Meanwhile, specialist UK niche publisher Park View, who have a number of imaging titles, have appointed Grant Scott, former brand editor of Archant Imaging, as editor of their forthcoming new title, “Hungry Eye”. The new mag launches in October 2011 and will cover still and video photography.

Its auto-response text states: “After the loss of key members of staff, Camerabox Limited has been forced to temporarily cease trading. We will temporarily cease to take any new orders and all existing and unfulfilled orders have been cancelled. Refunds take between 2-14 days or alternatively you can contact your card issuer to issue a dispute and chargeback. Thank you for your co-operation and patience in this difficult period.”

Fujifilm X100 for pro photographers
– what it is, and what it isn’t

Simon Towler takes a first quick look at the new Fujifilm X100 camera, considering it from the point of view of the professional photographer.

• .mp3 audio podcast file
• .3gp video for smart phones

We rarely feature cameras on NewPhotoDigest, and when we do they’re usually professional systems over £10,000. But we’re making an exception for the new Fujifilm FinePix X100, for a few reasons. The main one is that professional photographers are waiting for this camera, and are considering buying it as their always-with-you compact, so it just about falls within our editorial remit (at a squeeze). And Fujifilm are marketing it as a “professional” compact, so it should be examined in that light.

Recently, Katrin Eismann, author of a number of Photoshop books, returned her new Fujifilm X100, commenting that it should have been “a sleek digital camera that didn’t try to be retro”, and saying it is “too quirky for serious use”. So, she didn’t get what she was expecting when the X100 box arrived.

What it is

Addressing working professional photographers, I think it’s important to think about what this camera is, and what it isn’t.

“The Fujifilm FinePix X100 digital camera is a retro-styled compact for the mass market. There may be professionals out there wishing, hoping or expecting it will be something else, but that’s what it is.”

The Fujifilm FinePix X100 digital camera is a retro-styled compact for the mass market. There may be professionals out there wishing, hoping or expecting it will be something else, but that’s what it is. The pro market is a very small market; Fujifilm haven’t made the X100 just for pros, as some kind of compact Leica M9 alternative.

The X100 will produce images of professional quality though; in fact, it will out-do some of the semi-pro cameras photographers have used quite happily for press work and weddings in the past.

Today was the first day I saw a functioning production X100 in real life. I haven’t had time to learn how to use it, and I haven’t done any serious image taking with it. But I’ll give you some opinions on it anyway.

The only reason NewPhotoDigest is covering this camera is because it’s a candidate for inclusion in the list of non-DSLRs that professional photographers favour as their take-anywhere, always-with-you camera — the role traditionally filled by rangefinders and advanced compacts. Online surveys tend to indicate that quite a few camera models make it onto this list, and it’s not dominated by just two or three stand-out models. Canon G and S series models feature, as do micro four thirds cameras, and several other types.

The only reason I personally am interested in it is because — probably like a lot of photographers — since the advent of digital I’ve been waiting for a digital compact to come along that has genuinely usable manual creative controls.

You could write a book on this camera. In the remainder of this article I’m going to touch on only two features: the manual focus, and the hybrid viewfinder.

Manual controls

In my opinion, where a compact does have manual controls, they’re often there purely for marketing reasons, to be features on the feature list rather than to be used routinely. They have gadget value in the first few days after you get the camera, but once you’ve learned them and finish playing with them, you rarely use them in anger. Most digital compacts with a full manual option are almost impossible to use in anything other than point-and-shoot mode.

The Fujifilm FinePix X100 has some immediately obvious advantages over these cameras. Its retro styling puts the manual controls under the command of a traditional layout of analogue rings and dials on the camera itself. These are familiar and intuitive to use, and it’s very satisfying to be able to change settings almost instinctively, without having to take your eye from the viewfinder.

And they have the other advantage of the traditional manual layout, which is that they’re arranged so a quick look down at the top of your camera allows you to read its complete current settings from all the rings and dials at a glance.

Manual Focus

One of the things that have always frustrated me in the manual modes of digital compacts up to now has been the manual focus. This usually has to be set with reference to a distance scale displayed as a bar on the camera’s screen, and adjusted by buttons, or (much better) by command wheel.

The Fujifilm X100 improves slightly on the command wheel with its implementation of manual focus control. It has a traditional-looking focus ring on the lens. It’s not a real, mechanical lens-focus ring; it’s a fly-by-wire thing, just as a command wheel is. And it doesn’t have a distance scale marked on it, so you can’t pre-set the focus before a shot by reference only to the focus ring, you have to look at the camera’s LCD display for that. The focus distance can’t be read from the focus ring.

My brief time with the Fujifilm X100 wasn’t long enough to convince me that, overall, it had any really significant advantage in manual focus over compacts that have come before. But realistically, how important is that?

Hybrid viewfinder

Viewfinders can be digital, with shooting information, or they can be optical. But many digital compacts no longer even include a built-in viewfinder, and some of those that do have only a vestigial one, too small to be routinely usable.

Why would you want a viewfinder when today’s compacts have such high quality, large, bright, high resolution display screens? Well, I still like to have the option of using a viewfinder in bright sunlight. And I like the way a viewfinder held to my left eye screens out my vision of everything outside the scene I’m framing.

I’ve never liked the electronic viewfinders on compact stills cameras. I haven’t liked their lack of colour fidelity, their imperfect colour registration, and the noticeable image lag when they try to update as you move the framing around. I’ve never felt they’ve had enough resolution either. These electronic viewfinders had a long way to go, and they’re still not there yet.

“The Fujifilm FinePix X100 has a unique hybrid viewfinder.”

