Photography

André Bogaert – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Apr 22, 2023 By Admin in Photography

London Moments

OK it’s my home town so I admit bias but as a people photographer I find it hard to find a city better for subjects, locations and situations to capture the moment.

I never get tired of walking the streets of this city watching, trying to anticipate a special moment or facial expression and capturing it, a moment which will probably never happen just the same way ever again.

I see the stories I capture in black and white. Nowadays I photograph almost exclusively with a digital camera so yes the images are in colour both in front of me as I take them and also when I first look at them as RAW files on my computer back home but in my head I see my work as very contrasty black and white moments frozen in time and that’s how I like to present my work.

All these photos were taken in Central London.

André Bogaert

Contact: https://www.bogaert.uk & [email protected]

Cook: Exclusive: Apple CEO Tim Cook on the impact of the iPhone camera and how it has “democratised” photography

Apr 22, 2023 By Admin in Photography

It has been 16 years since the iPhone was first launched. The iPhone changed the mobile phone industry forever but it wasn’t till 2010 that its effect really started to shake things in other industries. 2010 was the year when the iPhone 4 was launched and it was the same year an app called Instagram came out and started catching the fancy on social media. It was also reported that in 2010, an estimated 121 million digital cameras were sold across the world. That was perhaps the all-time recent high for digital cameras as the iPhone over the years has become the go to device for casual, amateur, and even professional photographers. 13 years have ensued and the iPhone has evolved dramatically and perhaps has one of the most consistent and versatile camera a smartphone user can buy.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is aware of the power of the iPhone camera and says that for a lot of people “the best camera is right in their pocket.”
In an exclusive chat with The Times of India, Apple CEO spoke about the impact of the iPhone camera has had on people’s lives. “Apple has always been about democratising everything,” Cook told The Times of India on a recent visit to New Delhi. Case in point:
We meet at an upscale hotel in the capital where Karishma — a rangoli artist from Chandigarh — is here to show Cook her designs. Cook admires the rangoli and kola designs made of flower petsls, rice and coloured sand. He would later tweet and called the “amazing designs vibrant and beautiful.”

He shared the images of these designs, which were clicked by two photographers — Joshua Kartik and Apeksha Maker. Cook takes out the time to chat with them. Kartik says that in his brief interaction with Cook he spoke about the impact of iPhone on videography. “What the iPhone and Apple have done is dramatically reduce the processing time. We have gone from spending hours after shooting something on processing the images or footage to instantly upload and share,” says the Mumbai-based photographer, whose #shotoniPhone images have been shared by Cook earlier as well.
Maker also echoes the sentiment. “The most important thing the iPhone has done is give people the confidence to shoot pro-level images and footage with relative ease.” She told Cook that how her love for photography kickstarted because of a product that isn’t renowned for the camera. It was an iPod touch which was gifted to her and the first photo she clicked was from the music player. Since then, there has been no looking back for the photographer, whose images Cook shared with the world from his Twitter account earlier this year on Holi as well.

Giving people the power

In the last couple of years, Apple has really upped the ante when it comes to video shooting capabilities of the iPhone — an aspect Cook spoke about as well. “It’s not just photography but videography and movie making are also now done on the iPhone,” he says.
The iPhone’s Cinematic Mode has caught the attention of movie makers as well. Earlier this year, renowned director Vishal Bhardwaj — in association with Apple — released a short 30-minute film titled “Fursat”, which was shot entirely on the iPhone. “It is incredible that now, with the cinematic mode, full-length movies are being shot on the iPhone as well,” says the Apple CEO.
What Cook calls “democratising” is eminently visible on social media and how people have started looking at photography and videography. Millions of images are clicked on the iPhone daily and people have the freedom to just take a device out of their pocket and get down to work. The iPhone has over the years given users the power to shoot what they like without carrying additional gear. Not just that but what Apple puts inside the iPhone — a processor capable of computing tasks at extremely fast speeds — has made a tremendous impact in making lives easier of those who edit, process their images and footage. “At the end of the day, it is about democratising,” says the Apple CEO.

Barbara Sabaté Montoriol – The Eye of Photography Magazine

Apr 22, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Fragments of them / images, dreamy women and silent animal presences…

A Collection of images, which associate without hierarchy paintings and photographs of artists of all periods, is the source of my work of collages. This digital collection is as much a palette of shapes and colored shades as a support allowing thought to bounce back through associations of ideas and images.
I am part of a current of iconographic artists whose colors are the images of other artists.
The representation of women is my subject. I seek to take a different look at the iconography of women as subject and object of art and to offer another reading of inherited models.
I question the meeting point between different realities, in particular the animal reality, because the presence of an animal is a graceful emergence of difference, of someone who is obviously other (1).
My ambition is, that by leaving the original painting to enter another aesthetic field, “my” women are seen differently, that they acquire a life of their own or perhaps find it again (in the sense of finding their freedom), that ‘they go on a journey and free the viewer’s imagination as one opens a window on another world and they become the heroines of a story to be written.

(1)Jean-Christophe Bailly, Le Versant animal, Bayard

Barbara Sabaté Montoriol
Artist-author, lives and works in Paris and Île-aux-Moines.

https://fragmentsdesens.com/

Earth Day and the ‘new Big 5’: 11 moving photos of vanishing wildlife

Apr 22, 2023 By Admin in Photography

A violent practice rooted in colonialism is being subverted, with the release of a new book that flips the idea of the “Big 5”. Marking Earth Day, 11 striking images reveal the animals that are disappearing from our planet.

