CAPITAL IMAGE Winter 2015
A Publication of the Canberra Photographic Society
Image of the Night June 2015: "Spinebill in Grevillea" by Dave Bassett.
CONTENTS Winter 2015 3
Editorial (Happy 70th Birthday - CPS)
4
Out There 2015
The Canberra Photographic Society
5
Family Portraits (March - April)
aims to promote excellence in
11
Composition and Capture (April)
is published quarterly in electronic
photography as a recreational pursuit
14
Hedda Portfolio Competition (May)
form by the Canberra Photographic
and as a serious art form. The society
18
Altered Reality (May-June)
Society.
was formed in September 1945.
22
Moving Water (June - July)
Current and back issues are available.
Visitors are welcome.
28
Telling a Story with Pictures (July) with a note on Personal Projects
Contacts president@cpsaus.org
by Ian Marshall and Brian Rope
secretary@cpsaus.org
30
Bica Projected Image Portfolio Competition (August)
35
Mid-year Aggregate Competition Results
treasurer@cpsaus.org competitions@cpsaus.org communications@cpsaus.org enquiries@cpsaus.org webmaster@cpsaus.org committee@cpsaus.org membership@cpsaus.org For the latest program please visit our web site www.cpsaus.org and click on "Program with Themes" or "Calendar of Events."
35
A Grade
36
B Grade
37
External Competitions
by Helen McFadden 38
Purgatory in Paris or How Photography Kept Me Sane
by David Maish 42
African Safaris for Photographers
43
Best of the Blog
by Murray Foote
Capital Image
Enquiries communications@cpsaus.org The Editor Capital Image Canberra Photographic Society GPO Box 857 CANBERRA ACT 2001 Next edition: Spring 2015 due out November 2015
This magazine is copyright and may not be reproduced without the permission of the Canberra Photographic Society. Copyright for each image is retained by the photographer. 2
Editorial - 70th Birthday Special We are about to celebrate a significant milestone at the Canberra Photographic Society - our 70th birthday. Apparently we have been meeting on Tuesday evenings for the past 70 years (if the article from the Australian Photo-Review, 1945 is anything to go by)! If you are interested in our history, there are several relevant articles on our blog - see p 43 for links. Our main 70th Birthday celebration will be a dinner at the Hellenic Club on Tuesday 29 September starting at 6pm. Please put this date in your diaries and see the latest eNews for details about how to buy your tickets. Our exhibition "Out There" 2015 should also be a special occasion with a bumper show this year. The exhibition opening will be held on Friday 21st August at 6.15 pm. The exhibition will run from 20th to 30th August. See the "Out There" invitation (next page) for details.
Editor: Helen McFadden
We continue to add to our activities: there is now a "Personal Project" group for those who are interested in pursuing a long-term photographic goal. This ties in with our "Telling a Story with Pictures" theme. Ian Marshall and Brian Rope have provided some more information on p 28. I am thrilled to present articles that Capital Image readers have submitted on the theme of "how photography saved my life". In the previous edition Marwan El Hassan shared his story and in this edition David Maish describes how photography kept him sane when his wife was suddenly taken seriously ill while they were on holiday overseas. Many thanks to Marwan and David for sharing these inspirational experiences with us. Murray Foote's regular "News from the Ether" is now published via our blog. His regular Capital Image column now called "Best of the Blog" provides links to "News from the Ether" and other articles of potential interest from the CPS blog.
Assistant Editor: Lenuta Quraishi
As always, I am happy to hear from readers. If you have comments please email me at communications@cpsaus.org. If you have views on how you would like to see the CPS evolve please let us know at committee@cpsaus. org.
Announcement of the formation of the Canberra Photographic Society in the Australian Photo-Review, October 1945.
Helen McFadden Editor 3
4
Family Portraits (March - April)
Image of the Night April 2015: "Son" by Leo Sbirakos. 5
Our Theme for March (coordinated by Jim Mason) was "Family Portraits". We kicked off this theme with a combined excursion and social event. Former CPS membersTrish Grice and Richard Marris of RT Photography organised and hosted a family portrait session with volunteer models in the lovely setting of Lennox Gardens. Many thanks to the volunteers and to Trish and Richard for their time and efforts. This was followed by a family barbeque. Our workshop night featured a hands-on session with several members bringing in their own studio lighting set-ups. Members took it in turns to try out the lights and learn about the use of flash under the expert guidance of Jim Mason and Steven Shaw. The theme ended with the April Competition night where the Set Topic was "Family Portrait". There were 69 images entered in this competition (45 in A grade and 24 in B grade) of which 49 were projected images (71% of entries) and 20 were submitted as prints. Judge Andrew Sheargold provided expert comment on the images and selected "Son" by Leo Sbirakos (previous page) as the Image of the Night. Andrew Sheargold is a commercial photographer specialising in photographing people. His image "Master Chef" was a finalist in the National Photographic Portrait Prize 2010. Andrew was particularly impressed with Leo's image and felt that it would be at home on the pages of National Geographic. He awarded this image a score of 5. He also awarded Steven Shaw's image (below) a score of 5. Other high-scoring images (each with 4.5 points) are shown on the following pages.
