Shaquille o’neal orlando magic hi-res stock photography and images – Alamy
Photography
Photography center presents century-old album by French military officer
Taipei, Feb. 10 (CNA) The National Center of Photography and Images (NCPI) is presenting an online gallery featuring photographs taken by a French military officer during his visit to Taiwan over a century ago when the island was known as Formosa and under Japanese rule.
The gallery titled “Memories from Formosa and the Pescadores Islands” showcases photographs taken by Claude de Rarécourt de la Vallée, who was a lieutenant colonel and the count of Pimodan.
Born in 1859, the French nobleman was a military attaché with the French embassy in Tokyo during the 19th century and was invited by Japanese general Kawakami Soroku to tour Taiwan and the outlying Penghu islands in 1896, one year after they were ceded to the Empire of Japan by the Qing Dynasty.
After arriving at the port of Keelung, he visited several other areas, including Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Changhua, Yunlin, Chiayi, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Magong City in Penghu.
Accompanied by his Japanese hosts during the trip, he was moved by the scenes of ordinary people going about their daily lives, such as farmers toiling in the fields with their buffalos, traditional buildings, and the temple culture.
The count of Pimodan later wrote a memoir about his trip and produced an album that included 54 photos made with the collotype technique, which he then gifted to those who hosted him, according to the NCPI.
Collotype is a photographic printing process invented in 1855 to print images in a wide variety of tones without the need for halftone screens. The majority of collotypes were produced between the 1870s and 1920s.
After Taiwan, the national center said he also visited other regions in Southeast Asia to observe how Japan, France, and Britain ruled their colonies.
The online gallery can be viewed at: https://bit.ly/3TSwX3U
Shootz! Wrapping Up A Week Celebrating Photography
If you missed Thursday’s inaugural Pau Hana with Photojournalists, you’ll soon be able to find editor-at-large Naka Nathaniel’s social media interviews of Civil Beat’s visual journalists. The next photography-specific event will likely take place in the fall.
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Quick Thinking And A Drone Leads To Stuck Photographer’s Rescue
For most, a drone peering through your kitchen window would be an immediate sign of a stalker, or at least something quite creepy. The Taylor family, of Fairview, Utah, certainly thought something similar when that occurred in their own kitchen window, but it turned out to be much more.
According to Fox 13, drone photographer Brian Telford’s truck was stuck in the snow nearby. He had been trying to get out of his truck for around an hour, but he’s wheelchair bound and wasn’t able to get out. So he strapped a note to his drone and flew it to the Taylor’s, hoping to grab someone’s attention.
“I just figured, ‘Hey, this is worth a shot, I think this is a good idea.’ Smarter than it would have been for me to try to get out.” – Brian Telford
Abe Taylor, upon spotting the drone, grabbed a scooter to knock the drone out of the air, striking it down to get what they figured was some sort of stalker away from their window. But, when they brought it inside, they noticed the note.
“We opened up, and it explained to us, ‘Can you please help? I’m in my truck stuck in the snow, I’m wheelchair-bound and cannot back out.’” – Abe Taylor
The note had worked, and the Taylor’s departed to search for Telford. Upon finding him, they used their side-by-side and some chains to free his truck from the snow.
“Brian turned out to be a great guy, of course, there’s a gentleman dedicated to his craft. To be able to work while it’s not easy for him to get on site to do what he does, so to be able to help him out was very gratifying.” – Abe Taylor
Related: 140 Search And Rescue Members Training Just A Mile From Snowmobile Accident
Image Credit: Fox 13 via YouTube
Spring Photo Mini Sessions with Rachel Lynn Photography at PAWS & More
Join PAWS & More Animal Shelter on March 3rd for their Spring Photo Mini Sessions with Rachel Lynn Photography. There are limited spots available, and the shelter will contact you to collect your session fee of $100, and you will receive a link to your digital photos within three weeks. No refunds or rain checks will be issued. In the event that you cannot come to your session, the full amount will be used as a donation. You can find a link to reserve your spot with this news story at KCIIradio.com.
From Self-Taught to Wedding Photography Sensation: Director Ken’s …
In the heart of Seke, Chitungwiza, a young man named Kenny Thearny Makiseni, known as ‘Director Ken’, defies convention. A self-taught photographer, he has carved out a niche for himself in the competitive world of wedding photography without the benefit of formal education.
