D-Day 70th anniversary

Seventy years ago today thousands of men lined up on makeshift jetties beside South Parade Pier in Southsea to board the landing craft that would take them across to France and D-Day.

For a time, the Allied Supreme Commander himself, General Dwight Eisenhower, watched them embark. "Good old Ike!" they're said to have shouted when they recognised him.

Though Eisenhower's experts had correctly forecast a break in the prevailing bad weather the following morning, D-Day itself, on Monday, 5 June the wind was up and the seas were rough.

Many of those who made the crossing through the night were badly seasick. Some would never return.

Today the weather was very different.

A cold, stiff breeze first thing fell away and the sun shone from a cloudless blue sky as men from all three services - along with contingents from France and Denmark - held a drumhead ceremony in the shadow of the towering Navy war memorial on Southsea Common.

Princess Anne was there for a service meant both to commemorate the dead of D-Day and honour the survivors - not just those who fought on the beaches but also the thousands of civilians in cities like Portsmouth whose work was vital to the war effort and who shared in the privations and the dangers, not least from frequent German bombing raids.

"We had a wee scuffle here and a scuffle there and then took over the radar station”Dugald Buchanan-MortonD-Day veteran

Many citizens of modern Portsmouth had come out to watch. They applauded as the contingents of servicemen and women marched off towards Southsea's seafront D-Day Museum at the end of the ceremony.

The men embarking at Southsea on that windy day 70 years ago were part of Assault Force S, the British units destined for the easternmost of the five invasion beaches - codenamed Sword.

5 Tips to Step Up Your Street Photography

A great street photography photo, like any well shot candid photo, is a combination of good light, composition and the right moment. You have to go search for that combination of interesting light and people. The hardest part of street photography is you have to create the context for your photos. It is your job to convince people they should be invested in this picture you took of a complete stranger.

If you are shooting a concert or an event, it is at least clear what the background of story of the photo is. The art of street photography (which I will in no way say I’ve come close to achieving, but improvement is what keeps me shooting) is taking a photo of a normal scene, devoid of context, and making it into something interesting.

Shoot with confidence

When you grab your camera and take to the streets, you need to own them. If you feel self conscious, your body language will betray you and you will look like you doing something wrong. If you look like you are doing something people will assume you are and the response you get to photographing strangers will not be a positive one.

On that same note, not everyone will want to have their picture taken and will get mad at you for taking pictures, whether you were taking pictures of them or not. First, yes you are allowed to take pictures of strangers on the street. There is no expectation of privacy in a public area. But just because you can take pictures of people doesn’t mean you should. If someone gets upset just move on. You can waste your time trying to educate them on the finer points of the law, or you can spend your time making more photos. I choose the latter.

Use a wide lens

Street photography is not the time to be sniping photos of people with a long telephoto lens. You are not as inconspicuous as you think you are; people will see you. Long lenses make you look sneaky and like you are doing something wrong. As weird as it might seem, you will get a better response taking someones photo up close with a 50mm lens than far away with a 200mm lens. I personally often use a 35mm lens. Primes are nice because they are not large and imposing and often times you can shoot unnoticed even when you are photographing a scene from close up. And if you ask someone for their photo you are not shoving a huge lens into their face.

A wide lens will feel awkward at first because it exposes you more to the people you are photographing. It is a good thing to remember this is how they feel when they notice you photographing them.

Ask and wait

For a lot of street photography, you will be wandering around making photos of street scenes where going up and talking to your subjects would not only be unfeasible, but would ruin the moment you were looking to capture. But there are moments where you might see a group of people hanging out that you want to photograph, and hanging back waiting for the right moment to snap the shutter would be very obvious and creepy. It is a law of photojournalism that as soon as a camera is introduced into an environment, it changes it. Accept this, and learn to embrace it. The best way to get natural images in situations like this is to make them feel comfortable with your presence. Chat them up, explain who you are, give them a card if they are interested in getting a copy of any pictures you take, and after that if they don’t mind you taking photos just hang back and wait for them to forget about you. While you are talking to them take some group pictures, get them used to the camera, after that is when you start taking the real photos. Groups of people can be great subjects. Because they are in a group of their friends they are not as threatened having their picture taken as they would be along by themselves on the street.

