One of the world’s most famous photographers will soon share his wealth of knowledge via a brand new course on BBC Maestro. The fashion and portrait photographer will be sharing over two decades worth of experience into digestible bitesize lessons that anyone with an interest in access the first two lessons free of charge, if you sign up before the official launch of the paid-for course. 

Rankin is widely renowned as one of the world’s greatest photographers. He’s shot everyone from he’s shot pop royalty in the form of David Bowie and Kylie to Minogue to actual royalty, Queen Elizabeth II (although he wasn’t allowed to photograph her hands). He’s worked on numerous of projects highlighting the impact of food waste to photographing West End stars to raise money for homeless charities. 

• These are the best cameras for portraits perfect for capturing in-focus faces with beautifully blurred backgrounds

For many aspiring portrait photographers, he is an inspiration and the new BBC Maestro series will cover everything from the equipment he uses, and different lighting techniques to interacting with models, promoting yourself, and networking. 

BBC Maestro first launched in November 2020 in partnership with BBC Studios to offer never before offered insights into the world’s greatest creative talents. Whether you want to learn how to produce music from Mark Ronson, write poetry from Carol Ann Duffy or find out how Billy Connolly become one of the funniest and most respected comedians, there truly is something for everyone no matter your creative flair. 

Prices start at £79 for a lifetime subscription to a single course which will enable you to watch videos as many times as you want at your leisure. If you’re a multi-faceted creative with interests across the arts you can also sign up for £10 a month subscription and access 100+ hours of video lessons, explore new courses as soon as they land and if you’re not enjoying the service there is a 30-day money back guarantee. All NHS and public health workers are entitled to a 25% discount, all you need to do is email support@bbcmaestro.com from your work email address. 

Courses are available in a wide number of countries around the world including the US, the UK and Australia

To sign up for your free two lessons head to the . 

Also check out the best lens for portrait photography and browse a range of super-sharp 85mm prime lenses

During the colonial period, the camera became something of an imperial device, as Western images defined narratives about the history, culture, and identity of the African continent. Now, in its first major exhibition of contemporary African photography, the Tate Modern in London is showcasing the work of a new generation African artists using the medium on their own terms.

“A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” features 36 artists—working in photography, video, and installation—who represent different generations and a wide span of geography. Each offers their own unique perspectives on Africa and its relationship with the wider world, informed by history while looking to the future with hope.

The exhibition is curated by the museum’s international art curator, Osei Bonsu, together with assistant curators Jess Baxter and Genevieve Barton and former assistant curator Katy Wan.

“It’s not a traditional photography survey. I don’t really think that Africa can be summarized or distilled into one large exhibition,” Bonsu told Artnet News. “This was more of an attempt to tell very specific stories about Africa through the lens of artists who were either living and working on the continent, or were paying homage to many of the traditions and visual practices that, in my opinion, best reflected the way that we see photography in Africa.”

Khadija Saye, Ragal, “in this space we breathe” (2017). Photo courtesy of the artist.

The show features about 100 works presented in seven thematic sections by artists including Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou, Edson Chagas, Zohra Opoku, Kudzanai Chiurai, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, and Zina Saro-Wiwa.

Some photographs imagine alternate histories for the continent and its global diaspora, including the recreation of a royal precolonial past, with African kingdoms ruled by ancient dynasties.

Drawing on the more recent past, other photographers engage with traditions of studio photography, which became popular in African in the 1950s and ’60s as many nations achieved independence. These studios allowed African families to get their portraits taken, often for the first time—and the bonds of kinship captured in these images still resonate in their contemporary counterparts.

There are also photographs showing harsh truths about our present day reality and the growing climate emergency, documenting the rapid growth of Africa’s urban spaces—as well as hopeful imaginings of postcolonial utopias.

Together, the artists both reclaim African history and invite viewers to reconsider the continent’s place in the world, underscoring the importance of cultural memory and identity.

Ahead of this week’s opening, we spoke with Bonsu about the work of five of the artists in the show.

George Osodi’s “Nigerian Monarchs”

George Osodi, HRM Agbogidi Obi James Ikechukwu Anyasi ll, Obi of Idumuje Unor (in Palace) 2012, “Nigerian Monarchs.” Photo courtesy of the artist.