"Human and Bird Families by the Lake" by Steven Shaw. 6
Other Set Topic entries that scored well were (clockwise from top left) "Kobi" by Dave Bassett, "Ron" by David Cox and "Old Dutch" by Sheila Lunter. 7
Clockwise from top left: "Art not Apart" by Brian Rope, "Tim and Ben" by Matt James and "Weather Horizon" by Cliff Samson were each awarded a score of 4.5 in the April competition.
8
"King Penguins, South Georgia" by Steven Shaw was awarded a score of 4.5 in the April competition, and is featured on the cover of an ebook on sale to raise funds for the extermination of rats on South Georgia. See http://photosafaris.com/Photosafaris/media/documents/South-Georgia-eBook.pdf
9
"Goreme Carpets" by Jan Kulikowski was awarded a score of 4.5 in the April competition. 10
Capture and Composition (April) The technically-based theme "Capture and Composition" was designed to provide an introduction to some basic photographic techniques for less experienced photographers and new members. Our activity night featured presentations by Phil McFadden, who spoke on the requirements of a good capture (harvesting the best possible data for image production) and Helen McFadden, who provided an introduction to the elements of composition. The workshop that followed was a hands-on session where attendees were taken through the steps required to set up a their cameras and tripods for landscape photography. The activity night and workshop sessions were open to all members and were recommended as essential preparation for those who signed up to attend the weekend workshop at Merimbula run by Phil McFadden with assistance from Helen McFadden and Ian Marshall. The weekend workshop was fully subscribed and several new members joined the event. Those who attended had opportunities to shoot coastal landscapes in the best light of early morning and evening gloaming.
Clockwise from above: Photographs taken on the Merimbula Coast Workshop by Marwan El Hassan, Cliff Samson, Ian Marshall and Marwan El Hassan.
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Clockwise from top left: Photographs taken on the Merimbula Coast Workshop by Neville Ford, Amina El Zein and Sarah Ausserlechner.
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Clockwise from top left: Photographs taken on the Merimbula Coast Workshop by Amina El Zein (above) and Neville Ford (right).
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Hedda Print Portfolio Competition In May we held our annual Hedda Morrison Print Portfolio Competition. We are grateful for the ongoing sponsorship of this competition by Ted's Cameras. The competition is named after Hedda Morrison, a noted photographer and late member of the Canberra Photographic Society. If you are curious about Hedda's legacy and role in the society, see an article written by Brian Rope on the CPS blog at https://canberraphotographicsociety.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/hedda-morrisons-extraordinary-journey. Judge Sean Davey, a freelance photographer who regularly teaches photography at PhotoAccess, spent time commenting on each portfolio and asked each author to talk about their work, why they had made it and what it meant to them. This made for an interesting and informative evening.
Matt James' Winning Portfolio " Ginkaku-ji Rainstorm" is shown on this and the following page.
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Matt James described how he had arrived at this notable tourist spot in Kyoto, Japan when it was pouring with rain. He had looked for a different, more intimate way to photograph this much-photographed location and so focussed on the textures created by the falling raindrops.
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Dave Bassett was a runner-up with this portfolio of "Feathered Portraits". 16
Helen McFadden's "Natural Photocollage," a series of portraits derived from old magazines pasted on the walls of an historic slab hut, was also a runner-up.