The Fujifilm FinePix X100 has a unique hybrid viewfinder. At the flick of a lever you can make the electronic viewfinder disappear, and view your framing directly via the fair sized optical viewfinder, through the same window. Vital shooting information — including framing-lines matched to subject distance — is still indicated, on a kind of heads-up display superimposed on the optical viewfinder, and there’s even more info on show when you flick back to the electronic finder.

When you take a shot, the viewfinder can display the digital image you just took for a few moments after each exposure.

Conclusion

Playing with the Fujifilm X100, I got the impression that the combination of the innovative viewfinder and traditional analogue controls really would work well in tandem, and allow you a shooting style that other compacts would deny you. So there’s more than styling going on here, the ergonomics may actually be better for some shooters than other compacts.

Looking up its DxO Mark sensor ranking tells me the Fujifilm FinePix X100′s image quality is well within the domain of what’s considered professional — as you’d expect from a current model with an APS-C sized sensor. You can take serious professional images with this camera.

In professional situations, the retro styling may aid credibility, particularly if you add some of the optional accessories, giving the little compact more gravitas and presence. This might stop people asking you why you aren’t using the usual DSLR brick with a 1200mm lens — like their local photographer does, or like the one they have at home.

This is not a no-nonsense, no-compromise, thoroughbred professional camera. It’s not a purely professional camera at all. No manufacturer can afford to make compacts just for the tiny pro market. But it is a camera that could be used for professional purposes.

The retro features are just styling, but they do actually work, and do open up, to some extent, a more traditional way of using the camera, that may enable some pros to leverage their knowledge of manual creative control.

“Despite appearances, this is not a Leica M9 that shrank in the wash.”

Despite appearances, this is not a Leica M9 that shrank in the wash. That is just appearance, it’s not what you should be expecting. And it’s not a sleek leading-edge compact either. It is a quirky blend of innovative premium compact and retro styling, not intended for ruthlessly serious use.

This camera is in short supply at the moment, and there are very few demo models in the UK. What worries me about this is that many of the pros who’ll buy one over the next few months may not have had a chance to get hands-on with it before putting it on order. They’ll be buying on specification, and hype. Like Katrin Eismann, they may be expecting something other than what they’ll get.

It is what it is. It’s a lovely little camera.

(Oh, did we mention, the lens hood is extra?)

[for an in-depth review, we unreservedly refer you to DPReveiw.com]

CES has become one of the most significant trade shows for the photo industry, as photo products have converged with consumer electronics.

British wedding photographer and photo trainer, Damien Lovegrove, launched his first art book on March 30th, 2011 with a champagne party on Charing Cross Road, in the heart of London’s book district.

The book, “Chloe-Jasmine Whichello”, is a collection of the photographer’s images of model Chloe, accompanied by her words. It is designed and published by Damien and his team.

The launch party was attended by photographers, models and makeup artists from the UK pro photo community, as well as Damien’s own family and team. Signed copies of the book were available to buy, and a beautiful edition of prints from it covered the walls of two floors of the venue (The Gallery, Soho). Music was provided by a live jazz combo — and by Chloe herself, who sang to her father’s accompaniment on the piano.

[ Damien has a written a great blog post about the book publishing process here: http://www.prophotonut.com/2010/12/13/self-publishing-an-art-book-the-easy-way/ ]

“In accordance with Paragraph 45(1) of Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986, notice is hereby given that the affairs, business and property of Photologic (UK) Limited – In Administration (“the Company”), is being managed by Anthony Harry Hyams FCCA, and Lloyd Edward Hinton MIPA MABRP acting as Joint Administrators. Pursuant to paragraph 69 of Schedule B1 to the Insolvency Act 1986 the Joint Administrators act as agents of the Company and without personal liability.

Details of creditors claims and any queries should be submitted in writing to Kelly Levelle of Marriotts Recovery LLP by email at klevelle@marriottsllp.co.uk or by post to Marriotts Recovery LLP, Allan House, 10 John Princes Street, London W1G 0AH.

Formal notification of the Company’s Administration will be sent to all known creditors in due course”

Incorporated on 20/08/2009, it’s known to have sold memberships to only a relatively small number of photographers. Its principal activity was a pay-site web forum. Several trading names of the same individual are associated with the same address. As of this morning, its website was still saying it’s a PLC.

[The dissolved entity was not related in any way to SISEP, the school and event photographer society of the SWPP.]

The combined prize value of the MPA Wedding and Portrait Awards is £3000, which is won by the clients for the winning and finalist images. Clients’ photographers compete for the titles of Wedding or Portrait Photographer of the Year, and all finalists get a certificate. Professional photographers, who need not be MPA members, may submit any number of entries on behalf of their clients, each accompanied by a £2 fee. Half of this will go to charity. Entrants grant the MPA reproduction rights, for publicity and advertising purposes, in all finalist and winning images. The closing date for the first judging of the 2011 Awards is May 3, 2011.

Photographer Siobhan Bradshaw with her portrait of Alton Ellis (left).

The framed print was unscrewed from the wall where it hung, while the Cafe was open, by a sneak thief or thieves, who ignored other works hanging nearby. Management at the Jazz Cafe are said to be “very upset”.

“It was fitting for his picture to be hanging in the venue where Alton Ellis last performed.”

The value of prints by art photographer, Siobhan Bradshaw, who’s also known for her jazz shots, has risen considerably since the Alton Ellis photo was taken in 2008, pushed up by a number of successful exhibitions in London. Her performance photograph of Ellis was especially significant, as he died so shortly afterward, without ever performing again.

