Archive for the ‘Exhibitions and Contests’ Category
Photography’s ‘Old Masters’ and ‘Beat Generation’ plus an Art Deco Kaleidoscope
English: Ansel Adams The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the National Park Service. (79-AAG-1) Français : Ansel Adams. Les Grands Tetons et la rivière Snake (1942). Parc National des Grands Tetons, Wyoming. Archives Nationales des USA, Archives du service des parcs nationaux. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Two photographs each by Laura Gilpin, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andre Kertesz, Man Ray, Brassai, and Richard Avedon, three by Edward Weston, four by Irving Penn and also from Alfred Stieglitz, five from Ruth Bernhard, and a whopping twelve and fourteen prints from Henri Cartier-Bresson and Ansel Adams respectively. That’s the creme de la creme in a gigantic 240 lot auction of photographs tomorrow, 6th April at Sotheby’s.
Let’s start off with a surprise. Fifty albumen postcard-size prints of the West from the 1880s by Carleton E. Watkins at merely $10,000-$15,000? This might be the bet of the evening for an investor cum art collector.
The first few lots are female figures by Ruth Bernhard. Bernhard’s powerful studies of the female form are such that they may bring to mind classical statues of Greek goddesses; witness Bride. The impression of statutary is accentuated by two devices: the clever lighting and the low angle Bernhard has shot from; her lens is at about the height of the model’s thigh.
The potent expressionistic qualities of black-and-white are brought home in an unusual low-key landscape in which the eye is led back from the near-black foreground via the lines of the roadway as it – the eye – is naturally drawn to the white structure in the background. A painterly masterpiece by Paul Strand.
A very different kind of landscape is Ansel Adams’s At Timberline. The bleak ‘music’ of this nature study comes about from ‘contrapuntal’ curves and jags – the curves of the limbs and more obvious jags of the twigs. Worth mentioning are the tones and the crop – see how the tip of the tree touches the top edge of the frame and how it ‘rises’ from the bottom edge.
The potency of forms and the drama of nature one usually expects in an Ansel Adams image are on showy display in Clearing Winter Storm. Smell the cool mist, smell the moist earth . . . . Equally potent and equally dramatic, albeit a human drama, is The Steerage. This arresting image of the flotsam and jetsam of humanity is a photogravure on vellum measuring 13 1/8 by 10 3/8 inches – and estimated at $10,000-$15,000. Is that an error? Or is Christmas (very) early?
‘Synecdoche’ is a word that describes a type of phrase; a particular kind of figure of speech. Lot 67 by Minor White is a photographic (and high-contrast and gorgeous) synecdoche – a pylon rises out from the heavens . . .
From the West Coast to the East Coast, New York City. Just how did Margaret Bourke-White shoot this aeroplane from on high, so perfectly aligned with Manhattan’s grid and the diagonal of the frame?
The name Harold Edgerton may not ring a bell but check out Lot 75 and the photographs will ring one . . . this auction has it all, from Photography’s ‘Old Masters’ to Photography’s ‘Beat Generation’!
Thurman Rotan’s Daily News Building can only be described as ‘Art Deco Kaleidoscope’. Pity that this pre-Photoshop marvel is available only in a dinky 4 3/8 x 8 5/8 inches; it would make for a smashing poster.
Dreamy, soft-hued, colour closes out our mini-survey; this hypnotic Nature Study by Eliot Porter is an impressionistic meditation on nature. It’s one of a set of three; view the third for a body of water in two lushly saturated and near-complementary hues. This lot is anything but dinky; the items are poster-sized at 36½ x 30 inches.
One cannot cover even the highlights of an auction of this magnitude in a blog post; any lover of photography will find it a pleasure to browse through the e-catalogue. Check out W. Eugene Smith’s sensitive human impressions, Yousuf Karsh’s intimate portraits, and Ormond Gigli’s go-go girls, for instance, and remember that this auction includes scads of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s finest photographs.
