analysis by the art economist Clare McAndrew. While much attention in the press is ​​lavished on the handful of megagalleries routinely selling multimillion-dollar paintings, we focused on a group of art dealers with five or fewer full-time employees who are more representative of the small or midsize businesses that make up most of the industry.

1. Take the leap.

A photograph of a man, in mid air, leaping chest first out of a window onto a street. A passer-by is riding a bicycle.
“Leap Into the Void” (1960), an artistic action by Yves Klein photographed by Harry Shunk and János Kender.© The Estate of Yves Klein, c/o ADAGP, Paris 2023. Collaboration Harry Shunk and János Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

Opening a gallery is a bit like becoming an artist. If you’d be happy doing anything else, those with experience say, don’t do it. “It’s a goat rodeo every day,” says dealer Cristin Tierney, 52. “Good thing I love goats.”

Most dealers get into the game for a simple reason: They want to help build the careers of the artists they love and help other people fall in love with them, too. Along the way, they pick up a skill set that ranges from charming wealthy collectors by night to applying drywall by day.

The amount of start-up capital needed varies. ​After several years working at a Chelsea gallery, Rachel Uffner, 45, set out to open her own space in 2008. She sold art informally on the side and cobbled together about $125,000: a mix of small business loans, revenue from ​the​ sale of art ​​​​to a corporate collection, and $25,000 her parents had been saving for her wedding. Jasmin Tsou,​ 38,​ the founder of JTT gallery in Tribeca, started out in 2011 with a $2,000 loan from her former employer, ​the dealer Michele Maccarone.​ It was enough to pay for a tiny booth at an art fair, where she ended up selling more than 30 works.

2. Find a space.

Thomas Struth’s “Crosby Street, Soho, New York” (1978).© Thomas Struth

Like any other business, galleries are all about who you know. Some dealers sublet their first space from a supporter or friend at well below market rate.

​​An artist offered to rent Tsou a 500-square-foot gallery on the Lower East Side for $3,000 a month as long as she agreed to clean out the trash that had piled up inside. “The trash was drywall, studs, paint, plaster — I used all of that to build the space out,” Tsou recalls. ​“If the universe had not opened every single door at every moment, I don’t know if I would have done it.”​ Other dealers hit the pavement for months in order to find that elusive mix of good bones, good vibes and a good price. “I must have looked at 40 spaces,” said Helena Anrather, ​36, ​who opened up shop in Chinatown in 2017.

These days, rents can be eye-watering. Jonathan Travis, a partner at Redwood Property Group, estimates that the average ground-floor gallery space in ​West ​Chelsea or TriBeCa costs around $100 per square foot. ​On the Upper East Side, rents can cost up to two or three times as much​, making it “the most expensive gallery district in the city,” Travis says​. ​(Prices for upper floors in the neighborhood are more comparable to those in Chelsea and TriBeCa.) ​The most affordable option for a dealer starting out in Manhattan is an upper floor in Chinatown, which could cost, at the lower end, $​5,000 ​​a month. But even that requires serious investment. A first-time business owner, Travis warns, should be prepared to put down a security deposit of as much as eight months’ rent, though that number too will vary depending on the neighborhood.

3. Build a roster of artists.

David Robbins’s “Talent” (1986).© David Robbins 1986

Often, dealers start out mounting shows of work by friends or acquaintances before looking farther afield. Open studio events, art-school graduate shows, Instagram, international biennials — all are frequent hunting grounds for new talent. Rachel Uffner met Curtis Talwst Santiago, a Canada-born, Munich-based artist who creates tiny dioramas inside jewelry boxes, while he was doing a residency at the art space Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. “We’re lucky in New York because a lot of people come to us,” Uffner says.

​​​The artist-gallery relationship is a bit like dating. Young artists might work with a number of art dealers casually — contributing a painting to a group show or art-fair booth, for example — before committing to something more serious, like a solo show. Only then might they agree to formal representation, in which a gallery becomes the artist’s official agent. ​​​“You have that status conversation — ‘What are we?’” Anrather says. “It’s important to be clear about one another’s goals.”

