07 June 2024

Photographers in the USA and Sri Lanka have been named as the winners of The Salvation Army’s Equip photography competition.

Taking inspiration from two Bible verses, Ephesians 4:12 and John 4:35, photographers were asked to submit images which captured either open land used for crops or a place where the active mission of Christ exists.

Entries were received from 25 territories across the Salvation Army world, with winning photographs by Charles Rex Arbogast (USA Central) and Lieut-Colonel Milton Collins (Sri Lanka) chosen by members of the Equip Advisory Team.

Major Brenda Allen, Equip Coordinator at International Headquarters, said, ‘My prayer is that the photos and the gifts of the photographers would be celebrated, and that the Lord would inspire hearts through the message of his Word that accompanies these beautiful images.’

Equip is the new online learning platform for everyone involved in the mission of The Salvation Army. Equip courses provide training in international development, church mission, community projects and more: salvationarmy.org/ihq/equip.

The winning photographs

Category One: An area of open land used for, or yielding, a crop

Winner: Charles Rex Arbogast, Norridge Citadel, USA Central

‘Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.’ (Matthew 13:8-9).

Charles Rex Arbogast’s photograph captures dramatic skies over the Palouse countryside in Washington State, USA.
 

Category Two: A Salvation Army space/place where the active mission of Christ exists

Winner: Lieut-Colonel Milton Collins, Territorial Headquarters, Sri Lanka

‘The water of life’ (Revelation 21:6)

In Lieut-Colonel Milton Collins’s photograph, a young child from a small village in Sri Lanka’s Anuradhapura District enjoys a drink of water. The community in this predominantly Buddhist region recently opened a new well with the support of The Salvation Army World Service Office and the Sri Lanka Project Team. The well provides safe, clean water for around 450 families, helping to fight chronic kidney disease.

IHQ Communications

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Leica, renowned for its high-quality cameras and iconic imagery, has now revolutionized smartphone photography with the release of the Leica Lux app. Designed to bring the sophisticated Leica look to mobile devices, this app offers a range of features that cater to both amateur photographers and seasoned professionals.

The Leica Lux app aims to transform your smartphone into a powerful photography tool, allowing you to capture images with the distinct Leica aesthetic. The free version of the app includes an Automatic Photo mode, Aperture Mode—featuring the Leica Summilux-M 28 mm f/1.4 ASPH emulation—and five Leica Looks simulation modes. These features enable users to effortlessly achieve the timeless Leica style in their photos.

For those seeking more control and creativity, the Lux Pro plan offers a comprehensive suite of advanced features. Subscribers gain access to manual controls over exposure, focus, and white balance, providing the precision needed for professional-level photography. Additionally, Lux Pro users can explore the full range of Leica Looks and five Leica lenses, with the promise of an expanding library of Looks and lenses over time.

Benefits of the Leica Lux App

• Leica Aesthetic: Capture stunning photos with Leica’s signature look directly from your smartphone.
• Advanced Controls: Unlock manual settings for exposure, focus, and white balance with the Lux Pro plan.
• Leica Lens Emulation: Experience the Leica Summilux-M 28 mm f/1.4 ASPH and other iconic lenses.
• Growing Library: Enjoy an expanding collection of Leica Looks and lenses for endless creativity.
• User-Friendly Interface: Designed for photographers of all levels, the app is intuitive and easy to navigate.

The Leica Lux app is a game-changer for mobile photography enthusiasts, offering tools and features that elevate the standard of smartphone photography. Whether you’re capturing everyday moments or creating professional-quality images, the Leica Lux app ensures every shot reflects the renowned Leica quality.

Ready to transform your mobile photography? Download the Leica Lux app now and start experiencing the Leica difference. Download from the App Store.

The Leica Lux app is more than just a photography tool; it’s a bridge to the world of professional photography right at your fingertips. Whether you’re a beginner or a pro, the Leica Lux app promises to elevate your mobile photography experience to new heights.