“From the towering giraffe to the bright orange and blue rock agama to the deep-sea anglerfish that produces its own light, we live alongside creatures that are a match for anything science fiction writers have imagined to populate alien worlds,” writes Graeme Green in his book The New Big 5, published this month. In April 2020, the wildlife photographer launched a project to flip the idea of the “Big 5” of trophy hunting on its head, inviting people around the world to vote online for their five favourite animals to photograph and see in photos; the New Big 5 of wildlife photography, as decided by the public vote, are the elephant, polar bear, lion, gorilla, and tiger.

Spotted torrent frog, Santa Barbara Park, Ecuador, Lucas Bustamante; International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) status: Critically Endangered (Credit: Lucas Bustamante)

The original term referred to five African animals that were considered the most desirable trophies, and the most dangerous animals to hunt: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion and leopard. But, as Green writes, “it was interesting to realise how many people had heard and used the original Big 5 term without knowing what it meant. Many had assumed it stood for Africa’s biggest animals, forgetting animals such as giraffes and hippos, both of which are larger than leopards or lions. Others thought it meant the most dangerous or lethal, forgetting animals like hippos (which kill more than double the number of people each year than are killed by lions), crocodiles, snakes, scorpions, or mosquitos.”

More like this:
– The photographers changing the way we see animals
– Can photography save the Amazon?
– Striking images that show how climate change is affecting oceans

Golden snub-nosed monkey, Foping National Nature Reserve, China by Qiang Zhang; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Qiang Zhang)

“The Big 5 isn’t the only term connected to Africa’s violent past,” continues Green. “Safari is a Swahili word, meaning ‘journey’, from the Arabic safar. Used by Arab traders in Africa, the word safari was adopted in the 1800s by white hunters, mainly from Britain and other parts of Europe, to describe their hunting expeditions, or hunting safaris, where they’d shoot animals, such as lions and elephants, for trophies. That creates a strange state of affairs today, with many wildlife lovers paying to take safaris (a word rooted in the hunting that wiped out millions of wild animals across Africa) to see the Big 5 (the list of animals most prized by trophy hunters).”

Chimpanzee, Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania by Thomas D Mangelsen; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Thomas D Mangelsen)

The new book brings together 146 of the world’s greatest wildlife photographers, conservationists, and advocates – including Dr Jane Goodall, the British primatologist who has spent more than 60 years studying chimpanzees. Her afterword is called Hope in Dark Times.

“People often ask me if I really do have hope for the future,” she writes. “I believe we have a window of time during which we can start to heal some of the harm we have inflicted and slow down the heating of the planet. But only if we get together and take action now.”

African lion, Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, South Africa by Marcus Westberg; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Marcus Westberg)

Photos have the power to create connections between humans and animals they might never have encountered otherwise, writes Dr Goodall. “I’ve never seen a polar bear or a tiger in the wild, but I’ve seen so many images, such as a mother relaxing as her cubs play around her, or two young play-wrestling males standing upright, or a tiger moving silently through the forest. This is why photographs are so important. For many people, it’s only through such images that they can develop a deep respect and love for animals in the wild, as they haven’t had the opportunity to spend time with them.”

Polar bear, Wapusk National Park, Manitoba, Canada by Hao Jiang; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Hao Jiang)

Polar bear

“A polar bear’s life is tied to the sea ice,” writes Krista Wright, the executive director of Polar Bear International, in The New Big 5. “Sea ice is to the ocean what soil is to a forest. It forms the base of the Arctic food chain. Tiny channels in the ice filter light, creating an environment where algae grows, which feeds what some of our friends in the science community like to call the ‘little squiggly creatures’. These in turn feed the fish, which feed the blubber-rich seals and whales, which feed the polar bears… Trying to picture an Arctic that is ice-free is like trying to picture a rain forest without trees or an ocean without water.”

African Elephant, Kruger National Park, South Africa by Berndt Weissenbacher; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Berndt Weissenbacher)

Elephant

“With around 40,000 muscles (more than there are in the human body), their trunks are powerful enough to tear branches from trees, but dexterous enough to pick a seed up from the ground… The elephants we see today are the result of minute changes that occurred over the equivalent of 750,000 human lifetimes,” writes Green. The evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins told him: “Elephants are the product of about 60 million years of evolution. It’s incredible. Their trunk is an astonishingly clever, sensitive instrument. Early elephants would’ve been smaller, with no trunk or a small trunk, like a tapir. The trunk would’ve lengthened gradually over time. The tusks are also remarkable. Tusks started out as incisor teeth and grew out gradually.”

African elephant, Lower Zambezi National Park, Zambia, by Marsel van Oosten; IUCN status, Endangered (Credit: Marsel van Oosten)

The number of African elephants once reached upward of 30 million. Today, only around 400,000 remain. According to Professor Dawkins: “Every time a species goes extinct, especially something like an elephant, you’re wiping out tens of millions of years of evolutionary research and development in the blink of an eye.”

African lions, Naboisho Conservancy, Kenya by Graeme Green; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Graeme Green)

Lion

“There are fewer than 20,000 lions remaining in the wild,” writes Dr Moreangels Mbizah, the founder and executive director of Wildlife Conservation Action, in The New Big 5. “In Africa, they currently inhabit less than 8% of their former range. Although lions also previously existed in many other countries, outside of Africa, lions can only be found today in the wild in one location: Gir National Park in India.”

