Mona Kuhn Exhibition

Photographer Mona Kuhn has an exhibition opening at Flowers Gallery, 21 Cork Street, London W1S 3LZ.
Details     

Vintage 80s: Life on the streets

BBC reports:
Time passes and society and places change, yet we often don't notice or overlook the visual clues we see everyday. But, by always carrying a camera and recording those daily encounters, Johnny Stiletto managed to capture a very personal view of life on the streets of London in the 1980s.

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The head of photography on… picture manipulation and trust in news imagery Acceptable uses of Photoshop in the Guardian and Grazia

From the Guardian

"A certain amount of scepticism is a healthy thing in journalists and readers alike. Going through the thousands of photographs that the Guardian picture desk receives each day, we try to keep a critical eye on anything that could be the result of digital retouching software like Photoshop. We are kept on our toes by eagle-eyed readers, always alive to the possibility of artifice.

The most common complaint is the "flipping" of a photograph. This often happens accidentally when using images from picture libraries that have been scanned from negatives or transparencies. But there is also an old tradition in newspaper design for a picture, especially of a person, to face into the page or story that it illustrates, and subeditors have a tendency to want to "flip" to achieve this. But it is against our guidelines.

Our rule about the use of Photoshop and other picture-manipulating software is that cropping and toning – basically anything that might have been done in a darkroom – is OK, but the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is forbidden. We have to trust our photographers and the agencies we deal with not to indulge in anything that might go against our guidelines, but usually it's difficult to spot. I suspect the odd door handle, light switch and extraneous elbow may have been retouched by perfectionist photographers, and most of the time this probably doesn't matter because the pictures are being used in a non-news context – a portrait in the arts pages, for example."

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How about changing the Club competition rules to say that " use of Photoshop and other picture-manipulating software is that cropping and toning – basically anything that might have been done in a darkroom – is OK, but the moving of pixels or "cutting and pasting" is forbidden."

Do you really want to get to grips with Adobe Photoshop?

From -   REIGATE PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY

Do you really want to get to grips with Adobe Photoshop?

If so, you need to be in Reigate on the 26 September”.

Because on Monday, 26th September Reigate Photographic Society are hosting an evening presentation by Donna Oxley who is an Adobe certified instructor.

The programme will include:

• Brief overview of Photoshop CS5.
• The Camera Raw Processor;
• What is camera raw and why you should use it, making tonal adjustments,white balance, sharpening, cropping, synchronizing settings across images.
• Using Layers;
• The different types of Photoshop Layers, pixel, vector, adjustment, effects,layer masking for compositing.
• Monitor Calibration and Colour Management (if time allows).

Questions and Answers.

The presentation will take place in the Old School Room, Reigate Community Centre, to the rear of the Reigate Methodist Church in the High Street,Reigate, RH2 9AE.

Parking is available in the Morrison Supermarket car-park.

The presentation will begin at 8pm.

There will be a charge at the door of £3 for non-members.

We welcome any members of local camera clubs who would like to join us for an interesting and informative evening.

Les Dyson – Reigate Photographic Society Publicity Secretary

For more information and location map please look at our website –
www.reigatephotosoc.co.uk

Competition news from the SPA

The Keith Hunt Trophy will be on Saturday, 11 November 2011, at Trinity Methodist Church, Brewery Road, Woking. The judge is still to be confirmed.

The Surrey Advertiser Rosebowl will be on Saturday, 25 February 2012, at Parkview Centre for the Community, Sheerwater, Woking. Judge will be David Eastley, LRPS.

We will be sending entry forms to all those who took part in the competitions last year about 2 months ahead of the competition date. If your club did not take part, please contact me and I will make sure you get one.

Light-field photography has the potential to revolutionize photography. Ren Ng, the founder of Lytro, explains how a camera can capture images that are never out of focus

Lytro has big plans. This week the Mountain View, CA-based startup said it would soon bring to market a new kind of camera that's based on light-field photography. The result: photographs that you can focus after you take them. Simply click your mouse on the spot on the picture you want in focus, and it changes before your eyes 


Article including demo   also see this video from the BBC


YouTube video promo

World Photography Day

World Photography Day?

Many people that have mentioned that they’ve never heard of World Photography Day. Why is that? World Photography Day wasn’t ‘created’ by a big brand as a marketing tool. Rather, it’s a day where photographers had started to come together to celebrate photography, just because they could. Any excuse to throw a party right?

Slowly, groups around the world have started to get on board with the idea of World Photography Day and you will find traces of World Photography Day being celebrated over the last 20 years or so. Each year, World Photography Day has gained momentum and this year, we’re hoping to bring photographers together once again with an even larger audience.

Why August 19th?

World Photography Day originates from the invention of the Daguerreotype, a photographic processes developed by Louis Daguerre.  On January 9, 1839, The French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype process. A few months later, on August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift “Free to the World.”

Another photographic processes, the Calotype, was also invented in 1839 by William Fox Talbot (it was announced in 1841). Together, the invention of both the Daguerreotype and Calotype mark 1839 as the year that photography was invented.

If you’re interested in learning more about the history of photography, take a look at the following article on Wikipedia: History of Photography