​​​​Galleries make introductions to curators and other influential art-world tastemakers, shape the career trajectories of the artists they represent and generally split sales proceeds 50-50. One or two highly successful artists can sometimes drive a large portion of a gallery’s profits, which makes it all the more stressful when a megagallery like Gagosian or David Zwirner — which offer considerably more resources and better infrastructure — woos them away. Still, smaller dealers may try to strike a deal to share representation. “At the end of the day, if David Zwirner or Hauser [& Wirth] comes to an artist I work with and says, ‘We’re going to have a show,’ what am I going to say? No?” asks the dealer Charlie Moffett, 38. “There is this tacit understanding that if a bigger gallery does offer them an opportunity, they would like to find a way to keep working together … but you can’t hold on too tight.”

4. Find your people.

Jared French’s “The Rope” (1954).© Estate of Jared French, courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art/Licensed by Scala/Art Resource/ARS, NY

A gallery is more than just the artists it represents — it’s also the community of​ people who keep the operation going. That cast includes art handlers (who get the art from place to place and install it safely), directors (who sell art to collectors and serve as the main point of contact for artists), registrars (who keep track of art as it travels from, say, gallery storage to a museum or to a collector’s home), and fabricators (who help artists with highly technical production). Anrather noted somewhat sheepishly that her director, Megan Yuan, started out as an unpaid intern; her role — and salary — grew alongside the business. (Yuan was sent over unannounced by a gallery in the neighborhood that had overestimated the number of interns it could accommodate that day.) The market rate for a director at a midsize gallery varies widely, according to dealers: between $60,000 and $120,000, plus perhaps a 10 percent ​commission on each work they sell, based on the gallery’s profit, or a bonus predicated on the gallery’s total annual revenue. ​​

5. Build your network of collectors.

Alex Katz’s “The Cocktail Party” (1965).© 2023 Alex Katz/Licensed by VAGA at ARS, NY. Photo: Tom Van Eynde

It takes fewer collectors than one might think to keep a gallery afloat. “In any given year, you are selling a huge percentage of what you sell to a handful of people,” says Tierney, who founded her gallery in 2010. Some dealers can rely on a core group of a dozen or more supercollectors who consistently buy art from multiple exhibitions a year, and many more who make one or two purchases over the course of a decade. As Tierney put it: “I have had times where someone who I met at a panel discussion 10 years ago sends me an email out of nowhere and says, ‘How much is that?’”

6. Get your priorities straight.

Pablo Barba’s “The Influencers” (2022).Courtesy of the artist and A Hug From the Art World 

Art dealers have to make decisions about where to spend and where to save. Rather than renting out a​n expensive​​ Chelsea restaurant for a post-opening soiree, which can cost more than $15,000, many young dealers opt to ​​​​celebrate ​their artists with beer and pizza at a nearby bar for less than $2,000. Few work with specialist PR firms, which can charge as much as $10,000 a month. Anrather turned the gallery’s defunct ​elevator shaft into “extremely compact storage” to minimize her off-site storage fees. Kendra Jayne Patrick, who founded her itinerant gallery in New York in 2018 and opened a brick-and-mortar space in Bern, Switzerland, last year, says she often takes advantage of certain European airlines’ generous luggage policies to cut down on art shipping costs, and uses those savings to fund complex installations.

Dealers say some things are still worth splurging on, like photography of every exhibition ($1,000 to $3,000 a pop). Several invest in catalogs, essays and scholarly research on gallery artists ($15,000 to $50,000 a year). Tierney sets money aside for travel to small cities where collectors and curators rarely get house calls ($20,000 a year). Moffett covers half of his qualifying artists’ health insurance; Polina Berlin, 38, who founded her Upper East Side gallery last year, fronts money for top-of-the-line materials. “I went to pick up handmade watercolors and ended up putting $2,500 worth of paint on my credit card,” she says. “My jaw dropped.”

7. Figure out your art fair strategy.

Louise Lawler’s “Big” (2002/2003).Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers

Art fairs are a necessary part of the gallery business: They drive anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of all revenue, according to dealers. If a gallery offers market-friendly material (which usually means attractive paintings), it can pocket more than $250,000 in just a few days (though travel, booth fees and other expenses can easily exceed $50,000).