Threats include shrinking habitats, a decline in prey because of illegal bushmeat poaching and an increase in human-wildlife conflict – but there are solutions, writes Dr Mbizah: “The communities that live with the lions are the ones best positioned to help lions the most.” Local people should be at the forefront of tackling the problem, she argues. “In the past, conservation has just been about protecting wildlife species and habitats, and very little concern was given to the people that live around these areas. Conservation should be about both nature and people and should aim to reduce the costs local communities face from living with and protecting wildlife, as well as increasing the benefits. If local communities don’t have a direct connection or benefit from protecting lions, they have no reason to want to do so.”

Mountain Gorilla, Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda by Mark Edward Harris; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Mark Edward Harris)

Gorilla

“Gorillas have long fascinated us because we see ourselves in them,” writes Dr Tara Stoinski, president, CEO, and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, in The New Big 5. “When you spend time with them, you can’t help but see so much of our behaviour reflected back. Like us, they have friends and enemies. They form relationships that last for decades and risk their lives defending their families… When a silverback called Titus died in 2009 in Rwanda’s Volcanoes National Park, his family stayed beside his body, grieving, trying to rouse him for three full days. I mourned along with them, as I do every time we lose a gorilla.”

Despite their at-risk status, there is some hope – Dr Stoinski highlights how, due to the work of Dian Fossey and other campaigners, Rwanda’s mountain gorilla population has increased from a low of 250 in the 1980s to an estimated 600 individuals today.

Bengal tiger, Bandhavgarh National Park, India by Thomas Vijayan; IUCN status: Endangered (Credit: Thomas Vijayan)

Tiger

“I’ve had countless fascinating interactions with tigers in Indian jungles over the last 30 years,” writes Dr Anish Andheria, president and CEO of the Wildlife Conservation Trust, in The New Big 5. “Each incident is vividly etched in my mind.” Dr Andheria points to the success of the Indian conservation programme Project Tiger, which in the early 1970s “achieved the impossible: aligning the government and local communities in a battle to bring a large carnivore back from the brink”. Between 2006 and 2018, the tiger population in India doubled from just over 1,400 to nearly 3,000.

Sadly, the story in other nations with tiger populations hasn’t been as positive – of the 13 countries where tigers were once present, three now have none, while two others have few left. In the remaining countries, tigers often number fewer than 1000.

Florida Manatees, Florida, United States by Gabby Salazar; IUCN status: Vulnerable (Credit: Gabby Salazar)

Despite the urgency of the crisis, there are reasons for hope. Green recalls how in recent decades, two communities whose stories he covered as a journalist – in the Peruvian Amazon and in Chile’s Aysén region – successfully fought off plans by energy companies to construct dams that would have flooded hundreds of square miles of land, displacing people and wildlife.

As Green writes in The New Big 5, “Commercial whaling wiped out 2 million whales in the 19th and 20th Centuries, but, since whaling was banned in 1986, humpback whale populations have recovered in the South Atlantic ocean from just 440 in the 1950s to 25,000 today. West African giraffes plummeted to near-extinction, just 49 left, before Niger’s government and communities rallied. They’re now standing tall at around 600. Siberian tigers, Jamaican rock iguanas, Checkered skipper butterflies, Nassau groupers, sea otters, and Hula painted frogs are among the many other species saved from extinction by people taking action.”

The photos in the book help to reinforce the connection between humans and all wildlife. “Every creature deserves to exist,” writes Green. “From bees to blue whales, from tigers to termites, all wildlife is essential to the balance of nature, to healthy ecosystems, and to the future of life on our planet.”

The New Big 5: A Global Photography Project For Endangered Wildlife by Graeme Green is out now (Earth Aware Editions), with a foreword by Paula Kahumbu and an afterword by Jane Goodall.

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Reclaiming Georgia’s Stone Mountain Through Haunting Landscape Images

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

It was a windy day when photographer Sheila Pree Bright brought her father’s Bible to the site of her latest project. Just east of Atlanta, and towering beside the city named for it, the lone, massive chunk of granite that is Georgia’s Stone Mountain looms large in the history of the American South, the Confederacy, and the legacy of racism. Bright went to the mountain to photograph it, and to tell its story in a new way. “I get emotional about it,” she says, remembering the moment, years later, when she feels her late father endorsed her effort.

According to Georgia law, Stone Mountain in its entirety is a designated memorial to the Confederacy. The north face of the mountain is home to the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, depicting Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson on horseback. The idea for the carving came from Helen Plane, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, in 1914. After watching the infamous film The Birth of a Nation, Plane also expressed admiration for the Ku Klux Klan, going to great lengths to include them in the memorial. At the time, the mountain was owned by the Venable Brothers, who granted the Klan access to the mountain for their rituals. On November 25, 1915, Alabama preacher William J. Simmons held a ceremony at Stone Mountain announcing the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan.

*The Carving*, from the series *Invisible Empire*, 2019 Sheila Pree Bright/Copyright of the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art

The mountain’s history was raw for Bright when she began work on two series, “Behold the Land” and “Invisible Empire.” The photographs are meditations on the Georgia landscape, specifically Stone Mountain and its haunting history. Selections from both series are featured in an exhibition called The Rebirth of Us at Atlanta’s Jackson Fine Art Gallery.

It’s Bright’s latest chapter in a career that began with the desire to capture the lives and experiences of communities that have been historically overlooked. Now, from taking portraits of ’90s rappers in Houston, one of the birthplaces of Southern rap, to documenting the 2014 and 2015 Black Lives Matter protests, Bright uses photography to challenge dominant narratives and to put contemporary stories into social and historical context.

