Tampa Bay student photographer wins Florida State Parks contest
Photography
Canon’s exhibition “World Unseen” brings photography to the visually impaired
The world of photography is often seen as a visual realm, but what about those who experience limited or no sight? This is the beautiful vision behind the World Unseen, a photography exhibition created by Canon in partnership with the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
An exhibition for everyone
Designed to be inclusive and immersive, the World Unseen welcomes visitors of all visual abilities – blind, partially sighted, and sighted – to experience the power of photography in a whole new way. Through a blend of soundscapes, captivating audio descriptions, braille text, and a technique called “raised prints,” visually impaired visitors can now fully experience the power of photography we all appreciate so much.
But remember that the exhibition isn’t just for those with visual impairments. It’s a powerful experience designed to bridge the gap between the sighted and non-sighted worlds. Special effects will be used on some photos to simulate different visual impairments, allowing sighted visitors to experience the world as someone with glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy might see it. This fosters empathy and understanding while simultaneously highlighting the importance of accessibility in the arts.
“The World Unseen exhibition opens up the world of photography and enables more blind and partially sighted people to experience the emotive stories, and physical touch, of these iconic images,” explains Dave Williams, inclusive design ambassador at the RNIB.
“As a braille user, it’s fantastic to be working with Canon to raise awareness of the possibilities of textured print and to see in action how technology can make art more accessible for people with sight loss.”
Canon launched a video showcasing a part of the World Unseen. It shows one of the photos on display, from Brent Stirton‘s Rhino Wars series. The image itself shows the world’s last male northern white rhinoceros, standing in the Kenyan savanna, surrounded by three men with rifles that protect him.
Canon’s PRISMAelevate XL software and the Arizona printer series turn Brent’s photo into a tactile experience. In the video, you can see the reaction of blind conservationist Lawrence Gunther as he touched the tactile image and read the description using Braille.
My absolutely favorite part of the video shows Lawrence as he engages with the tactile photo. “I’ve never felt anything like this before in my life,” he tells Brent. “What I’m feeling here, and the differences in the skin texture, it feels a lot like the animal. People are going to go nuts for this.”
“I’m so privileged to be here and experience this,” Lawrence says as his eyes tear up. “Oh, man. It’s… This is my dream.” I cried a little, too.
When and where?
The only complaint I have about the World Unseen is that it will be up for a very brief time. It occurs at Somerset House in London from April 5 to 7, 2024, so if you’re in London at that time, mark your calendars and make sure to visit.
But despite its short display, this exhibition is definitely a fantastic event. It’s a testament to the power of art to connect us all, regardless of our abilities. It’s a chance to see the world anew, to break down barriers, and to celebrate the beauty and stories that photography has to offer to everyone.
[via Digital Camera World]vivo’s V30 breaks new ground with studio-quality portrait photography
vivo, a global leading technology company, unveiled the new vivo V30, the latest flagship-level studio portrait addition to the stylish V series.
The new device is vivo’s slimmest smartphone featuring a 5000 mAh (TYP) battery. It offers new color options, Studio-Quality Aura Light Portrait, and smooth performance with a bright display, ensuring long battery life.
Powerful camera setup with breakthrough sensor technology
The V30 enhances portrait photography with its Studio-Quality Aura Light Portrait feature, offering a light-emitting area 19 times larger and 50 times softer than standard flash. Smart Colour Temperature Adjustment ensures vivid, harmonious tones, while Distance-Sensitive Lighting guarantees perfectly-lit portraits. Special modes like Food Mode capture fine details in any lighting, making it ideal for foodies.
The V30 boasts a robust camera setup, featuring a VCS True Colour Main Camera, a 50 MP AF Ultra Wide-Angle Camera, and a 50 MP AF Group Selfie Camera. Its flagship-level light sensitivity and super Optical Image Stabilization make it ideal for powerful night scene photography. vivo’s re-engineered image sensor, based on human eye bionic standards, enhances photo quality for slim smartphones. The vivo-exclusive Camera-Bionic Spectrum (VCS) technology improves image purity by 25% and colour reproduction by 15%[1] compared to the previous generation. The 50 MP AF Ultra Wide-Angle Camera offers Auto Focus and a 119° wide angle, while the 50 MP AF Group Selfie Camera supports Auto Focus and a wide angle of 92°, making it perfect for group photos.
