Tag Newsletter

Tag Newsletter

Does GDPR Spell the End of Street Photography?

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Books, Cameras, Community, Digital, Equipment, EU, European Union, GDPR, General Data Protection Regulation, Law, News, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Photojournalism, Portrait, Privacy Policy, Resources, Rights, Social Network, Street, Tips, Travel, Urban photography

As you probably know by now, after receiving a gazillion emails advising you of the fact, last month saw the introduction of the GDRP, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. And in an article on his websiteGerman photographer and journalist, Hendrik Wieduwilt, is worried. Very worried. 

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PJGX Philip Jones Griffiths Exhibition

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Exhibition, Gallery, News, Newsletter, Philip Jones Griffiths, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Photojournalism, Resources, War Photography

TJ Boulting and Trolley Books are hosting an exhibition by renowned photographer Philip Jones Griffiths to mark the tenth anniversary of his death, on 19th March 2008.  

According to the gallery website, PJGX presents photographs from the two important bodies of work that represent Philip’s archive – the Viet Nam war and Britain in the 1950s to 70s.  

Griffiths was born in 1936 in Wales and was famous for his coverage of the Viet Nam War. He started work as a full-time freelance photographer in 1961 for The Oberver, and then covered the vietnam war for Magnum agency.  

Henri Cartier-Bresson said of Griffiths: “Not since Goya has anyone portrayed war like Philip Jones Griffiths.” In 1980, Griffiths became the president of Magnum, a position he held for five years. He died aged 72 in London, on March 19, 2008. 

In 1971 he published his first book, the ground-breaking Viet Nam Inc, which cemented his reputation as both a fiercely intelligent and astute photojournalist.  

The book had a huge impact in turning people’s opinion against the war and the US involvement in Viet Nam. Carefully considered and captioned with a scathing dry commentary, this was ‘war photography’ but in a very different sense, as the journalist and film-maker John Pilger wrote on Philip’s death in 2008: “No photographer produced such finely subversive work, knowing that truth in war is always subversive.” 

Griffith’s book, Agent Orange: Collateral Damage in Viet Nam was even more vehemently ‘war photography’ of a different sense. The toxic chemical in Agent Orange that had been dropped by the US on Vietnamese and Cambodian soil to defoliate the landscape and reveal the enemy, was also responsible for horrific congenital deformities, still affecting children born today. 

Viet Nam Inc. had been republished in 2001 with a foreword by Noam Chomsky, who observed: “If anybody in Washington had read that book, we wouldn’t have had these wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.” 

But who would publish these disturbing new images from Viet Nam, a generation after the war had ended? It was around this time that Philip met Gigi Giannuzzi, the founder of Trolley Books, and he discovered not only a publisher but a kindred spirit, someone who was not afraid to make a book of such difficult-to-look-at work. T 

wo more books followed, Viet Nam at Peace in 2005 and Recollections in 2008, published a few months after Philip’s death. Despite his seminal book on the Vietnam War, Philip hated to be described as a war photographer. 

His 50year archive is rich with stunning photojournalism from over 100 countries around the world. As well as his images, Philip’s words always gave a crucial insight, and showing in the exhibition is a filmed interview that Philip gave in Aberystwyth in 2007 at the University of Wales. It is followed by a recent award-winning documentary (a co-production between Welsh company Rondo Media, S4C and South Korean production company, JTV, Jeonju T

Two suspected drug traffickers (the center one having 15 years old) are arrested during a police operation in the Acari slum in northern Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

PJGX Philip Jones Griffiths Exhibition  
info@tjboulting.com 

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PHOTOGRAPHY: BACK TO BASICS (PART 2) Aperture

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Analogue, Aperture, Blog, Cameras, Creative, deep, Equipment, Focus, Lenses, Light, News, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Resources, Settings, shallow, Student, Techniques, Tips, Workshop

Getting to grips with Aperture 

 

For most of us, taking that first step in switching to the dreaded Manual Mode on your camera can seem ludicrous. Why on earth should I switch to Manual Mode, when the camera can easily take a picture for me? Why should I even leave Auto Mode, for that matter? If it’s there, why can’t I use it.  