Osei Bonsu: “These images are about the role of traditional Nigerian monarchs in contemporary society. Before the amalgamation of Nigeria’s Northern and Southern Protectorates in 1914, these rulers would have been the kings and queens of various ethnic groups and communities. They no longer hold constitutional rights, but are the custodians of culture and kind of intermediaries for their community.

George is looking at the power and majesty and regalia of those traditional rulers, but also questioning perhaps the ways in which their role now has been sidelined or that some of these traditions have been somewhat forgotten.

They’re not costumes, they’re not models. The fact that they might seem almost like theatrical stage images is a testament to kind of historical grandeur and majesty of these traditional monarchs that still hold an important role today.”

Khadija Saye’s “Dwellings: in this space we breathe”

Khadija Saye, Andichurai, “in this space we breathe” (2017). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Osei Bonsu: “Khadija Saye was an artist who tragically died very young. But rather than focusing on the circumstances surrounding her death, we really wanted to show her contribution to the landscape of contemporary African photography.

An artist of Gambian/British heritage, Khadija’s work is testament to her mixed faith upbringing, with a Muslim father and a Christian mother. These images are an attempt to ground herself within that spiritual understanding of her own identity through the traditional Gambian rituals.

It’s a tribute to her ancestral background and faith through photography. She used a wet collodion tintype process, which was popularized in the 19th century and is rarely practiced any longer. It’s a labor intensive process that leaves much to fate and to chance.

When the artist spoke about the experience of working this way, she related it to kind of spiritual transcendence in which the process becomes somewhat of a kind of a means of surrendering to the chemical outcome. The process captures these very irregular and almost kind of ghostly presences of herself.”

Zina Saro-Wiwa’s “Invisible Man: The Weight of Absence”

Zina Saro-Wiwa, from “The Invisible Man” (2015). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Osei Bonsu: “Zina Saro-Wiwa is an artist of Nigerian heritage who is based in the U.S., but grew up in the U.K. She worked as a journalist and is widely recognized for her work as a filmmaker and as an artist.

In “Invisible Man,” you see the artist reckoning with the her experience of loss in her own family, notably the death of her father, a climate activist and Nobel Prize nominee. She is posing in these photographs in a mask, because when one puts on a mask, you enter a realm between the living and the ancestral world.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, masks became very desirable objects, both as objects of ethnic culture and for the avant garde. But these masks were part of the way that African people related to their environment, the cosmos, to their ecosystems, and are still part of a living culture. The mask still has a very particular relationship to environment and to the way people relate to the ecosystem, which is under threat due to ongoing extractive practices particularly in relation to oil.

There’s a beautiful quote on the artist’s website saying that she was told that these masks were too heavy for women to carry. So, she had her own mask commissioned as a protest against this very gendered practice of excluding women from the politics of masquerade.

“Invisible Man” is one of the more poetic attempts for an artist to think about African history and cultural heritage, but really through their own lived experience.”

Sabelo Mlengani’s “Country Girls”

Couple Bheki and Sipho, 2009. From the series “Country Girls.” Photo courtesy of Tate and the artist.” width=”677″ height=”1024″ srcset=”https://www.mecreates.com/story/news/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-03-at-6.45.42-PM-677×1024.png 677w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-03-at-6.45.42-PM-198×300.png 198w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-03-at-6.45.42-PM-33×50.png 33w, https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2023/07/Screen-Shot-2023-07-03-at-6.45.42-PM.png 1000w” sizes=”(max-width: 677px) 100vw, 677px”>

Sabelo Mlangeni Couple Bheki and Sipho, 2009. From the series “Country Girls.” Photo courtesy of Tate and the artist.

Osei Bonsu: “Sabelo Mlengani is a South African photographer who grew up in the province which is where the “Country Girls” series was shot. It’s a very personal reflection of LGBTQ life within the South African countryside.

We often associate these queer lives with kind of cosmopolitan environments, but there are also queer people who fashion their own identities within the countryside. The artist makes his subjects visible through these very intimate family portraits that both celebrate the kind of communities that are portrayed, but also think about their precarity and the vulnerability.

What he does by looking at this community is to upend or challenge many of the assumptions that people have that this is a recent trend or it’s kind of Western import. Queer culture, queer subjectivity is actually part of everyday life and very much in the spirit of the country.

