Friday 18th November 2011Google Doodle Pays Homage to Louis DaguerreIf you're a photographer, then whether you know it or not, you owe a great deal to Frenchman Louis Daguerre, so it's a good job that Google have chosen to celebrate Daguerre's 224th birthday with this entertaining Google Doodle.
Daguerre was a French physicist who created the first successful form of permanent photography, in conjunction with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, back in 1826. Niépce had been experimenting with the fact that silver carbonate or silver chloride and a chalk mixture darkened under the exposure to light, with the pair refining the process to build towards using it to produce photographs.
Daguerre's experiments led him to expose silver-coated copper plates to iodine, producing silver iodide. He then exposed the plates to light for several minutes, then coated the plate with mercury vapour and heated to 75oC before finally fixing the image permanently to the plate with salt water. This was the first form of permanent photography, called a Daguerreotype.
The Daguerreotype was presented to the French Academy of Sciences in 1839, following years of experimentation with the medium to perfect the process. At this point however, the image on the plate was still in reverse from the image that it captured, the image needed to be viewed from an angle due to its shininess, and it had to be protected from destructive fingerprints and the air in a glass fronted box.
Nevertheless, photography had its foundations, and generations of photographers would take this basis and build on the medium, making it, what it is today.
Posted on November 18th 2011 on 01:24pm
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Tuesday 08th November 2011Ed Ruscha's Photographs and Archive Find A Home at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles
From 'Twenty Six Gasoline Stations', 1962 Ed Ruscha
Ed Ruscha was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1937, and came to be one of the most famous American artists of the 20th century. His works often revolve around typography and language, placing his work in the contexts of American Pop and also Conceptual Art.
While perhaps better known for his graphical works, photography played a large part in Ruscha's artistic output and in his explorations of the world around him. He particularly went to great lengths in documenting certain subjects in Los Angeles, such as LA Apartments, the entire of Sunset Strip and parking lots across the city.
He self-published a number of photography books, documenting these subjects, and many of the photographs that he took became the basis for some of his more famous painted works, such as his gas station series.
Recently, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Research Institute made a joint acquisition of over seventy photographs by Ruscha, as well as his entire Streets of Los Angeles archive which comprises thousands of negatives, hundreds of photographic contact sheets and documents related to his journeys, studies and photographic output.
The acquisition now makes the Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute the leading resource on the photography of Ruscha, and will also make this collection more accessible to the public than ever before.
Posted on November 08th 2011 on 12:51pm
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Thursday 03rd November 2011The Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition: If You're Not in it, You Can't Win itYou may notice some kind of blog theme…maybe relating to photography competitions, but all that we can say is, the more opportunities available to people, the better, so if you didn't previously know about the
Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, but would have entered if you did, our work here is done.
The Wildlife Photographer of the Year award is sponsored by Veolia Environment and hosted by the Natural History Museum in London, and the BBC Wildlife Magazine.
Entries for the 2012 competition start on the 5th December so that leaves a month for you to get out there, capturing some amazing wildlife shots, if you would like to be in with a chance of winning. The closing date for entries is the 23rd Feburary 2012.
This international competition is well renowned, and photographers throughout the world aspire to be included in the award. While there is a dominance of professional photographers, it's not unheard of for amateurs to also succeed. Making this a serious case of; if you don't try…
Each year tens of thousands of photographers enter the competition, and are judged by an international panel of photography experts. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year was established as an award in 1965, back when the BBC Wildlife magazine was just known as Animal, and there were a great deal fewer photographers on the scene. The competition really took offing the 1980's, when in 1984 the BBC Wildlife Magazine joined forces with the Natural History Museum to make the award what it is today.
Let's take a look at some of the winners of the 2011 Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition:
2011 Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year - Winner: Daniel Beltrá, Still life in Oil.
2011 Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife - Winner: Peter Chadwick,Taking off.
2011 Gerald Durrell Award for Endangered Wildlife - Runner-up: Cyril Ruoso, Tiny warm-up.
2011 Eric Hosking Award - Winner: Bence Máté,Workers' Reflections.
2011 Wildlife Photojournalist of the Year - Winner: Daniel Beltrá, Beneath the Surface.
Posted on November 03rd 2011 on 11:26am
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Wednesday 02nd November 2011Why Not Enter the Landscape Photographer of the Year Competition?As a happy consequence of working with websites for artists and photographers on a daily basis, we get to see a lot of great artworks and photographs. Some we think, may even be potential future competition winners, which is why we thought to bring the UK
Landscape Photographer of the Year awards to your attention!
The winner for 2011 of the Landscape Photographer of the Year has already been announced, so you now have the time to get ready for sending in entries for the 2012 competition. There were some absolutely fabulous pictures entered in 2011, and no doubt choosing a winner was an incredibly difficult task.