Visit our BPro blog to read about another auction of photographs at Sotheby’s.
Of Scanning Cameras and Martian Panoramas
It’s time for our weekly fix of odd and unusual photography news and today’s three-pack is surely one of the most eclectic yet connected ones we’ve had thus far.
The Mother of all Panoramas
Yesterday on our pro blog we brought you a tutorial that explains How to go Big, one method behind which is to Stitch a panorama.
Dan Havlik seems to have stumbled across the mother of all panoramas, created by Andrew Bodrov. And this is no ordinary panorama, it is a 360-degree interactive panorama. But here’s the kicker: it’s on . . . Mars! Bodrov apparently stitched it together from NASA images.
Take a spin and check out the Red Planet. As fascinating as the terrain is, what’s most interesting is to tilt upward and see what the ‘sky’ and the Sun look like on Mars.
‘Oh Snap!’ or ‘Oh Claptrap!’?
There’s another way to be ‘interactive’ – interact with the exhibits at an exhibition! That’s what Oh Snap! Your Take on Our Photographs at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh attempts to do. In this “collaborative photography project” that got underway one week back, visitors to the exhibition are invited to return with their own photographs that ‘respond’ to or have some connection with a work at the exhibition, and submit them. If accepted, they’re set on the wall close to the ‘parent’ “inspiration.”
According to Nikita Mishra’s news story there was quite a ‘response’.
Hmm. Is the intention to spot photographic talent? Is it a new fad that panders to egos? Is the goal to reel in those all-important admission fees? Or is this a valid mode of exhibiting and artistic expression?
The ‘Scanning Camera’: John Neff’s ‘Camera-Scanner’
Confusing, isn’t it? Whatever it is, there’s no ‘Oh Snap’ here, rather, there’s an ‘Um Whirrr’. That’s because John Neff’s cameras are “made without shutters or viewfinders, [instead they] capture images using a slow-moving linear scanning array, rather than a full-field sensor,” explains Chicago Artist’s Resource.
The idea is to allow time to elapse while the scanner scans the composition and creates a photograph with an antique look. These cameras took a lot of time and trouble to construct for photographs that look like ones you can see in this slideshow.
Art or gimmick? Knotty questions once again! The Renaissance Society, however, likes Neff’s camera-scanner photos well enough to host a solo exhibition. One thing’s for sure: they have an unusual tonal range and texture.
The “Fine Art Street Photography” of K. Chae
Logo for Leica Camera (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“Fine art street photography” – at first glance that sounds like a contradiction in terms and also seems a little pretentious. But before coming to a final judgement, take a tour of South Korean photographer K. Chae’s imagery and you may reconsider.
“My attention to color is what sets my work apart from other street photographers,” Chae says, in an interview published on the Leica Camera Blog. “People often comment that they confuse my photographs with paintings. I never shoot B&W.”
On that note, here’s Exhibit A: a luscious photograph of a kneeling, slender maiden writing out the names of bakery items on a display case. The careful composition, the ‘moment in time’, the ‘story’, the details, the splashes of colour – this is really a new approach to street shooting.
In diametric contrast is this photograph with literally two hues but infinite tints, a truly artistic composition, and an oddly hypnotic sense of depth (partly attained by perspective and partly by the combination of focal length, f-stop, and focus-point). It’s almost an abstract composition (and it would look really hypnotic on a large canvas).
This photo again is street shooting (frankly, at its finest) but here ones sees lines – including leading lines – galore, lots of texture, and a clear story – in fact, this one picture tells two human interest stories.
Want some more? Just set aside ten minutes, visit Chae’s website, and admire the enthralling slideshow. If actions speak louder than words, so do pictures, and Chae’s portfolio ‘loudly’ proves that his work is truly “Fine art street photography”.
Despite how Chae sets himself apart (as do his distinctly unusual ‘street shooting’ photos), like most street shooters his “primary weapon of choice” is (surprise, surprise!) that well-beloved of street-shooters, a Leica. He loves it “because it is difficult to use,” as he is averse to “current developments of cameras where it seems cameras make the picture for you.”