Atlas Obscura spoke to Bright about the exhibit, the choice of doing landscapes, finding inspiration in the essays of W.E.B. Du Bois, and what she hopes viewers will take away from her work.

You’ve mentioned you grew up in Germany, at the military base where your father was stationed, and weren’t really exposed to Black culture. What draws you to the subjects that you photograph now?

The people, especially African-American people. When I was photographing the portraits of the men who wanted to be rappers, they came out with guns and all for me to photograph and they said, “you’re like a white girl in a black body.” So for me, photographing African-American people was the experience of searching for home.

I look at what is going on in pop culture, too, and how it affects marginalized communities. For example, when you look at the #1960Now series [Bright’s 2018 portraits that connect the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter Movements], I was very curious about the young people back during the Civil Rights Movement and I started thinking about it generationally. With all the stuff that was going on with Black bodies, I had to go to the ground and photograph. That’s what started that series.

*Behold the Land, Untitled 3*, 2021 Sheila Pree Bright/Copyright of the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art

How did your Stone Mountain project come about?

For seven years, I was photographing the project #1960Now, lecturing, and exhibiting all at the same time. I didn’t realize until after 2017 that I was actually traumatized and needed self-care from being on the ground, what I’ve seen, what I’ve experienced.

The photo editor of the Washington Post called and wanted to commission photographers to do a photo essay about racism. I said, “oh my God.” I was so exhausted but I knew I needed to talk about it in a different way. I live 10 minutes away from Stone Mountain and as an artist, I wanted to show different ways of seeing, to unpack instead of just photographing people.

We learn of each other through the media and it’s always negative, especially when it comes to us [Black people]. So I wanted to challenge myself to do landscape. I started reading a lot about the land by reading essays by W.E.B. Du Bois; one of them was called “Invisible Empire.” It’s about how Georgia is so beautiful but yet … there’s something strange and disturbing.

The Washington Post photo editor told me that I had to shoot people but I said no, I don’t. I wanted to make these landscape photographs beautiful because it [Stone Mountain] is beautiful but it has all this symbolism with it.

I think the idea of doing landscapes came before the essays, but what the essays informed me about is how to do them. In “Behold the Land,” Du Bois was talking to a group of Black and white young people about how to move forward. If you think about it, it’s all about the land. That’s what really inspired me even more to really challenge myself with the land.

*Behold the Land, Untitled 5*, 2021 Sheila Pree Bright/Copyright of the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art

Why did you choose to do black-and-white photos for the “Invisible Empire” and “Behold the Land” series?

I made them in black and white because if you think about the Confederacy and The Lost Cause, nothing has really changed. We have progressed, yes, but yet, we’re still in the same place. Why can’t we change?

We always talk about change. We talk about diversity. And when the George Floyd protests happened, everybody from PR was doing all this, “I’m with Black Lives Matter,” things but to me, that was just a front, to be honest.

The images in black and white are very haunting, beautiful, and magical. This was actually liberating for me to be on that mountain and to deal with all of that symbolism. How do we, as a society, move forward with all of this? Because if we do not unpack any of this, it’s constantly going to continue. As long as the silence is there, we’re not going to be able to move forward. This work, for me, is presenting a liberation and figuring out a way for us to move forward.

*I Can’t Breathe*, from the series *Invisible Empire*, 2021 Sheila Pree Bright/Copyright of the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art

When you went to Stone Mountain to photograph the landscape, what was going through your mind?

My parents are from the Jim Crow era. They are both passed now. As a child, my parents did not talk to us about the Civil Rights Movement and when I started coming to the South, when I started working on #1960Now, I said to my mom, “why didn’t you ever talk to us about the Civil Rights Movement?” She said that she didn’t want us to hate white folks. When my parents passed, there was a lot of stuff that was going through my mind because we’re all born into a movement, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

I can’t talk to them right now but when I got to that mountain, I was feeling the ancestors, I was feeling my parents and asking them questions about their experiences and being so young and how they dealt with that trauma.

I did a lot of research on the Lost Cause and the Confederacy. I didn’t realize that white women were responsible for funding all of these monuments. They also had rituals and ceremonies in schools about the Lost Cause. Young people at the ages of four and five years old were writing essays about the institution of American slavery. One of the books that I was reading talked about how one boy won an award for talking about how the slaves were better off being slaves. This pulled me away.

The second coming of the Ku Klux Klan was created on that mountain and they read Romans 12. So I brought my father’s Bible up there and I laid it down. It was a windy day. It was in Romans but not in that chapter and I swear to you, when I started to photograph the page it was on, the page changed to Romans 12. I get emotional about it because I felt that my father was speaking to me with that.

*Bible*, from the series *Invisible Empire*, 2019 Sheila Pree Bright/Copyright of the artist and courtesy of Jackson Fine Art

How can we reconcile how we feel seeing Stone Mountain’s beauty while also being aware of its dark history? How are your photographs part of that reconciliation?

Even though we are still dealing with the trauma, we have to think about how we move in the future and how we heal, because I don’t believe racism is going anywhere. Another part of the reason I chose landscape is because the land is so important. Across the world, if you think about it, a lot of the people that are hurting because of the land are people of color.