We’ve included the ‘Country Girls’ series in an area of the exhibition titled ‘The Family Portrait,’ because we often see more conventional or normative depictions of family. This was an attempt to think about a more expanded idea of family that had more to do with one’s chosen family rather than one’s biological family.”

Dawit L. Petros’s “The Stranger’s Notebook”

Dawit L. Petros, Untitled Epilogue II Catania Italy (2016), “The Stranger’s Notebook.” Photo courtesy of the artist.

Osei Bonsu: “Dawit L. Petro is an artist, now based in Chicago, whose family migrated from East Africa to Canada. In this work, he’s thinking about the longer histories of migration and border crossing, and his own experience as an outsider in many contexts.

This series was created over a year-long period of traveling Africa to Europe along the Mediterranean coast, retracing the journeys of migrants seeking better lives—the kind of sites of journeys of border crossings that we know often end in tragedy.

In the photographs, taken in Sicily and Mauritania—sites of arrival and departure for migrants—the subjects are holding mirrors that [reflect] back to the viewer, revealing coastline, power lines, all of these kinds of liminal spaces beyond the reach of the camera. ‘Stranger’s Notebook’ is a meditation on the ways in which we often aren’t able to humanize those who are the statistics on the global news reel, whether it be the refugee crisis or successive forms of of economic migration around the world.

It’s an attempt to grapple with the complexities of what it means to represent a subject that is unrepresented. And it makes you think not only about the contemporary implications of migration, but the much longer interconnected history and relationship between Africa and Europe.”

“A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography” is on view at the Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG, July 6, 2023—January 14, 2024.

More Trending Stories:  

A Tourist Who Was Arrested for Carving His and His Girlfriend’s Names Into the Colosseum Is Begging for Forgiveness 

Archaeologists Found an Ancient Marble Bust That May Have Belonged to Caligula at the Bottom of an Italian Lake 

German Archaeologists Find a 3,000-Year-Old Bronze Age Sword So Well Preserved That It ‘Almost Still Shines’ 

Barbie’s Real-Life Hot Pink Malibu Dreamhouse, Complete With Ocean Views and a Roller Rink, Is Available to Rent on Airbnb 

A U.S. Judge Permanently Banned Digital Artist Mason Rothschild From Selling His ‘MetaBirkin’ NFTs, Handing a Win to Hermès 

A 17th-Century Double Portrait of Black and White Women, Said to Be of ‘Outstanding Significance’ Will Remain in the U.K. 

This Famed Dollhouse Is Hung With Tiny Original Artworks, Including a Miniature Duchamp. Here Are Three Things to Know About the One-of-a-Kind Treasure 

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

It is that time of year again when families head out for Fourth of July festivities, to reach a climactic end with a panoramic view of fireworks exploding in the night sky. While many will want to just sit back and take in the magnificent view, others will want to capture them on a camera so they can look back on a fantastical evening.

July 4th typically means a day spent enjoying time with the family, cooking on the grill, and then everyone heading out just before dusk to catch the local fireworks show. For the many that will attempt to capture the light show in the sky with a digital camera, here are a few tips to help grab some gorgeous memories. Even if someone uses their smartphone, many of these tips will apply to them as well.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember to take with you to the fireworks show is a sturdy tripod. Being able to steady your camera will ensure a crisp and clear image, while shooting handheld may cause the image to become blurred. If you do plan to use a tripod, having a cable release, or a remote shutter release, will be of great assistance, as just touching the shutter button on the camera itself can cause your camera to move. Turning off vibration reduction in the camera settings is a good idea as well, as it usually does not play well with a tripod.

Another great piece of equipment to have in your camera bag is a spare battery. If the fireworks last for an extended period of time, chances are you will be snapping a ton of images. Having a spare battery could mean being able to capture the grand finale or missing it altogether. The same goes for having a spare memory card. If someone is shooting in high-resolution and RAW at the same time, which is recommended, those files can take up a lot of space very quickly.

Prime lenses are great for capturing sharp and detailed imagery. However, having a wide-angle lens will be the best bet for being able to capture all of the fireworks and the scenery in the foreground. Those planning on using a zoom lens will want to use the widest angle available, as to capture more of the night sky, and then zoom in as desired from there.