DULUTH — Tom Haas remembers his first summer on Isle Royale. He was 19 and scored an internship with the National Park Service to take photographs that might be used to document and promote the little-known park.

It was 1967, and his park ranger boss wanted photos of the island’s iconic wolves and moose. Haas was given a bulky, old-school, single-frame camera that had to be loaded with new film for each photo. Black-and-white film was far cheaper at the time, so that’s what Haas had to work with.

With the tripod required to keep the giant camera still enough to take in-focus photos, the contraption weighed 20 pounds. Moreover, the 135-millimeter fixed lens made everything in the distance seem small.

It didn’t take Haas long to figure out that it wasn’t working to capture candid shots of wildlife from afar. But the big, bulky camera, with its black and white film and decades-old technology, was perfect for capturing other magic on the island — portraits of its fascinating summer residents, still-lifes of boats, lighthouses and kitchen stoves, and dramatic landscape shots of shoreline, waves and rocks, plants and forests.

Haas didn’t know it, but that summer job in high school, and that old camera, would lead him on a yearslong adventure on and around Lake Superior’s largest island. He would go on to buy a large-format camera for $40 and spend the next 20 years kayaking around and photographing the island and its people, one frame at a time.

Haas took nearly 4,000 images on Isle Royale, most of them gathering dust for more than 30 years until he and his wife, Jeannie Thoren, decided some of those pictures needed to see the light of day again. The result of their effort is an unmatched, historical collection that captures both the island’s natural and cultural history.

From those 4,000 negatives, Tom and Jeannie made hundreds of prints, spreading them across the upstairs in their eastern Duluth home. Over an entire winter, they decided on 275 of their favorites for Tom’s new 240-page coffee-table-sized photo book, “Isle Royale, A Photographer’s Circumnavigation, 1967-1987,” available this month in bookstores and online.

If Ken Burns ever produces a documentary on Isle Royale, this is where he will get his historic photos. Because they are in black and white, and taken with a camera format designed a century ago, the photos have an other-worldly aura.

While taken 40-50 years ago, some of these photos seem to hark back to the 1800s, in part because of the old nature of the wooden boats and humble buildings on the island.

“Prior to working at Isle Royale, I had only shot with 35mm film, some for high school yearbook production, and some wildlife,” Haas explains on his website. “Once I discovered the clarity and detail a larger-format film can produce, I was hooked.”

Haas said the big camera’s limitations made him learn patience as a virtue in photography.

“You wait for the sun to get where you need it to be in the sky. Wait for the wind to go down,” he noted.

But it’s not just the mechanics of old film and old cameras that make the photos special. Haas developed an eye for subjects that make his photos pop with personality, from old kitchen wood stoves and wooden boats to water-worn rocks and the weathered faces of island fishermen.

Through the many years, Haas was on the island, only about 75 seasonal residents and maybe another 75 Park Service staff were spread across the 45-mile-long archipelago. Everyone knew everyone, and Haas fit right in.

“I lived with some of these people, and I’d come back every year to visit them. And some of them were alone by then and needed help just maintaining their camps,” Haas told the News Tribune in an interview in his living room.

He developed a special bond with several families and bachelor fishermen, widowers and widows who had no one else at their remote locations scattered across the island’s sheltered coves and bays. He helped them mend and set their nets for herring, Lake Superior’s small but tasty native fish that sold for about 50 cents per pound at the time.

“The islanders were extraordinarily welcoming, hospitable families, and the commercial fishermen and women knowingly risked their lives in simple boats every day they spent on the water,” Haas writes on his website. “Over time I also found myself serving as both an errand boy for and companion to these folks, performing plenty of odd jobs along the way.”

While Haas started his Isle Royale adventures in a Park Service-issued canoe, he eventually purchased his own folding, German-made, two-seat kayak called a Klepper. It served as his transportation but also had room for his heavy camera gear in the second seat. He found the craft was perfectly suited for the rough seas that could envelop the island. It was mobility and safety on a shoestring budget, Haas recalled.

