Fotofestival Naarden
Until June 23rd the biannual fotofestival Naarden takes place again.
Situated in the very nice fortress town Naarden this festival looks at the current state of Dutch photography. The them this year is: “Don’t stay here”. Photographers look over the country borders and especially Ditch photographers do so. The choice of the curators is very diverse and the quality of the pictures is very high.
Highlights are the portraits of homeless people made by Jan Banning. He portrayed them not in a cliché way but in a way, we, ourselves would be liked to be portray. Also good to see is that almost the whole program consist of solid documentary and portrait photography. The days of too overly artistic photography are over.
Highly recommended.
Found: NatGeo’s new BLOG
FOUND is a curated collection of photography from the National Geographic archives. In honour of their 125th anniversary, they are showcasing photographs that reveal cultures and moments of the past. Many of these photos have never been published and are rarely seen by the public.
They hope to bring new life to these images by sharing them with audiences far and wide. Their beauty has been lost to the outside world for years and many of the images are missing their original date or location.
An absolute must for every serious photographer to follow this blog.
Free Excursion: Noordereiland, Rotterdam
Photographyschool.NL organises free excursions along side their normal course program. These excursions are meant to allow individuals to get to know each other and in a pleasant and relaxed way, share knowledge and make photographs.
Our first excursion was March 16th. We went to the Noordereiland in Rotterdam. Despite being in the centre of the city this island still looks like a separate village. Many small details and photographic treasures can be found here. Also from this island all the great bridges of Rotterdam can be seen and photographed.
We had some old friends show up but also a few people we didn’t know yet, among them students who are looking forward to joining one of our future courses. The weather was grey, therefore I converted most of my pictures below to black and white using Lightroom.
We had a great time and have already organised the next excursion to Kinderdijk on September 1st.
Click here for more information on our next free excursion.
Why switching to Back Focus Button is a good idea
Most cameras have the autofocus function coupled with the shutter button You half press and then the AF kicks ins and locks. But many times you like to recompose You hold the button half pressed, recompose and make the picture. Damn, you want to make another one, again you have to focus on your subject and recompose again. Wouldn’t it be nice if al this focusing had to be done only one time?
Are you all the time switching between one shot AF and servo AF? Wouldn’t it be great to have a way making all this switching not necessary?
Sometimes you want to use manual focus. Maybe when the AF is hunting with close ups. You have to set the lens to manual. Because if you don’t the AF will override you when touching the shutter button. Very annoying and wouldn’t it be great to have a solution for his?
Well, the solution for all these situations is Back Focus Button. It basicly means that the AF function has been assign to a button on the back of your camera. This button will be operated with your thumb. Only when you press it the AF is activated.
How you can implement this on your particulate camera is bet found in the manual.
You might a few days to get used to this method but after that you’ll probably stick to it for the rest of your life.
The Lost Photographer: Vivian Maier
Can you imagine? One of the best street photographers in the second half of the 20th century and nobody had ever heard of her?
Vivian Maier was a nanny in New York and Chicago and roamed the streets for great pictures. She continued to photograph into the late 90′s. At the end of her life she was poor and only survived with the help of some of the children she took care of in the beginning of her working life. Only in 2007 when her storage locker was auctioned were her 100.000 negatives discovered. John Maloof is now cataloging her work and making it available to the world through exhibitions and a documentary.
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How to be Successful with Long Exposures
Sometimes there is just too much light.
You see a nice scene, a waterfall, a fountain or great moving clouds. You would like to blur all the movement and so you put your ISO to 100, your aperture to f16 and still you’re not able to achieve a long enough shutter speed.
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Exhibition: Eve Arnold Photographs 1950-1985
From March 5th the Museum in Helmond presents with pride, an exhibition of Eve Arnold. She is well known for her intimate, intriguing portraits of celebrities like Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe.
This is the first exhibition by Eve Arnold that can be seen in the Netherlands. The exhibition consist of 3 documentaries and over 130 photographs Among them the legendary Malcolm X reportage from 1961 and her 1979 China series. Eve Arnold was one of the first western photographers allowed to enter China. Arnold was also one of the only people to photograph so personal and caring images, and over such a long period of time, Marilyn Monroe. Together they did six sessions between 1952 and 1961.
Arnold was the first female member of the famous agency Magnum. Her photography was a search inside herself. She lived during a time and in the world just after the Second World War. She photographed her subjects from close by with a preference on natural light, giving her photos atmosphere and honesty.
Biography
Arnold is a child of poor Russian immigrants. In 1946 she worked for a photo lab in New York. A friend gave her a camera with which she made her first photos at the end of the 40s. In 1948 she followed a six week course with Alexei Brodovitch (at that time art-director at Harper’s Bazaar).
Soon she found her strength: photo documentaries of new and surprising subjects. In 1952 she made her first political documentary of the Republican Party in Chicago. Afterwards many reportages followed for LIFE, Fortune, Look, Paris Match, Vogue and the English Sunday Times. She also made reportages of celebrities like Marlene Dietrich (1952) and Joan Crawford (1959). From 1952 to 1961 she was THE photographer of Marilyn Monroe. The start of their cooperation is Monroes’s remark at a party to Arnold: “If you could do that well with Marlene, can you imagine what you can do with me?”
In January 2012 Eve Arnold died aged 99.
http://www.gemeentemuseumhelmond.nl/tentoonstellingen/2013/eve-arnold/
Competition: The Fence 2013 Outdoor Photo Exhibition
Photographers of all levels are invited to submit their best image series that capture the essence of “community” and fit into one or more of the competition categories.
Categories:
- Home
- Streets
- People
- Creatures
- Play
Want to Improve Your Photography in Time for Spring?
PhotographySchool.NL is happy to announce that the Advanced Photography Course will run in April 2013. The Advanced Photography Course is made up of five modules which can be taken all in one period or over multiple periods. Each module is designed to make sure you truly understand the photographic element of focus and to provide you with real-world opportunities to practise that knowledge.
On the Advanced Course you will be moving out of the studio and into everyday situations like sports events, the beach and breathtaking Dutch landscapes, in order to apply the skills you have learned. There will also be an added emphasis on photo critiques and getting the most out of printing your images.
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The Last Roll of Kodachrome Film
Kodachrome has been the slide film of choice of many photographers for many decades.
It’s saturated but life-like colors and sharpness made it so popular. It was introduced in 1935. It was one of the first successful color materials and was used for both cinematography and still photography. Because of its complex processing it was sold with prepaid processing. Because of the uptake of alternative photographic materials, its complex processing requirements, and the widespread transition to digital photography, Kodachrome lost its market share and its manufacturing was discontinued in 2009.
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