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Altered Reality (May) by Murray Foote So, what constitutes Altered Reality? This is not entirely obvious because almost all photographs involve altering reality to a greater or lesser extent. Possibly the only exception is making a photographic facsimile of a two-dimensional object under strictly colour-managed conditions. What some may term “realistic” photographs merely seem plausible to our expectations. So I suggest that altered reality images are those that defy our normal expectations of reality. According to the Photographic Society of America, for this to be the case, “the image must obviously display a change in natural colour, form, shape, or any combination of these three”. Potentially a “normal” image could constitute altered reality if it is sufficiently disconnected from its origins and has something of a surreal edge. Methods, then, for either film or digital photography, may include generating abstractions, sandwiching layers and compositing as well as applying effects such as posterisation, bas relief, sabattier effect, solarisation, infrared and the use of apps, filters or blending modes in photoediting software. The techniques of HDR (high dynamic range) photomanipulation are, on their own, not usually considered to constitute "altered reality" in many international competitions. Inherent in the term "altered reality" is a promise of creativity. It helps to have a great image to start with and technique by itself is not sufficient. Merely using a recipe or a preset is likely to lead to a cliché unless it is done with perception and finesse and combined with other methods as appropriate. One thing you will not find in Lightroom, Photoshop or your camera is a [Max Ernst] button so you have to work it out yourself. In doing so, there is also no ban on subtlety. On the Activity Night we had presentations by Brian Rope, Leo Sbirakos and Murray Foote. • Brian showed how you can quickly get remarkable images from a mobile phone and demonstrated the use of many apps, either on their own or in concert with each other (top images). • Leo explored the methods and possibilities of compositing, mainly using Photoshop, and showing how you can subtlely modify or combine images in a seamless manner to create either surreal images or images that look as though they may be real but you can’t quite be sure (middle images). • Murray showed how you can create infrared images using either an R72 filter or a converted camera and how to undertake colour swaps and manipulations in Lightroom and Photoshop (bottom images). Judging by the degree of participation in the topic on the next Competition Night, the presentations appear to have sparked the imagination of several members. For more information on Murray’s and Leo’s presentations, see the 2015 Themes and Workshops thread in the CPS Forum (http://cpsaus.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=375). An excursion to the Questacon exhibition "Perception Deception" rounded out the theme and introduced attendees to some of the factors that influence how we see and perceive the world. 18
The judge of the June competition (Set Topic Altered Reality) was Michael Mulrine, who brings a wealth of experience to his appreciation of images. Michael was a leading photojournalist and, as a photographer, has known and photographed four Australian prime ministers and many other Australian politicians as well as overseas dignitaries, including former UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson, former Ethiopian President Haile Selassie and former Prime Minister Sato of Japan. These days Michael mostly photographs landscapes and portraits - and anything else that presents an opportunity to capture light falling on a form. At the June competition there were 62 entries (46 A grade and 16 B grade,) of which 47 were projected images (76% of entries) and 15 were submitted as prints. Michael selected "Spinebill in Grevillea" as Image of the Night (see cover). Three other images were awarded a score of 5. All these images were from the "Open" category. Four of the images awarded a score of 4.5 were in the "Set Topic" section and 7 were "Open" entries.
Clockwise from top left: "South Durras" by Tony McCormack (5), "Lake George Dawn" by Graeme Watson (4.5), "Golden Bay" by Jan Kulikowski (4.5) and "First Light on Eden Baths" by Cliff Samson (4.5) scored well in the June competition. 19
Clockwise from top left: "Burmese Girl" by Jenny Varela (4.5), "Generations" by Dave Bassett (5), "Gyr Falcon" by Helen McFadden (5) and "Wheel-chair racer" by Michael Taylor were entered in the Open category in the June competition. 20
Clockwise from top left: "The Devil in Me" by Peter Powell, "The Long Road" by Leo Sbirakos, "Alone" by Leo Sbirakos and "Love of Music" by Peter Powell showed how "Altered Reality" can be applied. All scored 4.5 in the June competition. 21
Moving Water (June) by Dave Bassett The highlight of this theme was the well-attended excursion to Gibraltar falls. This was a great venue for moving water and everyone took a large number of photos. After photographing the falls we adjourned for lunch and discussions at the Moon Rock Cafe at the Tidbinbilla Tracking station. On the activity night Murray Foote and Dave Bassett presented several images relating to the theme and discussed techniques for photographing moving water in different situations. The evening went well and provided attendees with some ideas that they were able to implement at the excursion. Murray's assistance on the activity night was very much appreciated. The July competition, where the Set Topic was "Moving Water," received 68 enties (46 A grade and 22 B grade) of which 51 (75%) were submitted as projected images and 17 as prints. Karleen Minney, Photographic Editor with the Canberra Times, returned after her well-received presentation in February to act as judge. She chose two images from the "Set Topic" category as Images of the Night. Congratulations to Leisa Condie and Julie Garran.
"Water/Ice" by Leisa Condie was one of the Images of the Night in the Set Topic "Moving Water" in the July competition.
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"Summer" by Julie Garran was one of the Images of the Night in the Set Topic "Moving Water" in the July competition. Julie also won 1st Place - Outstanding Achievement in the Children of the World (Amateur) Category in the 8th Annual International Color Awards (www.colorawards.com). 23
Clockwise from left: "Oh No! Not my Lens" by Peter Powell, "Goรฐafoss" by Murray Foote, "Hinlopen Reflections" by Helen McFadden and "Motion" by Steven Shaw scored well in the July competition.
