The International Photography Awards would like to share with you, an opportunity to participate in 30th Annual Spring Photography Contest–for more information please visit: http://PFMagazine.com/IPA/Contest.aspx

XTO IMAGE AWARDS – Call for Entries

Calling all photographers and illustrators inspired by the human form to submit their work to the Xto Image Awards. The final deadline is March 1, 2010.

Prizes: $2000-Grand Prize Winner and $1000-Runner-Up; An exhibit in Los Angeles for the top two winners of each category.

The exhibit will be April 1-7, 2010 at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica, CA. The winners celebration will be held April 3, 2010, 7pm-10pm in conjunction with MOPLA. Looking forward to seeing you there!!

www.x.to

Julia © Hans van der Kamp

Nude photography is the ultimate expression of you as an individual and your connection to the world. Nude photography simply gets to the essence of the person. There is little to hide but a lot can be said or represented about a person, their beliefs, beauty, individuality, togetherness and expressions. A professional photographer will help you express sensuality, sensitivity, compassion and excitement, desires, innocence, appreciation of skin and celebration of self.

These days, expert nude photographers can make the experience very rewarding, and in some cases, quite spiritual even. Nude photography sessions are exciting, sensitive, intimate, personal and totally individual and unique. Every person is treated individually to produce the type of imagery that they like or envisage for themselves. Images can be artistic, sensual, sexy, stylish, natural, highlighting your best features and downplaying any less flattering attributes. The session should be enjoyable and fun. The idea is to have fun and express yourself and be surprised at the extraordinary results that can be achieved. In nude photography it is important to be made to feel at ease and relaxed. The session is not about the photographer, but about the individual or the individuals concerned.

Its important that the studio of your choice is fully equipped with the latest technology. High quality digital equipment will ensure high definition images. Also, make sure the studio environments are fresh, clean and welcoming. Theres no reason you shouldnt be made to feel welcome and be treated to a special experience by friendly staff.

A professional nude photographer will make you feel relaxed and comfortable with yourself and your session. Making you feel comfortable and relaxed is the most important element and is important in creating timeless imagery. They should focus all their attention on your experience so that they can create the right mood and atmosphere that promotes outstanding photography.

Nude photography can also be enhanced with special props and accessories; something that can represent your individuality and uniqueness. As nude photography can already be very flattering, props should only be added if they do something to enhance your body, attitude or style. Sometimes the minimalist approach offers the greatest opportunity for uniqueness.

Along the same lines as props, your photographer (or you) may choose to capture your unique features such as skin art, tattoos, piercings – all which accentuate and adorn a persons skin. Its important that your photographer understands and appreciates your preferences and use all your unique features to create a most individual work of art.

Posing, placing and positioning for nude photography is very important as is image design and style. Its essential that your choice of photographer is well trained to allow this type of posing to occur naturally and capture these important attributes in a spontaneous and uninhibited way. Nude photography should end in wonderful pieces of timeless art for your pleasure and enjoyment.

Framing and composing images is also very important. The choice of settings and backgrounds should benefit and highlight your personality and uniqueness. Many photographers have a range of studio backgrounds, however often the simple backgrounds such as basic black or white are most popular.

Lighting is also essential when it comes to nude photography. The correct lighting can emphasize features and bring out the best in you. Studio lighting is totally controllable to highlight or neutralize areas as required to ensure superb creative imagery.

Spontaneity, mood and feelings are what nude photography is all about. Make sure you find a photographer that creates the mood and brings out the feelings that will become timeless memories forever.

Author: Vittorio Natoli

The Worldwide Photography Gala Awards ( WPGA) open a Juried competition for professional and non professional photographers worldwide: The Robert Cornelius Portrait Award. The theme is Portrait in its broader sense (images may be submitted in eight different categories) and the photographs will be juried by Stephen Perloff. The winning images will be featured in The Photo Review, and published in the 2011 Robert Cornelius Portrait Award Calendar. The Robert Cornelius Portrait Award will consist in a cash prize of US$ 1,000, and the winners of each category will receive a cash prize of US$ 300.