V30 empowers users to effortlessly explore their creativity, providing the tools needed to shoot and edit professional-grade vlogs with ease. The Aura Light Portrait Video feature of V30 enhances video clarity in low-light conditions, therefore the portraits become clearer and night scenes brighter. With the Hybrid Image Stabilisation (OIS + EIS) feature, the device excellently performs thousands of stabilization computations per second, ensuring smoother and more stable footage.[2] Additionally, the powerful Vlog Movie Creator provides a one-stop solution for video creation, offering a variety of video effects and optimization features to simplify the editing process.
Ingenious slim and light design with a simple and elegant aesthetic
V30 boasts style and practicality, pairing a slim 7.45mm profile with a 5000mAh battery. Using an innovative One-Piece Encapsulation Technique, it integrates the battery without sacrificing sleekness. The result? A 12% thinner body compared to other 5000mAh smartphones, ensuring both aesthetics and endurance. Its 3D curved screen enhances grip for extended use. V30 introduces new Colour, Material, and Finish (CMF) innovations, offering a range of captivating colours and textures. The Aqua Blue edition features a mesmerising water ripple pattern achieved through a Rippling Magnetic Particle process. V30 also offers a colour-changing Lush Green and a classic Noble Black shade for diverse preferences.
Seamless performance and long battery life, perfect for all-day use and entertainment
Introducing the V30 with cutting-edge battery technology, boasting a doubled lifespan. Even after 1600 cycles, it retains over 80% capacity, lasting four years.[3] With a 5000mAh battery, enjoy 23 hours standby and 48 minutes[4] full charge thanks to 80W FlashCharge.[5] Enhanced by Qualcomm Snapdragon® 7 Gen 3 and Extended RAM, it ensures seamless multitasking. The 1.5K Ultra Clear Sunlight Display offers stunning visuals with flagship-level eye protection, reaching 2800 nits brightness. The Ultra Large Smart Cooling System and 11 temperature sensors ensure stability during intense tasks like gaming. Built for durability, it features drop-resistant cushioning, robust “Schott α” glass, and IP54[6] rating for dust/water resistance. V30 offers unmatched performance and longevity.
*Source: AETOSWire
[1] The data comes from vivo’s laboratory based on a comparison of the main camera sensors on V30 and V29 in low-light environments in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio and color noise.
[2] The Hybrid Image Stabilization (OIS + EIS) works when you are shooting with the main camera at 1x or above zoom.
[3] These tests simulate daily usage habits (charging and discharging a phone once a day) and indicate that 1600 cycles equal approximately 4 years of usage. The above data was provided by vivo’s lab according to tests conducted in a simulated environment, with ambient and battery temperatures of 23°C±2°C for a full charge and discharge. Actual results may vary due to differences in test equipment, test environment, personal usage patterns and habits.
[4] The data was provided by vivo’s lab according to tests conducted under the device’s default charging mode.
[5] The maximum standby time is for screen-off standby with a 4G network. The data is from vivo laboratory. Charging data is based on vivo laboratory environmental tests. Actual battery duration and charging speed is subject to actual usage and may vary depending on environment and other factors.
[6] This product is rated as IP54 for splash, water, and dust resistance under IEC standard 60529 and was tested under controlled laboratory conditions. The resistance to splashes, water and dust is not permanent and may be reduced due to daily use. Do not charge the mobile phone when it is wet. Refer to Safety information in Settings for cleaning and drying instructions. Damage due to liquid ingress is not covered by the warranty.
Image Credit: vivo
Here’s a look at the ‘Photographer’s Edition’ of the Nubia Z60 Ultra, which will be released on March 28
The Nubia Z60 Ultra was one of the first to equip the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and was launched towards the end of last year in China. Now the company is teasing a photography-focused version of the Z60 Ultra that will go on sale on March 28th.
Speaking of this camera-focused special edition, Nubia asks “Have you ever seen one with such AI?” (machine translated). So there’s probably some AI stuff going on behind its imaging. However, the general trend for special editions revolves around only a refreshed look.
ZTE has released a preview of the ‘Photographer’s Edition’ of Nubia Z60 Ultra
The photography edition of the Nubia Z60 Ultra will reportedly offer the same components inside as the regular version. Speaking of the AI addition in camera, there might be some added features like camera modes in the camera app.