I think it’s about reclaiming the mountain. Indigenous people were living on that land first. There was also a town in Stone Mountain where Black people lived that nobody talks about [Shermantown, a late 19th-century African-American shantytown named after the Union General William T. Sherman]. For me, it’s about reclaiming through the violence and darkness that was there because if we don’t do that, we’re going to be constantly internalizing that.

What do you want viewers to take away from your work?

When I think about Atlanta, I think about how violent the Antebellum South was. I spoke to an elder named Lonnie King who started the Atlanta Student Movement [in 1960]. One thing that he really instilled in me was that you’re never going to get the masses of the people. He said that even though you would think there were a lot of people on the ground, there really weren’t. But those who were, who fought for human rights and civil rights, helped the culture move forward. So for me, if I can inspire one person to go talk to their children or grandchildren to talk about our history, the violence that many faced, I would have done my job.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

North Augusta student recognized nationally for sports photography

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Showcasing North Augusta at the national stage, North Augusta freshman Luke Lobato captured sports for the Yellow Jackets during a peak moment.

Lobato recently was awarded a new Sony A7c camera for winning the School Photographers of America contest for winter sports photography. Lobato’s winning photograph came from a wrestling match held at the school.

Inaugural 'Taste of North Augusta' restaurant week to happen in April

“We are seeing some incredible photographs this year. I am stunned at the level of quality and art these students are creating,” said David Crandall, executive director of SPOA. “Seeing students have a passion for photography in high school is incredible for our industry and many others. Having a partner like Sony reward these students with brand new Sony camera kits is amazing and shows their vested interest and investment into education and future professional photographers.”

Lobato first started photography in July 2021. He decided to enter the contest after seeing an ad on Instagram.

He was surprised to win and is looking forward to trying the new equipment.

North Augusta Freshman Luke Lobato took a wrestling photo that earned top honors among student photographers this winter. (Photo provided by Luke Lobato).

Photo provided by Luke Lobato.

“It was cool,” Lobato said. “I didn’t really know what to think about it at the time. I still don’t really know what to think about it. I still am going to keep on doing photography no matter if I win or lose.”

Special Olympics held at Belvedere Elementary, celebrates young students

Students from Naperville, Illinois; Forest, Virginia; and Rochester, Minnesota were also awarded for their photo skills across several divisions.

To learn more about the photography contest, visit the SPOA website.

Are the Latest Camera Technologies Bad for Photography?

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

There have been some magnificent improvements in the abilities of cameras over the last few years, not least in lenses and camera focusing systems. The technical advancements have almost taken camera skills out of our hands. But is this good or bad for photography?

Looking Back to the Photographic Past

Going back in time, the camera obscura used a tiny aperture but no lens to create an image that would project onto a wall or screen. It’s theorized that early cave dwellers noticed this effect from tiny holes in the animal skin curtains hanging across the cave mouth. The projected scene on the wall inspired their wall paintings.

You can replicate this effect with your camera. Drill a hole in a body cap, tape some aluminum foil over the hole inside the cap, and prick a tiny hole in the center of the foil. Fit it to your camera’s lens mount and a do-it-yourself pinhole camera. Everything is in focus. Well, nearly in focus.

Early film cameras had a single element, a piece of convex glass. Rays of light would hit that lens, which would make the light converge to create a sharp image on the film. There’s a great interactive demonstration of how that works on the Physics Classroom website.

Similarly, the earliest film processing required precise chemistry techniques, not least because the chemicals could poison you.

Things progressed and lenses with multiple elements evolved with ever-increasingly flawlessness and definition. Modern camera lenses are complex devices with an array of elements. The highest-quality lenses need precision to make and that takes time, which is why they are very expensive.

Advancements in Autofocus

With the improvements in lens quality, the accuracy and versatility of autofocus leaped forward, too.

Back in 1978, Polaroid released the SX-70 SONAR OneStep camera. It used ultrasound to detect the subject distance and focused using that. Three years later, Pentax released the first autofocus SLR with the ME F. Other manufacturers soon followed suit.

When you looked through the viewfinder of many film SLR cameras, you would see a horizontal split in the middle of the screen. At first, what you saw above and below the split would be misaligned. To focus on the subject, you would turn the lens’ focussing ring until what you saw on either side of the split was in phase. When digital photography became mainstream, DSLRs had two focusing systems, one of which used a similar method. The sensor’s focus points would detect if the subject were out of phase, hence phase detection.

However, when you used your live view screen on the back of the camera, the focusing system was different. It employed contrast detection. Pick up your camera and put it out of focus. You will see that the scene loses contrast; shadows and highlights become a muddy midtone. As you focus the lens, the scene gains contrast and the different tones become more defined. The disadvantage of contrast detect is that it struggles in low-contrast situations. It is also slower to find focus than phase-detect because it doesn’t know whether you are focusing too close or too far away. Consequently, it must hunt to find the correct focus. However, like everything in photography, there are advantages too. Contrast detection’s advantage is that it is more accurate.

The Problem That Autofocus Brought Us

At that time, DSLR manufacturers decided for us that the viewfinder became less important because the autofocus was so good. Those eyepieces became small, making it difficult to discern detail; only top-of-the-range models had large, bright viewfinders. I am sure you can see the flaw in their decision here. It was a real disappointment as it was harder to compose the image correctly, plus the viewfinders rarely covered 100% of the image that you wanted to shoot.

Canon introduced their dual pixel focusing system for live-view phase-detect autofocus back in 2013 on the EOS 70D, where phase detection was possible on around 70% of the shooting area. They claimed it made their focusing system faster than any other full frame camera.