In addition to further particulars about Chae’s affinity for Leicas, the interview plumbs his philosophy of photographic art and, indeed, everything surrounding photography, such as the importance of learning and experience, the “shades of the earth,” and the need to nurture fresh talent.
In closing, if you haven’t clicked on any of the links above, take this on trust: don’t leave without clicking this one: if the saying “the eyes have it” is true, these ‘have it’ in spades.
Spotlight on Competitions and Contests
English: Canon EOS 5D digital SLR camera with Canon EF 24 mm f/2.8 lens Suomi: Canon EOS 5D -digitaalijärjestelmäkamera Canon EF 24 mm f/2.8 -objektiivilla (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A few days back the winners of the 56th World Press Photo Contest were announced. See them all on The Darkroom.
World Press Photo is one of the most prestigious photo contests and it is heavily contested by many of the best photographers around the world. A novice’s chances of winning it aren’t exactly bright. Not to be despondent though: today we’re ‘shining a spotlight’ on competitions and contests.
We list several below with a new twist: the heading identifies what you can walk away with should you win that contest!
Before entering any contest/competition, please carefully read its rules and conditions of entry to avoid disappointment.
Pro Camera equipment worth R185,000
That’s an EOS 5D Mark III, 24-105L lens kit with selected accessories, an EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 L IS USM lens, and a Pixma Pro 9500 Mark II pigment inkjet printer for the winner plus fabulous prizes for two runners-up! The prizes are from Canon and the competition is hosted by Sunday Times. This competition is “for South Africa’s best wildlife and nature photographers” and, though the subject can be “anything environmental,” “judges will be on a special lookout for authentic work of less common wildlife and fascinating landscapes.” It is open until 10th December.
Extreme outdoor photography clothing and a two-man hide
The prize of a hide (besides jacket, trousers and gloves) suggests wildlife photography; however, the topic of this competition is broader: the ‘Great Outdoors’. Though you can submit a photograph of a Siberian Tiger on the hunt, photos of “a day out at the seaside” are just as acceptable. The prize is courtesy of Stealth Gear and their ‘Great Outdoors’ Competition is open until 28th February.
Sony NEX-5R compact system camera
Not a bad prize on offer from Chromasia and Goodman Business Parks for their architectural photography competition. Now do you think you’d have an advantage if you entered a photo of a building managed by Goodman?(!) You can submit your photograph of an architectural marvel until 25th February.
Nothing . . . well, ‘Publicity'(!)
If “email marketing, 70+ press release announcements, 75+ event announcement posts, extensive social media marketing and distribution” plus backlinks to your website appeal to you, enter Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery art competition. Photographers can compete with illustrators to depict “‘Nature’ [which] is considered to be anything that was not created by or has been substantially altered by man.” Closing date: 24th February.
Thrilling Kite Aerial Photography (KAP)!
Strathblane and Dumbrock Muir by kite aerial photography (KAP) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“[T]he results can be pretty amazing in the right setting” is how DPSchool describes aerial photography by way of ‘unmanned’ kite. Looking at said results, methinks the qualifier “in the right setting” is superfluous!
Consider this smashing shot of a brilliantly-lit and packed college football stadium. The photo is an event with the red and green complementaries delighting the eye in their perfectly balanced hues. Whether or not this is a crop circle, it makes for a startling contrast with the colourful college stadium, with its shades of dull brown and exclusively circular shapes.
If you liked those two then here’s another monotone beaut in greyish browns, and here’s another green-and-red entry that’s more of a study in greens with red accents.
Such are the varied wonders of 61 Amazing Kite Aerial Photography Images, an unusual and interesting gallery virtual-curated by Darren Rowse.
Rowse doesn’t just take us on a tour of ‘amazing’ ‘images’, he provides some tips and introduces the reader to the tools of the trade, such as “purpose-built rigging” – probably useful if you’ve got your 5D Mk II a thousand feet above the earth.