The Nubia Z60 Ultra offers a triple camera setup: a 50-megapixel Sony IMX800 primary camera (focal length 18mm), a 50-megapixel OmniVision OV50E ultra-wide (35mm), and a 64-megapixel OV64B periscope telephoto lens offering 3x optical zoom (85mm). Notably, the camera samples look promising.
Alongside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Nubia Z60 Ultra offers a 6000 mAh silicone anode battery and supports 80W wired charging. For storage and memory, the regular version offers LPDDR5x RAM and UFS 4.0 storage, with configuration options starting from 8GB+256GB all the way up to 24GB+1TB. In the front, you see a BOE Q9+ OLED panel with 1.5K resolution (2480 x 1116) that goes up to 1500 nits in outdoors.
Nubia hasn’t released pricing for the upcoming photography-focused edition of the Z60 Ultra yet. We will update you as more information becomes available.
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Mark Leech: Behind 50 years of sports photography
One of the first assignments Mark Leech had as a sports photographer was when the agency he was working for sent him up to Ipswich Town’s training ground to take pictures of the team for the club calendar. When he arrived he was explaining to the woman behind reception who he was and that he’d been told everything had been arranged.
“Then I heard this voice behind me,” he recalls. “‘Arranged by who?’ It was Bobby Robson. And he wasn’t happy. I said: ‘arranged by my editor’. And he said ‘I’m in charge round here, I’m the bloody manager and nobody arranged it with me.’ Then he took me up to his office and tore me off a strip. ‘You know nothing’, he shouted at me. And he pointed at a picture on the wall behind his desk. ‘You’re not even a proper photographer. That’s a bloody picture.’ It was a shot of some match action from a game a couple of weeks before. ‘Don’t come back here,’ he shouted at me, ‘till you can take a picture like that.’ I was only 18. I was so petrified I didn’t dare tell him that I had actually taken it. It was my picture.”
Given that Bobby Robson was manager at Ipswich from 1969 to 1982, it is clear that Leech has been photographing for some time. Indeed, last October, he celebrated 50 years since he first had a picture published in a national newspaper. But here’s the thing: five decades on he is still hard at work on the touchline, there every weekend training his lenses on the action. More to the point, he still loves his job.
“I did Luton against Burnley recently,” he says as he sits in the cafe of the office block in north London where he has his studio. “And when I came back home afterwards my wife said to me: ‘have you been drinking?’ I said no. She said: ‘so why have you got that big smile on your face?’ The fact was, I’d just loved being at the match. And she said: ‘I wish I made you as happy as taking pictures of Luton against Burnley’.”
As it happens, his half century of joy began in less than auspicious circumstances. In fact, it started in failure. He had applied for a job with the Hayters sports agency as a trainee football reporter. But he required 5 O-levels, and had only managed to pass two. Someone mentioned there was a position going at a photographic agency so he went along and impressed them in the interview by knowing all the names of the players in a big pile of pictures with no captions. He was taken on as a general apprentice, working in the dark room during the week, elbow deep in developing fluid, then on matchdays he would stand on the touchlines of London stadiums waiting to transport the rolls of film from the photographers back to the dark room.
“I was mad on football, had the best view in the house and the first time I went along, after about 20 minutes a photographer handed me a film. I stood there for a minute, then he said: ‘what are you waiting for?’ The game had hardly got going. And there I was having to leave to get to the dark room. I tell you, some of the oddballs that hang around outside grounds when matches are going on have to be seen to be believed.”
Once he had developed the film, he would then speed to Fleet Street, going around the newspaper sports desks trying to sell the best shots. It was a tough apprenticeship, working six days a week for the princely weekly return of £12. But then, no more than three months after he had started, he decided to buy a camera, a Zenith that cost him nearly two weeks wages.
“I remember my Dad said to me: ‘why have you bought that? You’ll never be able to take a decent picture’,” he says. “I was really motivated to show him.”
And, in part to prove his father wrong, he took the camera along to a match at Highbury in the spring of 1974. He was behind the goal when Brian Kidd scored. But instead of taking a shot of the goal, he followed Kidd as he went to celebrate with the fans on the North Bank. There was a policeman sitting there, with his helmet by his side, and Kidd put it on to huge acclaim from the crowd. Leech took the picture and, not forgetting to grab the film from the official photographer, headed immediately to the dark room.
“I ran it round the papers and got four back pages. Nobody believed I took it. It gave me a bit of belief.”