24
Clockwise from left: "Car Park Coffee" by Graeme Watson, "Diving" by Michael Taylor, "Mosque" by Jan Kulikowski and "Perth Sunrise" by Jim McKenna scored well in the July competition. 25
Clockwise from left: "Kissing Kangaroos" by David Flannery, "Fake Humming Bird" by Dave Bassett, "Lake George Dawn" by Graeme Watson and "Peregrine in Flight" by Helen McFadden scored 4.5 in the July competition. 26
Clockwise from left: "Lighthouse" by Leo Sbirakos, "Iceberg" by Brian Jones and "Rough Morning" by Gordon Gullock scored 4.5 in the July competition. Gordon submitted this image for comment in Photo Review and won an Olympus OMD camera valued at $1599. The judge's comments on his image can be seen at http:// www.photoreview.com.au/ competitions/ image-review/ rough-morning. Congratulations Gordon.
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Telling a Story with Pictures (July) by Ian Marshall and Brian Rope Sometimes single-image competitions narrow our vision and we respond by aiming to make spectacular single images. This is a completely valid approach but there may be another way to look at your photography and develop a body of work or collection of images that goes a bit further and tells a story.
Steve Doszpot presents “A Long Journey from Budapest to Canberra” A Digital Family History by Steve Doszpot, about his family’s escape from (then Communist) Hungary in 1957. It was produced in October 2007 as part of the Tuggeranong Arts Centre “In First Person - Digital Storytelling Initiative.” http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=O7v2XNVun8w
The activity night for this theme saw Steve Doszpot talk about how he had made a short video that told the story of his family's flight from Hungary to Australia in the 1950s. This video, constructed from family photographs and newsreel footage, may be seen on Youtube (link in caption left). At the workshop, members brought in work-in-progress and sought advice on potential entries into the upcoming Bica Projected Image Porfolio Competition - an opportunity to work with a set of 4 to 6 images to tell a story or convey a message. At an excursion to the National Library's "Keepsakes: Australian and the Great War" exhibition, library volunteers gave generously of their time to show members some of the library's treasures that reflect the experiences of that war.
Personal Projects (from Brian Rope's article in f11 magazine)
An image from “A Long Journey from Budapest to Canberra” A Digital Family History by Steve Doszpot.
A recent introduction to our program that ties in with the story-telling theme is the instigation of a "Personal Projects" group. This group has been led by Ian Marshall. Members of the group have undertaken to work towards a goal and get together every so often to talk about their progress and to share results. They will probably have an opportunity to exhibit the results of this work later in the year. Before the first meeting of the Personal Project Group, Ian gave participants a suggested outline of a plan. He suggested that the first step is to write down what you are going to seek to achieve – is there a theme, idea or something to explore that motivates your project? He said: "Ask yourself what is the new focus you want to explore, whether there is a method or process that will inform or constrain your work and whether you will need specific resources or assistance. In other words, don’t embark on the project without thinking it through. Also, think about how you might present the results of your project at its conclusion." Members of the group who have taken the challenge have come up with quite diverse projects. One person who has always loved the great masters of portraiture, such as Karsh, has embarked on his own series of portraits of people trying to reproduce the light in some of Karsh’s images. Another is looking at creating a group of images combined 28
with written words. This project is a personal response to cancer survival and the end product will be shared with oncology ward patients. A third is going to photograph each type of rose in Australia’s National Rose Gardens, matching his new images to old ones of them and to official listings of them. Yet another person plans to use her images to create a children’s book that grandparents might buy for their grandchildren. Proceeds from sales will raise funds for a charity. I can’t wait to see the results of all the personal projects, including mine!
Some things to think about if you want to embark on a digital story-telling project (Ian Marshall) Photographs can record something about a time and place that may never be seen again or they may become a tool to explore. 1.
Where to start – have something to say! It is obvious, but the starting point can present itself in many ways: an idea to explore; a concept to portray; some place or event limited by time and space. A key thing is to keep the scope of the project to one that you can manage, then get out and explore it with your camera. Be conscious that you are on a journey of discovery, so don’t assume that you have all the answers with a few photographs – push yourself.
2.
When you have your collection of photographs, ask yourself two questions:
What have I seen?
How did I see it?
These two questions sound superficially similar but the first one is about discovery: as you explored what did you find? You know how to use your camera, almost instinctively, so what has your photography revealed? The second is a question of aesthetic – how have I portrayed what I have seen? Is my style revealed in immediacy or distance? Is it about shape or colour or movement or texture? Do the people tell the story, or is it the environment or the context? Is it about fear or peace? 3.