Here are some of the most riveting images from the 61.
From the air, a car dealership looks like an orderly, even austere, columns of pegs but Stone Fishing in Maupiti is a visually-appealing, disorganized, splatter of shapes and colours.
Turns out that diagonally bisected images with one subdued dappled triangle and crazy splashes of colour arouse and ‘turn on’ the eye.
If any photograph is the essence of KAP, of flying, this one’s it. The tilt, the blur, the vertigo, the falcon – you could be airborne yourself.
From the air to the sea, and this photo of a sailboat is another winner. The boat, with its myriad bright tints, pops out of the deep, dark water and grey skies. The contrast, the elevation, the composition – they all work together in this shot.
This one wins the prize for the weirdest, wildest KAP image – courtesy of its subject! Most artistic and aesthetic? How about this lucky accident, as admitted by the photographer? Or this one, a candidate for the abstract art prize?
We have to close out with this straightforward shot that is a bewitching view of what looks like a doll’s house town rising from the sea, crowned by a gigantic monastery and cathedral.
(Larger than) Life, and Death
English: Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
La Mort La Vie. That’s the name of an exhibition that just opened in Staten Island, New York, and the emphasis is more on the ‘Mort’ part – Death.
Photographer Agnes Thor has long had a preoccupation with death: “Death has been on my mind for so long I can’t remember what sparked it to life” (a strangely inverted play on words there) and a personal tragedy was the trigger for her photographic exhibition that “this will all end someday.”
The opening photograph of the grave of Thor’s grandmother has so much space, depth and light – yet it is somewhat overshadowed by the obvious, dark, hulking headstone in the near left foreground – wonderfully framed and composed. A similar feeling of stillness, a calmness, pervades all of Thor’s photographs, even one with a trace of motion: sand streaming in an hourglass.
One or two pictures are overtly morbid but are thoughtfully done. Interestingly, light plays a key part in most photographs of Thor’s dark subject, from the misty, ‘blue hour’ photograph of a cemetery to the light-flooded but russet and relatively dark image of something more basic and elemental.
Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, will soon be hosting an equally unusual exhibition but, instead of having to do with death or life, it has to do with larger than life. They call it ‘Big Pictures’. It’s all about huge, vast prints. A very informative press release is virtually a mini-essay about the exhibition.
The museum explains their exhibition thus: “Photographers like Ansel Adams (1902–1984) and Margaret Bourke White (1904 1971) understood that larger photographs resulted in a distinctive shift for the viewer.”
True: a larger-than-life image allows the eye to roam through limited areas and explore the photograph, “creating a unique and powerful personal experience.”
That being the case, one wonders why all that real estate is wasted on a few unworthy images that would be suitable for postcards. For instance, on what can only be described as a ‘Modern Artsy’ image that is not much of a ‘Landscape’, as the title proclaims it to be, due to limitations on part of both the photographer and her subject.
Much better are images that are not only epic in scale but which project the grandeur of nature alongside the inventiveness of man, and are beautifully lit and composed. William Henry Jackson’s Excursion Train is the type of image that would enthrall as a ‘big picture’. Too bad that the Amon Carter Museum’s curators seem to have missed the boat – or the ‘excursion train’ as it were – in choosing a few too many ‘small-time’ artsy images for their ‘Big Picture’ exhibition.
Two Exhibitions: (Larger than) Life, and Death
La Mort La Vie. That’s the name of an exhibition that just opened in Staten Island, New York, and the emphasis is more on the ‘Mort’ part – Death.
Photographer Agnes Thor has long had a preoccupation with death: “Death has been on my mind for so long I can’t remember what sparked it to life” (a strangely inverted play on words there) and a personal tragedy was the trigger for her photographic exhibition that “this will all end someday.”
