The Richmond Photo Club is holding its annual show at Lansdowne Centre with 80 photos on display.

The club’s members are displaying both colour and black and white photos until Sunday, April 28.

The public is invited to come and look at the photos and then vote on their preferred image.

Club members will be on-hand to help with the voting and to talk about their activities.

The photo exhibit at Lansdowne is located at the Centre Court, close to the food court and Toys’R’Us.

For more information on the Richmond Photo Club, click here.

This afternoon, Buckingham Palace announced King Charles would be returning to public duties starting next week. Though his cancer treatment is not finished, a Palace spokesperson said “doctors are sufficiently pleased with the progress made so far that The King is now able to resume a number of public-facing duties.” The spokesperson added that his “medical team are very encouraged by the progress made so far and remain positive about The King’s continued recovery.”

In tandem with the announcement, the Palace shared a new portrait of King Charles and Queen Camilla, taken earlier this month on the morning of April 10 by photographer Millie Pilkington. The portrait was taken the day after the royal couple’s 19th wedding anniversary, and King Charles and Queen Camilla look as in love as ever.

Pilkington posted the image on her Instagram, sharing, “Feeling truly honoured to have been asked to take this portrait of Their Majesties the King and Queen earlier this month in Buckingham Palace Gardens. And delighted that His Majesty the King is recovering so well.” She added, “Thank you @theroyalfamily for such a wonderful commission, and Paul Ellis for assisting me on the day – couldn’t have done it without you.”

Pilkington is no stranger to royal family portraits—in fact, she took a number of photos released by Kensington Palace on special occasions last year, including a portrait of Prince William and his kids for father’s day, and portraits for Prince Louis’s 5th birthday, Princess Charlotte’s 8th birthday, and Prince George’s 10th birthday.

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.

Former Village Voice and New York Observer photographer James Hamilton lives in a small Manhattan apartment on University Place that also doubles as his studio. There’s a dark room in the corner, where Hamilton develops his images, using chemical ingredients plucked from a wine cooler. His walls are lined with books and stacks of photos, a treasure trove of portraits and reportage he’s shot over the decades, among them BB King in concert, Liza Minelli at home and Muhammed Ali out in the streets.

“This is James Stewart in Rear Window,” says director Wes Anderson, when recalling his first impression of Hamilton, and his apartment, in Uncropped, the documentary he executive produces. Hamilton wouldn’t argue against the comparison. Rear Window – Hitchcock’s classic about an adventurous newspaper photographer taken off the job by a broken leg, abandoned to spy on his neighbours – is a formative film for the cinephile cameraman.

“I was not inspired to be a photographer by that film, but I was inspired to live his life,” Hamilton tells the Guardian, very matter-of-factly, on a Zoom call. “I live in the same neighborhood that [Jimmy Stewart’s character] lived in Rear Window. Almost the same block. He mentions the Albert hotel, which is directly across from where I live.”

I’m speaking to Hamilton and Uncropped director DW Young about the film, which is not only a portrait of the man behind some of the most iconic portraits, but also a look back at a lost era in alternative news media, the staff photographer for the Voice in the 70s and 80s, with stints at Rolling Stone predecessor Crawdaddy, Harper’s Bazaar and the New York Observer flanking that period.

He’s photographed Hollywood galas, capturing images of Jane Mansfield leading a conga line and Cary Grant describing his knife phobia to guests, and has captured Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Hitchcock and pretty much every rock band that passed through Greenwich Village in some of their most funky or iconic poses. He describes his photography as “arranging chaos”, whether we’re looking at street scenes with kids playing or feminists protesting, or celebrities bringing that same disruptive energy to hotel room photo shoots.

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As a photographer for an alt-weekly like the Voice, he was also poking his camera within spaces and movements that few other outlets at the time would cover with such rigor. During our interview, Young whips out a photo book featuring Hamilton’s images of the burgeoning hip-hop scene, like an image of guys hanging on a low-rise stoop with their boombox in Brooklyn’s Gravesend, and portraits taken in Hamilton’s own apartment of LL Cool J, Run DMC and pioneering group Funky 4 + 1. “The Voice was very important for covering hip-hop early,” says the director, pointing to rigorous writing from music critics like Robert Christgau, Gary Giddens and Greg Tate who, in keeping with the Voice’s whole vibe, embraced the scrappy new sound coming from the Bronx. “When I look through the old issues and start seeing the articles, it really brings it home. [They were] giving hip-hop legitimacy, treating it seriously, seeing all it had to offer as an art form and getting heavy critics involved.”