Well, you can, but may not end up with a photo you were hoping for. Once you understand that taking a photo is basically exposing light to a sensor, or film, you are halfway there. Last month we spoke about the holy trinity of photography that is the Exposure Triangle, the ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.  

And I call it the holy trinity, because these three elements work together. They depend on each other, and we combine them in such a way so when we hit that shutter release, the amount of light hitting that sensor or film is just right to get you a “good exposure.” And I put good exposure in quotation marks, because exposure really depends on whether you are happy with the result. Confused yet?  

Basically, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture (or f stop) do exactly the same thing. They control how much of that light hits the sensor. ISO, the film or sensor speed, does that by being either too sensitive to light, (ISO 3200), or not very sensitive (ISO 50). When shooting analogue, you won’t get very far if you don’t put a film in the camera, so you choose the right ISO for the light conditions. If it’s too bright, you use a less sensitive ISO (lower number) like 50, or 100. If it’s cloudy you use a more sensitive film (higher number) like 400, and the darker it gets the more sensitive film you will need.  

This is the same with digital cameras. Before we start shooting, we check the light and set our ISO speed accordingly.  

This month’s focus (no pun intended) is the aperture. Found in your lens, (not the camera) the aperture basically does the same job that the Iris in your eyes does. If it’s too bright it closes, and if it’s too dark it opens. The wider the aperture can open, the more expensive the lens usually is, so now you know why some lenses are ridiculously expensive. 

Aperture is measured in F-stops like f1.2, f5.6, f11, etc. The lower the number the wider the aperture, and more light will hit the sensor, or film, so an aperture of f1.2 is extremely open, and an aperture of f32 is tiny. Think about it like this: Small number, big hole, big number, small hole.  

So when we expose, we can choose to let in more or less light hit our sensor or film by opening and closing the aperture, just like a tap of water filling up a bucket. The more you open the tap, the more water runs out, and vice versa.  

Now, you are probably wondering what setting to use when you expose. If ISO, aperture, and shutter speed all do the same thing I.e. controlling the light that hits our sensor or film, what do we prioritise on? When do we use aperture? When do we use shutter speed?  

Well, we will be talking about shutter speed in the next article, but when it comes to aperture, apart from controlling the amount of light that hits the sensor, it also does something else that is quite magical: It controls how much of the area behind and in front of your subject is in focus. You might have noticed that landscape shots are always sharp, showing the entire scene in focus, while the background in portrait shots is usually blurry in an effort to isolate the subject you are photographing from anything distracting in the background.  

This control of the sharpness of the foreground and background is called depth of field, and the aperture is the tool with which we control that depth of field. The wider the aperture (low number, bigger hole, like f1.2) the blurrier the background will be, and the smaller the aperture (high number, small hole, f32) the sharper the background will be.  

In other words, if you are shooting landscapes, you would be better off setting a smaller aperture, like f16 or f22, in order to make sure that the entire scene you are capturing is sharp, whereas if you are shooting portraits, you should really set a wider aperture like f2.8, f3.5 or f4 to try and blur the background and lead the viewer’s eye straight to your subject. 

One thing to remember, however, is that zooming in and out with your lens, as well as the physical distance between you and your subject, also affects how blurry or sharp your background will be. The closer you are physically and by zooming in with your lens, the blurrier the background will be, and the further away you are physically and by zooming out, the sharper the background will be.  

A great way to see how apertures work is to click on this link to see how the aperture works on this canon exposure simulator, and to get to grips with exposure check out our Digital Photography workshops. Have fun!   

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Exhibition – SHADOWS IN PARADISE by MARIANNA ROTHEN

Tags: , , , , , , , , , Exhibition, Fine Art, Gallery, Light, MARIANNA ROTHEN, Museum, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography

The little Black Gallery is curating work by Canadian photographer and fashion model Marianna Rothen, her first solo exhibition in London, starting from 23 January – 24 February 2018.