The opening photograph of the grave of Thor’s grandmother has so much space, depth and light – yet it is somewhat overshadowed by the obvious, dark, hulking headstone in the near left foreground – wonderfully framed and composed. A similar feeling of stillness, a calmness, pervades all of Thor’s photographs, even one with a trace of motion: sand streaming in an hourglass.
One or two pictures are overtly morbid but are thoughtfully done. Interestingly, light plays a key part in most photographs of Thor’s dark subject, from the misty, ‘blue hour’ photograph of a cemetery to the light-flooded but russet and relatively dark image of something more basic and elemental.
Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, will soon be hosting an equally unusual exhibition but, instead of having to do with death or life, it has to do with larger than life. They call it ‘Big Pictures’. It’s all about huge, vast prints. A very informative press release is virtually a mini-essay about the exhibition.
The museum explains their exhibition thus: “Photographers like Ansel Adams (1902–1984) and Margaret Bourke White (1904 1971) understood that larger photographs resulted in a distinctive shift for the viewer.”
True: a larger-than-life image allows the eye to roam through limited areas and explore the photograph, “creating a unique and powerful personal experience.”
That being the case, one wonders why all that real estate is wasted on a few unworthy images that would be suitable for postcards. For instance, on what can only be described as a ‘Modern Artsy’ image that is not much of a ‘Landscape’, as the title proclaims it to be, due to limitations on part of both the photographer and her subject.
Much better are images that are not only epic in scale but which project the grandeur of nature alongside the inventiveness of man, and are beautifully lit and composed. William Henry Jackson’s Excursion Train is the type of image that would enthrall as a ‘big picture’. Too bad that the Amon Carter Museum’s curators seem to have missed the boat – or the ‘excursion train’ as it were – in choosing a few too many small-time artsy images for their ‘Big Picture’ exhibition.
The Guardian’s Best Photographs of 2012
Having seen the photographs our press have chosen as their ‘Best Photographs of the Year’, it may be interesting to compare what the media mavens in Old Blighty and those across the (big) pond over in America consider to be their Photos of the Year, courtesy of The Guardian and TIME respectively.
We’ll cover The Guardian’s selection in this post, specially the dramatic and dynamic images, and review those of TIME in today’s post on our sister site.
Unlike TIME’s 366-photograph smorgasbord, The Guardian provides a far smaller selection of what are for the most part photojournalistic and editorial images, a few of them with considerable impact. Like the very first one showing half the island of Manhattan plunged in darkness. Compare with another aerial shot of another city – Aleppo – that was plunged in darkness but for very different reasons: shelling and bombs.
The newspaper seems to have asked the photographers behind the chosen images to write a few lines describing the ‘whats’ and ‘wheres’ of their images, plus what they mean to them. Though these textual vignettes are sometimes self-glorifying or try to put over a less-than-first-rate photograph, at other times they shed light on a cryptic or amusing image – like this one of, shall we say, ‘Bathing Beauties Chinese Style’? The photo and the mini-story complement one another very well.
The vignette, though so well-written, is superfluous for this brilliant shot evoking pure joy; indeed, a sense of euphoria, at an Obama election rally. Likewise for another Obama photograph: a lovely photograph of a heartfelt embrace between man and wife. This would be, and is, a wonderful photograph regardless of who the subjects are.
The very next image, possibly the most carefree and dynamic one in the gallery, is one for which the photo and the description play off one another. (Indeed, a very similar photograph of Palestinian Parkour was featured in one of our posts.)
Not to be missed is another photograph from the Islamic World. Would you believe a brilliant blue burqa and an array of laserlight speckles dotting the frame makes for an exceptionally pretty photograph? Compare with a photograph with another kind of ‘speckles’ – real sparks from real flames. That’s what this horseman is riding through in a very dramatic image of a religious festival in a remote Spanish village.
If these dynamic and dramatic images are not to your taste, you’ll find more sober ones if you browse through the gallery. So go ahead, with our Best Wishes for 2013 to all our readers.