Meanwhile, other brands such as Sony, Nikon, Fujifilm, and OM use a hybrid system that makes the best of both phase and contrast detection. Lumix’s latest camera, the DC-S5M2, employs the same system, although most of their previous mirrorless cameras only used contrast detection. Focusing is faster and more accurate with mirrorless cameras than it was with DSLRs, now achieved in a few hundredths of a second.

These days, good cameras can focus across the entire scene. Furthermore, that split screen analogy is no longer entirely true as there is now a horizontal line sensor and a vertical line sensor at the same AF point, in other words, cross-type focus points. This means that the focus point can detect lines in both orientations. Previously, a horizontal sensor would have struggled to know if a horizontal line was out of phase. This is, of course, a hugely simplified explanation of how focusing works, and this video gives a superb explanation.

As autofocus progressed, and lens technology got faster to lock onto the subject, so too did the ability of the camera to detect eyes and faces. Tracking subjects across the frame also became more accurate too, especially with the introduction of AI technology. Now, even the previously appallingly bad hybrid mode (AI Focus/ AF-A) that switches between single and continuous autofocus, is starting to work reasonably well in some cameras. Canon has a system on their EOS R3 where the photographer’s eye movement focuses the camera according to where the photographer’s eye is looking.

The Return of Manual Focus

At first, I was a bit of a Luddite back then. I was used to shooting with manual-focus cameras that autofocus seemed to be cheating; I wanted to have full control over my photography. Additionally, with early digital cameras, the autofocus was sluggish.

Similarly, although my SLR and later DSLR cameras had an aperture priority exposure mode, I stayed with manual exposure. That was until I learned the advantage of letting the camera do the heavy lifting. Running indoors and out when shooting events, required little messing around with settings, so I was less likely to miss the action. Also, those silly tiny viewfinders of DSLRs pushed me towards using autofocus, unless using the live view screen when my camera was on a tripod.

Things are swinging back the other way to make manual focusing easier than it was. DSLR users who attend my workshops are often taken aback by the size, quality, and brightness of my mirrorless camera’s electronic viewfinder. Furthermore, lenses are produced that have focus clutch rings, making it easier to switch between manual and autofocus than fiddling through menus or fumbling for switches on the side of the lens with a gloved hand.

For example, the following images show the OM SYSTEM M.Zuiko Digital ED 90mm f/3.5 Macro IS PRO Lens with the focus clutch in its two positions.

Also, the focus assist function in the camera outlines the in-focus edges with colored lines. Therefore, I no longer need to calculate the hyperfocal distance or depth of field for certain lens settings. I just rotate the focus ring until the yellow outline covers the areas that I want to be sharp. Manual focus is once again encouraged.

Using Other Technologies That Make Photography Easier

I was showing a veteran friend the AI-based features of my camera and how it can focus on birds and track them. He called it military precision. The camera can also pre-empt action and record frames before I fully depress the shutter button. A photographer no longer needs to anticipate when a bird is going to take to the wing before fully pressing the shutter button. The camera is buffering images and will save multiple frames as soon as the shutter is released. Consequently, the hit-and-miss technique resulting from the photographer’s reaction time is redundant.

At night or when using ND filters, I can sit and watch long exposures develop on the live view screen in real-time, and I can see the histogram move to the right; I don’t have to calculate the exposure.

Similarly, there is the ability to light paint and see the new light appear on the Live View screen while the unlit areas remain the same brightness.

Most of the time I don’t even have to carry an ND filter as, up to ND64 is available within the camera.

These kinds of features are brilliant. I am all in favor of things that make it easier for me to get photos. Advanced but easy-to-use camera facilities allow photographers to capture images that would have previously taken considerable learning and practice.

Exposure is correctly achieved by a host of facilities that help override the shortcomings of TTL metering. Front-to-back sharpness no longer requires mathematics. In fact, with software now available, it doesn’t even matter if your picture isn’t entirely sharp.

What’s More Important, the Photograph or the Photography?

I have heard it questioned whether the photograph is more or less important than the act of shooting it. This has usually been expressed by middle-aged men acting as gatekeepers who want to keep photography for those who take the time to learn the technicalities of it. Their predecessors probably decried the invention of the pocket calculator and insisted on carrying a slide rule instead.

Although being a late middle-aged man myself, I haven’t got a problem with this new technology. In fact, I celebrate it. Why should creating good photographs be limited to those with the mathematical skills and technical understanding to do all the things the camera can work out automatically? Is that not a kind of snobbery? This democratization of photography is great. Anyone can achieve more interesting and compelling results much more easily than ever before using these facilities. Moreover, these advanced features can be seen as a gateway to learning other techniques, just as scene modes are in cameras.

Many photographers started their photographic journey with entirely automated settings: auto exposure, auto ISO, autofocus and tracking, scene modes, and more recently AI assistance. These features helped them discover the joy of achieving an image they could hang on the wall. They were used as a stepping stone to learning how to take those photos. They would lead to them wanting to learn more and discover the joy of creating photos themselves, without relying on those tools that made photography easy.

Automation Doesn’t Stop You from Doing it Manually

Despite these advancements being available, those of us who enjoy doing everything manually can still do so and get the satisfaction of applying our learning and expertise. Moreover, if we want to, we can also choose to hand over the heavy lifting to these automated functions and get the shots we want to achieve, freeing up our minds to concentrate on the photograph’s story and composition and not the technical process.

