Longtime Hiawatha resident Deb Christian started her first full day as the new utility clerk for the City of Hiawatha on Dec. 3.
Christian’s official start day was on Dec. 1, which is the same day she retired from photography and operating Deb’s Images.
By day, Sandra Herber is a librarian at Humber College in Toronto. But on her time off, she’s an intrepid photographer of Canada’s far-flung landscapes. Her fascination with the art form began at age 12, when her mother passed down her grandfather’s old manual Pentax Spotmatic. “I was so obsessed with it,” Herber says. “I begged my parents to let me set up a darkroom in our basement.” As an adult, she took her camera on various trips through Malaysia, eastern Myanmar and New Guinea, but it was only in 2002, when she enrolled in her first photography workshop, that she began to take her hobby more seriously.
In 2013, Herber flew to Saskatoon to snap some photos of the Prairies’ historic grain elevators, which piqued her interest for their ability to meld form and function. The vast landscape—giant flat fields, endless stretches of sky and isolated old buildings—enchanted her. “Everything about the Prairies is a challenge,” Herber says. Scattered remote communities face unreliable cell service. In the summer, the punishing heat can crest to 35° C or more, while winter temperatures sometimes plummet to minus-40. “It is not a land for the faint of heart,” she says.
READ: This mid-century photographer captured the Inuit’s disappearing way of life
Soon Herber was going back twice a year. In 2015, she made her first winter excursion, which became a lesson in emergency preparedness. She had to plot out and download online maps for her entire route in case she lost cell service. Before she left, she also double-checked her food and fuel supplies, since there would be nowhere to stop along the way. Despite these challenges, that winter in the Prairies brought her obsession with the region into focus. “The grain elevators and any other buildings just stand out so beautifully,” she says.
In the 1930s, these small wooden elevators dotted seemingly every town and village in the Prairies, but the ensuing decades of agricultural industrialization rendered them obsolete; they were steadily replaced with larger concrete structures. Herber is drawn to the old buildings for their visual appeal, of course, but also for their importance to the Prairies’ past. (She is a librarian, after all.) On her trips, she visits other historically significant structures, like a two-classroom schoolhouse in southwestern Manitoba and a 20th-century church built by Ukrainian immigrants who moved to the region in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was one of the first things they constructed so they could have a place to gather. “Many of their descendants have moved to the cities, and that whole culture, that whole way of life, has disappeared,” Herber says. “But these buildings hang on as a memorial.”
Herber tries to scout and map out most of her locations in advance, but trees like this one (captured in 2022 in Saskatchewan) are a stroke of luck. It caught her interest while she was driving, so she quickly pulled over and got to work. “Every other tree in the neighbourhood had lost its autumn foliage,” she says. “But somehow that little tree had hung on to its beautiful golden and rust-coloured leaves.”
This photo shows what was then Canada’s oldest Prairie grain elevator, built in 1897 and once operated by Lake of the Woods Milling Company. When Herber visited it in Elva, Manitoba, in 2022, it was in the process of being dismantled so its wood could be refinished and reclaimed for other uses. Just over a month after her visit, a random spark burned the 124-year-old structure to the ground.
Only a handful of people live in the hamlet of Herronton, Alberta. Herber estimates that its population likely never exceeded 50 or 60, yet in the early 1930s, there were an impressive five grain elevators in the area. The blue-green building, shot in 2018, is the official colour of the Alberta Wheat Pool. Founded in 1923, it was one of the first wheat farmer co-ops on the Prairies and later became part of Viterra, currently the nation’s largest grain handler.
In 2023, Herber spent over an hour driving next to this Saskatchewan field, trying to find the perfect shot of hay bales. The result shows her ability to see beauty in what locals might consider run-of-the-mill. “I’m not saying that those people don’t appreciate the beauty of the Prairies—of course they do,” she says. “But maybe an outsider’s view shows you that something ordinary can be really beautiful.”