It was fitting for it to be hanging in the venue where he last performed, and disrespectful for it to have been stolen from there. Jazz Cafe management are understood to be considering acquiring a replacement print.

by Simon Towler

The first decade of this century saw an extraordinary boom in on-site printing in UK event photography; so much so that the two activities became, for a few years, synonymous. The on-site printing boom may have been enabled by the new technology of digital photography and portable instant photo printers; but it was fuelled by the credit boom. Britain was going out, and Britain was spending money. And one breed of photographer was going to have some of that.

“The gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research. On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state.”

Revellers got used to the idea of stepping onto a photographer’s seamless on a night out, and buying a print. The numbers of these photographers kept growing, and they were raking in cash.

Then came the crunch, and recession. And many of them disappeared.

Or did they? During the boom, no one was able to estimate how many had got into this new kind of event photography, or how big the booming market was. But now the gold rush is over, the dust has settled, the present market isn’t difficult to research.

On-site printing hasn’t died. It’s just returned, more or less, to its pre-boom state. Before the boom, the on-site printers were the equestrian photographers, travelling to horse shows, and the dog agility people. Those people are still doing on-site printing today (and with much better printers). But for others, much has changed.

The Entrepreneurs

During the boom, there were entrepreneurial individuals who established on-site printing companies that grew a lot bigger than others. They either had lucrative ongoing contracts with big nationwide events, or they had more complex business models like franchising, or ‘events-as-corporate-marketing’; or they had superior sales and marketing, that could keep several crews supplied with work.

The photographers who owned those businesses earned individual annual incomes ranging from about £40-60k, right up to six figure sums, on turnovers that in some cases were in the millions. And they’re still around. Most of those people are still in event photography today — though some have survived business failures and, with the exception of a few really very big players, most now trade from home.

The Jobbers

Those entrepreneurs still provide — mostly casual — work, to what we now think of as an events-only photographer: one of the 200 or so jobbing individuals equipped to do on-site printing. They plug into networks for buying subbed jobs, or take second-shooter assignments. They don’t earn a lot of money — it’s not unusual for them to be offered as little as £50 a day, just a top-up on top of a day-job — and they keep a low profile. (The day-job and the need for a low profile may be two of the things that prevent them from trading in their own right.) They’re pretty anonymous, often known only by a trading-name and mobile phone number listed on some basic website.

Today’s Event Photographer

But those guys make up less than a fifth of the photographers who do events. Although the wholly independent, events-only, on-site printers — who earned comfortable livings trading as eventers in the past — mostly withdrew from the market, their place was taken by other social photographers — mostly wedding photographers — who could get event work, but didn’t depend exclusively on it, nor on the on-site printing model.

“Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from other photographers.”

Today, most referrals for on-site printing actually come from these other photographers, many of whom choose to hire an on-site printing crew for events that require it, rather than provide the service themselves.

There are about 700 of these businesses active in event photography today. Events are a significant portion of their income, but they typically have at least two other primary revenue streams: wedding and portrait work, and schools and prom photography. They get their own jobs in their own right, and represent roughly three quarters of the market. For all intents and purposes, they ARE the event photography market today.

The Revenue Model

On-site printing was the supreme revenue model in event photography during the boom years: the idea was to sell prints like hotcakes, there and then for cash. Many event photographers even paid for the privilege of attending an event, just to have the opportunity to sell prints on-site.

Hopefully, no one pays for it today. On the contrary, charging to attend has become an important part of the mix. On many jobs, an attendence fee is the main revenue. On-site printing is not regarded as an automatic necessity either. Unless an eventer knows a particular job of old, it can be hard to predict whether most of the per-photo revenue will come from prints on-site, or from web sales afterwards — or indeed if prints will be any substantial component of the revenue at all. The days of the event photographer obsessed with the performance minutiae of their dye sub printers are numbered, if not over. More than one major manufacturer has had to withdraw from the market for these printing machines completely.

The Digital Challenge

It would be untrue to say that event photography has struggled with the digital-sales challenge. The truth is, it has largely failed to struggle with, or even address, that challenge. For customers at an event, an image that can be instantly shared over the mobile phone network onto Facebook and Twitter often has more value than a print — no matter how professionally taken, against whatever novelty background. Event photography lacks technological solutions and revenue models for mobile phone and social network sales. It’s still wrestling with web sales, and experimenting with the blind alley of selling images on disc and USB stick.

Moving Into Proms

One of the most positive and progressive developments in event photography has been the general move into school prom work that has accompanied the growth in the UK of the whole school prom phenomenon. This dove-tails very well with the skill set of today’s event photographer, who frequently does schools work, as well as events, weddings and portraits. They’re the kind of schools photographer who operates locally on a small scale, often doing their own schools printing on — you guessed it — dye-sub printers; and it isn’t difficult for them to add prom photography to this mix. In fact, it’s a natural progression. Local wedding and portrait photographers have the trade qualifications and respectability necessary for schools work, something the more anonymous events-only photographers lack.

Conclusion

So, on-site printing hasn’t died. It has only reverted to it’s pre-boom state. It’s still practiced, as before, by the equestrian and dog agility photographers. And the most successful exponents in other markets haven’t experienced much decline in their business either. Top event photographers will still tell you honestly that, for them, on-site printing is still quite healthy. They’re largely unaware of the difficulties lesser mortals are experiencing. But the supremacy of on-site printing as a revenue model has waned, and event photography has reverted to a more traditional mix of ways of making money. All but the most successful events-only photographers have largely disappeared, their places taken by the wedding and portrait photographers who also do schools and events. For photographers, school proms have become one of the most important categories of event.