According to a press release, the characters of Shadows in Paradise are portrayed by Rothen herself and by her models/muses/friends in photographs that were shot in Rothen’s home in upstate New York.

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Photography Tip: Improving your Composition

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Assignments, Composition, Creative, Design, Light, Nature, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Techniques, Tips, Travel

So you got your lovely new camera and you are off to take some amazing shots. By now, especially if you have done our level 1 course at LSP, using the camera in manual mode should be a cinch and you would have experimented with shutter speeds, apertures and ISO.

Last month’s photography tip was about the elements of design and how to use geometry, lines, textures and form to add more spice to your photography. But one of the fundamental parts of photography is composition, part of our Level 2 course.

Without getting too much in-depth, here are a few tips to improve your photos, as I was taught by my editors and colleagues through the years. Read More

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Photo Tip of the Month: Elements of Design

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Assignments, Blog, Composition, Creative, Design, Digital, Light, London, Newsletter, Photo, Photography, Settings, Techniques, Tips

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson – Magnum Photos

You will forgive us for repeatedly mentioning Henri Cartier-Bresson, but in this month’s photography tip, I can think of no one better than the great master himself when it comes to talking about elements of design.

Bresson said that the greatest joy for him while photographing was looking for Geometry. In other words he looked for structures, saying that it was a visual pleasure, an intellectual pleasure to put everything in the right place.

“It’s a recognition of an order that is in front of you,” he said.

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Understanding natural light

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Creative, Digital, Fine Art, Light, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Resources, Student, Techniques, Tips, Workshop

If you want to be a great cook, you need to know your ingredients, your spices and your seasoning. If we were to compare photography to cooking, then the spice of the art is in the word. PHOTOGRAPHY. Two Greek words Phos and grafo, light and to write. So photography (fotografia) is literally writing or painting with light.

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What you can do to protect your equipment

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Cameras, Digital, Equipment, News, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Technology, Tips, Travel

There really is no better feeling than getting yourself geared up to take off for your holidays with your camera. As photographers, a change of scenery and the opportunity to document the amazing world we live awakens the artist in us all.

But if we are not careful our well-earned trip could come at a cost. Camera manufacturers insist that our camera gear is “weather resistant”. And there’s the magic word. “Resistant”. But no camera or lens is truly weatherproof.

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Important points to consider when buying new equipment

Tags: , , , , , , , Cameras, Digital, Equipment, Focus, Love, Newsletter, Photo, Photography

One of the questions I receive more often when I answer e-mails for LSP is “What camera should I buy to attend your courses?”.

It is never an easy answer to give because it envolves several particularities and what is right for one might not be right for the other.

I will write about digital cameras only, but if you want to buy analogue, it should not be too different with few less things to worry about.

The first thing you need to define is your budget. Done that it is simpler to look at the options and choose the best one. That is the total budget and should include all essential accessories:

  • memory card
  • extra battery
  • UV filter for your lenses (check the diameter of the lens)

The second thing is to choose between cameras that have MANUAL Exposure Mode. While you might not want to use your camera in manual mode all the time, we expect you to use them manually as part of your course.

They can be:

  • APS Sensor DSLRs
    The most recommended cameras for beginners. They can be affordable and have the option to interchange lenses.
  • Mirrorless Interchangeable-Lens Compact (MILC)
  • Advanced Compacts
  • Super Zoom
  • Full Frame DSLRs
  • Medium Format Cameras

 

 

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Free eBook – Photography Tips & Assignments

Tags: , , , , , , , , Assignments, Blog, News, Newsletter, Photo, Photographer, Photography, Resources, Tips

In December last year we prepared an e-book with a selection of Photo Tips & Assignments that have been published on a monthly basis since 2012.

They have been selected from the best of our Newsletter, reviewed and updated and include some of the winning photographs as well.

Some of you contacted us to make it available in the blog as well, so here is the link for download:

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