For a decade, Herber has been building her scouting map, where she pins locations that she wants to visit and colour-codes ones she wants to return to (or not). She had already photographed this Manitoba grain elevator in the summer, but she came back in 2022 to see it surrounded by snow. This photo was captured after a white-knuckle drive on the Trans-Canada Highway, plagued by four-foot-high snow drifts and plenty of ice.
Grain elevators were painted different colours depending on who owned them. Herber believes that this one, located in Saskatchewan, was once owned by Searle—hence the large, faded “S” at the top. When she took this photo in 2023, she incorporated the power lines; many photographers omit them, but Herber considers them an inevitable and important part of the Prairie landscape.
During Herber’s travels, she sourced a lot of locations from organizations like the Manitoba Historical Society. But in 2022, she came across this barn in southwestern Manitoba while browsing geotagged images online. She usually selects historical subjects for her photographs, but she found the contrast of the red walls against the stark white snow too striking to resist.
This Ukrainian church, not far from Saskatoon, was built in the early 1920s. It replaced the congregation’s original building, which went up in 1905—the same year Saskatchewan became a province. Last year, Herber drove to the church, where she learned that the congregation still exists, although it’s now based in the village of Alvena. “They protect the church,” Herber says. “They come out; they maintain it.”
In 2022, when Herber pulled up to this school in southwestern Manitoba, she was immediately attracted to its vibrant yellow colour. It’s a two-classroom schoolhouse—a departure from the usual single-room ones found in the area at that time—and Herber suspects the community must have taken great pride in it. Although the Coultervale School District dates back to 1887, the one that Herber photographed was constructed in 1914.
A gift of art is a great way to celebrate the holidays that continues to bring beauty and enjoyment throughout the years. Original works of art are unique, ‘one of a kind’ gifts that continue to bring pleasure to the recipient long after the holiday has ended.
The Gallery 14 Fine Art Photography Gallery in Hopewell New Jersey continues its season of exhibits with a special, “Members Holiday Exhibit and Boutique” from December 9 to December 17, 2023. The opening on Saturday, December 9 will be at noon. There will also be an artist meet and greet on Sunday, December 10 from 1pm to 3pm.
The exhibit will include fine art photographs both on the walls and in the artist’s bins along with many smaller gift items including calendars, note cards, purses, scarves, and jewelry accessories that can make perfect gifts and stocking stuffers. There will also be items for sale from the “Watercolor Women of Gallery 14.’
The exhibit will feature works by all of the member artists: John Clarke, Pennington, NJ; Larry Parsons, Princeton, NJ; Charles Miller, Ringoes, NJ; Philip “Dutch” Bagley, Elkins Park, PA; Martin Schwartz, East Windsor, NJ; Joel Blum, East Windsor, NJ; John Strintzinger, Elkins Park, PA; Mary Leck, Kendall Park, NJ; Barbara Warren, Yardley, PA; David Ackerman, Hopewell, NJ, Bennett Povlow, Elkins Park, PA.
Gallery 14 is a Co-Op gallery of like-minded artists that want to promote photography as a fine art medium. Each artist has their own style and approach to working photographically, everything from traditional images to highly manipulated or abstract works. This exhibit will include the full range of photographic possibilities. “We all are very excited to be sharing our work with in-person viewers within the comfort of our gallery, after a year of only showing works virtually.” Says Gallery member Charles Miller. In addition to the exhibit, artists will also have portfolios of work available for viewing.
Gallery 14 will be offering an ongoing series of exhibits throughout the year featuring individual members as well as guest artists. For more information on Gallery 14 and its exhibits visit www: gallery14.org.
Gallery 14 is located at 14 Mercer Street in Hopewell, NJ and is open on Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 to 5:00. Additionally, Appointments can also be made by email to: [email protected] to view the show at other times.
More galleries, restaurants and stores can be found on: www.downtownhopewell.com.