They think it’s all over? Well it isn’t quite, yet.

Spotting a disreputable photographer society can be tricky!

With current sensitivities, for schools, prom and event photographers, it has never been more important to choose a reputable photographer society. And — just as importantly — to avoid disreputable ones.

Disreputable societies

A disreputable society is one so lax that it attracts disreputable members — anonymous or black-economy workers seeking a society logo to put on their website and a listing that can make them appear qualified or even CRB checked. Disreputable members infiltrate by exploiting the eagerness of amateurish organizations to accept new members, and the lack of checking they do on applicants’ identity and good standing.

“It’s frankly irresponsible for crank individuals to start rogue groups like this, when the kind of photography involved includes schools and prom work.”

This isn’t the kind of membership a schools and event photographer, or anyone shooting youth sports, can afford to be associated with, and it’s a trap for the unwary. In fact, it’s frankly irresponsible for crank individuals to start rogue groups like this, when the kind of photography involved includes schools and prom work. Groups like this can also become places bigger players use to exploit a supply of cheap assistants and second-shooters; or to sell unprofitable jobs to naieve ‘subs’.

['subs' = (loosely), 'sub-contractors': togs who 'buy' jobs from a bigger photographer who originally got the booking]

Getting sucked in

In fact, the importance of job-trading to the newbie jobbing photographer, and their need to plug-in to job-trading networks, is often what sucks in the unwary. An initial period of free membership may be followed by a charge just to continue to access the group’s Internet forum. Then the newbie finds that more established members require them to upgrade to paid membership before they will trade jobs and other benefits with them. These members, who may not have much more experience themselves, typically market ‘workshops’ and ‘training’ to new joiners.

How do they blag it?

So how do photographers get taken in by this? Well, like so many other frauds on the Internet, these groups are often nothing more than just a good-looking and convincing website. The people who set them up have spent more time teaching themselves web design than learning the camera. They can be backed by unscrupulous or hard-squeezed photographic suppliers, who use them as a sales and marketing tool to identify naieve photographers just starting out, and as a discrete channel through which to sell unbranded, grey market, generic or counterfeit supplies.

Are they legal?

Are they legal? Not really. Groups that lure you into paying to join, by falsely claiming to have substantial membership, are practising a deception and perpetrating a fraud. They’re doing the same when they try to hustle sponsorship. They rarely have more than fifty members at any one time. Many of those haven’t had to pay a fee, because they’re involved as fee-charging ‘trainers’ themselves. You should be able to leave these groups, and ask for your money back, at any time, by asking them to disclose how many paid members they actually had at the time you joined, and telling them you were deceived.

How to avoid them

How do you avoid them? Don’t use pay-sites and stick to the well known societies. By far the largest organization for school, prom and event photographers in the UK is SISEP, the SWPP’s school and event photographer society. At least 75% of UK schools and event photographers belong to it. Larger school photography concerns, particularly those who do their own printing, may want to check out the Professional Schools Photographers’ Association. In the UK this is a small but respectable group under the umbrella of the Photo Marketing Association. And deserving of an honourable mention is Kevin Cheesman’s SchoolPhotoPRO, another small group which some independent schools photographers find suits them. Of course, you may not need to join a specialist schools or event photographer society, in which case membership of the MPA or BIPP may be just as good for you.

So, keep your eyes open, and be careful out there!

—NewPhotoDigest

“British photo-journalist Alixandra Fazzina has distinguished herself as one of the leading humanitarian reporters of our generation. For over a decade she has tirelessly rooted out stories and documented the plight of the uprooted through distinctive and moving photo reportages, with the sole aim of raising awareness of those forced to flee their homes because of conflict, violence and misery.” UNHCR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjLwTl9ZEH4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auQeEuxGu6Q
Siobhan Bradshaw is an emerging British art photographer, perhaps better know at present for her stage portraits of leading international artists appearing at London’s Jazz Cafe music venue. She exhibited successfully at We Are Cuts, in London’s Soho, at the beginning of 2010. Her work attracted the attention of veteran British jazz and music photographer, David Redfern, head of BAPLA (the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies). Simon Towler interviewed her for NewPhotoDigest in Regent’s Park, London.

>> NPD: I’m talking to Siobhan Bradshaw

You are the photographer at the Jazz Cafe.

So, this year, what have you been doing?
You had a show in London?

>> SB: Yeah, at Cuts, in Soho.
And that went really well.

>> NPD: And that was portraits from the Jazz Cafe?

>> SB: Yes.

>> NPD: And did you sell well?

>> SB: Yes.
I exhibited Maceo Parker, Mica Paris, Mos Def,
I did some small black-and-whites downstairs.
Noel McKoy, Reuben Wilson, Meshell.
Cuts is in a new place now,
it used to be on Frith Street.
I’m sure people are more familiar with it than they realize,
Cos it was quite an integral part of Soho,
and lots of what was happening in the kind of early 90s
and throughout the 90s.
I’m sure lots of cool people got their hair cut there.
And it was always a really lively atmosphere to go and visit
like, to hang out there, you’d always hear really interesting conversations, and em…
>> NPD: And it’s a pretty cool place, there’re quite a few well-known…
>> SB: It’s a cool place, and the people are really [pause] nice.
>> NPD: It’s quite a big part of the London scene really.
>> SB: Yeah.
>> NPD: And it’s a hairdressers!
>> SB: And it’s doing really well selling art…
>> NPD: Yeah!
>> SB: …starting with mine! Well, not actually, there was someone before me.
But, yeah, it’s doing really well, the last few shows they’ve done.
>> NPD: Who did you get turning up at the Private View,
anyone we’d know?
>> SB: Oh, yeah, David Redfern…
>> NPD: Yeh.
>> SB: [pause] …and, em, all my friends.