Fifty selected images will be part of an itinerant exhibition during 2011 starting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then in Europe and US. As in other contests organized by WPGA who partner with Save the Children, a portion of its revenue (entry fees and sales of works in exhibitions) will be donated to that humanitarian organization.

WPGA invites photographers working in all mediums, styles and schools of thought. Traditional, contemporary, avant-garde, creative and experimental works that include old and new processes, mixed techniques, and challenging personal, emotional or political statements are welcome to The Robert Cornelius Award.

Click here to submit

LACDA: The majority of work by Sally Dennison (a native New Yorker) is self-portraiture without the intent to accurately photograph herself, but rather to showcase gender identity issues using herself as a blank canvas that can transmogrify in many subtle directions. She works with digital manipulation with regards to challenging aesthetic paradigms and rejecting imposed standards of beauty for art as well as personal appearance. The blend between the fabric of her garments and the fabric of her surroundings indicates a similar blend between inner and outer ‘cultural fabric’ that can serve to define us as people. This blend and the deadpan poses in these works also offers a very visually striking series by an artist exhibiting giftedness of a high caliber.

In the artist’s words:
“The series ‘One and the Same’ was started in graduate school and is an ongoing project. Shooting the photographs has proven much easier than manipulating them and turning them into what I envision. A wig and myself are the essential ingredients, but they are transformed in post-production into something and someone else. I draw from that which shapes our aesthetic values. We ultimately are the ones to define our aesthetic values and I find it fascinating the intangible ideals we (mostly women) set for ourselves. I use “self-portraits” because I can identify so closely to the topic of beauty ideals, which has become so prevalent. As a young woman, I am constantly aware of my own image and have at one time or another believed and reinforced the idea that there is an attainable physical ideal, if you suffer enough for it.

This series is a rejection of cultural ideals that surround me on a daily basis. As much as it is concerned with aesthetic values this series deals heavily with digital manipulation. It has come to be that we have no idea when an image has been “photoshopped” and so we assume humans have the capability to be flawless. Each of the images is worked with through Photoshop so that every detail of my face and body has been restructured. Each of my “characters” or “identities” have lingering features in common, but it is only noticeable when viewed as a group.”

http://lacda.com/exhibits/Sally_Dennison.html

Even though Nikon entered the camera world by 1948, today its digital cameras are well known everywhere. The company started small but always dreamed big. Here is a historical review of Nikon.

Nikon was one of the late starters in the camera world. It established itself after the end of the World War II with the launch of the Nikon I in the year 1948. It took Nikon three years to develop this camera. From its launch, the Nikon I had a lot of problems. This was rectified by the company and another model called the Nikon M was introduced in 1949 which was well accepted by the market.

During the 1950′s, Leica (a German make) had the best 35 mm rangefinder cameras. Nikon wanted to surpass Leica, and its pursuit, it came up with the Nikon SP in 1957. This was considered to be one of the best Nikon cameras available at that time.

After this, Nikon continued to innovate and launched the Nikon F single lens reflex (SLR) camera in 1959. The Nikon F set the industry standard for SLR’s and became the hot favorite of photo journalists and professional photographers at that time. With the Nikon F, Nikon managed to surpass Leica and became the market leader in this category.

Then, in the year 1980, Nikon hit another milestone. It designed the Nikon F3 which was to be used by NASA astronauts in outer space expeditions. This camera needed to be big enough so that astronauts wearing bulky gloves could easily handle it and at the same time it had to be strong enough to work perfectly in zero gravity situations and withstand the strong rays of the Sun. NASA was very happy with the job done by Nikon and it got more cameras designed for itself in the coming years from the company.