The answers to the two questions above lead to the critically important task of editing. Your answer will have provided a clearer view so that you can cull, sort and cut your many photographs to a series in which each photograph contributes to what you are saying about your subject. You may leave out some very good photographs in this process because it isn’t about your hero shots – it is about all of the photographs working together to suit your narrative or story. Your editing choices may vary for different presentations.
4.
Presentation. You may choose one or multiple forms for presentation. Exhibition, book, audio visual, website, calendar, pop up gallery, guerrilla exhibition, ebook. And others: all present their own challenges with practical and aesthetic solutions.
5.
Good Luck!
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Bica Projected Image Portfolio Competition Experienced photographer Bob Miller has been judging Canberra Photographic Society competitions for many years. This year we welcomed him as expert judge of the year's Bica Projected Image Portfolio competition. Bob has photographed across many genres but has recently been concentrating on his archaeological photography holding an exhibition "Beyond the Expected" - an investigation of digital photography and archaeology for Doctor of Philosophy in Communication - Creative Work. We thank Bica Photographics for their ongoing sponsorship of this competition. Bob went through all the entered portfolios and made constructive comment about each. He spoke about how there are several ways to construct a portfolio - as a sequence, as the development of an idea or as a collection of images that work together to tell a bigger story than each image would on its own. He commended the high standard of entries and said that there were several worthy of recognition but only three awards. He selected Judy Parker's "Butt Out" as the winning portfolio with Jenny Varela's "Burmese Children" and Brian Jones' "Different Worlds" as runners up.
Winner: Judy Parker
1. . . ashes to ashes . . .
2. . . gloom and doom . . .
A husk-like butt, dropped on a matching ash-coloured pavement, with a suggested death reference.
A ‘drowned’ butt on a rain-soaked pavement, suggesting the depression of addiction.
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3. . . no smoke without fire . . .
4. . . furtive . . .
A discarded butt, combined with the smoke and fire echo in a tradesman’s spray-canned figures and numbers on a Sydney city pavement, suggesting the concept of risk.
A butt found carefully placed in a mortar joint, shoulder-high, in a wall at Central Railway Station: a smoking habit often now increasingly secretive.
Butt Out: environmental portraits of a dying habit - Artist's Statement by Judy Parker This portfolio is not about the joys of smoking. When I was a teenager, both my parents smoked quite heavily. A smoky room or car was normal for them, me and my sisters. My parents were not evil. Smoking in the 50s and 60s was a popular and socially approved habit. On a family holiday, well out of the reach of shops, I once saw my father, desperate for a cigarette, resort to using small squares of newspaper (complete with printer’s ink) to wrap his ‘roll your own’ tobacco when his cigarette papers ran out. I was old enough to recognise that this did not seem right. I left home while still 15 to study in Sydney for four years. Mum and Dad both gave up smoking a decade or so later but Dad had emphysema when he died. My younger sisters all took up smoking for many years. The one who kept up the habit for longest now has severe emphysema and other major respiratory problems, although she no longer smokes, for obvious reasons. I must have left the smoking environment at just the right age because, when I was 16, I smoked two whole cigarettes while on an outing with friends and, having proved I was cool, inhaling and exhaling without coughing (I knew exactly what to do from years of observation), I never felt any inclination to smoke again. Clearly, these images are not made in praise of such a sad, unhealthy and unattractive habit. Nor are they concerned with celebrating a visual aesthetic. Instead, they are my personal response to observed manifestations of this habit, photographed as found and without manipulation, because of the way the butts and their backgrounds combined to suggest to me a range of associations and interpretations. I added brief captions, based on fragments of well-known expressions, to reinforce my interpretations and help communicate their context. 31
5. . . tarred. . . and feathered?
6. . . out damned spot . . .
A butt dropped on fractured glass ceiling tiles above a storage basement at a Central Railway bus stop, suggesting visual references to both tar build-up in the lungs and social disapproval.
An emphatically extinguished cigarette butt found on a broken pavement suggesting a larger message about the habit itself.