Hamilton is sitting beside Young at the latter’s Brooklyn Heights apartment. He would have logged in from his own landmark pad had he been comfortable with Zoom. He’s a very analog guy, though he has been dabbling with Facebook lately, digitizing so much of his stunning street photography as a way to archive the work and share with his intimate circles. “Putting pictures on Facebook motivated me,” says Hamilton, about his foray online. “It gave me a job. It amused me. It amused my friends.”

Those Facebook posts caught the attention of Young’s life and producing partner, Judith Mizrachy (Hamilton’s former New York Observer colleague) and became the impetus for Uncropped, a time capsule hardwired with a sense of melancholy with every page flip through the archive. Ironic that social media led to the rediscovery of Hamilton’s photography while it’s that very technology that makes that work impossible today.

Gone are the lively everyday street scenes because, as Hamilton explains, now everyone in New York is looking at their phones. Also gone are the more candid, spontaneous and authentically vulnerable photographs with actors and rock stars. “Everyone goes around with extra makeup, dressed a special way, so that they can be photographed in a completely glamorized form for Instagram,” says Young, describing today’s heavily filtered, PR’d and posed aesthetics, a stark contrast from the harsh and dramatic lighting and action Hamilton worked with. “They expect to be photographed at any moment during the day, in a selfie or whatever. They’re only comfortable with that kind of photograph. A street photograph would expose the falsity of that.”

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Young also describes the collective cultural hum below 23rd street that is no longer there. The Village Voice, with its 22 Greenwich Avenue office just a quick stroll from Hamilton’s apartment, was at the centre of so much artistic and even anarchist movement, which meant its writers and photographers were already in the centre of so much action. “There was the ability to interact with many, many scenes in proximity to one another,” says Young, describing the time when the Voice was still in print, before the internet democratized but also saturated media and its value, and bohemians could still afford to live in Manhattan. “That creative combined energy was really critical. That has fractured because of prices of real estate and all the other things. A lot of that world is harder to find on the street.”

Hamilton’s work with alt-weeklies, from the Voice to the New York Observer, continued into the internet era; even after Jared Kushner bought the latter, turning it into a tabloid focused on business and real estate interests, gentrifying the brand so that it lost its character like a New York neighbourhood overrun by glass towers. “Another building’s blocking the view of the Empire State,” says Hamilton, describing the shifts.

But in the end, it wasn’t these shifting winds, in media and New York culture, that took Hamilton out of commission. He was struck by a car, which broke his leg, just like the guy in Rear Window.

• Uncropped is out now in NY and LA cinemas and digitally on 7 May with a UK release to be announced

Arducam, who creates cameras and modules for embedded systems and electronics hobbyists has announced the Arducam Pivistation 5. It’s a Raspberry Pi 5-powered all-in-one camera kit that you build yourself.

Due to its modular nature, there are three different versions of the camera available. There’s the 64-megapixel autofocus Hawkeye, the ultra-low light Darksee and the 1″ 20-megapixel Klarity. All three are on Kickstarter right now.

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Arducam Pivistation 5 – Powered by Raspberry Pi

The Arducam Pivistation 5 is powered by the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB. This means that it runs Linux, so you can use it just like normal Raspberry Pi if you wish. You can experiment with all kinds of software from the many DIY Raspberry Pi-based cameras that have been released over the last few years.

Running a full operating system like the Raspberry Pi means that it’s probably updated more often than any camera you can buy from the likes of Sony, Canon or Nikon. And you have the ability to customise it to your needs.

Do you want to run a web server on your camera or have it automatically upload images to the cloud? Well, it’s a Raspberry Pi, so you can do that pretty easily.

Available in three flavours

There are three versions of the Arducam Pivistation 5. They are the Hawkeye, Darksee and Klarity. Each of them is essentially the same, except for the camera module. Of course, the camera module isn’t just like swapping out a sensor, but pretty much all of the camera’s specifications.

The Hawkeye contains the company’s 64-megapixel 1/1.7″ camera module with a built-in fixed lens. It offers an 84-degree field of view with an f/1.8 aperture and a minimum focus distance of 8cm. It also has phase-detect and contrast-detect autofocus.