And recently, when Manchester City came to play at the Emirates with Kidd was on the City coaching staff, Leech introduced himself to the subject of his shot.
“He was delighted when I told him I’d taken it. He said he had it on the wall of his house in between a picture of him meeting the Pope and another of him meeting the Queen.”
Mark Leech remains a familiar face on touchlines, more than five decades after taking his first professional photograph
Credit: Offside
It was a picture that propelled Leech into the world of snappery. Within a month, he had been sent to the European Cup final in Paris. And so began a career that took in seven World Cups and dozens of cup finals, glory games and ignominious defeats. He was an eye witness, right there on the touchline, to the grandest, most historic occasions in the game. He was the only British photographer when Diego Maradona won the Scudetto in Naples, he was right alongside Gazza when he did his dentist’s chair celebration at Euro 96 and he was there at the World Cup in Marseilles in 1998 when England lined up to take penalties against Argentina.
“Glenn Hoddle had said before the game he had a plan for penalties, and then I could see through my long lens him in the huddle before the shoot-out going ‘I need another one,” and David Batty going ‘oh all right then’.”
Through it all he was always looking for a different angle, an unusual approach.
“People often ask me what was the best football picture ever taken, maybe expecting me to say that one of Maradona at the 82 World Cup facing the Belgian defence,” he says. “But actually, it was one my hero Gerry Cranham took at the 1966 World Cup final. It’s just after Geoff Hurst had scored his third and instead of getting a shot of the goal, Gerry turned and took one of the England bench celebrating. In amongst all the limbs, Alf Ramsey is sat on the bench, motionless. And it just perfectly captures that look on Jimmy Greaves face that says: ‘it should have been me’.”
These days, as he runs his own hugely successful photographic agency, Leech is still in search of the perfect picture.
“The game is so much faster, more skilful,” he says. “But the principles of a decent picture are still exactly the same. You still know when you’ve got one the moment you push the button.”Though while the principles remain, not much else has. Take the picture he recently fashioned outside the Tottenham Hotspur stadium ahead of the match against Wolves.
“I saw this South Korean chap in a Son [Heung-min] shirt taking a selfie holding up a portion of fish and chips. So I took a picture of him and even as I took it I couldn’t help thinking to myself: imagine thinking that would happen when you first started 50 years ago.”
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Eye in the sky: the photographer who used 20,000 photos to make an epic collage map of Dundee
The link between photography and the modern city is well established. In the mid-19th century this developing technology was perfectly suited to capture turbo-charged urban growth as it happened, providing a new way of seeing emerging global metropolises.
“Photography not only depicted these wholly novel sorts of environments,” says Meredith More, a curator at the V&A Dundee. “It became an expression in itself of their modernity and complexity. The way people began to imagine and to inhabit their cities was profoundly influenced by the way they were photographed.”
A forthcoming V&A Dundee exhibition, Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World, explores this relationship. The centrepiece is a new work by the Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino. Late last summer Nishino spent six weeks in Dundee walking the streets, meeting people, visiting community groups and businesses and taking photographs of anything that caught his eye: football matches, gulls, car parks, the botanic garden, a hairdresser, the sky, the river. Twenty thousand images later he returned to his studio in Shizuoka, Japan, where he began to make some sense of it all.
The resulting work is a vast diorama map, more than five metres wide, made up of thousands of tiny individual images assembled by hand into a personalised collage of his trip. From a distance it acts as a topographically accurate map – there’s the River Tay, the bridges, the hills and so on – but go a little closer and there is the built environment with its historic and modern architecture; closer still there are people and birds and the delightful little details that emerged from his chance encounters.
“I had no expectations – I only knew that it was a regional city in Scotland, and that it had the V&A Museum,” says Nishino. “If you look at a city from a bird’s eye view, it will just flow by you. But by walking with local people you gain more layers of perspective. I wanted to create a work that captures the landscape from high and low. I wanted multiple points of view.”
Nishino has previously made diorama maps of other cities including Tokyo, London, San Francisco and New Delhi. This latest work will be presented alongside stellar historic images from the V&A’s photographic holdings – Thomas Annan’s 19th-century Glasgow, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 20th-century Paris and so on – as well as more modern work and sections on aerial photography and recently made 3D scans of Ukrainian heritage sites under threat from the Russian invasion.