Caption: Artwork by Scott R Hoerl
December 6, 2023
Five months after Salman Rushdie suffered a near-fatal stabbing during an event at the Chautauqua Institution, in western New York, in August, 2022, he sat for a photo portrait by Richard Burbridge. In the resulting picture, which accompanied David Remnick’s intimate, forensic Profile of the author in this magazine, Rushdie—scars visible, one lens of his glasses blacked out to conceal his damaged right eye—gazes straight into the camera with a knowing glint in his good eye and a whisper of a smile. He looks not quite defiant but in waiting, as if to casually announce, Whatever else you’ve got for me, I’m ready—an apt embodiment of Remnick’s observation that, in the decades since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, of Iran, issued a fatwa against Rushdie, in 1989, “He refused to be terrorized.”
In early June, when smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed New York City in an otherworldly orange haze, Clark Hodgin set out to capture the eerie scene, for Carolyn Kormann’s first-person dispatch. Hodgin’s collection of uncannily beautiful images of iconic spots includes one in Central Park, where kids who have taken to the irresistible boulders appear frozen in amber, a cell phone in hand, backpacks and all. The image underlines the strangeness of that dystopian moment, which was surreal and oddly beautiful (as long as you didn’t inhale) yet deeply foreboding, especially for our youth, who are inheriting a world increasingly altered by climate change.
For a portrait of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, Mark Peterson was denied his request to ride along with the Mayor—so he improvised and caught Adams as he swapped out his suit jacket from a makeshift closet in an S.U.V. The picture, which shows Adams flashing a smile for a passerby, serves as a superb entrée to Ian Parker’s Profile, which begins, “Mayor Eric Adams’s exuberant self-regard stops just short of biceps-kissing.”
Among many other powerful documentary photographs this year are David Guttenfelder’s stark silhouette of soldiers on a wooded battlefield in Ukraine; Philip Montgomery’s instantly iconic image of United Auto Workers strikers in Toledo, Ohio; and Supranav Dash’s ingenious juxtaposition of a wizened goatherd and his flock ambling along a fence, behind which looms a vast sheet of solar panels in the Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park, in southern India. Carolyn Drake, who accompanied Paige Williams to Mississippi’s Neshoba County Fair, captured the legacy of a hundred and thirty-four years of history in her photograph of a sea of white faces in the fairground stands, ensconced in a joyful tradition that has roots in the state’s segregationist past.
Remarkable portraits this year include Stephen Ross Goldstein’s stunning picture of the comedian Sarah Silverman, for an interview with Carrie Battan, taken just weeks after Silverman’s stepmother and father had both died: a queen of comedy who has dropped her beloved mode of mirthful incredulity, staring directly into the camera, her visible grief contained. The visual artist Shikeith turns a portrait of the painter Kehinde Wiley into something of a rapturous artwork in itself, depicting Wiley as the loving creator of both a cacophony of lush color on his palette and, in counterpoint, the delicate, precise brushstrokes of a painting in progress. Elizabeth Renstrom pinpoints Kate Berlant’s inner Kate, the alter ego that the comedian both explores and sends up in her hilarious performances. Rahim Fortune gives Samuel R. Delaney, the polymathic sci-fi author and chronicler of gay life, an aptly blurry-edged frame.
Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari created a cheeky portfolio to accompany Rachel Syme’s piece on the American designer Thom Browne. To evoke the ethos of Browne’s working environment—where all employees wear a requisite shrunken gray suit, known as “uniform”—the artists conducted a shoot in Browne’s New York offices, with Browne’s real employees receiving instruction from a model in a square top hat and fur: high fashion one step ahead and leading the way for the suits.
We are proud to announce the results of the third-annual PetaPixel Awards where we give honors to a small list of the best new photography products released in the last year as voted by the PetaPixel staff.
Started in 2021, the PetaPixel Awards are designed to be exclusive. Unlike other awards that create a laundry list of categories that give every company a chance to be a winner, and we only pick seven products: best in camera, prime lens, zoom lens, smartphone, computer, software, and photography accessory. We are also continuing a final category that we started last year called “Photography Trend of the Year.”