Some small and midsize galleries are working to limit their reliance on fairs. The Bogotá, Colombia-based Instituto de Visión decided to open a location in New York in 2021 in part to increase international exposure for its artists, and to be more discerning about the number of fairs in which the gallery participates. Still, many businesses find them necessary, if not exactly desirable. “As someone put it to me recently, ‘With art fairs, the house always wins,’” Anrather says.

Other dealers have begun approaching fairs as vehicles for exposure rather than sales. “We pick one fair a year where we say, ‘This comes out of our PR and marketing budget,’” Tierney says. Last year her gallery presented a complex seven-channel installation by the video art pioneer Mary Lucier at the Frieze Masters fair in London. It didn’t fly off the shelf, but it raised the artist’s profile in a way an ad rarely does.

8. Expect the unexpected.​​

Jessie Homer French’s “Three for the Fire” (2006).© Maxwell Benson Entertainment Ltd, courtesy of the artist, Massimo De Carlo, and Various Small Fires

Dealers quickly learn that it’s important to leave some buffer in the budget. “Nobody sits you down and tells you about the fines,” Uffner says. ​“You get fined for stuff you didn’t even know you needed to do.” (For example, Gagosian Gallery was fined $4.28 million in 2016 for failing to properly administer New York sales tax on art shipped to and from the state.) Uffner’s gallery recently paid $7,000 to settle a lawsuit over its website, which a plaintiff claimed was not in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Then there are other unforeseen costs, like the $5,000 she paid to ​​get an emergency replacement for the gallery’s hot water heater.​​

The patchy and unpredictable nature of the gallery business means that in order to be successful, you have to see the job as a calling. “I do this because I want to live in a world where people feel supported to make things,” Tsou says. “It’s a bizarre thing we do as humans, and also one of the most beautiful.” In a testament to the precarity of the business, shortly following this interview, JTT abruptly announced it was shutting down after 11 years.

What Does It Cost?

The gallery business can be extremely volatile. In a slow month, a dealer might be uncomfortably in the red; in a busy month, they might accrue enough revenue to cushion them for the rest of the quarter. And one sale could make the difference between a good month and a lousy one.

The below is a sample budget for a small-to-midsize gallery during a particularly busy month of sales. (Opening an exhibition and participating in an art fair in a four-week stretch is the exception rather than the rule, but both are included here to offer a broad cross-section of a gallery’s activities.) The figures are a composite sketch, reflecting an average of the numbers shared by the sources interviewed.

Shipping: $3,500
Storage: $2,500
Director’s salary: $10,000
Rent: $12,000
Art fair: $50,000
Opening dinner: $2,500
Exhibition photography: $2,000
Exhibition catalog: $5,000
Insurance: $3,500

Total Costs: $91,000
Total Monthly Revenue: $295,000
​​Total Profit: $204,000 ​​

Wildlife Photographer of the Year show set for Coventry

By in Photography

Wildlife Photographer of the Year show set for Coventry
Mason Bee At WorkSolvin Zankl
By Shehnaz Khan
BBC News, West Midlands

A Coventry museum has been selected to host a world-renowned international photography exhibition showcasing wildlife from across the world.

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum will host images from this year’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, from 27 October until 1 April.

On loan from the National History Museum (NHM), the exhibition will bring images to life in a digital display.

This year’s competition received nearly 50,000 entries from 95 countries.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year, which launched in 1965, is also set to run at the NHM from 13 October.

This exhibition features photos of animal behaviour and puts a spotlight on different species, with the winning images set to be announced on 10 October.

‘Incredible opportunity’

The Coventry museum is set to be only venue in England, other than the National History Museum, to host the lightbox edition that has the digital display.

It follows a partnership between both museums, which has previously seen Dippy the dinosaur begin a three-year residency at the venue earlier this year.

Rosie Addenbrooke, from the museum, based in Jordan Well, Coventry, said they were “thrilled” to be one of the venues hosting the exhibition.

She said it was an “incredible opportunity” for audiences to see some of the world’s “finest wildlife photography.”