What unique features does your camera have? Do you use them? Or do you like to shun automation in favor of doing everything manually? It will be great to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Peter Miller, photographer of ‘Vanishing Vermonters,’ dies at 89

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Waterbury photographer Peter Miller self-published his last book, “Vanishing Vermonters: Loss of a Rural Culture,” in 2017. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger

Photographer Peter Miller once traveled the world for periodicals‎ ranging from Smithsonian to Sports Illustrated. But the Waterbury resident, seeing professional cameras give way to personal cellphones, struggled to make ends meet this past decade upon turning 80.

“I was thinking of leaving Vermont to live in a less-expensive state, but many emailed me and said I couldn’t because I am … a Vermont treasure?” he wrote inquisitively in a 2016 commentary. “I thought about that, and in a way it is true. My calling is to document the culture of Vermont.”

And so the old-timer learned some new tricks. Logging onto the internet, the self-described “nonviolent anarchist” launched a crowdsourcing campaign that raised enough money to self-publish his sixth book, “Vanishing Vermonters: Loss of a Rural Culture.”

“My people, I call them, seem to have been priced out of our state,” he wrote in the foreword, “as taxes and the cost of energy escalated and real-estate prices soared.”

Miller’s latest title would be his last. A vanishing Vermonter himself, the 89-year-old black-and-white photographer died Monday at Morrisville’s Copley Hospital, his family confirmed without elaborating.

“His consistent approach to producing authentic depictions of the Vermont way of life is unparalleled,” former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy said of Miller in a 2013 congressional floor speech. “He gives a face, and a voice, to Vermonters.”

Born Jan. 6, 1934, in New York City, Miller moved to the Green Mountain State at age 13 before buying his first camera at age 16.

“I have no idea why,” he once told this reporter about the purchase.

Miller nonetheless focused his lens on retired Weston farmers Will and Rowena Austin, not realizing the resulting photo would grace the cover of his 1990 book “Vermont People” as well as a sign advertising his longtime Route 100 home and gallery in the Waterbury hamlet of Colbyville.

Moving on to the University of Toronto, Miller met Armenian Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, best known for his 1941 “Roaring Lion” portrait of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The Vermonter assisted Karsh on shoots with the likes of French philosopher Albert Camus and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso — “arrogant and wanted to control the sitting,” Miller said of the latter artist — to discover the master’s secret.

“Forget about the camera,” he learned. “Talk to the people.”

Miller did that as a U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer in Paris, then a Life magazine reporter in New York from 1959 until returning to the Green Mountains five years later to freelance for a variety of national publications.

Peter Miller is best known for his iconic image of the late Tunbridge farmer turned “Man with a Plan” film star Fred Tuttle holding a picture of his father holding a picture of his father. Photo by Peter Miller

Most longtime Vermonters recognize Miller for his iconic image of the late Tunbridge farmer turned “Man with a Plan” film star Fred Tuttle holding a picture of his father holding a picture of his father.

“I set up my tripod and … 120 years of Tuttles in the same photograph,” Miller said of the shot.

But when Miller approached more than a dozen publishers in hopes of releasing his first book in the 1980s, all dismissed his proposed collection of black-and-white “Vermont People” photos as a Works Progress Administration project a half-century too late.

“They said there wasn’t any color,” he recalled, “and it was too regional.”

Publishing the book himself in 1990, Miller sold out his first 3,000 copies in six weeks and an additional 12,000 since, spurring follow-up titles including “Vermont Farm Women” and “A Lifetime of Vermont People.”

Miller’s fortunes changed with the new millennium. Turning 80 in 2014, he pivoted from camerawork to commentaries as he turned his house into an Airbnb and tapped his local food shelf.

“It is tough all over for creative people,” he wrote in an essay for VTDigger. “New business models created by CEOs with the expectations that every intellectual property is as free as the internet has crippled the photography, illustration, writing and music creators.”

Miller would not go gentle into that good night. Self-publishing his 168-page “Vanishing Vermonters” book in 2017, he shared the stories of more than two dozen portrait subjects.

Take Clem Despault, a fellow octogenarian and used car salesman, salvage yard operator and stock-car racer just down the road.

“Them Motor Vehicle people got this new car-inspection system,” Despault is quoted as saying of a program that can mandate expensive repairs. “I got people who can’t afford to hardly live and they need a car just to drive a couple of miles to work or to buy food. This is a rural state, we’re poor and everyone’s got to drive, don’t they know that for God’s sake?”

Miller photographed both “people who are really upset and people who’ve had to reinvent themselves.” He was both, selling his work on a website from his 160-year-old farmhouse before moving to a senior apartment in Stowe last fall.

“They keep saying they’re going to raise taxes again because we need a doggie park, we need a hockey rink, we need, we need …” he lamented. “I have to stand up for my people — me included.”

Waterbury photographer Peter Miller marked his Route 100 home and gallery with a sign featuring his photo of the late Weston farmers Will and Rowena Austin. Photo by Kevin O’Connor/VTDigger

2 Anthologies on South Asian Photography and Cinema to Be Launched at Columbia University Symposium

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

Two new anthologies on South Asian photography and cinema will be launched next week at a symposium at Columbia University in New York City. The two books — “Bombay Talkies: An Unseen History of Indian Cinema” (Alkazi Collection of Photography and Mapin Publishing) and “Unframed: Discovering Image Practices in South Asia” (Alkazi Foundation for the Arts and HarperCollins Publishers India) — provoke a new look at questions of artistic practice and its relations to collaborative world-making, knowledge production and archival memory, according to a university description of the event.