Be patient

Nothing is guaranteed when you take your camera out into the city. Photo opportunities may not immediately present themselves. You may go out three or four times before taking a decent photo. Be patient. The only certainty with street photography is you will never take good photo if you are not out there trying to make it happen. You either need to find a place with amazing light and wait for the moment to happen, or walk around searching for your photos. This is a numbers game. The longer you spend out making images, the more “keepers” you will end up with. While it is not a bad idea to have a specific photo you want in your head, the beauty and art of street photos is the spontaneity and unpredictable nature of them. If you aren’t finding anything interesting you aren’t in the right location, and you aren’t staying out long enough. Know when to stay and wait, know when to move and always understand that after all this work you may not get anything good. That’s ok, just take your camera out a different night and try it again.

David Allee Explores Brooklyn’s Abandoned

Domino Sugar Factory

In 2012, photographer David Allee was given permission to explore and photograph the abandoned Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Photographing for over a year, Allee covered the 90,000 square foot factory, documenting the abandoned equipment, graffiti, and pervasive sugary residue, describing the smell of the factory as “crème-brûlée mixed with mold and rot.”

The Domino Sugar Factory was built in 1882 and was, at one time, the largest sugar refinery in the world, processing over half the sugar consumed in the United States. After a 20-month labor strike in 2002, the plant two years later and has sat abandoned ever since. Allee says his series seeks to convey the complicated, and sometimes difficult, history of the factory; “There is this obvious evidence and physical residue of the messy, chaotic, and seemingly violent process of refining sugar…there was a visceral sense that the work that took place here was torturous.” Ironically, he says, “everything is literally sugar coated.”

This spring, a one-and-a-half billion dollar redevelopment plan was approved by the City Council, meaning that a large portion of the factory’s complex will be torn down to make way for new buildings. The central refinery will remain intact; being renovated to house office space.

Photo of The Day

Spruce Knob

“I was looking to take milky way pictures in spruce knob lake for a long time and this past memorial day weekend, I camped overnight near the lake and it was perfect night with clear skies and pitch black. I can spot the milky way with my naked eye, and I enjoyed the night watching the stars and the milky way. This picture is a single exposure 5D Mark III with rokinon 14 MM f/2.8 lens.” -Venkat Kancharla

EXIF:

Canon 5D Mark III

Rokinon 14mm F/2.8

30 sec at F/2.8 ISO 3200

National Geographic Live! - Peter Essick: Ansel Adams Wilderness Revisited

As a bit of a bonus, above is a 25-minute National Geographic Live presentation that Essick gave in which he shares the journey that lead to the creation of these images. While it is a bit of a long watch, it’s as inspirational and informative as the above photographs are beautiful, so be sure to put it in your queue.

National Geographic Photographer Pays a Stunning Tribute to Ansel Adams’ Work

It’s been just over three decades since the passing of Ansel Adams, but his legacy lives on in the hearts and minds (and on many of the walls) of those he inspired. One of those people, noted National Geographic photographer Peter Essick, decided to pay tribute to the renowned Group f/64 master.

Essick revisited Ansel Adams’ ‘playground’ to pay homage to the scenery Adams captured several decades before. Traveling through the Ansel Adam Wilderness, an area in the Sierra Nevada of California that is named in Adams’ honor, Essick composed photographs in what might be considered the “Ansel Adams style,” ultimately compiling the fruits of his labor into a book titled, The Ansel Adams Wilderness.

In the introduction to his book, Essick speaks to the motivation behind this project:


Like Adams, I am a native Californian familiar with the High Sierra, and some of my first successful photos were of this wilderness area (located between Yosemite National Park and Mammoth Lakes, and renamed for Adams following his death in 1984). For 25 years I have traveled throughout the world as a photographer for National Geographic magazine, but the High Sierra always has had a special place in my heart.