“It is an exhibition that will appeal to people of all ages as the photographs really do capture nature, with all its glory and emotion – and that is something that can move all of us,” she said.

Presentational grey line

Follow BBC West Midlands on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: newsonline.westmidlands@bbc.co.uk

Related Topics

Related Internet Links

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.

Restorer blown away by images of early 20th Century on dirty slides

By in Photography

Restorer blown away by images of early 20th Century on dirty slides
Photograph uncovered by Roger LiptrotRoger Liptrot

An amateur restorer who was “blown away” by the images he found on a set of “dirty and dusty” slides he bought at auction has said he wants to know more about the people pictured on them.

Roger Liptrot, who recently retired, bought the collection for £27 in Rochdale earlier in the year.

He said he cleaned them after watching an online tutorial and found “terrific” images from the early 20th Century.

He has now shared the images in the hope of finding out more about them.

He said very little was known about the photographs when he bought them, other than that there was a name written on the box lid, Ernest Timperley.

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Unknown

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

The 70-year-old turned to the 1911 census where he said he found Mr Timperley listed as a 24-year-old calico printer’s apprentice in Middleton, which is now part of the borough of Rochdale.

He said he watched a video tutorial online and set about cleaning and restoring the glass slides, uncovering the photos and bringing them back to life.

“They were in such a state and hadn’t been touched for ages,” he said.

“They were dirty and dusty, so I couldn’t believe it.

“I was blown away. They’re just terrific.”

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Unknown

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

He said he hoped that by sharing the images, they might be seen by someone who recognises the people with them and can share with him some details of their origins.

Anyone with information can email northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk.

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Unknown

Photograph uncovered by Roger Liptrot

Roger Liptrot

Presentational grey line

Why not follow BBC North West on Facebook, X and Instagram? You can also send story ideas to northwest.newsonline@bbc.co.uk

Related Topics

Shelter Dog Photography: I Retake Pictures Of Shelter Dogs To Increase Their Chances Of Adoption (22 Pics)

By in Photography

Shelter Dog Photography: I Retake Pictures Of Shelter Dogs To Increase Their Chances Of Adoption (22 Pics)
image

Since 2010, I have been involved in the animal welfare world. By starting at my local animal shelter as a People Care Specialist, I found my love for shelter animals. Throughout my years of being employed at this shelter, I saw that many of our images didn’t represent our pets in a great way. By picking up just a basic point-and-shoot camera, I started my journey of pet photography.

As the years went by, I continued to develop my craft and started volunteering at other shelters across the United States, mainly in Wyoming, to help increase the chances of adoption for the shelter animals.

In this short series, you will find a comparison between a shelter dog’s intake photograph and the ones I took on my camera.

Most shelters are overcapacity and staff and volunteers are overworked and drained, mentally and physically. With increasing numbers of pets being surrendered to shelters, the animal welfare problem is at an all-time high.

Even having an intake picture like these ‘befores’ is better than the animal having no picture at all.

I step in to help, to hopefully alleviate some of the stress on the staff, and to also help those animals find forever homes.

More info: wyomingpetphotography.com | Facebook | pinterest.com | twitter.com | Instagram

The frozen bubble: physics meets photography

By in Photography

The frozen bubble: physics meets photography

27 September 2023

Cosmos MagazineCosmos Magazine

Cosmos

Cosmos is a quarterly science magazine. We aim to inspire
curiosity in ‘The Science of Everything’
and make the world of science accessible to everyone.

By Cosmos

Nicole Reynolds and Anika Chan

Australian Institute of Physics

Each year, the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP) holds multiple photography competitions to celebrate science photography and most importantly, the amazing physics illustrated by the striking images. winner of each year’s competition has their photograph featured on the homepage of the AIP website.