Try composing images using different angles and with interesting backgrounds. Many will simply point their camera toward the sky and only capture the fireworks themselves, so think outside the box and be creative. Step back from the crowd and try and incorporate it into the image with the fireworks being the background. If there are buildings or a city skyline in the foreground, include those in some of the photos as well.

When it comes to camera settings, a good place to start is having the camera in manual mode with an ISO of 100 or whatever the lowest available is, with longer shutter speeds in the range of 1.5 to 4 seconds in order to capture more of the firework trails. F-stop will typically fall somewhere between f/8 to f/16, depending on location. So, start at f/8 and adjust from there as needed. Photographers will want to underexpose their images because fireworks are extremely bright. Keep in mind that all of these settings may need to be adjusted once the show starts, so be ready to adjust accordingly.

At the end of the day, having fun is the name of the game. Don’t get overly stressed trying to capture the perfect image. Also, don’t be afraid to experiment with framing images in a unique manner, or even blurring the fireworks for a dramatic effect. All of us at HotHardware wish everyone a very happy Fourth of July.

Ailsa Craig is an uninhabited island off the west coast of Scotland that has a long and winding history, involving many different groups of people. Once the final destination for priests who needed to “find God again” and who were sent here by the Church to reflect, as well as a hideout for pirates looking to escape capture, the island is now an official bird sanctuary and home to thousands of Gannets, that nest along its cliffs. But there is another aspect to Ailsa Craig’s history that makes it an important place in the world of sports, and that is its longstanding use as a mining spot for the granite that almost all of the world’s curling stones are made from.

It was this part of its story that first interested Dutch photographer Elmer Driessen, who travelled to the area in 2019 in the hopes of photographing its rugged mass. He had read an article about curling the previous year, and was struck by how integral this island was to the game. “Apparently [the stones] were all made from the same two types of granite that they found on this tiny island,” he says. “I wanted to know more about this mysterious rock, so I decided to go to Girvan, a little town on the mainland that is nearby, and from where I could take a boat out to the island.”

After some trouble trying to convince locals to ferry him out to Ailsa Craig, and one failed trip to Girvan later, he finally managed to secure passage to the island through the help of a couple of friends and a man named Ian, who lived close by and owned a speedboat. He finally arrived on its shores in the summer of 2020 and the photos he took during that drip went on to become part of a project that he named after the curious island.

There are few photography subjects more fascinating and beautiful than the cosmos itself, and the annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition highlights that. The shortlist for 2023 has now been published, starring some stunning shots of the Sun, our majestic Milky Way, and awe-inspiring aurorae.

Run by Royal Museums Greenwich in the UK, the Astronomy Photographer of the Year is the world’s largest competition of its kind, and as past galleries attest, it always attracts some incredible images from astrophotographers around the world.

Now in its 15th year, the 2023 shortlist features a range of subjects across the competition’s usual categories. That includes detailed photos of our Sun and Moon, glamor shots of galaxies, and the swirling patterns of nebulae. Others contrast celestial and Earthly scapes, showing the Milky Way, comets, aurorae, or star tracks across the night sky above an equally mesmerizing landmark.

Mehmet Ergün

Among the highlights are The Great Solar Flare by Mehmet Ergün, which shows our Sun in sharper detail than we’re used to seeing. Photographed using an H-alpha solar telescope, the image captures the texture of our local star, including a huge solar flare. But let’s not forget the mind-blowing scale on show here: “According to our calculation, this solar flare is about 700,000 km (435,000 miles) long,” Ergün said. “Earth has a diameter of about 12,700 km (7,890 miles).”

Another highlight is Pandora’s Box by Derek Horlock. The Milky Way lurks in the night sky above the Greek island of Naxos, contrasted with a painting of the mythological figure Pandora by Balinese artist Wild Drawing, on the wall of an abandoned hotel.

Derek Horlock

The winners of each category, two special prizes and the overall winner will be announced on September 14, 2023. In the meantime, take a stroll through our gallery at the other shortlisted images.