Methodology: Because PetaPixel’s staff is entirely composed of current and former photographers, all were asked to vote for first, second, and third place across all categories. First-place votes were worth five points, second worth three, and third worth one. In all cases, those who deal directly with sales and marketing were excluded from voting to retain objectivity. No company is even allowed to submit nominations for consideration in the PetaPixel Awards, as all conversation is conducted internally.
How does the phrase go? “Keep it simple, stupid”? That’s really the crux of what makes the Maven Magnetic filters so good. They don’t over-complicate the concept of streamlining the use of filters and they just work. It also helps that the glass they use is top-tier. Color-coded to make it easy to nab the filter you need at a glance and integrating very, very strong magnets to keep them affixed to the front of your lenses, these have become a mainstay with our YouTube team who regularly has to shoot in environments with rapidly changing light.
Originally a Kickstarter from late 2022 and only available widely in 2023, these are the best filters we’ve used in years. Simple and effective, they just plain work.
For the first time in PetaPixel Awards history, a smartphone app has claimed top honors in our Software of the Year category. Blackmagic is deserving, as its iOS capture app has not only become the industry standard for shooting high-end video on a smartphone, but it’s doing so for absolutely nothing — it’s free.
The Blackmagic Camera App turns the iPhone into what feels like a dedicated, standalone video camera, runs smoothly, and supports the latest advancements of the iPhone 15 Pro Max. As Filmic Pro has fallen, Blackmagic has risen, and it is so ubiquitous among mobile filmmakers that even Apple uses it.
The rise of Blackmagic’s Camera app was fast, and for very good reason.
Apple had a busy year in computing and while the M2 Ultra-equipped Mac Studio is impressive, what really blew us away was the performance of the newly-released MacBook Pro with M3 Max. This laptop has made it very hard to recommend any other laptop computer because of the unique combination of battery life, low noise, heat management, and pure computing power — power that doesn’t care if it’s attached to a wall or running on battery. With the addition of better gaming capabilities, the MacBook Pro is really leaping beyond the competition.
Oh, and in a majority of our benchmarking scores, this computer — a laptop, mind you — outperformed the Mac Studio with M1 Ultra.
“The M3 Max is remarkably impressive and in almost every metric we at PetaPixel test, it outperforms the performance of the M1 Ultra inside of the Mac Studio desktop machine. We were all so taken with the M1 Ultra when it first came out but the ensuing chips have not had that same impact since, well, they didn’t improve on that greatness all that much. But put in context, we really do have to give more than a cursory glance to what Apple has accomplished in the past few years in order to really appreciate it, because it is so very impressive,” I wrote in my review.
“I am in awe that Apple has already surpassed the performance of its M1 Ultra in a laptop less than two years after it hit the market. That’s absurd.”
Apple has once again nabbed our top honors in the smartphone category. The iPhone 15 Pro Max improves on the previous year’s model on the inside and out, and while there is some debate as to how it performs head-to-head as a photo-taking device against other smartphones like the Google Pixel 8 Pro and OnePlus Open, the vastly superior video capabilities of the handheld make it difficult to choose anything else when looking at the device as a whole.
“It’s easy to write off the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max as being marginal improvements over the iPhone 14 Pro that came before. Similar cameras, similar screens, and similar batteries are to be found. A few tweaks to the photo-taking experience and a new button don’t seem like huge additions, but they are thoughtful changes,” Chris Niccolls explains.
“What I think we should focus on is the changes to the shooting experience brought about by the A17 processor. Everything about the Main camera image quality has been improved and any of the features you would use like Portrait mode or Night mode are also better, regardless of what camera you use. Everything feels faster, sharper, and cleaner.”