>> NPD: So what else have you been doing?

>> SB: I’ve been working on a large piece.
I want to do, like, a large frieze of my work,
keeping the same format as the work that’s up in the Jazz Cafe
mounting it onto die bond [pause]
with it being about fifteen feet long.

I’m putting some stuff using this idea up,
I’m going to be doing it in a window, somewhere in the West End,
you will hear shortly.
And I’m going to be doing a commission as well.

>> NPD: And you’ve got something going to Japan too?
>> SB: Yeah.
>> NPD: Tell us about that.
>> SB: It’s for DJ Ichikawa, he has a band, and, em… [pause]
He’s been a DJ for about twenty years, in House music
and he has a bar, I think it’s in Kyoto, and it’s very nice
I’ve seen photographs of it,
and he’s going to put my work up in there as an exhibition.
>> NPD: And you were doing DJ slideshows as well, weren’t you?
>> SB: Yeah, I was working, I did something once a month at Sequence
but that stopped after six months.
>> NPD: OK, so you’re not doing any more of that?
>> SB: No.
>> NPD: And you stopped shooting film recently?
>> SB: No. I’m still shooting film.
>> NPD: But you went digital?
>> SB: Yeah, I went digital, but I’m still shooting film, black and white.
>> NPD: So what digital camera did you go for?
>> SB: D700.
>> NPD: And your film camera was your?…
>> SB: F3.
>> NPD: F3. Which you’re very fond of.
OK. And how did you find the transition?
>> SB: Well, for a long time I was just pointing and shooting really, and that was good
but then there comes a point where you can’t do any more
and understanding all the camera can do is quite a lot to take on
when I’m not really a “manual” type of person –
I look at a manual and I almost drop it –
but if you show me how to do something I get it straight away.
So now I’m reading the manual, and it’s an amazing camera, it can do amazing things.
For music photography you cannot really be relying on film any more,
I mean, it just doesn’t make any kind of sense,
and once you’ve switched over to digital, you’re pretty much going to stay with digital.
But like I said, I’m still shooting black and white film as well. And it’s nice,
you’ve got the best of both worlds.
>> NPD: Apart from earning a living, your art is your main thing, isn’t it?
>> SB: Yeah.
>> NPD: What sort of stuff do you shoot for art photos?
>> SB: Well, I’ve been shooting “the city” for easily over a decade now
cos I used to live in Soho, that’s where my work really started
when I started using cameras and I stopped painting and drawing.
And while I’m in the city, I think I will always photograph the city.
I find it really rich in its symbolism.
I’m not so interested in the people, photographing the people,
but the spaces that they inhabit, and like the empty spaces at night,
that still fascinates me. But it’s changed a lot, it’s much more dangerous now,
you’re not so safe walking around at five in the morning just shooting in really desolate places,
it’s much more dangerous.
>> NPD: Your two main stomping grounds of the past decades have been London’s Soho and Camden Town?
>> SB: Well any city, any city I would visit I would photograph,
so I have L.A., New York [pause] anywhere I went. The city in general fascinated me.
>> NPD: And you shot Quentin Crisp in New York?
>> SB: Yeah. He was actually my first portrait.
>> NPD: So how did the Quentin Crisp session come about?
>> SB: I phoned him up! His name was in the directory!
I always kind of admired his live-as-you-wish lifestyle, you know?

He chose how he wanted to be and he was it, and I liked that, I kind of respect that.
>> NPD: So where did you do the session?
>> SB: In his cafe that he used. I can’t remember the name of it,
but he was a regular fixture in this cafe.
>> NPD: That’s one of your favourite portraits, isn’t it?
>> SB: Well, the interesting thing about doing portraits is…
He was a professional portrait. I mean, the man knew what he was giving.
He was composing, he was giving you… he knew exactly what he was doing.
That was amazing in itself, just to watch him do his thing.
>> NPD: You’ve never tried to sell that one, that’s right isn’t it?
>> SB: No. But I’ve got lots of people I think in my portfolio that probably…
[pause]
maybe not quite the same as Quentin Crisp, but in their own way, equally as magnificent.
>> NPD: Who else have you got good stories from your shoots with?
>> SB: I think that probably most of the portraits that I’ve taken,
most of the musicians that I’ve photographed are really interesting people, and…
I couldn’t tell you on the spot, but you know, the snippets of conversation that you have
often stay with you for a long time, [pause]
and especially as you’re strangers. I mean obviously you get to know them as time goes on
but initially you’re strangers.
>> NPD: You got a great shot of Ginger Baker once.
>> SB: That was my most scary shot.
Usually I have a nice thing going on, but that one was pretty scary.
>> NPD: Tell us about that.
>> SB: Well I was allowed one shot. The door opened. There he was.
And he wasn’t very happy that I was there to do the shot.
>> NPD: Did you get your one shot?
>> SB: I took four. [laughs]
>> NPD: And how many of them were good?
>> SB: All of them! [laughs]
>> NPD: What light?

>> SB: Well, it was quite awkward lighting where I took it, but it was fine,
it was on the D700. –But my film came out nice too.