“Bombay Talkies,” launched previously at the Jaipur Literature Festival in Delhi earlier this year, presents rare behind-the-scenes photographs from the personal archive of the cinematographer Josef Wirsching who moved from Munich to Bombay during the Nazi takeover of film studios in Germany. The book is rare because it gives access to the aesthetic decisions, creative communities, and cross-cultural exchanges that were vital to filmmaking in late colonial South Asia. Also, as is common with literature on Indian cinema, Wirsching is not an actor, filmmaker, or musician, but someone who dictates the overall look and visual style of the production.

Most of the photographs in the book were taken in the 1930s and ’40s when Wirsching was employed at the legendary film studio, Bombay Talkies Ltd. Shot across film sets and outdoor locations they convey a world of meaning that ran parallel to the world of the silver screen. As a specific genre, the “behind-the-scenes” photo expands the limits of the film frame by showing us that which lay just outside, adjacent to, and beyond the movie camera. Shot primarily on a Leica camera, and preserved by Wirsching’s grandsons, Georg and Josef (Jr.), these images not only unsettle the boundaries between film and photography, Indian and foreign, but also give rare access to the aesthetic decisions, creative communities, and cross-cultural exchanges that were vital to filmmaking in late colonial South Asia.

“Unframed,” which includes an array of essays and interviews, hopes to “give the extent to which images may be productively and ethically produced in an era of volatile ‘post-truth’ mass media/social media ethos, the university says.

Speakers at the event include Rahaab Allana, curator/publisher, Alkazi Foundation for the Arts, New Delhi; Iftikhar Dadi, John H. Burris Professor and chair of the Department of History of Art and Director of the South Asia Program at Cornell University; Noam M Elcott, Associate Professor for the history of modern art and Director of the Center for Comparative Media at Columbia University; Chitra Ganesh, a Brooklyn-based visual artist; Bakirathi Mani; professor of English and co-director of the Tri-College Asian American Studies Program at Swarthmore College; and Sudhir Mahadevan, associate professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and adjunct professor in the South Asia Center at the university’s Jackson School of International Studies.

The Winners of the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023

Apr 21, 2023 By Admin in Photography

The German Society for Nature Photography (GDT) has announced the winners of its annual member’s competition, the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023.

Each year, the GDT holds a competition for the Society’s members, in contrast to the GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest which is open to all European photographers. That said, the GDT is open to non-German photographers. In this year’s contest, 424 GDT members from 13 countries entered, with nearly 7,000 images submitted.

GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023 — Silke Hüttche

German photographer Silke Hüttche has been named “GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023” for her image, Scenes of a Marriage. The winning photo shows a pair of birds on a utility pole looking in opposite directions.

“I have this habit of constantly looking for birds wherever I am. So, every time I pass this electricity pole, I look up for there is always some kind of bird sitting there,” Hüttche says.

“As was the case on this somewhat dull day in September 2021 when I glanced up and spotted the kite sitting there on the one end and, shortly after, a second one arriving to settle on the opposite end. This seemed to get exciting — were the two a pair or rivals? Hoping for some action-filled photography, I took out my camera and waited. Initially, my wish was for interaction between them. But they just seemed to have nothing to say to each other and kept looking in opposite directions. In the end, I was fascinated by this scene of perfect symmetry, and luckily both birds remained still for long enough until I had the picture I wanted,” she continues.

Silke Hüttche, a 58-year-old wildlife and nature photographer, is only the second woman to be named the overall winner in the competition’s 51-year history. The GDT hopes that her victory, along with the growing numbers of woman participants, is a good sign that the historically male-dominated genre of nature photography is beginning to better reflect society at large.

Category Winners

The contest includes seven categories: Birds, Mammals, Other Animals, Plants and Fungi, Landscapes, Nature’s Studio, and Urban Nature. Hüttche’s overall winning image took first place in the Urban Nature category.

The winners and runners-up receive prizes sponsored by AC-Foto, the GDT’s long-time partner. For her overall victory, Hüttche received an OM System OM-D E-M1X camera and 45mm f/1.8 lens provided by OM Digital Solutions.

Prize of the Jury

Photographer Dominik Janoschka won the “Prize of the Jury” for his image, Beyond. The image is a double exposure captured in Saxon Switzerland National Park.

All Winning Images

In addition to the winning images featured in this article, the GDT selected the top 10 images for each category. These images can be viewed on the GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023 website.

Image credits: GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023

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You’ve mentioned you grew up in Germany, at the military base where your father was stationed, and weren’t really exposed to Black culture. What draws you to the subjects that you photograph now?

How did your Stone Mountain project come about?

Why did you choose to do black-and-white photos for the “Invisible Empire” and “Behold the Land” series?

When you went to Stone Mountain to photograph the landscape, what was going through your mind?

How can we reconcile how we feel seeing Stone Mountain’s beauty while also being aware of its dark history? How are your photographs part of that reconciliation?

What do you want viewers to take away from your work?

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Handpicked by our editor, as well as breaking news, business profiles, and government recaps from North Augusta.

Looking Back to the Photographic Past

Advancements in Autofocus

The Problem That Autofocus Brought Us

The Return of Manual Focus

Using Other Technologies That Make Photography Easier

What’s More Important, the Photograph or the Photography?

Automation Doesn’t Stop You from Doing it Manually

GDT Nature Photographer of the Year 2023 — Silke Hüttche

Category Winners

Prize of the Jury

All Winning Images