Runner-up: Brian Jones Different Worlds - Artist's Statement by Brian Jones This series follows the venerable photographic tradition of documenting life in the world around us. I take particular delight in observing the little details that hint at life in the worlds that these kids inhabit – worlds that range from poverty to affluence. For instance, the children in Rajasthan dressed in rags but wearing silver jewellery, or the children in Buenos Aires, apparently well looked after (clean clothes and an apple), yet beggars. The images are candid shots where, hopefully, the spontaneity of the childrens’ expressions shines through. Those expressions range from simple joy to deep ambiguity that invites interpretation by the viewer. I hope that the detail revealed and the humanity expressed in the faces of the children prompts the viewer to wonder about the stories behind the images. The series also invites the viewer to think about the disparities between the different worlds shown in these cameos. 32
Runner-up: Brian Jones
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Runner-up: Jenny Varela
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Aggregate Competition: Mid-year results (A grade) Photographer
Aggregate Score
Average Score
Graeme Watson
84
8.4
Leo Sbirakos
83
8.3
Dave Bassett
82
8.2
Helen McFadden
77
7.7
Michael Taylor
77
7.7
Julie Garran
76
7.6
Brian Jones
74
7.4
Jan Kulikowski
73
7.3
Leisa Condie
70
7.0
David Flannery
69
6.9
Murray Foote
69
6.9
Judy Parker
68
6.8
Robert Douglas
67
6.7
Peter Powell
65
8.1
Sheila Lunter
64
6.4
David Maish
63
6.3
Brian Rope
61
6.1
Jim McKenna
61
6.8
Matt James
61
7.6
Steven Shaw
60
7.5
Alan Charlton
58
5.8
Margaret Leggoe
58
7.3
AndrĂŠe Lawrey
47
5.9
Ian Skinner
28
4.7
Ian Marshall
23
5.8
Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov
19
4.8
Ken Thomsen
16
8.0
Susan Hendenson
14
7.0
Alan Pendergast
12
6.0
Bill Laurie
6
3.0
35
Aggregate Competition: Mid-year results (B grade) Photographer
Aggregate Score
Average Score
Marwan El Hassan
73
7.3
Gordon Gullock
63
6.3
Jenny Varela
62
7.8
Cliff Samson
61
7.6
Lenuta Quraishi
59
5.9
Sarah Ausserlechner
59
5.9
Tony McCormack
54
6.8
Geng (Greg) Wei
40
6.7
Ulrike Nedomlel
40
6.7
Sally Field-Leal
33
5.5
Craig Burns
30
7.5
Tom de Jongh
29
7.3
Jagdish Wable
21
5.3
David Cox
17
8.5
Amina El-Zein
16
8.0
Darrell Wood
14
7.0
Janet Milford
12
6.0
Laura Gilbert
4
4.0 36
External Competitions by Helen McFadden I encourage all members to consider entering competitions. Although the financial rewards may be modest or even negative (you pay to enter), it is a great confidence-booster to receive recognition from external judges. The CPS recognises success in external competitions when awarding its annual "Photographer of the Year" award. There are many competitions around so look for one that suits you. Agricultural shows and competitions run by newspapers and magazines can be a good place to start . Try and select a competition that aligns with your type and genre of photography. Competitions may receive lots of entries but those that do also usually have lots of categories and bestow quite a few awards. In competitions with themes or categories you will be comparing your image with others in a similar genre so it is not a question of landscapes versus people as it is in the CPS competitions. It can also be helpful to enter competitions that give scores (such as the Better Photography Magazine Photograph of the Year competition) or feedback (on request from the International Garden Photographer of the Year (IGPOTY)). This means that even if you don't win, you can still see how your images stack up against others and gain an understanding of what appeals to judges. Gordon Gullock recently won a camera with his image "Rough Morning" (p 27) entered into the Photo Review. Brian Jones and Julie Garran have been successful recently in international competitions such as the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for women photographers, the International Color Awards, the Pollux Awards and the World Wildlife Photographer of the Year Award. As mentioned on p 22, Julie Garran won 1st Place - Outstanding Achievement in the Children of the World (Amateur) Category in the 8th Annual International Color Awards. This competition received 7,358 entries from 79 countries and conferred 541 title awards and 750 nominees in 33 categories. This means that the top 10 percent of entries will receive a nominee award. Winning a category is a significant achievement. Clockwise from top left: "Monkeys captured in the forest in Kalimantan, Borneo, now for sale as pets in Denpasar, Bali" by Julie Garran and "121 Marcus Clarke Street" by Brian Jones received awards in recent international competitions (for details see text).
Julie also won the Animals and Wildlife category of the 7th Julia Margaret Cameron (JMC) Award (image top left) and received several other awards in this competition and the International Color Awards. Brian Jones was Runner-up in four different categories of the 7th Pollux awards (image bottom left) and has four entries in the final rounds of the 51st World Wildlife Photographer of the Year as well as several other awards. I was a runner up in the "People Culture and Daily Life" category of the 7th JMC (image right) and received several nominee and finalist awards in this competition and in the International Color Awards.
"Stone Town Traders" by Helen McFadden was recognised in the Julia Margaret Cameron Award (for details see text).
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Purgatory in Paris or How Photography Kept Me Sane by David Maish You might think that the title for this article is somewhat unusual but as you read on hopefully you will see the significance in the title and how my interest in photography made purgatory bearable. Possibly it’s a misuse of the word "purgatory" but the alliteration is great.