Apple has closed the gap on image quality against its contemporaries and continues to push past them when it comes to video capture thanks to the addition of ProRes Log, more framerate and resolution options, and the ability to shoot directly to an attached SSD. From image quality to workflow, everything about the iPhone 15 Pro Max is better and, therefore, worthy of praise.
For the second year in a row, Tamron has claimed top honors in the zoom lens category, cementing its place as the premiere manufacturer of high-end zoom optics. While 2023 brought us several outstanding options including the Nikon 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR, the Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 GM II, the Sony 70-200mm f/4 OSS II, and the Sony 20-70mm f/4 (which came in close second to Tamron), the excellent performance mixed with the approachable pricing of the 70-180mm f/2.8 won out.
As explained by Chris Niccolls, this second-generation version of the 70-180mm f/2.8 improves upon the first in notable ways that make it worthy of praise.
“The bokeh is much more natural and pleasing to the eye, and sharpness has been refined over an already very sharp lens to begin with. Although the Tamron 70-180mm f/2.8 VXD VC G2 is slightly heavier and larger it is still a very easy-to-carry lens by f/2.8 telephoto standards. Tamron has managed to make a great lens even better and this adds even more value to an already affordable optic.”
We all hope to see this lens come to other mounts beyond Sony E in 2024 — all photographers deserve the option to use it.
With a knockout combination of excellent optical performance and top-tier build quality, it’s hard not to love the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 DG DN Art. It is, absolutely, a specialized lens but it won over the PetaPixel team due mainly to the fact it can perform extremely well wide open. Optically, you can’t argue with what this lens can produce. It is an extremely impressive lens, especially given the combination of its ultra-wide field of view and its wide-open f1/.4 aperture. Usually, that combination of features leads to some level of compromise, but that didn’t happen with the Sigma 14mm f/1.4 Art and for that, this lens deserves praise.
“Excellent optical performance coupled with professional build quality; what’s not to love? The Sigma 14mm continues the tradition of Art series lenses, delivering the goods at a decent price. Despite the larger physical size of the lens, the trade-offs are worth it,” Chris Niccolls wrote in his review.
This was a close vote. The Sigma 14mm f/1.4 Art won its honor by just one point over the second-place selection, the Nikon 135mm f/1.8 S Plena.
For the second year in a row, Nikon has captured the top honor of camera of the year, this time with the Z8. Last year, Nikon nabbed the honor with the Z9 and while many might argue that the Z8 is just a repackaged, smaller version of the Z9, what it offers for the price went unmatched by anyone else in 2023.
It is the best camera for serious photographers and represents Nikon’s huge turnaround from just a few years ago. It’s highly capable for both photo and video use making it more compelling for more users than even the Z9, even if it drops a few features to reach a more compact size and lower asking price.
As Chris Niccolls said in his review: “The Z9 is still going to be the king of the hill in the Nikon lineup. Everything that I love about the Z8 is really a testament to just how good the Z9 was at its release. But the Z8 is better suited for so many people and at a more tolerable price too… I’m happy to say that the Nikon Z8 is as good as we had initially hoped. If you are a Nikon DSLR shooter that is ready to upgrade, or a professional photographer looking for a new compact kit, order one now.”
This vote was not close. The Z8 received all but one first-place vote and won in an absolute landslide with over 30 points more than the closest competitor.
Over the course of 2023, mirrorless lens design has become remarkably sophisticated. We’ve seen a 300mm f/2.8 lens from Sony become more compact and lighter than any before it while at the same time seen a 24-105mm f/2.8 from Canon. What is clear is that moving to mirrorless and the promises photographers were told would be the positive result of that is coming to fruition.
Mirrorless lenses are not only smaller and more impressive, they focus faster and weigh less. It’s an amazing time to be a photographer and the technology advancements we’re seeing can’t be understated. All lens makers deserve a round of applause for what they are achieving.