Haas paddled up and down Isle Royale’s shore and wandered about the island’s interior, from Gull Rocks to Rock of Ages and everywhere in between.

“I paddled the entire length of the island in one day, just to see if I could do it,” Haas said.

But most of his travels were at a much slower pace, aimed at scouting photo subjects and memorizing the face of the island’s shoreline.

He became a mostly self-taught artist of photography, carefully setting up his contraption wherever his eye told him would best capture the moment and the place.

He later toyed with the idea of becoming a professional photographer, making a career out of it, but his early efforts to sell prints didn’t amount to much.

“I consider it a hobby,” said Haas, now 75. “Then it was fun, not work.”

Haas was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1948 and went on to attend college at the University of Connecticut. He intended to study science but used much of his time teaching himself photo-developing techniques in the biology department’s little-used dark room, where he developed his skills in turning negatives into prints.

Worried about being drafted into the Vietnam War, Haas said he hung around Isle Royale and the North Shore even after his internship, and kept returning, in part “because it’s closer to Canada,” where he planned to escape, if drafted, as a conscientious objector to war.

“I went to the island to wait out the draft … but after that, I didn’t want to leave,” Haas said.

But even when the draft threat ended, Haas knew he wanted to stay on Lake Superior. Most years in the 1970s and ’80s he was on the island from May into October, about the same time the island was visited by longtime summer resident families and with Park Service staff. The island essentially shut down, closed to people, in winter and early spring.

When Haas wasn’t on the island he spent time in Lutsen, working at Minnesota’s first big ski resort and learning how to cross-country and downhill ski. He then drifted down to Duluth where he’s lived ever since, landing a job managing Continental Ski Shop and eventually becoming a national representative for Fischer skis.

When he wasn’t taking photos, Haas could usually be found kayaking in summer and skiing in winter. He got so good he even won the 1972

American Birkebeiner ski race

in Hayward.

Haas and Thoren — a Marquette, Michigan, native enshrined in the U.S. Ski And Snowboard Hall of Fame for her pioneering work designing women’s ski gear — met formally at a ski industry convention in Las Vegas in the 1970s. They immediately struck a relationship over skiing and, even more so, Lake Superior and Isle Royale.

“Tom fell in love with Lake Superior, the North Shore, Lutsen, with skiing … with the island. … We both knew this area was home,” Thoren said. “There we were in Las Vegas talking about Lake Superior.”

Tony Dierckens, Duluth author and the owner of Zenith City Press, said he met Jeannie and Tom when they needed help bringing their photos together for the book. Dierckens has a side business, X-Presso Books, aimed at helping people self-publish their pet projects.

After seeing the treasure trove of Haas’ images, Dierckens knew it was a personal project that needed to go public.

“After I met them I just thought these photos needed to be out there, nobody else has anything like this. … Nobody else could,” Dierckens said. “I really think this is an important project. These are absolutely beautiful photos.”

Haas considers himself fortunate to have been in the right place in the right era. Many of the people, fishing camps and boats once familiar on the island are gone now. He eventually sold his $500, 50-year-old kayak for $1,400 in 2022, and he hasn’t been back to the island in a decade.

But Haas is lucky. He not only has great memories of his time on Isle Royale, but has a book with 275 of his best photos to help him, and the rest of us, remember.

“It was a great experience, not just as a 19-year-old kid,” Haas said. “But to be able to keep going back, year after year, and keep taking photos. … I was fortunate.”

• “Isle Royale, A Photographers Circumnavigation, 1967-1987”
• By Tom Haas
• 240 pages, 275 black and white photos
• Published by X-Presso Books, Duluth. Available at bookstores around the Lake Superior region and at

  tomhassphotography.com

  for $80.

Tom Haas will sign his books at Zenith Bookstore, 318 N. Central Ave., Duluth, from 1-3 p.m. June 15.

Photographs of flooding, hurricane-damaged houses and wildfires are all too common in the news these days, as climate change brings with it extreme weather and natural hazards. 