During the 1990s, Nikon continued to innovate by bringing out better and more advanced SLR cameras. It came up with the NIKONOS RS, the world’s first underwater auto focus SLR camera in the year 1992. The company also joined hands with Fuji Films and introduced the E2/E2S digital still cameras in 1995. As far as digital cameras were concerned, Nikon entered the digital arena in the year 1997 with the launch of its first digital camera, the COOLPIX100.

Today, the company has expanded itself further, and even opened factories in distant lands such as Poland and the Netherlands. It has entered new areas such as binoculars and telescopes and eyewear. Nikon is also considered to be one of the good makes as far as digital cameras are concerned. Over its 50 year history, Nikon has done a fascinating task of constantly innovating itself and bringing about new technologies in the market.

Author: Kevin Rockwell

Leica IIIf

It is over seventy years since the first Leica was manufactured by Ernst Leitz in Wetzlar Germany. Since then over 1,500,000 of these cameras have been manufactured. Leica cameras were well ahead of their time and focused (pardon the pun!) on being extremely small and high quality.

The initial models of Leica camera were designed by Leitz engineer Oskar Barnack, and similar designs continued to be manufactured right through the war. Today, this design of cameras are still called “Barnack-Leica” in Japan in order to differentiate them from the new M type Leica, of which the first model was made in 1954.

The iconic Leica IIIf was launched in 1950 with and featured a full synchronized contact. It became known as either the Black Synchro or Red Synchro according to the series of numbers – 1 through 20 – that were found around shutter dial. These numbers were engraved in Black on early model and were changed in Red on later model, hence the name. On the Red model, the shutter speed was also increased to make the synchronization with the flash unit more efficient. The synchronized speed of the electronic flash is 1/30sec for the Black model and 1/50sec for the Red one.

A Self-timer was incorporated in the final model in 1954. The IIIf proved so popular that it continued to be made until 1957 even after the world-beating Leica M3 was released.

After the War, the camera industry started copying Leica in Japan as well as some other countries and the Leica IIIc(1945) and IIIf(1050) had become their main targets.

Author: Dave Simpson
Provided by: Digital Camera Times

Moon in landscape

DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) Cameras are a super advancement on cameras of old or not even too long ago. The photography World has moved on and in a very big way too. It all started with the digital compact and has moved on to bigger and much better things, even our mobile phone cameras these days tend to be able to produce some amazing images. But specialist subjects still require a certain amount of specialist knowledge and equipment if we are determined to create an impressive picture…

Take the moon for instance, ordinarily you would think it fairly straight forward to photograph, and in a way it pretty much is, but for a planet that is a quarter of a million miles away and three and a half thousand kilometres in diameter giving it some respect and wanting to get some good images is the only way to go.

Let us say that you have or are thinking of getting a DSLR camera of some description, with that camera you should get a standard lens, which unfortunately will not provide impressive results when photographing the moon or any other part of the Solar System, so an upgraded lens is a must for the quality images.

A 28-200mm will give you good close range and quite a good mid-range, this type of lens is ideal for everyday use as well as some distance shots that are not mega miles away. Ideally you would want a 70-300mm or even bigger where possible, but with a lens like this it is only really ideally suited to the longer distance shots and not very good with anything very close up.

One way of getting a benefit out of the standard lens that comes with the camera is to use a 2x converter this does exactly what it says on the tin. So for instance if the standard camera lens was a 18-70mm it will increase the distance pictures to 140mm and is also pretty good for close ups too, even insects in some cases.

The converters are a pretty good option if budget is an issue as lenses can in some cases work out quite expensive, but certainly a must at some point. One of the downsides with a converter is that you will have to lose the auto-focus facility on your camera and focus manually.

Stability is a must when it comes to photographing objects that are in the distance or quite far away, for this a tripod is essential although in some cases you may be able to get away with using a mono-pod, but using a tripod and taking the pictures on timer or even using a remote control will yield excellent results.

Finally, if it is a bright moon you will probably be better off using a low ISO, something like 100ISO should do up to 400ISO, but for best results take a few on each ISO setting and check your results in the cameras LCD screen on rear, you will soon tell if it is too bright.