Image credits: Elements of header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
Physical education teacher and girls’ head track coach Joshua Washington has a secret hidden interest: photography. Inspired by the art of taking photos, he wrote and published two books exploring photography from different lenses. Both books are focused on the distribution of his Polaroid images around Georgia.
“Essentially, what I do is I pick a theme; I take pictures of it, and then I print these small Polaroid-sized images, and I leave them in different places around the city, in random places,” Washington said. “Let’s say you’re on the MARTA bus headed home; you’re on the train; you’re anywhere, grocery shopping, you’ll reach down in the milk carton, and you’ll pull out and see a random Polaroid, and it’ll be a picture of mine.”
Washington said he got the idea of leaving art around Georgia while he was visiting a cousin in Montreal.
“When I first got to Montreal, I was walking around the neighborhood with my cousin, he was showing me around where he lived,” Washington said. “And when you’re a photographer, you look at everything from a photographer’s eye. So, you see different things that other people don’t see.”
In Montreal, Washington said he noticed graffiti in an alleyway that caught his eye.
“I was like, ‘Wow, that’s pretty cool,’ “Washington said. “I asked my cousin how long [the street artwork] had been there. And he didn’t even know it was there.”
Seeing the alleyway set Washington’s creative journey in motion, pushing him to the idea of writing a book.
“I started to think how cool would it be to find artwork but, this time, in my home city where I’m from,” Washington said. “If you were walking around just in your day-to-day, and you just found some artwork. I thought that would be pretty cool, and that’s how that idea was born, in terms of leaving art around.”
Alex Wallace, a member of the Student Support Team at Midtown, said he was surprised when he found out Washington had written a book.
“I noticed that he had a book after I followed him on Facebook,” Wallace said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God,’ I didn’t know he had a book.”
After researching the book, Wallace purchased it.
“I was intrigued by [the book], and I found it interesting,” Wallace said. “I did not know he had all those gifts and talents and interests.”
Washington said including drone photography in his second book, “Above All Else,” showed a different perspective on photography to appeal to all kinds of people.
“There are a lot of photography coffee table books, but they’re all from the same perspective,” Washington said. “And so, regardless of what the theme is, if the perspective and the angle is the same, it doesn’t make a big difference. So, I wanted to make sure that when I’m talking to people, and they’re asking me what makes yours different, I can give them a legitimate answer in terms of what makes them different.”
Washington said showing various kinds of photography in books is rare; so in his book, he wanted to create a fresh twist by using drones to take pictures over a regular camera.
“The locations themselves I took them [the photos] at are pretty cool, but from the perspective of a thousand feet in the air, it creates a whole new sort of angle or purview from it,” Washington said. “Something that looks regular or something you might have seen before when you see it from that high up, it creates another viewpoint you’re not going to see in many books, especially not coffee table books.”
Junior Julia Williams, who had Washington for health, said she liked the concept of drone photography. She may like this concept but nowhere has she said has she actually seen it in his book or that she’s actually seen the book at all.
“I think drones can definitely give photography more dimension to the book, instead of just text,” Williams said. “Photography is usually from a person’s viewpoint, so seeing photos from the air is definitely very cool.”
Wallace said he appreciated Washington’s humility regarding his book’s success.
“It was interesting that a teacher has a book,” Wallace said. “I was really impressed that he didn’t brag about it. He didn’t make a big deal out of it. You know my personality. I would be like, ‘Oh my God, I got a book.’ But he wasn’t like that. He’s very humble; so I was excited.”
Sure Shot: A celebration of Hip-Hop’s Golden Jubilee in photographs – NBC 6 South Florida
Renowned photographer Andy Gotts has announced a new photography exhibition, called Nemesis, which features portraits of villains from the Hollywood blockbuster James Bond franchise.
This new exhibition will showcase these 007 villains like never before in Al-Mare at The Carlton Tower Jumeirah in Knightsbridge, London, and is running up until 8th January 2024.