>> NPD: And so what’s the future?
>> SB: The world? [laughs] I really want to go to Berlin, Paris, and America and New York.
>> NPD: And you’re not represented, are you?
>> SB: No.
>> NPD: And you don’t have a gallerist?
>> SB: No.
>> NPD: And you’re looking for one?
>> SB: Yes.
>> NPD: How hard are you looking?
>> SB: At the moment I’m not looking so hard. But I will be.
>> NPD: If there are any gallerists watching, what do you want them to know about Siobhan Bradshaw?
>> SB: I want to put together the different subjects that I’ve been doing,
I think they work quite cinematically. I’m really interested in not only exhibiting them as photographs
but also making them into films, and putting music with them, and yeah, moving over a little bit into sort of cinema.
>> NPD: And you went back to St. Martins recently for more education?
>> SB: Yeah, to learn more about Photography, because I studied Fine Art before.
>> NPD: Where did you do Fine Art?
>> SB: At St. Martins.
>> NPD: And you’re moving on from that, you’re learning commercial studio practice soon?
>> SB: I wouldn’t say “commercial”. But yeah, I’m interested in doing portraits.
The person that always said “I would never do people!” is now doing people.
>> NPD: So you’re going to do musician portraits?
>> SB: Yeah. I think that I have to have some kind of rapport with the people that I’m photographing,
So it makes sense that I would do photographs of musicians, artists, dancers,
Cos I find them interesting.
>> NPD: So Siobhan Bradshaw, resident photographer at London’s famous Jazz Cafe,
long-time face in London’s Camden Town and Soho, thank you very much.
>> SB: Thank you.
>> NPD: Was it a nice day here in Regent’s Park?
>> SB: It’s beautiful.
>> NPD: That’s lovely. Thank you very much, Siobhan.

• Photomarketing consultancy ST&A claims UK event photographers may be turning to 8″x10″ and 10″x12″ instant prints to recover falling print revenues.
  +
• David Hobby, the American off-camera-flash blogger known as “Strobist”, spends a day teaching for The Flash Centre in London UK.
  +
• The new “London Road” studio in Gloucestershire marks it’s official opening with an open day of models and motorbikes.
  +

Saturday, 22 May 2010

• The twitterverse wakes up to photo lab Photographique’s “Bristol Festival of Photography”!
  +
• Photography trainer Damien Lovegrove appeals for exemplars of beauty, vintage, boudoir or latex photography to study!
  +
• Photo model Lex Eleven issues a tentative travel notice for Berlin, “soon”.
  +
• Gary Fong posts a YouTube video of gels for his Light Sphere flash gun diffuser.
  +
• The Sygma photo agency shuts down.

Friday, 21 May 2010

• David Hobby has his first engagement on the Strobist tour of Britain.
  +
• Norfolk wedding photographer Antonella Muscat reveals her rock’n'roll wedding will feature on “Four Weddings” on June 21.
  +
• Photographer Jonathan Worth announces the accession of his portrait of British comic-book author Alan Moore to the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
  +

Thursday, 20 May 2010

• Mark from Hasselblad UK visits commercial photographer Jay McGlaughlin in his studio.
  +
• Photomarketing consultancy ST&A claims debs photography is developing in the UK, and that the crews cleaning up have come in from event photography, not from schools photography.
  +
• Peter Galassi converses with Gerry Badger at the National Portrait Gallery about photographer Henri Cartier Bresson.
  +
• Business Start-Up expo is on at Excel, London. Quite a few photographers attend.
  +

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

• The overhauled BAPLA Picture Buyers’ Fair concludes at its new venue, The Barbican in London. Few photographers have attended.
  +
• Kiss and Tell: Bankrupt celebrity photographers Markus Klinko & Indrani claim to the New York Post that Indrani is seeing Lindsay Lohan!
  +
• David “Strobist” Hobby shoots Domestic Sluttery blogger Sian Meades in London, on a catamaran and in a driverless train.
  +
• The BIPP North West holds its AGM.
  +
• Wedding photographer Julia Boggio comes home (eventually!) with a “highly commended” from the HSBC South London Entrepreneur of the Year awards.
  +
• Italian photographer Fabio Polenghi is shot and killed in the Thai street clashes.
  +

Tuesday, 18 May 2010

• Photographer Craig Fraser brings home his new son, Oscar James.
  +

Monday, 17 May 2010

• Nothing much happened.
  +

Spinning roulette wheel photographed by Conor Ogle from London, UK.

How do you make a name for yourself in an over-subscribed profession like photography, where perfection is often just a minimum criterion for entry?

Well — as much as who you know, who and what you photograph — luck and accident seem to play a large part. Photography writer Simon Towler takes a look at the lucky strokes that have helped some photographers make their names.

Let death lend a hand

Annie Liebovitz was already the top photographer on Rolling Stone by the time she photographed John and Yoko for the magazine — just hours before Lennon was shot dead. One of those photographs was used on the cover of the next issue, and it became iconic. Liebovitz has been one of the world’s most famous photographers ever since.

Mario Testino was already an established London photographer when Diana, Princess of Wales sat to him — shortly before her death in a car crash. Afterwards, Testino’s portraits of Diana were widely published, and he became a top name in world photography.

The prolific Irish photographer, Fr. Browne, launched his career after he realized some photographs he had taken on a ship might be of interest to the public. The Titanic Album of Fr. Browne included portraits of many people that were to be their last. They perished soon after in the notorious ship wreck.

The public profile of a relatively little-known photographer, J.H. Lartigue, who had been discovered only recently, was raised when images from his first MoMA exhibition were published in Time magazine’s best-selling issue ever: the one that reported the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Lartigue had landed the MoMA exhibition through a chance meeting with an agent.)

Jones Griffith’s work was relatively little-published till he managed to capture paparazzi shots of Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, on holiday with a male friend in Cambodia.