Frozen bubble

The photograph of the frozen bubble (above) by Chad Clark, was the winner of the 2022 AIP National Photography Competition. Chad’s inspiration for the photograph came from wanting to try his hand at making a frozen bubble photograph. Adding soap to water lowers its surface tension, which then allows it to be blown into a bubble. In the bubble, water molecules are sandwiched between two layers of lipids, which are a class of molecules that make up parts of soap. If the bubble itself stays intact long enough for the temperature of the water to fall below freezing, a phase change occurs and the water begins to form ice crystals. The point of formation of these ice crystals can happen randomly along the surface in multiple places simultaneously, but often initiates where the bubble touches an already ice-cold object. These crystals grow along the layer of water between the lipids and are initially still freely floating around. Once all water is frozen, the bubble retains its shape.

Chad’s frozen bubble photograph was taken in his back garden, in the cold early morning in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory , Australia. He used a Canon 6d with a Tamron 90mm macro lens. Since the photo was taken in the early morning, a wide aperture was also used to account for low light conditions.

Lagoon nebulaLagoon nebula
Lagoon Nebula photograph. Credit: Aiden Baker-Gabb

Aiden Baker-Gabb won the highly-coveted Grand Prize, in the 2022 ACT AIP Photography Competition for his Lagoon Nebula photograph (above). His Cygnus photograph won the Special Award for a School Student in the same competition.

Aiden was inspired to take these photographs through his interests in the night sky and his in astrophotography. He says that while he enjoys marvelling at telescope photos, he finds it “far more rewarding to get outside and uncover these beautiful structures for [himself]”. Aiden regularly posts his astrophotography on his Instagram account, @abg_astrophotography.

The process of creating an astronomical photograph is complex, since a lot of space structures are outside the range we can see with our eyes. This means that the light that enters the camera needs to be edited and shifted into the visible light spectrum.

More photography

Nebulae are no exception. A nebula is a massive cloud of gas and dust from which stars form. Aiden’s two photographs depict the Butterfly Nebula in the Cygnus region, and the Lagoon Nebula.

On the right side of the Cygnus photograph we see a pale butterfly-shaped nebula which appears to be almost flying out of the picture. Surrounding the butterfly we have intricate networks of gas and dust, and the bright star Sadr, in the middle of the photograph. This star is the second brightest star in the constellation Cygnus. In the Lagoon Nebula photograph, a bright white core shines outwards into a cloud of blue gas. The youngest and most luminous stars are formed here and reside within this core. This central star forming region is surrounded by a border of green and copper gas, separating the nebula from a sea of surrounding stars.

Cygnus imageCygnus image
Cygnus photograph. Credit: Aiden Baker-Gabb

Light from distant astronomical objects is very faint, so Aiden took 50-100 short exposures and stacked them to capture as much light as possible. He repeated this using three different filters which let through three unique ranges of light. These three filters target different chemicals present in the nebulae. In the Lagoon Nebula photo, doubly ionised oxygen appears bright blue, surrounded by green ionised sulphur and orange hydrogen. Ionisation occurs when an electron is knocked out of an atom, causing the atom to be slightly charged. Those same three chemicals are coloured yellow, orange and red in the Cygnus photograph. Both of the photographs are false colour images, meaning Aiden has full control over what colours the nebulae appear.

Aiden’s two winning photographs were taken using a WO 71mm GT APO triplet refractor on a Saxon HEQ5 Mount, from his balcony in Canberra ACT, Australia.

Pinjarra the crocPinjarra the croc
Pinjarra the crocodile, at the Melbourne Aquarium. Credit: John Long

Dr John Long won a notable mention in the 2022 AIP National Photography Competition. His photo of Pinjarra the saltwater crocodile at Melbourne Aquarium is a beautiful example of total internal reflection (and a fantastic showcase of the joys of being a physicist).

In September 2017, Long was at the annual dinner for the Australian Conference for Science and Mathematics Education, which was being held at the Melbourne Aquarium. While seated at a dining table, Dr Long saw Pinjarra out of the corner of his eye, beautifully reflected from the surface of the water. He rushed over and took some photos on his Nikon digital camera. In Dr Long’s photograph, Pinjarra is looking up at the surface of the water, where we can see his reflected image. This reflection is a perfect example of total internal reflection.

To understand total internal reflection, we first need to understand how light interacts with the boundary between two transparent media. A transparent medium is a substance which light can travel through, such as glass, water or air.