Source: Royal Museums Greenwich

Ana, circa 1950, by Saul Leiter

Anne Morin on Saul Leiter Assemblages: ‘Photographs are often considered important moments, but they are, according to Saul Leiter, tiny fragments of an unfinished world. Such is his own world, little fragments of images juxtaposed and conjoined, amassing and forming vast, ever-expanding fields. He photographed that which obstructs, hides, encloses, and thus reveals new depths of reality. New York, paradigm of modernity, that city of unceasing rhythm, was for nearly 60 years the locus of his aesthetic finds and optical inventions’

Photograph: Saul Leiter/Saul Leiter Foundation

The Birmingham Times

In a year marking the 196th anniversary of the “Black Press of America,” The Birmingham Times Media Group (BTMG) won three national awards last week at the National Newspaper Publisher Association’s (NNPA) annual convention in Nashville, Tenn.

NNPA represents more than 200 Black-owned newspapers across the nation.

The NNPA Messenger Awards honor work published in 2022 and the Times won first place awards for Education reporting by Nicole S. Daniel on Maranathan Academy’s focus on at-risk students and Original Photography Use. The Times also won an award for General Excellence (Third Place).

Those awards come less than a week after the Times won four first place awards in the 2023 Alabama Press Association (APA) Media Awards, for Best In-Depth News Coverage; Best Local News Coverage; Best Newspaper Website and Best Layout and Design and a third place in General Excellence.

“These acknowledgements are not about awards, but the recognition that our team is making an impact in the community we serve, and others see it,” said Sam P. Martin, president and publisher of the BTMG.

Here are the NNPA awards:

Original Photography Use

1^st Place: Birmingham Times, Summerfest, Food and Fun

2^nd Place: St. Louis American, School Shooting

3^rd Place: Atlanta Voice, Election Central: The People Have Spoken

Frank L. Stanley Award Education

1^st Place: Birmingham Times, Maranathan Academy Still Serves Critical Need, (Nicole S. Daniel)

2^nd Place: Washington Informer, Group Challenges Colleges to Better Accommodate Student Parents

3^rd Place: Houston Defender, Black Families Choosing Homeschooling

Newspaper Excellence John H. Sengstacke Award

1^st Place: The Sacramento Observer

2^nd Place: Houston Defender

3^rd Place: Birmingham Times

July 4, 2023

The fifth 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, organised by the Australian Photographic Society (APS), has announced Melbourne photographer, Chris Bowes, as winner.

Bowes’ entry, Sun Kissed #1, #2, #3, #4, 2023, is ‘positive film imprinted with sunlight’.

‘Sun Kissed is a series of experimental photographs created using a hand-made camera that, rather than capturing a representational image, instead captures the colour of light,’ Bowes wrote in his concept statement. ‘They are presented in pairs, each pair containing an imprint of the light at sunrise and sunset over the course of several days. As such, the work’s aim is to reduce landscape photography to its most basic form, imbuing photographic film with an impression of the sun rather than capturing it washing over the environment.’

Bowes’ website bio describes himself as a ‘multidisciplinary artist who’s practice incorporates photography, video and installation’.

‘My work explores the material properties of analogue and digital image making, often finding failures within these systems and pushing them to the brink. I am also interested in the reduction of photography to its most basic properties – surface, light and duration – and regularly attempt to push the definition of photography as far as possible from its traditional Interpretation.’

Bowes wins $25K.

The adjudicators – Victoria Cooper, Doug Spowart, Eloise Maree, and Len Metcalf – also picked four works to be highly commended:

The Colony Reclaims the Land by Melanie Cobham

A flying saucer over Clyde Mountain, shows Declan, dead at two hours old, how to make a new body out of light, 2023 by Judith Nangala Crispin

I Knew at the Time, 2023 by Jess Leonard

Perhaps uncanny and slightly disorientating this work explores themes of women, the body and place, memory and mystery with only a fragment of the narrative presented before the viewer.
The story you walk away with is yours to believe. Digital Photograph on 200gsm Ilford Fine Art Smoot

I don’t always understand/selectively mute, 2022 by Arrayah Loynd

The 2023 Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize has become a major success for the APS, with sponsorship from Ilford, MRAC, Malabar, Bengalla, MACH Energy and Australian Photography. The Prize culminates in a finalist exhibition, which is showing until August 26 at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre in the NSW Upper Hunter Region. Click here to see all finalist images.