The Standard Chartered Weather Photographer of the Year competition aims to raise awareness about the impact of climate change and extreme weather, and is organized by the UK’s Royal Meteorological Society (RMetS).

Whether you’re using your camera phone or one of the best mirrorless cameras on the market, you can submit your entries to this year’s competition until June 18 by entering here.

The competition is open to amateur and professional photographers from around the world, and there are three categories: 

• The main Weather Photographer of the Year will win a cash prize of $6,400 / £5,000 / AU$9,500
• The Smartphone Weather Photographer of the Year is open for images taken on phones or tablets, with a $3,200 / £2,500 / $4,800 cash prize
• The Young Weather Photographer of the Year is open to anyone aged 17 and under (submissions by entrants under 13 must be entered by an adult) with a $950 / £750 / AU$1,400 cash prize

The Young Weather Photographer of the Year Award and RMetS have partnered with The Week Junior Science+Nature, and both the editor and the photo editor of the publication will be helping to judge the category.

“We are proud that The Week Junior Science+Nature will continue supporting the youth category as a media partner this year,” said Standard Chartered, noting that the publication “takes 8-15 year-olds on amazing voyages of discovery around the world.”

Offering advice on how to capture the best cloud photos, Standard Chartered suggests the following:

“Find an open area with a clear view of the sky. Avoid areas with tall buildings or trees that get in the way. Early morning and late afternoon are great times to capture beautiful colours and soft light. Clouds come in all shapes and sizes, so keep your eyes peeled for interesting formations and be ready to snap before they pass by.”

New to the Weather Photographer of the Year award in 2024 is the Standard Chartered Climate Award. This will be awarded to the picture that tells the most compelling story about the impact of climate change, with a cash prize of $1,280 / £1,000 / AU$1,900.

The public can also vote for their favorite images after the shortlist has been announced in September.

The competition is free to enter and open to people of all abilities. Entrants are allowed to submit a maximum of five images per category, and photographs must have been taken between June 18 2019 and June 18 2024.

For more information and to enter your photographs, visit the RMets website.

Photographing interesting weather might mean getting wet, so make sure to check out the best waterproof cameras! 

In 1967 romcom “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner,” Sidney Poitier’s dashing doctor is dropped into the lives of the Draytons, a White middle class family, when their daughter arrives home and announces she has a fiancé. The parents are liberals, but the news is shocking; they’re not sure if they approve of an interracial marriage. No matter that this man is handsome and of spotless character – he’s Sidney Poitier, for crying out loud – his presence, in all its Blackness, marks an intrusion, upending this hitherto White space.

Now imagine we know nothing about the Draytons. They could be civil rights campaigners or conservatives or card-carrying members of the KKK. And no Hollywood ending is guaranteed. That is the provocative space a puckish Omar Victor Diop finds himself in in “Being There.”

Conceived by British photographer Lee Shulman and Senegalese self-portraitist Diop, the series sees the duo utilize a collection of family photos from 1950s and 1960s America, editing Diop into a series of intimate scenes, both public and private, in spaces where Black people were often shut out.

The 60 or so photos, Kodachrome slides purchased on eBay by Shulman years ago, are drawn from his “Anonymous Project,” so named because Shulman has no idea of the identities of any of the people in them. The collection has spurred on multiple side projects, including a book with British photographer Martin Parr, and now “Being There,” which debuted at Paris Photo in November 2023 and was recently turned into a coffee table book.

“Being There” came to life when Shulman noticed many of the slides contained an empty seat – presumably that the photographer had vacated to take the photo. “There was an absence,” he told CNN in a joint video interview with Diop. That they were taken in America circa the civil rights movement, but also of a segregated South, “played on my mind a lot,” he explained. That absence became abstracted. The person missing from the seat evolved into a totem of worlds and peoples often excluded from the privileges of White America. “Every time I saw that chair, I saw Omar in (it),” Shulman added.