“Dundee was the smallest city I have worked in, but the final result was bigger than the other cities,” he says. “That was because I focused more on the people and events. The process of the work includes the physicality of walking and moving, as well as the photographic element. And while my work reflects the perspectives of my own travels, it is through the filter of the people who live there.”
Photo City: How Images Shape the Urban World is at V&A Dundee from 29 March.
Slice of life: four details from Sohei Nishino’s Dundee diorama
The football grounds
Dundee’s two football stadiums are separated by about 185 metres. “From my time in the city I had the impression that the local people were relatively shy and calm,” says Nishino. “But the intensity of a match was truly amazing. The shouting and expressions on their faces were 180 degrees different from what I had previously seen.”
People playing bowls
“When I first visited Dundee I was impressed by elderly people gathering at bingo and was disappointed that I couldn’t take photos of them. Then I found the bowls green. It could not be seen from the outside and it felt like a sacred space. But no matter how long I looked, I never could figure out the rules.”
The V&A and the river
“I started with the V&A when I began pasting the photos. I felt that the waterfront project and the establishment of the museum were important for the development of the city, and also for its future. So I rented a boat and took pictures from the river. I wanted to preserve the impression of the city floating on the river as I had seen when driving across the bridge.”
The McManus
The McManus, Dundee’s art gallery and museum, is geographically and culturally at the heart of the city. “I passed it every day and it became symbolic for me,” says Nishino. ”From it I could see a school, a pub, a cemetery, a historic jute factory and a casino, all in one magical space. And also the publishers DC Thomson, home of the Beano comic.”
Janine Wiedel’s book documents the last days of British industry
New York-born documentary photographer Janine Wiedel has released a new book titled Vulcan’s Forge, which takes as its premise a body of work she made between 1977 and 1979. During this time, Wiedel held a bursary from West Midlands Arts, and used the money to travel around the area, documenting industrial workers and businesses. From potteries and jewellers, to coal mines and steel works, she sought to capture the full gamut of the industry.
Having already spent many years covering subjects such as the Irish travelling community, Greenham Common Women’s Camp, and BIPOC and Rastafarian groups in Brixton, Wiedel was well-suited to the endeavour. By 1977, she was an established name in the world of documentary photography, and skilled in her ability to get close to her subjects and to peel back the layers of the seemingly mundane.
Accompanied by her campervan-cum-darkroom, Wiedel spent the next two years visiting factories and workshops all over the West Midlands, capturing the lives of the workers who kept everything running. “As I got deeper into my subject I began to feel that much of Birmingham and the West Midlands could well belong to Vulcan’s people: sons of fire, casting their thunderbolts,” recalls the photographer.
Once the heart of the industrial revolution, the work in this area was already in steep decline by the time she arrived, suffering greatly from years of underinvestment and competition from abroad.
As such, what we see in Wiedel’s photographs is the foreshadowing of total collapse. In fact, when the work was first exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery in 1979, the British Journal of Photography’s review of the exhibition noted that “a good deal [of the industries documented] are already obsolete as far as the world’s great markets are concerned”.
Needless to say, what is captured in these images are crafts and processes that are either long gone or greatly changed from what they once were. In some respects, the workers in the photographs are the last of their kind, soon to fall victim to Thatcherite economic policies and widespread technological progress. However, despite this looming adversity, Wiedel’s subjects can be seen carrying on as always, toiling away in their factories, chatting with their friends, and honing their skills as craftspeople.
“While it is a series documenting traditional industry, it is fundamentally about workers, and their relationships with each other. This is why most of the book you are holding consists of portraits,” writes author Josh Allen in the book’s foreword.
“Many of these are of individuals working, or in several cases clearly relaxed while taking an official or unofficial break. Others capture little groups of workers toiling collectively and helping each other out, sometimes posed, sometimes more candidly captured, engaged in the small social rituals common to any workplace.”
Distant as this world may seem to a contemporary audience, what makes this book such a timeless piece of documentary work is the fact that so many of the goods made in these factories are still around today.
As Allen notes, “Almost every day you, as viewer of this work, might live in or pass through a building partially made from Bilston steel; go from time-to-time to secure something or somewhere with a sturdy length of Cradley chain; lovingly tend a classic car with parts stamped out in the shadow of the M6; or handle an old piece of crockery, china or jewellery which was turned by hands that Wiedel captured.”
Vulcan’s Forge by Janine Wiedel is published by Bluecoat Press; bluecoatpress.co.uk