Philip Jones Griffiths had already been accepted into the prestigious Magnum agency when he started covering the Vietnam War in 1966. But his work was relatively little-published until he managed to capture paparazzi shots of Jackie Kennedy on holiday with a male friend in Cambodia. With his earnings from these he was able to support his war photography, and went on to publish his photo book Vietnam Inc.

Alberto Korda‘s iconic image of Che Guevara was taken in 1960, but at that time his paper rejected it. It remained unknown until Guevara’s death in 1967, when a journalist Korda had given the print to published it as a poster. Being the author of that Che shot helped gain Korda worldwide recognition for the rest of his worthy archive.

(Interestingly, the names of photographers who captured images of Guevara’s corpse are not well remembered. Those pictures were taken at a photo opportunity layed on by his killers. In them, the executed guerilla revolutionary looks reminiscent of Christ taken down from the cross.)

Get discovered (dead or alive)

Eugène Atget died in relative obscurity in 1927. He had earned his living from his little business of taking reference photographs for artists and illustrators to base their work on. His studio had been in Montparnasse in Paris, not far from that of his contemporary, Man Ray. Berenice Abbott became aware of Atget while she was working as Man Ray’s assistant. When Atget died, she bought much of his work. And by 1968 she had promoted it sufficiently to get the Museum of Modern Art in New York to start exhibiting and publicizing it. Since then Atget’s work-a-day reference photographs have been recognized as great art, and Atget as a master of photography.

Seydou Keita had been one of Mali’s most successful social photographers. He was retired and had no reputation, either outside Mali or as an art photographer, when a French art dealer traced him in 1991. The dealer had seen anonymous portraits from Keita’s studio shown by chance in an exhibition of African art in New York. After he identified and located Keita, solo exhibitions were organized around the world. A handful of dealers ably created a market for the work. The old photographer received a great boost to his wealth before he died, as well as recognition for his talent.

Shock tactics

Shock is trickier to contrive than you might expect. Many images intended to shock have gone unnoticed. On the other hand, some of the most successful shock-shots have been intended as pretty innocent fireworks, but went off like suitcase nukes.

Who would have expected Avedon‘s Natasia Kinski and the snake to have such an effect? Or Annie Liebovitz’s Demi Moore pregnant or Cindy Crawford shaving KD Lang? How about Patrick Demarchelier’s Janet Jackson topless with her husband’s hands covering her breasts? Or Toscani‘s Black woman breast-feeding a white baby for Benetton? The key to why these images had as much effect as they did is that they were published in the mainstream, as mainstream images.

“Turned out she was 14 at the time. Her photographer was arrested”

Also in the mainstream was the 1980 album cover for Malcolm McLaren’s newly manufactured band Bow Wow Wow. The cover was a clever, competent and innocent reshoot of Manet’s Déjeuner Sur l’Herbe, with the band’s lead singer standing in for Manet’s nude. When she turned out to have been just fourteen at the time of the shoot the young unknown who made the image was arrested. British music photographer Andy Earl has never looked back since.

Beautiful people

It can help to know, meet or be the right people. Anton Corbijn’s early career as a music photographer included photographing obscure Irish indie band U2. Astrid Kirchherr’s archive includes a portfolio of work of an unknown British rock group called The Beatles. Patrick Lichfield was a first cousin once removed of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. And Anthony Armstrong Jones married the Queen’s sister and became Snowdon. Mary McCartney is the daughter of Paul and Linda, and sister of fashion designer Stella McCartney. Photographers Bunny Yeager, Lee Miller, Corinne Day, Ellen von Unwerth, Helena Christensen, Rie Rasmussen, Zoe Wiseman and Nigel Barker were all photo models.

Heinrich Hoffmann was one of Germany’s highest earning photographers. He had started as an assistant in his father’s humble photographic shop but went on to earn royalties from reproductions of his images on postage stamps and state portraits. This came about largely through his friendship with then head of state, Adolf Hitler. (Hitler also had a relationship with, and ultimately married, Hoffmann’s studio assistant, Eva Braun.)

But it doesn’t always work. Prince William’s girlfriend Kate Middleton has become a celebrated style icon, but her reported desire to emerge as an art photographer hasn’t been fulfilled. She’s been introduced to the family snapper, Mario Testino, but rumours that she’s assisted or taken lessons from him have been denied. So far, some of the most widely seen work by the lady tipped as the future Queen of the United Kingdom has been product photography for her family’s Internet business.

Buy your own work

Why not by-pass the whole starting-out, up-and-coming-new-young-photographer phase? Become horizontally integrated: start your own fashion magazine and commission photography from yourself! British fashion and advertising photographer, Rankin, kicked off his career by dropping out of his photography course at the London College of Communications and co-founding Dazed and Confused magazine.

Exceptional Success

What we’re examining here is exceptional success. Success itself is exceptional; exceptional success, even more so. It must have exceptional causes. Luck and accident play their part. But, to some extent, you make your own luck. Most of the photographers we’ve looked at had some success before they got their big lucky break. They were already lucky. They were exceptionally good at the art and craft of photography. They had habits that tended to put them in the right place at the right time, connected to the right people. It paid off.

Willard Van Dyke’s beautifully crafted 1948 documentary about “The Photographer”, featuring Edward Weston. This was to be the year Weston made his last photograph. For the remaining ten years of his life he struggled with Parkinson’s disease.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4aE2f07ON4

Schools photographer Jenny Barnard of South Cheshire Studios has applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios prints schools work on Fujifilm ASK printers
written by Simon Towler

Schools photographers South Cheshire Studios have applied Fujifilm ASK thermal photo printers to nursery printing, to help them produce affordable packages at good margin

South Cheshire Studios is a small schools photography business owned and managed by Jenny Barnard. When faced with the challenge of pricing nursery packages affordably for lower-income parents, while at the same time still making a profit on them, Jenny decided to bring printing in-house. She cooked up an innovative solution based on affordable Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers.