Though the two photographers had never met, it tracks. Shulman owned a few works from the acclaimed self-portraitist, who has prior experience in this area. Diop’s series “Diaspora” depicts Africans outside of Africa at different points in history (albeit with some contemporary – often soccer related ­­– props). That sense of play and humor continues in “Being There,” in which an oft-grinning Diop offers a cheeky presence in each still.

Shulman and Diop curated the selection together. “We were looking for images that covered a broad spectrum of life, because it’s a family photo album,” said Shulman.

There are signs of wealth: a ski holiday, a Hawaiian jaunt, a trip to the Grand Canyon, alongside more modest adventures like a roadside picnic and a day at the zoo. The camera goes inside homes, capturing Diop in the back of birthday celebrations and lounging with families. However quotidian, that these moments were captured by cameras is a sign of race and class privilege, argued Shulman.

Other photographs, by nature of their location, are more charged. Diop splashes around in a public swimming pool; graduates from college; sits in a busy bar. He’s surrounded by White faces as he does so, occupying spaces which were historically segregated in some states. “The political potential of this series made it very easy for me to jump into this,” Diop said.

“We tend to have this glamorized gaze towards history. And in doing so, we forget how it’s easy not to make room for someone who’s different,” he added. “(The series) is an invitation to look at our lives nowadays and see how many people different from us that we allow into our intimate circles.”

Ironically, inserting Diop into these spontaneous shots involved a lot of planning. Period props and costumes were used by Diop in a greenscreen set, with rigs mimicking the lighting of each slide. Digital post-production slotted him into the photographs, approximating the grade and grain of Kodachrome film, along with any shadows, blur and movement in the shot.

Dressing up, Diop was struck by how much he looked like his father, who “laughed a lot going through the book,” the portraitist said.

“He’d been a student in Europe in the late ’50s, so he’d been sitting at these tables,” Diop added. “Of course, you can’t really compare (being an African in Europe) with what African Americans went through in the same era, but the idea of being different is something (they had in common).”

The collaborators never decided whether Diop is playing the same character in each photograph, or if it was a character at all, and not just Diop appearing as a time traveller. This ambiguity carries over into Diop’s relationship with the lens. “One of the reasons it works is that gaze he sometimes has towards the camera,” said Shulman, “you feel that he knows the photographer.” On the other hand, if it’s a case of Diop breaching the space-time continuum, photographs read as if he’s bringing the viewer in on the secret.

Likewise, neither resolved whether Diop was a welcome presence or gate-crasher in each scene.

Despite having the slides in his possession for years, Shulman still knows next to nothing about their subjects.

“As much as they’re anonymous, they tell us a lot,” he insisted. “Every time I look at these images, even without Omar in them, I feel these people are looking at us and telling us something about history.”

There is another, perhaps unintended, dimension to the photographs. The anonymity of the White people, and Shulman and Diop’s lack of desire to investigate them and their inner lives, forces the viewer to rely on sign and symbol to construct identity. We don’t know their politics, nor how they’d respond to Diop’s presence. Deprived of details, these lives become homogenized; bundled. In doing so, they’re treated like so many people of color were when portrayed by what was, for decades, a hegemonic Western – and almost exclusively White – lens, which had a knack for stripping away nuance. Diop’s winking presence, Black and African, seems to say, “Look where I am” but also, “See how you like it.”

Shulman insisted “there’s no pointing fingers in this book,” while later saying neither he nor Diop “feel like we own this project” now that’s out in the world and “lives its life.” All interpretations are valid, a fact they say excites them.

More than 60 years after the photos were taken, much of America appears different now. Gently probing, playfully satirical, Shulman and Diop remind us that much remains the same.

“It’s a very contemporary project,” Shulman said. “It has a lot of relevance to the world we live in today.”

“Being There” is published by Textuel and available now.

Shulman and Diop appear together just once, on the cover — a White British Jew and a Black Senegalese man alone together, exploring America’s broad horizons. “It really sums up a lot of the project for me,” said Shulman.

Pieces add up to an archive of a life lived deeply in Lyle Ashton Harris’s compelling survey at the Queens Museum.

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