Long says “it’s a really amazing image”. Dr Long is a long-standing Member of the Australian Institute Physics (MAIP). He teaches first year physics at Deakin University in Australia, and over Zoom to physics students across the world.

If you’re interested in joining the AIP, click the link here. The AIP membership levels cater to physics enthusiasts, Australian students and professional physicists.

To participate in the 2023 AIP National Photography Competition, send your photograph to [email protected] by the 1st of November, being sure to include your Australian state/territory. Entrants must be Australian residents.

image

MTSU Printmakers are back again

By in Printmaking

MTSU Printmakers are back again
Featured Photo by Kaleigh Young

Story by Kaleigh Young

The Tulip Popular Press kicked off its first meeting of the semester last Thursday. The Tulip Popular Press is a printmaking club that does various printing workshops, demos and field trips. They welcome all majors. They can be found in Todd 354, the print studio.

Risograph baseball cards of members who participated in the first Tulip Popular Press meeting of the semester. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

The club aims to give students of all levels the chance to experience how entertaining and accessible printmaking can be. At their meeting, they made risograph prints.

Risograph printing is a technique best described as digital screen printing. The process is similar to screen printing but with the added convenience of an office copier. It is known for its specific textures and vivid colors that other printers can’t produce.

The risograph of the evening was baseball cards of all the different members who came today. When someone arrived, they simply grabbed a printing tool such as a brayer or a squeegee for the prop in their photo.

The President Kayleigh Messner had the other members working on a physical magazine collage while the printer took its time on the photos. The magazines consisted of Better Homes, Vogue, Rolling Stones and more. Hectically, everyone ripped up different magazines to fit their pieces together into something visually appealing.

Risograph baseball inspired cards of printmaking participants. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

Even when engaging in creative activities the Tulip Popular Press allows a safe space for students to de-stress and make art without the pressure of a grade. They provide a space to join others interested in a common activity and make connections outside of regular means.

Students in creative degrees typically dislike the pressure of an assignment and also dislike their art being graded because art can be so subjective; A professor could depict style and misunderstanding of an assignment that the student wasn’t even aware of. This club gives freedom back to the students.

Their goals for the club during the year are to attend various print conferences such as Rocky Mountain Printmaking Alliance, Wayzgooze and SGC International. They hope to continue to grow in numbers and enthusiasm.

Their upcoming events are print conferences and more workshops such as pressure printing, screen printing and Lego letterpressing.

Tulip Popular Press President Kayleigh Messner. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

Mo Overholt, Vice President of the Tulip Popular Press. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

Samantha Souriyavongsa, Member at Large for the Tulip Popular Press. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

Chloe Register is the secretary for the Tulip Popular Press. (Photo by Kaleigh Young).

Candace Boyce, treasurer, is unpictured.

Printmaking is a medium for self expression and making new friends who also enjoy it. The printmakers invite those interested to join the printmakers again on Thursday to see what they have in store.

To contact Lifestyles Editor Destiny Mizell, email lifestyles@mtsusidelines.com. For more news, visit www.mtsusidelines.com, or follow us on Facebook at MTSU Sidelines or on X at @MTSUSidelines.

Michael Willson: the master photographer capturing AFL history from behind the lens

By in Photography

Michael Willson: the master photographer capturing AFL history from behind the lens

A Michael Willson photo is instantly recognisable. He captures the aching pathos of sporting loss, and the simplicity and stillness in an inherently chaotic game. Many of his shots rank among the most iconic football photographs taken this century. He captured Tayla Harris at full extension, and in doing so triggered some of the more reptilian online brains. He was on hand for Lance Franklin’s 1,000th goal coronation – a shot he calls the perfect mix of due diligence and blind luck.

Whether it’s a long-sleeved Jack Silvagni celebrating in teeming rain, Trent Cotchin being hoisted off or Gary Ablett Jr bowing out – they all have Willson’s indelible stamp, and they all feature in his exhibition, Beyond the Boundary, which wraps up at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery on Sunday.

Melbourne’s Jeremy Howe and Tyson Goldsack of Collingwood during a game at the MCG in 2015.
A young Hawthorn fan celebrates in 2017.