Using the stopped down, zone-system approach to his photographs, Essick almost perfectly replicates the monochrome aesthetic of the work that both literally and figuratively put Ansel Adams on the map, without copying him outright or “standing in the same tripod holes,” so to speak.

Today, we have the honor of presenting a collection of images from the book, with permission from Essick, himself. Before you dive in, however, we do have a couple of suggestions.

First: scroll slowly, so that you might better savor the work. And second: when you’re done, be sure to head over to Amazon and secure yourself a copy of The Ansel Adams Wilderness for a steal at only $18.

Ship Breakers of Bangladesh

Ship Breakers of Bangladesh

• one of the most dangerous jobs in the world

• Arduous and dangerous job employs 200,000 Bangladeshis and is notorious for injuries to and deaths of workers

• There are around 80 yards along an eight-mile stretch of the coast of Bangladesh

The sad beauty of these incredible images cast a light on the shipbreaking industry in Bangladesh, where workers face death and injury from accidents and environmental hazards for just a few dollars a day. Looking at the images remind me when I was looking at Lewis Hines work, bringing up the question of health and safety in the workplace.

Chittagong Ship Breaking Yard is the largest of its type in the world. Around 80 active ship breaking yards line an eight-mile stretch of the coast, employing more than 200,000 Bangladeshis and accounting for half of all the steel in Bangladesh.

Ship breaking is the dismantling of ships for scrap recycling. Most ships have a lifespan of a 25-30 years before there is so much wear that repair becomes uneconomical, but the rising cost to insure and maintain aging vessels can make even younger vessels unprofitable to operate. Ship breaking allows materials from the ship, especially steel, to be recycled. Equipment, fuel and chemicals on board the vessel can also be reused.

Peter Gwin, writing for National Geographic, visited the region to see it first hand. He described the guards, razor wire-topped fences and signs prohibiting photography there, installed following scrutiny in the ship breaker's operations after a spate of deaths. He said: 'In the sprawling shantytowns that have grown up around the yards, I met dozens of the workers. Many had deep, jagged scars. "Chittagong tattoos," one man called them.

'Some men were missing fingers. A few were blind in one eye.

'In one home I meet a family whose four sons worked in the yards. The oldest, Mahabub, 40, spent two weeks as a cutter's helper before witnessing a man burn to death when his torch sparked a pocket of gas belowdecks.

'"I didn't even collect my pay for fear they wouldn't let me leave," he says, explaining that bosses often intimidate workers to keep silent about accidents.'

Sara Naomi Lewkowicz - The Visual Journalist

Sara Lewkowicz is a native New Yorker pursuing a master's degree in visual communication from Ohio University in Athens. She received her bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently studying in London while flying back to America to keep shooting her domestic violence work. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers. She has won several grants and awards, including the 2013 Alexia Student Grant, first place in contemporary issues in World Press Photo and the 2013 Ville de Perpignan Remi Ochlik Award, and she has been named the 2013 College Photographer of the Year by CPOY. Other awards an honors have included being recognized by the Sony World Photography Organization. When she is not taking pictures, she enjoys yoga, painting her nails, watching films and reading.­

Sara Lewkowicz is one of the best up and coming photographers of my generation. Her work is different class to people of the same age. I first came across her work when I was looking through protographers her document domestic violence. Domestic violence is a largely invisible crime. We usually only hear it muffled through walls, and we usually only see it manifested in the faded yellow and purple bruises of a woman who “walked into a wall” or “fell down the stairs.” It is rarely limited to one event, and it rarely stops. Sara Lewkowicz’s project, “Shane and Maggie,” seeks to portray domestic abuse as a process, as opposed to a single incident, examining how a pattern of abuse develops and eventually crests, as well as its short- and long-term effects on victims, their families, and their abusers. 