As well as having the honour of winning such a competition, there are other bonus' to help spur you on, such as a £10,000 prize fund, and the chance to have your photographs published in the Sunday Times Magazine, and also in a book dedicated to the competition.
There are actually two classes within the competition; Landscape Photographer of the Year and the Young Landscape Photographer of the Year for entrants who are aged 16 or under, so anyone of any age, and any ability can enter with a chance to suceed.
Here's a quick look at some of the finalists, and the work of the 2011 winner, Robert Fulton:
The winning entry from Cumbernauld-based photographer, Robert Fulton.
Urban photography from Howard Kingsnorth, The Dark Square Mile, London
Tim Harvey, Rocquaine Bay During a Winter Storm, Guernsey, Channel Islands
Clive Collie, Near West Ilsley
Simon Byrne, Micheldever Woods, Hampshire, England
Dudley Williams, West Pier in Snow,Brighton & Hove, East Sussex
Posted on November 02nd 2011 on 10:53am
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Friday 25th February 2011Creative Flash Photography
Roel Wouters and Jonathan Puckey, of
Conditional Design, always seem to be able to inject fun, innovation and audience participation into their interesting photography or video projects.
Their prior project,
One Frame of Fame, saw the creation of a music video with the help of a growing online audience. The aim of the game is that they show us a frame from the music video that has already been created, then anyone with a webcam was able to copy that frame, with themselves as the star. You can submit your own frame to be included in the video along with others who have also submitted their version.
Throughout the More is Less music video, the homemade copy cats are introduced to match the frames of the original video, creating a layering effect throughout. The video is still open for submissions, with 29,711 people having participated so far.
Their latest photography project is also pretty interesting, and again interactive.
Flitser.org is a site that hosts a number of photographs that were taken by people who downloaded the Flitser app for iPhone 4. With the app, people were required to take pictures in a reflective surface, using the flash from the phone, then submitting them to the project.
Once uploaded, the photographs are then manipulated in a variety of ways by visitors to the site. There is a setting called Follower, for example, where moving the cursor across the screen sees the photographs quickly changing, with the position of the flash in the image following your cursor.
In another setting entitled Circle, the photographs interchange quickly, with the instances of the flash drawing the outline of a circle. It's definitely fun to have a quick play around, and we hope to see more creative projects like this in the future!
Posted on February 25th 2011 on 01:34pm
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Wednesday 23rd February 2011Landmark Photography, with a Twist
Saint Basil's Cathedral, Moscow
Is anyone sick of seeing the same photographs of the worlds great monuments, the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids of Giza, the former World Trade Centre in New York? If the answer is yes, then I'd like to point you in the direction of Switzerland-based artist
Corinne Vionnet, which I came about on a blog post at
My Modern Metropolis.
Vionnet plays with the idea that we all go to the same places and take the same photographs, and that world has become a microcosm where few experiences are left as unique or untouched by globalisation.
Louvre Pyramid, Paris
While the images that Vionnet produces may appear, at first, to be blurred versions of photographs taken at famous places, that's not the case. The artist spent a fair amount of time raking through the image archives and sharing sites of the internet, scooping up images of famous landmarks around the world. She then layers hundreds of these photographs one on top of the other to reproduce hundreds of views of the same place, all in one photograph.
The photographs not only demonstrate how over-saturated we are with repetitive imagery but they act as a document of the passage of time around moments captured by hundreds of people across the globe. The project becomes a demonstration of collective memory and the ubiquity, and democratisation of photography as a means of capturing the world around us.
The Taj Mahal, India
Posted on February 23rd 2011 on 10:08pm
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Saturday 22nd January 2011A Modern Perspective on Architectural Photography: Extracts of Local Distance
Building: The Jewish Museum. Photograher: Klaus Frahm
I came across a photography project the other day whilst browsing on a favourite image sharing blog called
Ffffound!. The photographs, at first glance, seemed to be exploding architectural collages, formed from various modern buildings or architectural structures.
Some further investigation into the photographs did reveal that they are based on modern buildings and structures, and that they are composed as collages, however there was far more to the images than just any sort of explosion.
The project that these images belong too happened in Berlin in 2009, and is called Extracts of Local Distance: Common Perspective Images. The project brought together artists and designers Benjamin Maus, Frederic Gmeiner and Torsten Posselt, and photographer Klaus Frahm. Frahm's architectural photographs were manipulated in to vast numbers of photographic fragments, before being collaged back together under a third abstract point of view, beyond that of the original architect and the photographer.
Building: The Barcelona Pavilion
The architectural pictures, that form the basis for the project, feature buildings such as The Jewish Museum, The Barcelona Pavilion and the Hamburg University Library - all stunningly modern buildings. Those pictures were then analysed and categorised, by a complex computing algorithm, by their vanishing points and shapes.