On the announcement of this new exhibition, Andy Gotts commented:
“My project Nemesis came about during lockdown. Like every other creative/artistic person, for a couple of years, there were no commissions. As I was in my third decade of being a celebrity photographer I thought I would use this period of time to look through my back catalogue and put together a retrospective book of my career.
“It was during this process I realised I had shot an awful lot of actors who have played a ‘Bond baddie’. I worked out there were only six actors still alive that had been a 007 foe that I had not shot in my 30-year career so I made it my mission to shoot them so I had the full set.”
Gotts has been a fan of the Bond franchise ever since he was a young boy, having picked up a love of 007 when went to see the first movie on his own, which just happened to be a James Bond classic: For Your Eyes Only.
Gotts continues: “My parents had gone shopping in Norwich and set me up with a bucket of popcorn, a large bottle of pop and placed me in the centre row of the ABC cinema. It was probably seeing the gadgets and equipment that started my love for cameras…though mine do not fire bullets!”
“A key one to get was Rami Malek – the most recent villain having played Lyutsifer Safin in No Time to Die – and one of the most poignant shots was Michael Londsdale, the space-loving foe Hugo Drax in Moonraker. He passed away aged 89 about a week later during lockdown, so this is the very last portrait of this giant of a man.”
Gotts describes the journey to capture Lonsdale in more detail: “I shot Michael at his home in Paris. I have always been a fan of Michael and loved his moves going way back to Day Of The Jackal. This shoot was put together specifically for this project and at a time when COVID was spreading throughout the world, and as luck would have it the shoot was planned for the very last day travel was allowed and the airports closed for lockdown.
“I knew Lonsdale was a tall man, 6ft1 (1.85m) and quite ‘stocky’. So I was a little taken aback when I arrived at his residence to see this fragile figure in a wheelchair. The sands of time are not kind to anyone, and it had escaped me that a man 89 years old, who had been retired for a number of years, would look quite as delicate. After a delightful afternoon chatting and swapping stories, I headed home through a deserted airport.
Though the story of Lonsdale’s last portrait is a poignant one, at least Gotts was able to meet him. Some villains did miss the collection: “My favourite Bond nemesis is, without doubt, Auric Goldfinger. His humour and ‘wheeler-dealer’ persona were very infectious, he was like the German version of Del-Boy Trotter. Cheating at golf and cards just to make a little pocket money, It is such a shame the wonderful actor Gert Fröbe, who played Goldfinger, had passed away before I started on photographic career but it will take a lot to beat this wonderful character.”
Other images manage a different emotion. Gotts described shooting Andrew Scott in Flemings Hotel, Mayfair: “Andrew was a dream to shoot and to be around. He is one of those people who does not put up barriers or just want their ‘good side’ to be seen in the shots. After we did the entire shoot of iconic and quirky snaps we sat around chatting over a drink. I was speaking about venerability in art and rawness in the natural face. The subject turned to crying/men crying in images. So I suggested, as we were still all setup, that we should try to capture a shot with these raw and vulnerable qualities.
I asked him what headspace he would need to be able to create a tear. I joked and asked him if I should pinch him on the arm… which caused a chuckle, not the desired effect or the best idea! Andrew sat in front of me looking down at his feet. He said ‘Are you ready?’
He lifted up his head and at that moment one tear rolled down his cheek and I captured this salty trickle at the perfect moment. I only took this one shot of the ‘tear’ image as I actually felt I was intruding in a moment he was having, even though this moment was specifically created to take a shot. It felt too personal as he was obviously thinking of something painful to cause the tear.”
If you’d like to shoot great portraits, read our guide to the best lens for portrait photography.
Photographer duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin have revealed the inspiration behind Taylor Swift’s TIME Person of the Year Cover Image.
Swift was named TIME’s 2023 Person of the Year and Dutch fashion photographers Inez and Vinoodh — known for their work for luxury brands and magazines — were chosen to shoot the pop star for three different magazine covers.