A Passion Ignited
Director Ken’s love affair with photography began at the tender age of 10 when he started filming flowers in his home garden. His parents, like many, were skeptical about the viability of a career in the arts. Yet, Ken remained undeterred. After completing his O Levels in 2023, he resumed his pursuit of photography with renewed vigor.
The Journey to Success
Director Ken’s journey has been marked by perseverance and resilience. He honed his craft shooting weddings at Greenfield and Waterlily Garden, developing a unique style characterized by the innovative use of light and color.
His circle of friends in the industry, including director Spice and the Royal Squad Dance Group, provided invaluable support and opportunities to learn. Ken also expanded his repertoire, working as a director, writer, and editor for skits and comedies.
Challenges and Aspirations
Despite his success, Director Ken faces financial challenges. Often, he has to hire expensive equipment to support his work. However, these obstacles have not dampened his spirit or ambition. He dreams of establishing a prominent photography company and is actively seeking sponsorship to acquire the necessary equipment.
Director Ken’s story is one of passion, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of dreams. It serves as a testament to the power of self-belief and the potential that lies within each of us, waiting to be unleashed.
As he continues to capture the essence of love and commitment on film, Director Ken invites us all to see the world through his lens – a world filled with light, color, and the promise of endless possibilities.
Today, Kenny Thearny Makiseni, better known as Director Ken, stands tall as a beacon of hope and inspiration for aspiring photographers around the globe. His journey, marked by determination and a unique artistic vision, reminds us that success is not defined by formal education alone but by the courage to follow one’s passion against all odds.
Strategic Lighting and Posing for Dynamic Portrait Photography |
Lighting is crucial to portrait photography, and learning to use artificial lights will free you from the constraints of working with just the sun. This helpful video tutorial will show you how to do that.
Coming to you from Eli Infante, this engaging video sheds light on the nuanced process of capturing portraits that tell a story. Infante’s methodical approach to planning and executing a photo shoot during the golden hour illuminates the critical balance between ambient light and artificial lighting to achieve the desired mood and atmosphere in portraits. His detailed explanation of adjusting camera settings to complement the natural light, while also making the most of a strobe for fill light, offers invaluable lessons on managing light to sculpt and define the subject.
Moreover, Infante delves into the importance of composition and posing, highlighting how these elements contribute to the overall impact of a portrait. By analyzing different poses and compositions against the backdrop of a stunning sunset, he demonstrates how photographers can guide their subjects to interact with the environment in a way that brings out their personality and enhances the narrative of the shot. The tutorial also covers practical tips for ensuring the stability of lighting equipment in challenging outdoor conditions.
In addition to capturing techniques, Infante provides a thorough walkthrough of the post-processing workflow, from raw adjustments to detailed retouching. The before-and-after comparisons not only reveal the transformative power of post-processing but also encourage viewers to experiment with their creative vision in the editing phase. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Infante.
Perspective | The things we do can come at a heavy cost, even photography
Photographer Louie Palu’s images hark back to an era when point of view and personal vision were more common.
These days, much of the imagery you see published is homogeneous, meant to be distributed to the widest possible audience. A sense of authorship has waned. Yet Palu has found a way to persist.
Palu’s work on how photography is implicated in environmental decay through mining is a good example. This work would not have been possible without guts and determination. It is not a story that would be splashed across the pages or pixels of most general-interest publications.
I’ll let Palu take it from here, in his own words, on what his project “Cage Call” is all about.
“The screen you are looking at can act as an illusion. In photography it’s where we see and share all of our images. However, if we look beyond our images and selfies formed by pixels on digital devices, there are materials with an alternative narrative that in the history of photography begins with the mining of silver. It’s come time we acknowledge where photography really begins, which is in the mine.
“This past fall, an exhibition of my project ‘Cage Call’ at the Image Centre in Toronto curated by Gaelle Morel opened and created a dialogue. The goal of the exhibition was to connect people to the rarely discussed materiality of photography and Canada’s role in it.
“The title of the work ‘Cage Call’ combines two elements of working underground. The first, ‘cage,’ refers to the elevator which takes you into the depths of the mine. And ‘call.’ The two combined means the call to go underground.
“Canada is one of the world’s mining capitals. Long before many of us used the word ‘globalization,’ Canadian-based and Toronto Stock Exchange-listed mining companies and banks were moving mining stocks and resource-based industry financing worldwide, and still do.