The Darksee is the low-light model. It contains 1/1.8″ sensor that shoots 8-megapixel. This makes each pixel around 6.25 times the size of those on the Hawkeye, allowing it to capture a lot more light at night despite being a smaller sensor. It features an M16 lens mount

The Klarity should also work quite well in low light. It’s higher resolution, at 20 megapixels, takes C mount lenses, sports a large 1″ sensor, and actually has larger pixels than the Darksee. This comes with an added cost, though.

All three cameras offer 10-Bit raw output, but the 64-megapixel Hawkeye also offers JPG, YUV and RGB output. All three modules contain rolling shutter CMOS sensors, and they have infrared-blocking filters, so they can only see visible light.

Arducam Pivistation 5 Specs

Price and Availability

The Arducam Pivistation 5 is currently running on Kickstarter. Pledges start at $139 for the Hawkeye, $179 for the Darksee and $279 for the Klarity. Items are expected to ship in August 2024.

Disclaimer: We only share crowdfunded projects we believe are legitimate. However, most of those projects are not in a delivery state. Make sure you look into the project and make an informed purchasing decision. While some projects may offer amazing rewards, others unfortunately may not deliver on their promises.

Brian C. Rittmeyer is a TribLive reporter covering news in New Kensington, Arnold and Plum. A Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College, Brian has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.

Barron, WI

(54812)

Today

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 48F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Periods of rain. Thunder possible. Low 48F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.

Updated: April 26, 2024 @ 6:33 pm

Ashley Skow, CPP of Captured by Ashley Photography in Atlantic has earned the Certified Professional Photographer (CPP) designation from Professional Photographers of America (PPA).

Skow earned this designation after completing an intensive program that measures her artistic and technical competence. Professional Photographers of America currently recognizes fewer than 2,500 CPPs.

“This was a very daunting goal to achieve. I have spent hundreds of hours on photography education and having to proving my technical knowledge and skills in professional photography,” Skow said.”I pride myself in continuing my education each year by attending various events and classes around the country to give my clients the absolute best in experience, quality, and professionalism. I’m excited to provide the very best professional photography right here in Southwest Iowa.”

Professional Photographers of America (PPA.com) is the leading body for certifying imaging professionals. CPPs must complete a written examination, finish an image evaluation and adhere to a strict code of conduct. Certification must be renewed on a periodic basis, ensuring continued confidence in the professionalism of Certified Professional Photographers.

Go to www.capturedbyashleyphotography.com for booking information for Ashley Skow, CPP.

Generative AI has quickly emerged as one of the most transformative and controversial technologies of our era. For photographers and photo editors, the implications are profound. Will it just make our jobs easier? Or will it replace them altogether?

At the center of this unfolding revolution / disruption / total calamity (delete as appropriate) is Adobe‘s Firefly, a groundbreaking generative AI model now baked directly into Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop.

You might have ignored Firefly up until now, assuming that it’s a temporary phenomenon—a mere blip or novelty that will soon be forgotten about. But if that’s the case, then Zeke Koch, VP of product management at Firefly, is here to tell you (warmly and diplomatically) that you’re very wrong. As far as Adobe’s concerned, Firefly is the future, not just of Photoshop and Lightroom but all of its creative software.

To give us more details, Zeke sat down with us to discuss how Firefly is transforming the creative process and why photographers shouldn’t fear this disruptive new tech. Even though all the images that accompany this article were generated entirely by AI, with no actual photographer needed.

What’s new in Firefly 3.0

Koch, a product veteran who has worked on Adobe Stock and Photoshop, explains that the AI model has been trained on a vast dataset of images and concepts, allowing it to understand and generate a wide variety of visual elements.

In plain language, that means the software has trawled millions of photos in the Adobe Stock library, and learned how to automatically craft new images that will look similarly “real” and professional.

“We’re trying to teach the model to understand reality, so it can really go to photographic reality,” he explains. “We’re trying to teach it to understand how a camera would understand the world. And then to better give you the kind of image you’re trying to generate, we’ve introduced the Reference Image feature. That means you don’t have to rely on words in your prompts, you can upload an image to show the AI the kind of thing you’re looking for.”

If you’ve tried Firefly in the last year and found it unimpressive, it worth noting that this week, Firefly has been updated from model 2.0 to model 3.0. And it’s quite the game changer.

This update delivers, in the words of the release notice: “stunning advancements in photorealistic quality, styling capabilities detail and accuracy along with greater variety [and] significant advancements in speed of generation [that] make the ideation and creation process more productive and efficient”. 