The photographer pair, who shot Swift once before for a 2019 Vogue shoot, captured the singer in the midst of her record-breaking Eras tour and called her “the ideal subject.”
The defining shot of Inez’s and Vinoodh’s three different cover images for TIME magazine features Taylor posing confidently in a black bodysuit and red lipstick, with her cat Benjamin Button draped over her shoulders.
Le livre du jour: Cat People de Bill Hayward (1978), Double Day & Company. http://t.co/9TOyKCJbvV pic.twitter.com/uXBHdKXQEN
— Jalouse Magazine (@JalouseMag) February 17, 2014
Inez and Vinoodh tell TIME that the captivating snap was inspired by photographer Bill Hayward’s 1970s book Cat People — which features artful shots of entertainers, writers, and other professionals with their pets.
The pictures [in Cat People] are brilliant. It shows very well the relationship that people have with their cats,” Inez tells TIME.
“But at the same time, [shows] the way cats are kind of on their own—they’re a special breed of animal. So I got a vintage copy of it for Taylor because I know she’s a major cat lover, and her cats travel with her.
“And I said, ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to do a picture like the one that’s on the cover of that book where the cat’s on the shoulder of the girl.’
“It speaks to a sense of carrying everything on your shoulders but being defiant while doing so. And she agreed and that’s how that picture happened.”
The photographers say that the image of Taylor with the cat on her shoulders perfectly embodies her cultural power in 2023.
“It really has everything: Her glamor, her power, her sense of empathy of carrying the whole world on her shoulders,” Inez says.
“Because if you do feel like that — she’s so involved in everything, whether it’s getting young people to vote, etc. — she’s always pushing for things that are outside of the music realm.
“I felt that there is something there in her body position that’s very powerful and strong. Her expression and the way she looks has this old Hollywood glamor but underneath, there’s so much power in her stance.
“The way she has Benjamin on her shoulders is kind of like, ‘Yeah, I’m carrying you all’.”
Swift is the first figure from the arts to be named TIME Person of the Year for her success as an entertainer.
The singer was picked from a group of nine finalists that included Barbie, King Charles III, and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, among others.
Image credits: All photos courtesy of TIME.
With Christmas fast approaching it’s getting to that time of year when people start asking what you want – a question I always find impossible to answer. But even when I’m void of ideas there is always something I beg people not to get me; camera or photography-related presents! Without meaning to sound ungrateful, the last thing I want is a mug shaped like a lens or a rubbish air blower.
As a photographer, the items on my wishlist are usually pretty expensive. That means that unless someone is feeling insanely generous it’s unlikely I’m going to get the photography lighting kit of my dreams (two Profoto B10 X Plus studio heads with all the light shaping accessories) or the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 GM lens I have wanted forever.
Just to clarify, I would never ask for these items either, I have never been one for excessive spending at Christmas, so to expect it back would be absurd, but in the past I have received DSLR holsters I’ll never use, or packs of scratchy lens clothes that remain in a junk drawer.
That’s not to say there aren’t some really good, affordable presents out there for photographers. I just think the person you’re buying for needs to specify that they want them, or you need to know the recipient so well you could handpick a coffee table book or print they will love. I have previously received an Instax Mini, a 35mm film camera, a Nikon 50mm f/1.8 lens and a prism but all of these have been on a wishlist so the person buying them knew they’d be put to good use.
I love Christmas. I love the decorations, the excuse to eat and drink excessively, the coming together of friends and family and of course watching Christmas films on repeat, but what I cannot stand is present giving for giving sake. I have a soft spot for handmade or unique presents – perhaps a photo book, personalized photo calendar or a digital photo frame already loaded with photos.
But I cannot stress enough how much I do not want to be on the receiving end of photography-themed Christmas tat. Christmas isn’t about how much stuff you get or how much someone spends but if you are going to be giving presents this year, try and make sure they will not go to waste!
If you’re still looking for gifts and you do know who you’re buying for, then we have an extensive guide to the best books on photography.