Sinar System from Switzerland and a Sony Award for an Aussie
Most beginners use compacts and APS-C, a few may use DSLRs. Take a gander, then, at this camera from Sinar of Switzerland. Sinar’s lanTec was announced yesterday. It is an ultra-high-end camera system for landscape and architectural photography and is the digital equivalent of ‘large format’ 8×10 cameras from the film days – its resolution goes all the way up to 80 megapixels.
Such a ‘system’ allows a photographer to use a particular ‘digital back’ per his preference. As for the camera, it incorporates tilt-shift for landscape photography and has built-in spirit levels.
Changing digital backs also changes the camera’s orientation, say from view camera to medium-format camera. Sinar’s website shows the three digital backs they make for the lanTec. Look at their eXact digital back. You will notice, among other things, that it can be used with Mamiya and Hasselblad camera systems, has a top shutter-speed of 1/10000, has a huge sensor, and can take pictures with up to 192 megapixels.
Using large-format camera systems is an entirely different method of photography altogether; though that always was the case, it is even truer now in the days of digital.
We do not know which camera Aussie shooter Palani Mohan used but we do know that the award he won was from Sony. Sony World Photography Awards is considered to be one of the more prestigious photo contests – given that the top prize is $25,000 plus Sony digital imaging/camera equipment, both of which are ceremoniously awarded at an annual awards gala at a posh hotel is held, it’s easy to see why SWPA has such cachet.
The winners for 2012 include some stunning images. Mohan’s photograph is not shown among the winners because he won third place. His award came in the Nature & Wildlife category. His common-sense advice really stands out in this Digital Age, notably, “Try to keep true to photography as after all, you are a photographer not a digital artist.”
Ed Hetherington is also a Nature & Wildlife photographer but he managed to capture a few shots he wasn’t intending to. You see, a lioness pinched Hetherington’s EOS 5D! The story doesn’t tell us whether Hetherington thought all the unusual photos ‘snapped’ by the lioness, and also the ones he took of lioness-and-camera, were fair compensation for his busted 5D.
A Beguiling Gallery of Indigenous Peoples
Indigenous Peoples are Humankind’s ‘endangered species’, so to speak. This Pinterest gallery contains some wonderful images, primarily portraits and ‘head shots’, of such persons.
Many of the photographs reveal persons of considerable beauty regardless of the lighting, be the subject a mere child, or even if all you can see are the subject’s eyes. Given the harsh conditions so many Indigenous Peoples live under and the absence of beauty parlours and facial treatments, one has to wonder how so many of them have the smooth, even complexions they do. Even the aged possess a clear-eyed, dignified appearance.
This observation brings a thought to mind. Those anthropologists and linguists who justifiably bemoan the looming extinction of indigenous peoples seem to be missing one fact: many Indigenous Peoples seem to possess a ‘Beauty Gene’. Preservation of genetic diversity for the sake of beauty is is a point open for argument; what these photographs provide is factual evidence for anyone wishing to argue the ‘pro’ side of the debate.
Most of us have read the names of some well-known Indigenous Peoples either in textbooks or in romanticized adventure or exploration books. Now we have a one-stop shop for so many of them! – Berber, Dinka, Masai, Cheyenne, and more. The gallery is actually so rich that it could be subdivided by geographical region and by subject matter – historical, children, features, dress, and more.
This gallery, besides hosting portraits primarily, is of value for other reasons too. You can find photographs of vanishing ways of life and even of vanished ways of life (except on reservations). One wishes that some ways of life never vanish!
Dress and costumes are – of course – a visually striking feature of much contrast between cultures. Compare the bright dress of Kalash girls with the plain dress of a Somali. A few will make you go ‘gadzooks!’ with astonishment.
Don’t neglect to view the photographs from the perspective of moods and emotions. You will find caring, humour, excitement, surprise, jollity . . . .
This gallery is a beguiling one because the photographs and subjects are so beguiling.
Follow us on Facebook for all the latest in canvas printing news and exclusive deals!