So it became a case of worrying about the bad stuff when it happened. On the second day, or was it the third, when I reached where Uta was I was told to go to the waiting room on the 3rd floor and wait for the doctor. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind and I started preparing myself for the worst. My feelings slumped when two doctors walked in and I expected dire news. Fortunately it wasn’t as I'd feared. I was told that Uta was being moved to the ICU next door to the surgical ward where she had been and was told about the visiting times and so on.
But I digress. Let’s go to the 24th June 2014, a warm summer evening in Paris. My wife Uta and I had just arrived in Paris by train to begin a final 6-day visit to Paris catching up on what we had not seen in our previous stops in this wonderful city. Following this we were to fly out and have 4 nights in Singapore before returning to Australia on 6 July. I’ll cut a long story short by saying my wife suffered a cranial aneurysm as we were about to enter the apartment we had rented for these final days in Paris. Needless to say it was a somewhat trying time but looking on the bright side I remembered that 24 hours earlier we had been on a walk in the Swiss Alps near Murren without immediate access to medical attention.
Street Photography: Paris Artist by the Seine
I’ll never forget the ambulance ride to the hospital as long as I live - peak hour traffic in Paris along one of the roads beside the Seine, diving down the wrong side of the road, siren blaring with oncoming traffic parting as the Red Sea allegedly did for Moses.
I was joined by both my grown up sons who arrived to support their father. Although their father didn’t realise it at the time, he probably needed it. I also caught up with some friends from Canberra, who were visiting Paris and had heard through a rather wide grapevine of the situation, as well an old friend who now lives in Queensland. It was great to have the company at this time but all good things come to an end. One son headed back to his home in Vancouver on about 8 July, the other son left on 13 July and my friends from Aranda on the 15th or 16th. So there I was stranded in Paris, with my wife in an induced coma, for who knows how long, not knowing what the outcome was going to be until the doctors reduced sedation to bring her around. Then there was a limit of two one-hour windows for visiting each day, so what could I do to fill in time? What could I do to keep myself occupied and stop thinking that I might be returning to Australia alone. I did not know what to expect each time I visited the hospital. In fact it was quite stressful and I was grateful that my sons had come over to Paris to give support. The Consular staff at the Australian Embassy was excellent too, allowing me access to phones and computer facilities etc.
Each visit to the hospital in the first week was hell. I didn’t know what I would find when I arrived there. The walk from the metro station was always consumed with dire thoughts that filled me with trepidation the closer I got the hospital. It was then I decided to stop thinking of the worst and take each thing as it happened: thinking ahead and second guessing what would happen could only lead me to the darkest depths. Street Photography: Mother and Son - Luxembourg gardens
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What could I do to fill in time?
It contained reproductions of around 200 Atget images as well as detailing where the photographs had been taken. In my mind I knew I had found something that would give me something to focus on during my solo period in Paris. So, armed with a copy of the tourist map I obtained from the hotel where I was staying, I began marking the locations where the photos were taken . On the days I would go “Atgeting” armed with my camera, map and my book I would take the Metro to the appropriate area and spend the rest of my time on foot seeking out these places to rephotograph.
This is where I was glad I had rekindled my interest in photography a few years ago. About 18 months earlier I had travelled to Sydney for the day to take in an exhibition of Eugene Atget photographs at the Sydney Art Gallery. Actually in preparation for our trip I had printed off some of his images from the web in anticipation of the fact that if I came across any of the places in our wanderings around Paris I would attempt to rephotograph them. For those of you who aren't familiar with Atget here is the first paragraph from the Wikipedia entry about him: “Eugène Atget (French: 12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French flâneur and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. Most of his photographs were first published by Berenice Abbott after his death. An inspiration for the surrealists and other artists, his genius was only recognized by a handful of young artists in the last two years of his life, and he did not live to see the wide acclaim his work would eventually receive.”
Street Photography: Some interesting street murals in the 5th District
As I travelled through Paris rephotographing Atget images, I kept seeing places that he hadn’t photographed, or rather that I didn’t have his images for, but that seemed to me to be also rich with the feeling of his work. I photographed many of those places where I felt Atget’s spirit. I don’t claim to have been channeling Atget or that Atget would have photographed those places had he seen them. I was walking around Paris “in Atget’s shoes”and they took me to many interesting places. Not only did I concentrate on Atget rephotographs but I also branched into an area of photography that has always left me feeling uncomfortable: Street Photography. I have always, rightly or wrongly, felt that most street photography is an invasion of privacy, especially if there is a person involved who doesn’t know they are being photographed. It is surprising that the more you do of this genre the easier it gets in this regard, which may be evident in some of the examples in this article.