With these segments allowed to retain their original positioning in relation to their original vanishing point, they were then used to form the layers of a new image, with a new perspective, and new shapes. The project could have easily produced endless numbers of unique images, however only a choice selection of particularly aesthetically pleasing outcomes made it into the final state of a fine-art print.
We have shared a few of our favourites, but make sure to visit the
Extracts of Local Distance website in order to watch a video all about the project and to view the full range of images.
Building: Hamburg University Library
Posted on January 22nd 2011 on 12:32am
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Thursday 20th January 2011Charity Auction for The Photographers' Gallery at Christie's
Christie's, the world famous auction house, is set to hold a charity sale this February in order to raise money for The Photographers' Gallery.
The Photographers' Gallery, as stated on their website, is the largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography, covering everything from the latest hot-shot talent to well established names on the photography scene. An impressive historical archive also ensures that the gallery deserves the support to expand and grow.
The charity auction to be held at Christie's will raise funds for the construction of a new building in the West End of London, allowing The Photographers' Gallery to respond to the consistent growth of popularity in the field of photography. The new premises, which will be a conversion of a former Edwardian industrial warehouse into a sparkling centre devoted to all things photography, is set to open in Autumn 2011.
The new space will feature public galleries, a floor dedicated to education, a print sales room, a bookshop and a ground floor café. There will also be an interactive element where visitors can upload their own images in the café to be displayed on the Wall for All.
The auction itself will be held at Christie's South Kensington sale room on the 17th February and the catalogue is available to view on the
Christie's website.
Posted on January 20th 2011 on 05:48pm
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Tuesday 11th January 2011Ruins Make Some Great Viewing"Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension....Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state."
These are the words of
Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre in their statement on their photographer website. Their description of ruins and what they mean to civilisation are particularly pertinent when you take the time to look through their photographic project entitled,
The Ruins of Detroit.
Detroit was once the central hub of the American automobile industry. Home to car manufacturer Henry Ford and the first ever large-scale production line, Detroit became a hugely affluent and densely populated place that oozed the American Dream.
However, all good things come to an end. The 1950's and 60's saw the rise of more affluent neighbourhoods in the suburbs, and 1967 in particular saw one of the most violent riots in American history take place due to race tensions in the city, causing parts of Detroit to disintegrate and eventually turn to ruin as a consequence.
The Ruins of Detroit is the culmination of a 5-year collaboration that has seen the creation of some truly stunning and intriguing photographs that capture the remnants of this fascinating history. All manner of monumental and exquisite buildings sit in decay alongside the shells of Detroit's industrial past.
Below are a few of our favourites, but to view a larger selection and to learn more about the photographers and their projects,
visit their website.
Michigan Central Station
Atrium, Farwell Building
United Artists Theatre
Ballroom, American Hotel
Packard Motors Plant
Fisher Body 21 Plant
Posted on January 11th 2011 on 06:26pm
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Wednesday 05th January 2011Sally Mann: Back In Print for all the Right Reasons
Sally Mann, Emmett, Jessie and Virgina, from the Immediate Family Series, 1989
Sally Mann is easily on of the most talked about, celebrated and debated photographers out there and is perhaps best known for her large scale photographs of her own children when they were just youngsters, and her later landscape work.
Sally Mann has received a lot of criticism for her work and continues, even now, to be used in debates regarding the decency of the fine art photograph and where the line lies between observational photography and pornographic imagery. Mann's case in this regard is particular severe, as accusations of producing pornographic imagery centered around her third major collection of works;
Immediate Family
. Published in 1992,
Immediate Family was a documentary account of the lives of her three children, taken at the family's summer cabin. In many of the pictures, her children, who were all younger than 10 years of age, could be seen naked. The work explored themes of growing up and exploration, of playing games and enjoying life as well as darker themes of death and loneliness.
Controversy was widespread and intense when the publication was released, with accusations of child pornography flaring up. Various parties reacted in different ways, with the Wall Street Journal famously moving to censor an image of one of Mann's daughters. Other critics however, stood by Mann in her argument that these are innocent and natural pictures taken by a mother, of her children, and that there is a raw humanity about them that everyone can relate to.
Having survived the backlash to go on and produce further works, and gain critical acclaim for series such as
Still Time
of 1994,
What Remains
of 2003 and
Deep South
of 2005. Notably, for many of the famous landscape shots that feature in some of these series, Mann used wet plate, 8 x 10 inch glass negatives, a method requiring a lot of care, skill and patience, that had long been neglected for more modern photographic techniques.
The photographic organisation, Aperture, along with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts now presents the latest book on the work of Mann;
Sally Mann: The Flesh and The Spirit
. The publication, which includes a range of works and topics from Mann's oeuvre, including sill life polaroids, images of her children, stark landscapes and more recent self-portraits, is the first thematic survey of Mann's work, and stands as a book that should not be neglected by anyone serious about photography.
Posted on January 05th 2011 on 06:25pm
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