The key, he tells Guardian Australia, is the ability “to see a picture within a picture.” “You can teach someone the technical aspects of what we do, but the creativity is something you’re born with I think.”

Willson was a mad Collingwood supporter growing up in Swan Hill, and vividly recalls the 1990 grand final, recording it on the VCR and later taking photographs off the TV screen. “Even when I was 12 or so, I was fascinated with still images,” he says. He worked as a graphic designer for seven years, but photography was always his passion and dream. He backed his talent and honed his skills, shooting amateur games for free on weekends, and seized his opportunity at the highest level.

The famous photo of Tayla Harris, taken in 2019.

Being a sports photographer is physically demanding and requires technical prowess, unsocial hours, an innate news sense and soft eyes. The very nature of Australian rules football, he says, adds another layer to the challenge. “Footy is played on a massive field, it’s played at such a great speed, it’s so unpredictable and the players are so fit and fast now. Besides, there’s always a lot of obstacles in your way – umpires, water carriers, even pigeons.”

An Eagles fan is beautifully captured at TIO Stadium in Darwin in 2015.

A grounding in amateur and country football has held Willson in good stead. He played in a premiership with Lake Boga exactly 20 years ago. He was a classic opportunist, the sort of player who could craft goals out of nothing. “The intrinsic nature of the game, the reading of the play, the bounce of the ball – it all helps to have played the game. I played it from the age of six until I was 30 and the feel of the game comes naturally to me. Most of all, it gave me a sense of what footy means to communities.”

The emotion of grand final day is clear to see on the face of this Eagles fan in 2006.

Every fan has their favourite Willson photo. One of mine is of Nick Daicos being pursued by a trio of helpless Bulldogs. It’s all there – the proprioception, the effortless superiority, the futility of the chase. One of those Bulldogs is Marcus Bontempelli, arguably the best footballer in the country. But in that moment, the football world belongs to the young Magpie. “You definitely have a heightened awareness of the superstars,” Willson says. “But they can he harder to shoot. They do things that split second quicker than other players – a quick give, a change of direction. They can be more unpredictable, and you have to be particularly hyper-vigilant around the high-flyers.”

Catch him if you can. Nick Daicos speeds away from the Bulldogs earlier this year.

The architecture of Adelaide Oval and the SCG, he says, offers photographers all sorts of artistic possibilities. But many of his best and cherished photos have come on grand final day at the MCG. “A bright sunny afternoon at the MCG is just about my perfect shooting scenario, particularly later in the afternoon, just before the sun goes down, when you get these long shadows.”

skip past newsletter promotion

Aliir Aliir and Tom Hawkins during a 2016 match between Sydney and Geelong.
A Saints fan at Etihad Stadium in 2016.

His favourite spot is in the forward pocket, under the Shane Warne Stand, at the Punt Road end. That’s where Dom Sheed lined up in the dying minutes of the 2018 grand final. Willson was in his back pocket, and produced a series of iconic shots. “On grand final day there’s so much stuff and a lot of crap on the sidelines. Luckily, this shot was so clean. As a Collingwood supporter, it was a hard one to swallow. But I pride myself on not getting emotionally involved. I’ve got a job to do. If you’re riding every bump, you’ll miss something important and it’ll be gone for ever. At that moment, I had a front row seat to one of the most clutch shots in the history of football. And when the luck falls your way, you’ve got to take it. It’s so rewarding when it all falls into place.”

Dom Sheed kicks a goal late in the final term of the 2018 grand final.
Kieren Jack is consoled by his brother Brandon on the MCG turf.

On grand final day, my eye is often drawn to the losers, to the desolation. In 2018, as the Collingwood players slumped to the turf, the photographers huddled around them like they were at a crime scene. But Willson’s shots never feel intrusive. A couple of years earlier, he captured a crestfallen Kieren Jack being consoled by his besuited bother, Brandon. The latter wrote a book about a career lived on the fringe, and devotes a passage to that moment. “I really wanted that one,” Kieren sobs. “It’s just football,” his brother tells him. He’s right. But at that moment, his words are hollow. And no one in football captures those moments better than Michael Willson.

«< 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 >»