Author: Clive Anderson

Artoteque.com

Artoteque.com is pleased to invite artists to WORK ON DISPLAY the 2nd annual juried contemporary art competition 12 months on display. WORK ON DISPLAY takes place online at Artoteque.com once every year.

Guidelines
All entries go through a selection process. The competition is judged solely by visuals submitted on-line as Jpeg [.JPG] attachment. Numbers of entries: 6 – 12 works / image files submitted on-line to: submit@artoteque.com.

The Selection
The screening is free and is conducted by review on 6 – 12 Jpeg [.JPG] of 72 dpi up to 700 pixels image files versions of the submitted works inline or attachment along the works details -title, year, medium, size, price. Submitters whose entries pass the screening are included in competition and are requested the participation fee payment.

Participation Fee
Submitters whose pass the screening will be requested the competition fee. There is a US$ 80 / EUR 50 entry fee for 6 works. and US$ 15 / EUR 10 for each additional work. Payment by Direct Transfer on account, by Money Order, by PayPal, by Western Union.

Awards
63 prize-winners will be awarded.
- Grand Prize. Award value EUR 4,900: One Artists will be awarded two-page spreads in ART IN VOGUE, a quality collective art book for collectors, galleries, museums, dealers and art lovers.
- Award of Distinction. Award value EUR 2,450: Two Artists will be awarded one-page in ART IN VOGUE, a quality collective art book for collectors, galleries, museums, dealers and art lovers.
- Honorable Award. 60 Artists will be selected for Diploma of Excellence.

Jury
The competition will be conducted in two rounds: preliminary and final assessment. Only works that pass the preliminary judging will advance to the final round. Judging Panel: Andrea Pagnez, art critic, fine artist, editor, curator (Venice Biennial), Florence; Marta Dimitrescu, fine artist, Artoteque.com director, editor, London.

Size and Works to be received
In order to complete the inclusion you may submit as attachments or on-line 6 ~ 12 works /JPG s image files 72 dpi up to 700 pix (21×21 cm /8,3×8,3) and the works details: title, year, technique, size and price All submissions must be mailed to submit@artoteque.com.

Exhibition period
The event will run one-year beginning with the date of the inclusion.

Deadlines
The earlier the better. The inclusions are in progress. Participants must affirm that submitted works are the original creation of the applicant, and that the participant holds all related copyrights and has not violated intellectual property rights.

Source: http://www.artoteque.com

Still I was in love with the Hasselblad from the start. I looked at it as a studio camera, because it was a piece of equipment that was a bit clumsy to use outdoors if one compared it to the Rolleflex 6×6. Of course, this was ages ago. I was not aiming to become an advertising photographer so the camera was way over my budget. Instead I used to dream about the Hasselblad 500EL that was left on the moon by astronaut Neil Armstrong to save weight for the return to earth.

It took me more than 25 years to actually buy a second hand Hasselblad and as a portrait photographer I loved working with it on a tripod, because of the way the standard viewfinder would give me the opportunity to easily look up while photographing whereas most other cameras would partially hide my face and blocked the contact with the person being portrayed.

When I switched to digital photography in 2001 the Hasselblad became a gadget, a souvenir. Although there were plenty back-ends available to turn the Hasselblad into a mean digital machine, the costs were simply too high. If the Hasselblad would have been an all purpose camera I would have certainly considered the digital options.

Soon a whole new range of range of Hasselblads was released and again the cost of these cameras was simply too high to even consider buying one.

At Hasselblad they were sensitive to this issue, because they lost quite a few customers, so at the last Photokina they promised the world that they would produce a camera that would be within reach of “every” photographer.

Now that a cheaper Hasselblad is going to be released February 10th, I see a lot of complaints on the web about the price estimated at 11,995 EUR. Sure, it is a lot of money, but if you compare it to top range Canons it is really not that bad. Whether this new camera will be a success for Hasselblad will depend on the usability of the camera in situations where most professional DSLRs dominate the market.