Closer To Heaven



Sara Lewkowicz’s domestic violence project is the most talked about in her series of work but she has other amazing ongoing projects that are just as good if not better but haven’t got the recognition. “Closer to heaven” focuses on the troubled life of Alex a stripper in America, struggling to pay bills and find any excuse to wake up everyday. It really is a great body of work that doesn’t need any text to accompany the images as you get every piece of information you need from each image. Looking at the whole series together you get a real sense of a journey unfolding in front of you but ultimately leaves you asking the question did “alex” turn her life around or carry on the way it was? I like the idea of the audience wanting more which is how the series leaves me. I want to know how this Alex is getting on, which is a hard feet to accomplish in such a short series of prints. 

Series Documents the Dangerous, Fascinating Work of Commercial Fishermen on the Bering Sea

Photographer Corey Arnold’s series ‘Fish-Work: The Bering Sea’ documents the daily lives of commercial fishermen aboard the f/v Rollo during winter crabbing expeditions-considered one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Arnold’s photographs show the fishermen’s complex relationship to the fierce ocean and deadly storms that surround them, showing the dichotomy of exhaustion and awe; frustration and exhilaration.

Part of his larger ongoing ‘Fish-Work’ series, ‘Fish-Work: The Bering Sea’ began after the economic turmoil of the early 2000s, as Arnold returned to commercial fishing in Alaska. In a statement about the project, Arnold says, “I landed a deckhand job aboard a 43-foot cod jigger, which eventually led to a king crab job in the Bering Sea. I spent seven winter seasons crabbing aboard the f/v Rollo and brought my cameras along to document the experience. Widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous jobs, we endured seas up to forty feet and a seemingly endless succession of sleepless nights, regularly shuffling 800 pound crab pots around the pitching deck in freezing conditions.”























































Arnold says he found time to shoot “between work and sleep” and kept his two cameras “wrapped in Ziploc bags and duct tape.” While his series fully captures the incredibly dangerous work, as well as the playful moments of respite, Arnold says that many of his best photographs were never made, “as all hands were needed on deck during the fiercest storms.”

‘Fish-Work: The Bering Sea’ was published as a monograph, you can find it here.
You can find more of Corey Arnold’s work, which focuses on “photographing the relationship between people and the sea” on his website.

All images used with permission.
[Via Visual News]

Zack Arias, Cheap Camera Challenge (Pro Tog, Cheap Cam)

Great Protog cheap camera challenge with Zack Arias from Digital Rev. It's really worth a watch to see how a pro works with different situations and working round obstacles to get the results, Enjoy!

Studio Lighting with Zack Arias: Introduction & Philosophy of Studio Lighting

One of the best photogs out there! nice little masterclass to help you out!



Full course available at http://cr8.lv/1kZveih
The first 45 minutes of the creativeLIVE course, Studio Lighting with Zack Arias.

In this clip Arias previews his lively three day workshop on studio lighting featuring white seamless backdrops, stages, models, and bands with Q&A and critique rounds.

Access the complete course: http://cr8.lv/1kZveih

Digital Darkroom: Printing iPhone Photos Using Traditional Chemical Processes

Lincoln, UK-based photographer Adam Rhoades came up with an interesting way of printing digital photographs using analog darkroom processes. By mounting his iPhone (displaying a photo) onto a 35mm enlarger, he’s able to enlarge and focus his digital photograph on photo paper as if it were a negative being projected.

Using a grain focuser, he’s able to see the individual red, green, and blue pixels of his phone’s display.

There isn’t that much that needs to be done to the digital photos prior to darkroom printing. Rhoades simply flips the image and inverts it to create a “digital negative”, which ensures that it’s printed correctly.

Rhoades writes,

Dramatic vignetting can be seen in the prints, this is partially because of limitations of the rig and the slight darkness of the iPhone screen in the corners. Results vary depending on the size and contrast of the image.

I’ve had the best results with prints that are similar in size to the iPhone screen, much larger and the grid pattern of the pixels starts to show. However, reproducing at 1:1, as with the retina display, the pixels are indiscernible to the human eye.

These prints where made using Ilford Multigrade paper, exposed for between 4 – 10 seconds (depending on size) and wet processed using a mixture of Ilford/Kodak chemistry.

Here are a couple of sample photos he shot using this technique: