Creating a successful landscape image takes a variety of factors, including good technique, solid planning, a knowledge of lighting, and more. Composition is one of the most challenging aspects, and it takes a keen knowledge of what to include in the frame, what to exclude, and how to position them all. If that is something you find yourself struggling with, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you some solid advice sure to help you improve. 

Coming to you from Christian Irmler – Landscape Photography, this great video tutorial discusses how to decide what to include and exclude in a landscape photo composition. By far, I think the most commonly overlooked part of the frame is the edges. It is easy to become overly focused on the center of the frame and miss something like a tree branch creeping into the edge of the frame, and while that might not seem like a big deal, once the eye catches it, it can pull the viewer out of the frame, which really upsets the balance of the frame. Be sure to do a check of the edges whenever you are about to press the shutter. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Irmler. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out “Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi.” 

Canon USA has announced the launch of Cadabra, a photography marketplace for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which will offer a variety of digital art from invited creators with a goal to empower creators by putting them in touch with passionate collectors who share their admiration for digital artworks.

Canon, the Japanese multinational corporation known for its imaging and optical products, is now venturing into the world of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) through its upcoming photography marketplace named Cadabra. 

Following its partnership with Immutable Image in July 2022 to issue a collection of photo NFTs, Canon is now making its second entry into the NFT market with this announcement.

About Cadabra

Cadabra is scheduled to go live in the latter part of this year, and will offer a curated platform of digital art spanning a variety of categories, including landscape, wildlife, lifestyle, sports, abstract, and others. In addition, the site will have a secondary market for the reselling of NFTs, providing artists with the chance to sell actual prints, which Canon will then fulfill.

Canon has not provided a great deal of specific information regarding the functioning of their soon-to-be-launched curated NFT marketplace. However, later on in this year, according to Canon’s announcement, the company would share information regarding the “first drop” of Cadabra as well as its developers.

Nevertheless, Canon’s Cadabra is an exciting development for the NFT market, particularly for photography enthusiasts and artists. With Canon’s reputation as a leading manufacturer of cameras and lenses, the company’s involvement in the NFT market is expected to draw more attention to digital art and further legitimize its value.

Canon’s previous foray into NFTs

Canon’s previous collaboration with Immutable Image in July 2022 resulted in “The Legends Mint” collection launched on the Solana blockchain, which included photograph NFTs from accomplished photographers such as Sam Abell, Barbara Bordnick, Gregory Heisler, Ryszard Horowitz, Walter Iooss, Jr., Melvin Sokolsky, and Joyce Tenneson. The success of this collaboration may have inspired Canon to further explore the NFT market and establish its own marketplace.

Final Thoughts

Canon’s launch of Cadabra is a testament to the growing importance of NFTs in the artistic world. This move signifies the company’s desire to explore new technologies and leverage its expertise in photography to tap into the burgeoning NFT market. It remains to be seen how the marketplace will operate and how it will fare in the highly competitive NFT market, but one thing is for sure – the Cadabra marketplace is sure to attract attention and generate interest among art collectors and photography enthusiasts alike.

Rickie Sanchez is an article writer specializing in cryptocurrency news. Since late 2017, he has been actively investing in cryptocurrencies. He is enthusiastic about everything that has to do with crypto and he hopes that the readers of his articles in the years to come will gain a massive understanding of blockchain technology.

The National Portrait Gallery, London, reopens in June following a three-year closure for the “largest redevelopment” in its 127-year history. Its opening exhibition, Yevonde: Life and Colour, will be the most comprehensive to date on British photographer, Yevonde Middleton (1893-1975).

Signing her work simply, Yevonde (though she also worked under “Madame Yevonde”), she was a celebrated portraitist, innovative colourist and advocate for women in the profession. In short, she was a pioneer. Yet Yevonde is not widely known outside photography circles.

In 1921, she became the first women to lecture at the Professional Photographers’ Association. In the 1930s – against a tide of resistance – she championed the use of colour photography and was the first person in Britain to exhibit colour portraits.

Over a 60-year career, Yevonde photographed the rich and famous. Around 10,000 sitters passed through her studios. She also ran a successful commercial photography business until the year before her death, shortly before her 83rd birthday.

From her teens, Yevonde was an advocate of women’s suffrage and was active in the Women’s Social and Political Union, the militant wing of the suffrage movement, from 1909.

However, a personal disinclination for suffragette lawbreaking (and the prison sentence that would likely follow) led her to champion women’s emancipation via a different route.

In her autobiography, In camera (1940), she remembers thinking at age 17: “I must earn my own living … To be independent was the greatest thing in life”.

It was an advertisement in suffrage newspaper Votes for Women, that gave Yevonde the idea that photography could offer economic independence.

Yevonde’s only formal training was an apprenticeship to Charlotte (Lallie) Charles (1911-13). Despite not finishing, and taking only one photograph throughout, it gave her the fundamentals to start a photographic business.

In 1914, having just turned 21 – and with some funding from her family – she opened her first studio.

Colour photography and innovation

Yevonde’s decision to set out on her own coincided with the decline of Lallie Charles’ studio. This reflected a widespread malaise in photographic portraiture, which was at that time stylistically confined to long-established conventions of black and white.

She explained that clients were: “Getting tired of the pale soft … prints, tired of the artificial roses, of the Empire furniture … They grumbled at the lack of variety in the poses.”

Seeing an opportunity to try something different, she developed a more dynamic approach and style, establishing a moderately successful business despite the disruption of the first world war and a stint as a land worker.

But it was with the advent of Vivex – a technically demanding process for colouring photographs – around 1930, that Yevonde’s breakthrough came, despite strong resistance to colour photography from within the profession and potential clients.

“I started experimenting madly”, she remembered in her autobiography, “oblivious of the fact that people did not want such things.”

She believed that photographers had become:

So engrossed in the beauty of light and shade and in their deep velvety blacks and sparkling whites that they will tell you quite seriously that the colour photograph is unnecessary and unnatural.

At the same time, Yevonde was excited to discover that a few studios were beginning to explore the new process, despite feeling that their preoccupation with achieving naturalistic colour rendered everything “astonishingly unattractive”.

She declared that her priority was to use colour differently, to “produce a striking and original picture”.

Yevonde’s Goddesses Series

Yevonde’s most famous project – the Goddesses Series of 1935 – was inspired by a charity ball. Soon after she photographed several society women in the guise of a mythological goddess. Each woman was furnished with props derived from Yevonde’s, sometimes whimsical, interpretation of their attributes.

For me, the series reveals both the extent and the limits of her pioneering spirit.

Despite her attempts to renegotiate the conventions of her time, Yevonde – ever the expedient businesswoman – was mindful of her client’s wishes, the majority of whom were female. As a result, many of her subjects align with the prevailing expectations of beauty and behaviour: looking sultry but with a submissive air, gazing wistfully out of the frame.

But in other examples, the women she photographed appeared liberated from the shackles of expectations for their sex. There’s daring composition and movement in the representation of Ariel and the confrontational gaze of Medusa.

In other work, an audacious use of saturated primary colour is highly effective, as in the portrait of actress Vivien Leigh.

In her photograph of actress Joan Maude, a vibrant palette of reds is brought together in a single image. This shows an industrious photographer thrilling to the possibilities offered by the new colour technology.

Sadly, with the outbreak of the second world war, Vivex ceased trading and Yevonde was obliged to return to black and white.

Throughout her career, Yevonde sought to promote and motivate other women photographers, encouraging them to “come out and meet one another” and to “join the association” of photographers.

“We must see one another’s work and criticise, and, more important still, receive criticism,” she wrote in her autobiography, “or we shall never improve”.

Most previous exhibitions have favoured Yevonde’s Goddesses Series. The planned show at the reopened Portrait Gallery, however, will broaden the scope considerably and include some newly discovered works.

As much as I love Yevonde’s use of colour, I am looking forward to seeing her later portraits in black and white and her practice of bringing elements of surrealism into her portraiture and other commercial work.

Yevonde: Life and Colour will be at the National Portrait Gallery, 22 June to 15 October 2023.

A photographer had a terrifying incident while taking pictures of the Dallas skyline when men chased and shot at him.

Ron Shipp was on the Houston Street Viaduct over the Trinity River and believes a group of men targeted him for his camera equipment.

“I’ve been out here countless dozens of times,” Shipp tells NBC DFW. “Day and night and never once felt unsafe.”

However that changed on Wednesday, April 12 after he heard voices coming from beneath the bridge while out shooting at 23:00 and instantly felt unsafe.

“Probably within 30 yards of leaving my car I could hear voices in the shadows behind me,” he tells Fox 4. “I saw some movement but I couldn’t see people. It concerned me, but not a lot.”

“Every time I walked out, they kept coming closer and closer. They weren’t on the bridge, I knew that much,” he says.

“I looked over the bridge again and saw two men 20 yards away and I realized they were using the outside ledge and the handrail to kind of walk and approach me hidden down low.”

Shipp says the sight of two grown men going to that much effort to approach him in the dark really scared him.

When Shipp realized that there was a group of at least four men stalking him, he began to run toward downtown — that’s when he heard gunshots.

“I saw flashes from a handgun and heard six shots right in my direction, it motivated me to run much faster,” he explains.

Shipp avoided being shot and reported the incident to the police. He has gone public with his story to warn other photographers who frequent there for photos.

“Empty bridge does not mean you are safe,” he adds.

Shipp regularly sets his camera up from South Dallas to capture stunning landscape shots of downtown Dallas.

“This is one of my favorite and most frequent locations to visit,” he tells Fox 4. “Especially after dark when the city is lit up.”

Despite the scary episode he plans to come back to the bridge but this time with a group of photographers.

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.

You may have noticed that today’s Google Doodle (the logo atop the Google homepage) is a picture of a 35mm film camera celebrating Zofia Nasierowska, a Polish photographer who would’ve been celebrating her 85th birthday. Known best for her portraits of influential Polish people, her passion for the art form was influenced by her father from an early age. 

Considered one of the most significant Polish photographers of her years, Zofia picked up a camera aged just seven years old. Her father, Eugeniusz Nasierowski, was also a well-known photographer, and just four years after she started learning photography she landed her own exhibition. 

• Check out the best film cameras from years gone by that are still popular today

Although her love for photography started close to home, the young photographer continued to expand her love for the subject at the Leon Schiller National Film School in Lódź, Poland, where she photographed many of her peers. 

Some of Nasierowska’s most famous portraits include a photo of Barbara Brylska, a Polish actress who appeared in Pharaoh and Irony of Fate, Polish actor and comedian Jan Kobuszewski, and the Polish singer / actress Kalina Jędrusik. 

All her photos were shot in black-and-white and, in one particular self-portrait, she can be seen using a Praktisix medium format camera – which appears to be the camera on which the Google Doodle is modeled, with a portrait of Nasierowska in the viewfinder. 

Although the photographer died in 2011 after a battle with brain cancer, her photography career spanned 35 years, only ending when she developed an eye disease. She continued to work with photographers and inspire a new generation – so much so that a Librabry in Elk, Poland, was named after her. 

She may not be as well known as some of the other photographers of her era, such as Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz or Robert Mapplethorpe, but she is still remembered as one of the greatest Polish photographers of all time thanks to her movie star-style portraits. 

If you enjoyed this article, check out the 50 best photographers ever including Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Vivian Maier, along with the best film for your camera.