“Meanwhile, northern towns like Cobalt, Ontario, are now the graveyards of photography. The silver is no longer in the ground having been mined out, sold and taken away.
“That silver is fixed into prints in museums around the world. Cobalt, once the world’s richest and biggest producers of silver, and also supplier to Kodak, now exists as a mined-out warning beacon to what the cruel resource extraction cycle looks like.
“Mining from Cobalt spread to grow international mining powerhouses in towns like Sudbury, Timmins, Kirkland Lake and Elliot Lake, where they mined gold, copper, nickel, zinc, uranium, rare-earth metals, platinum and more.
“When I worked on ‘Cage Call’ from 1991 to 2003, I found the mining process was complex, hard to explain and inaccessible. Before I made these photographs, this hard-to-explain and inaccessible process seemed like an illusion that was propagated by a system of capitalism that extracts the silver from the mine and presents it to us in a nice cardboard box containing either film or a shiny new digital device.
“‘Cage Call’ was an attempt to use photography to disrupt the very illusion that prevents us from seeing something — photography is the material and labor from the mine, not only the image.
“The book ‘Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production’ (Spector, 2022) is an excellent starting point to expand your thinking about all of this. It includes an essay by Dr. Siobhan Angus, who addresses the point I am making, that photography cannot exist without mining, and therefore we should acknowledge our role in its effects on communities and the environment.
“For me there are many steps in the photographic process before you put that roll of film in the camera or send those gigs of images to the cloud, which is powered by coal and nuclear energy mined from the earth. Dr. Angus understands this narrative all too well having grown up in Cobalt.
“Angus’s upcoming book ‘Camera Geologica’ (Duke, 2024) expands this critical discussion at a time when we all must acknowledge the effects of industrialization on our planet, including photography.
“Before Dr. Angus wrote her essay I worked with her father, Charlie Angus, two decades ago when he was a journalist. We spent years documenting the mines and communities in northern Canada in an unprecedented scope and manner. If you look at this work and want to further disrupt romantic narratives around photography, Dr. Angus’s book is a good starting point.
“‘Cage Call’ at its core is a challenge and discussion about us seeing the workers and communities that make things for us that come at a cost, we owe it to them and ourselves to acknowledge it.”
Artists invited to submit pieces for winter photography show
Submissions can focus on rural, urban or natural landscapes, or various outdoor subjects of interest, such as animals or birds, or even people skiing for example.
“[It’s to highlight] different ways we enjoy winter,” Garven said. “Someone wrote in asking if they could send a photo of their pet in the snow. That’s sort of the thing we’re looking at. It could be a cityscape in winter, a photograph of the downtown park, or some of our buildings draped in snow.”
Garven noted this is the gallery’s first winter photography show so the offerings should be interesting.
“In the past, we’ve had exhibitions by Battlefords photo clubs, Roger Giesbrecht, Stuart Kasdorf, and some other photographers, but we haven’t had too many [shows] lately,” she said.
Artists or photographers will need to arrange to have their work delivered to the Chapel Gallery by 4 p.m. on Feb. 11 to take part.
Garven noted the gallery has already been contacted by several people who plan to submit some of their pieces for the exhibit.
“We’re hoping for a really good turnout,” she added. “It’s always a wonderful surprise to see what shows up. It’s a mystery, then it’s just delightful when we see the work arrive at the door.”
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angela.brown@pattisonmedia.com
On X: @battlefordsNOW
Polar Bear Sleeping on an Iceberg Wins Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award
The Natural History Museum has announced the winner of its annual People’s Choice Award for Wildlife Photography. The competition saw over 50,000 entries submitted, which was narrowed down to 25 shortlisted for the top honors.
British photographer Nima Sarikhani made headlines for what’s being hailed as the marquee entry, as she captured a lonely polar bear perched asleep against an iceberg. The image was taken while on a three-day tour of Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, where Sarikhani noted that the photo “stirred strong emotions in many of those who have seen it,” adding that, “Whilst climate change is the biggest challenge we face, I hope that this photograph also inspires hope; there is still time to fix the mess we have caused.”
Entitled Ice Bed, the image was described as “poignant” by the Natural History Museum’s director, Douglas Gurr, adding that it “allows us to see the beauty and fragility of our planet.” Other notable submissions include a turtle smiling as a dragonfly rests on its snout; a flock of birds creating a silhouette of a massive bird as they hover above the streets of Rome and two lionesses caressing its cub in the Kenyan plains.
