AN EVENING WITH SEBASTIAO SALGADO
Last night, I went to the Natural History Museum in London for ‘An Evening With Sebastiao Salgado’ where the great man spoke for a couple of hours in the Central Hall, in the shadow the skeleton of a giant Diplodocus.
He spoke about the Genesis project, his previous projects such as Workers and Migrations and most interestingly what motivated him (during a conversation on the banks of The Serpentine in London…) to take that tangent away from the possibility of taking a job as an economist with the World Bank in New York, or becoming a photographer.
There was a main Q&A, but he stayed for ages after that answering further questions from the audience and having his picture taken with them, which was great as the answers were a lot more spontaneous and insightful. After a little cajoling, he even posed for a portrait for me too, which I lit him with by using a large TV screen, as there was zero light in there. Doubt he had this problem in the jungle……
BERT HARDY : CENTENARY EXHIBITION - worth a look… #photography #london (at Photographers’ Gallery)
HAVING AN OGGL.
You cannot beat the South Bank. We are really spoilt for choice in London and today I had a bit of an oggl around it. “An oggl….what do you mean oggl?” I hear you ask….
Oggl is the new smartphone app from the hip Hipstamatic hipster kids in San Franhipco and I highly recommend it.
If you love Hipstamatic, the lens and filter effects that are on offer, then Oggl takes it a step further with a better integration of sharing plus a community of users, that you can share your own work or to curate other photographers images to view.
The plus with Oggl is that you can edit the images afteryou have taken them, where as in Hipstamatic you take the image in camera with the lens/filter you choose and then that is it. So this is way more versatile.
So you can keep shooting with ease, to show your work on the other social media platforms facebook, flickr, foursquare, tumblr and twitter and at the same time build a community of like minded photographers who like and curate your work on Oggl. Easy!
Request an invitation to Oggl.
I Am An EyeEm Ambassador.
I just got made an EyeEm Ambassador for London!
For those of you who have not heard of it, EyeEm is a rapidly growing start-up mobile photography platform based in Berlin. It currently has approx 2.5m users with a growth of six figure signups a day. Quite amazing.
I met up with one of the founders, Lorenz Aschoff last week in London, who was very matter of fact about not having to be in London or San Francisco to make it big in tech. Apparently “Berlin is awesome….”.
I will be posting updates here from time to time about meet ups that some of you may well be interested in. You can download the app for free on iTunes App Store or on Google play for you Androids.
Why is it so good….? Instagram may have market share, but EyeEm has way more versatility, so great for showing all styles of photography!
Try it out for yourselves, I am here -> eyeem.com/richfoto See you on the other side!
EyeEm London Meetup.
I had the pleasure of meeting up with the crew of mobile photography app EyeEm last night, (luckily with some fantastic weather!) , on the South Bank in London.
They were over in London from their base in Berlin and dropped in to visit the EyeEm meet up organised by one of the EyeEm London Ambassadors, Dirk Singer.
It was great to meet EyeEm founder Lorenz Aschoff and his product manager, Matias Castello who both take a very laid back approach to networking and photography, which is the way forward! We talked a great deal, because we all had so much in common and in the end had to grab our photo-walk images in between! That sense of community is a powerful thing and I highly recommend you liking the EyeEm facebook page where you will be able to follow all their news, plus community and meet up event updates.
Obviously, EyeEm does not have as huge a following as Instagram’s, yet, but the sign-up rate has increased rapidly so Instagram’s market share will diminish over time. Instagram did themselves no favours over their terms of service issue a few months ago either, something that EyeEm were quick to capitalise on!
Also, the versatility of the app when publishing your photography makes it such a winner. You are not rigidly stuck uploading square shaped images. This is quite liberating as it lends itself to you being able to promote all styles of your photography on the network!
I highly recommend you download the app via iTunes as soon as is humanly possible and sign up to EyeEm directly from it, it’s really easy, then you can get snapping!
Oh….and you can follow me right there too…..! @richfoto
SIR NORMAN PARKINSON’S 100th BIRTHDAY.
I really love this. Today’s Google Doodle is honouring the 100 years centenary of the brilliant photographer Sir Norman Parkinson. A true English gentleman. Check out this BBC report on his life and the exhibition at the National Theatre, London.
YEAH….IT’S GOOD….BUT DOES IT FLOAT….!?
Recently, I was invited to a preview by the incredibly welcoming people at Citizen PR, to put the new Sony Xperia Z smartphone through it’s Android paces. Sony and Android are two words that are not overtly employed in my technology blinkered vocabulary, so I was initially reticent. But with the lure of incredibly posh burgers, fine red wine and carte blanche to photograph anything I liked relentlessly for a couple of hours, I was in.