I’ll leave the reader to research him further. It is well worth it as he has left a wonderful legacy of images from in and around Paris. He spurned such modern things as the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower and concentrated on the old Paris before it was redeveloped into oblivion. During my wanderings around Paris I found a shop on the Left Bank, near the apartment where my wife had collapsed, which had written on the window in English in large letters, “READ PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS”. Obviously having nothing better to do I entered the shop, which had an amazing collection of photographic images for sale as well as a large table near the back with multiple copies of numerous books on photography. I investigated these closer and found several books featuring Atget’s work. I chose one that for practical reasons was not too heavy and for financial reasons not too expensive. It turned out to be the best 29 Euros I have ever spent.
Sean Davey, the recent judge of Ted’s Hedda Morrison Printed Portfolio competition, made mention of his experiences of the therapeutic benefits of photography. I spoke with him at the end of the evening relating my experience in Paris and he recounted his experience from a time when his mother was gravely ill in hospital. We both agreed that indeed photography provided a safety valve and method for distracting one from the harsh realities of the circumstances we were in and it placed us better mentally to deal with the circumstances at the time. Maybe not Atget’s style but hopefully a non-clichéd photo of the Eiffel Tower
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I can only concur with these sentiments. During my timeof-trial in Paris photography gave me a focus-point to enable me to fill in time constructively. Atget gave me a reference point to fine-tune that focus. I photographed more than Atget rephotgraphs although I admit, looking back at my images, Atget had more than a minor influence on most of them. I also feel that the images I took during this time in Paris may be some of the best I may have ever taken but then that probably wouldn’t be hard starting at such a low baseline! Seriously, I am unsure whether I will be able to take such photographs again. I have shown a few of my rephotographs here compared with the originals. If you are interested, there are more on my Flickr page: h t t p s : / / w w w . f l i c k r. c o m / p h o t o s / d a v i d m a i s h / sets/72157649572905361 and on a Eugène Atget page on my Facebook page: h t t p s : / / w w w. f a c e b o o k . c o m / p a g e s / E u g e n e - A tget/351473441682797 Dare I sayit: I look back on my enforced eight and a half weeks in Paris with bittersweet memories.
Street Photography: Above - A wedding and photographer by the Seine, Right - The Grand Cascade at Parc St Cloud. Captured in colour. The sepia and vignette added post production.
Bitter because of the reason I was there and sweet for the photographic opportunities the enforced stay afforded me. Then there are the friendships I formed with the staff of the Bistro I ate at regularly and the staff of the hotel I stayed in. Memories of that aspect of my stay are probably best remembered with a discussion over a nice glass of French red.
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Atget Rephotographed - some examples
A corner building on the Rue de Seine in the 6th District
This is the Port St Dennis in the 10th District On the Isle St Louis the vehicle is in the perfect spot - I couldn't have planned it better had I tried! 41
African Safari Opportunities for Photographers
CPS member Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov organises regular photographic safaris (Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda) on a share-costs basis. Details of his upcoming trips are on his website http://www.vr-kphoto.com/safari-2015.html If you are interested in joining in, contact Vladimir on 0407 927 773, talk to him at a CPS meeting or contact him through his website http://www.vr-kphoto.com/contact.html. If you are interested in a shared trip to South Africa and/or Namibia in 2016 or 2017, see Helen McFadden to express interest. Nothing is planned yet, but this could change if there is interest.
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Best of the Blog by Murray Foote
The Canberra Photographic Society blog has been established as a platform for information exchange. This also means that you don't have to wait for the next edition of Capital Image before finding out the latest "News from the Ether". You can get to the blog by clicking the "BLOG" button on the home page of the CPS website www.cpsaus.org, or directly by clicking https://canberraphotographicsociety.wordpress.com. You might like to sign up to follow the blog and then you will receive email notification of new articles. News from the Ether articles by Murray Foote on the Blog: •
Recent articles from the Web (April - July 2015)
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Improved Nikon Repair Service
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Release of Lightroom 6 and Lightroom CC
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Photoshop and Lightroom Updates
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FastRaw Viewer
A short article by Murray Foote: •
“What is the best camera for landscape and wildlife photography?”
There are also the following articles that may be of interest to readers of Capital Image: •
"Elements of Composition (for Landscape Photography)" by Helen McFadden
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"Do I really need a tripod?" by Helen McFadden
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"Clubmen Characters" by Brian Rope
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"Hedda Morrison's Extraordinary Journey" by Brian Rope
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"Inspiration: Martin Chambi" by Sheila Lunter.
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