These are not just flowery words. Koch explains that there are real, verifiable software enhancements behind all the hyperbolic adjectives.

“There are a couple of different measures of the complexity that the model understands objectively,” he begins. “And so one is what we call the latent space. It’s effectively how many concepts you have. Those are more tied to the words in the prompt than they are to the picture. But essentially if you type something like ‘bear with guitar’ how many different variants are there of the bear guitar and what’s in the background and all those different things.

“So that represents all the concepts that you can explain in the network. And so we’ve made the latent space twice as big as it was before. And then the other thing is the imagery part: the part that tries to render what we think you want. That’s about three times as big as it used to be. And then the third thing is called attention. It’s basically, when we take your prompt and try to convert it into an image, how much does the model look at all the inputs that you give it? How much attention does it paid all those things? So we’ve also about tripled that.”

What this means in practice is that Firefly delivers higher-quality image generations, with better details and variety. Koch showed me a number of pictures produced by both 2.0 and 3.0 versions of Firefly. And, once he zoomed into the details, it was clear that the clarify of images produced by the latest version is palpably higher, as well as being more representative of real photography.

Officially titled Firefly Image 3 Foundation Model (beta), the new model is available for use in Photoshop (beta) and on firefly.adobe.com.

How it can help photographers

The short version is that this is impressive tech indeed, with its powerful AI capabilities, not to mention increasingly seamless integration with Adobe Creative Cloud. But what’s it all actually for? Kock is clear on this one: Adobe believes Firefly is poised to become an essential tool for photographers, image editors and indeed creatives of all stripes.

“Generative AI doesn’t replace creativity: it turbocharges and extends the creator’s abilities,” he stresses. “The creative spark still comes from you as the photographer. The AI amplifies your efforts so you can create, ideate and iterate much faster.”

In other words, Koch sees Firefly as a “supercharged editorial assistant” handling tedious tasks like background removal and object insertion, while the human being continues to drive the overarching artistic vision.

“We’re not just doing text to image generation from scratch,” he points out. “That’s been on the Firefly web app from the beginning. But the magic in Photoshop is using generative AI to augment and accelerate your existing creative process on real photos you care about.”

Specifically, he points to new tools like Generative Fill which allows replacing backgrounds, adding objects, or tweaking visual elements in one click instead of tedious editing. “We’re trying to make the model understand photographic reality as closely as possible, so it can do the rote editing tasks for you, while you focus on your creative vision.”  

By providing a starting point and a range of options, Firefly can help photographers explore new ideas and push the boundaries of their craft. Ultimately, Koch believes that Firefly and other generative AI tools will become an integral part of the creative workflow, just as digital cameras and editing software have transformed photography over the past few decades. 

The ethics of it all

Whether or not you buy the argument that AI won’t replace our jobs, there’s also the separate issue of how AI is learning from our existing work by studying it online. To many people’s minds, that’s simply another form of piracy.

On this issue, Koch is keen to stress the ethical nature of Firefly, based on the fact that it doesn’t scrape content people haven’t agreed to be scraped. “We’re creating models with deep expertise in areas like imagery, video and design,” Koch explains. “And we’re building these commercially-safe models only using data we have proper rights and licenses for, like Adobe Stock.”

As an added bonus, Adobe embeds content credentials for transparency on whether something was computer-generated. “As this technology proliferates, understanding where content comes from and if it was AI-generated is crucial for maintaining trust,” he adds.

The future of Firefly 

A more functional aspect of Firefly that sets it apart is its integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps beyond Photoshop. “There’s text to vector in Adobe Illustrator. There’s text effects in Express, there’s generative images in Adobe Express,” Koch explains. “There’s a little bit in Adobe Stock. So there are a bunch of different systems that can work together seamlessly.”

Lightroom is noticeably absent on the list for now, but as Terry White teased on stage at Adobe Max London it’s not been forgotten: generative AI capabilities will be coming to Lightroom on desktop and mobile soon.

In the future, such integrations will allow for a seamless workflow, where photographers can use Firefly to generate initial concepts or fill in gaps, and then refine and polish them using their favorite Adobe tools. “Having AI in Photoshop allows you to quickly remove the things in a picture that don’t meet your needs,” Koch says. “Or you can start with a blank canvas, get something started, for your inspiration.”