Upon arrival a good lady of Citizen handed me the new sleek device. The five inch 1920x1080 pixels HD screen sat sunken into the slim, black chassis. We both stared silently in awe at it. I triggered the display and the Xperia Z awoke, it’s display illuminating. It reminded me of KITT from Knight Rider. But without the low profile tyres or the creepy voiceover.
The first thing I instinctively found and opened, was the camera app. I am a photographer after all! The important telecommunications part of the smart phone is now actually an after thought. Why did the geeks even bother designing a device with earpiece and speaker!? The vivid, responsive display made taking pictures effortless. For once, I actually started framing images to fill the whole of the display, as you would on any other dSLR camera. Often I shoot to suit the app I will be publishing the images onto. For example, on Instagram, I will shoot with space around the image as it will be ultimately cropped into a square. The focus also snapped sharp without delay, which was also a massive plus. Previously, I’ve been cursing as the iPhone camera has still been searching, whilst I have missed the shot. Again.
What surprised me was the quality of the 13MP camera. I’m currently just making do with an 8MP camera in the iPhone 4s, which I thought was impressive. This takes the user into a whole new territory, as the quality is perfect for a businessman to photograph his own images for a brochure for his own advertising or to put onto social media without it looking pixelated and fuzzy. The images look professional and in these days of recession and budgeting, this a game changer. The only annoying thing was that you couldn’t use the volume control on the side as a shutter button, which would make it easier to hold still, but this is only a minor detail.
As if on cue, my colleague, press photographer Leon Neal, arrived. I shot some test portraits of him, whilst he photographed me, for your and the guests at the preview’s entertainment. Then we compared the other smart phones we had on us, against the Xperia Z. As you can see from the images, the size and vivid colour of the screen were superior, with great detail, especially in skin tones. However, the Xperia Z was the only one we knew we could drop into a goldfishless goldfish bowl of water and know it would survive for thirty minutes. Yes that’s right, it didn’t float….but in a good way!
The responsive navigation around the device driven by the 1.5 Ghz Quad Core processor is also a huge plus. I’ve always found Android quick, but the actual apps clunky to operate in comparison to iOS. The added speed made all the difference. I would now consider changing over to Android, where as I was liberally sitting on the fence before. In fact, to prove it’s watertight chassis is not a myth I may well take it back to Kumbh Mela to immerse it in water and paint myself!
All images edited using Google Snapseed on iOS.
Leon Neal courtesy of Leon Neal Inc.
PHOTO FORUM : EDMUND CLARK
I spent the evening at Photo Forum tonight who had photographer, Edmund Clark talking about his projects, Guantanamo : If The Light Goes Out and Control Order House.
I’d seen ‘If The Light Goes Out’ at The Bluecoat in Liverpool as part of the Look 2011, so I was looking forward to hearing from the man behind the camera.
The talk was effortless, as the images are all so strong, but Edmund’s commentary was so good. Understated and very English. If you are interested in politics and especially anything that encompasses American foreign policy, I highly recommend having a good look at both the projects online and the books when you get a chance.
SEXIEST JACKET EVER #wankerjacket #london #photography (at Fixation)
3 EXCELLENT PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS
We all collect one thing or another. I collect photo books. No surprise there. Imelda Marcos collected shoes and King Henry VIII collected wives. Where Imelda and Henry clearly didn’t learn a thing from their collecting habits by repeatedly skirting legality, my collection does actually serve an educational purpose.
This week, I have acquired three photo books by three very different photographers. Paparazzo! The Photographs of Richard Young by Richard Young, Vivian Maier Street Photographer by John Maloof and Maddie On Things by Theron Humphrey.
The images from Richard Young’s book are in your face and a step back in time (not too long ago…!) when press photography was still only shot in black and white. There is an edge to them. Especially the images from Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor’s party or the Getty family portrait. A lesson in how to take great pictures, fast.
The Vivian Maier book, reminds me of the story behind the discovery of photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue. Between them, they captured a century worth of historical photography which might otherwise have been lost forever, but by a chance discovery. In Vivian Maier’s case, she never let the images be seen in her lifetime and only due to the purchase of a huge collection of negatives in an auction by historian John Maloof, did her unique and brilliant street photography come to the public’s attention.
Finally is the brilliant Maddie On Things which is a blog by Theron Humphrey I have been following for a while. The premise of which was that Maddie is a dog who Theron rescued, then took on a year long tour of the USA. During the tour, he discovered that Maddie had incredible patience and balance, which he then photographed. Such a great wild idea for a project. You can see a great video on his project right HERE.
I DO LOVE A BRAZILIAN #focus2013 #photography (at Birmingham NEC)
@bjp1854 @1854 CAN’T WAIT UNTIL SEBASTIAO SALGADO ‘GENESIS’ IS PUBLISHED #photography