Evolving a requirement

South Cheshire Studios is a relatively young schools photography business. It started its first season in September 2008. Owner Jenny Barnard LBIPP specialised in nursery and primary school photography. She wanted to extend her service into some of the less-advantaged communities within South Cheshire’s catchment area, but couldn’t see how she could price her packages affordably for those parents and still make money from them, given the out-lab costs charged by her schools printers.

“We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

Jenny said: “We worked in some areas that didn’t have as much money, and we wanted to provide a service to them that they could afford so they could have photographs of their children. But the prices that we were being quoted from our schools labs meant there would have been no profit margin in that for us. So we needed to have a look around to see if we could find a way to make prints ourselves, to cut our costs in order to pass the benefit on to our clients.”

South Cheshire Studios did consider buying its own minilab. But Jenny did the math and realised that, as a small business serving fewer than fifty schools, South Cheshire wasn’t going to have enough volume for a minilab to be economical.

She said: “Because we’re a small company – we deal with about forty to fifty primary schools and nurseries – we didn’t have the through-put to make a minilab cost effective. Our nurseries only have about 30 to 100 children each, and our primary schools don’t have more than 300.”

Luckily, a chance remark from one of South Cheshire Studio’s suppliers, mentioning a family of printers from Fujifilm called the ASKs, led Jenny to the Focus on Imaging show in 2009 to seek them out as a possible alternative.

Finding a solution

Jenny and a colleague saw the Fujifilm ASK 2000 and ASK 4000 printers on the Fujifilm stand at Focus on Imaging 2009.

She said: “We were really impressed with them. We wanted to go with the Fujifilm brand rather than any other, and we thought that what they offered was just as good if not better than their competitors. We were very pleased with them. For nursery school photography, where today’s parents are buying a pack of pictures for just £10 and might only keep them for six months, the Fujifilm ASKs were perfect.”

The Fujifilm ASK 2000 is a professional photo printer that uses a dry thermal dye sublimation process to produce 300 x 600 dpi continuous tone images on rolls of water-proof, tear-resistant Fujifilm photo media up to 6 inches wide, at speeds of just 8 seconds per 6 x 4 inch print or less than 20 seconds per 6 x 8 inch print.

Its bigger brother, the Fujifilm ASK 4000, uses the same proven technology in a larger format, producing 8 x 10 inch or 8 x12 inch photos at a speed of up to 40 seconds (per 8 x 10 inch print).

Both printers cut their output into individual prints automatically.

These machines would require a far lower capital investment than a minilab, making it easier to recover the investment over a smaller volume of prints.

Refining the solution: workflow

By themselves though, the ASK printers did not represent a schools printing solution. Jenny needed to find software that would enable her to print her proof cards, a crucial task in schools workflow, on the Fujifilm machines.

She didn’t have any problem finding workflow software compatible with the Fujifilm ASKs. She stumbled across some straight away at the same Focus on Imaging show. The Fujifilm brand tends to be widely supported by software developers creating programs for professional photo applications.

Jenny said: “We use a proof-card system to get orders from our clients. The thing that enabled us to apply the Fujifilm ASK printers to our work was the availability of workflow software that links very well to the Fujifilm printers and allows us to make proof-cards for every single child at the touch of a button.”

South Cheshire Studios’ workflow now includes using this software to automatically generate proof-cards with the children’s images on them, printing them on a Fujifilm ASK 2000. Parents choose the images they want and mark their orders on the cards. South Cheshire then prints the orders.

The Studios bought two of the 6 inch Fujifilm ASK 2000s, and one 8 inch ASK 4000. It configured the three printers so that one of the ASK 2000s prints 6 x 4 inch photos on 4R roll media, the other does 6 x 8 inch prints on 6R rolls, and the ASK 4000 is used for 10 x 8 inch prints. The 6 x 4 inch printer also outputs 2 x 3 inch and 2 x 1.5 inch prints for South Cheshire’s standard packs.

This configuration allows South Cheshire Studios to print its proof cards and all its packs entirely in-house on the Fujifilm ASKs. Packs are generated and printed automatically by the workflow software, according to what’s ordered. For instance, the Studio’s pack “A” consists of two 10 x 8 inch prints, two 8 x 6 inch prints, two 6 x 4 inch prints and some little prints.

Perfecting the solution: colour management

But a configuration of printers and workflow software by itself was still not a complete solution. If South Cheshire Studios were to produce all the different size prints in its packs from three different printers, the printers would need to be colour-calibrated to produce identical output. Out of the box, no printer produces output identical to another, not even another one of the same model printing on the same media.

Luckily, Fujifilm has a headquarters in the UK, in Bedford, with all the technical expertise to assemble and integrate functioning solutions built on Fujifilm products. Fujifilm’s technical support manager, Leyton Prosser, understood straight away that South Cheshire Studios needed special software colour profiles for their ASKs to make the printers produce perfectly colour-matched output. Within a week he had created and installed these profiles, and even posted them on the Fujifilm website for other ASK users to take advantage of.

Benefits and trade-offs

In-house printing has allowed South Cheshire Studios to be more flexible in its workflow. When the business was doing all its schools printing with out-labs it was imperative for it to shoot in the morning and do post-production the same afternoon, so it could order its proof cards from the lab straight away. This was because it could take a week to get the cards back. Now it can just put everything into the workflow software, and have proof cards coming out of the Fujifilm ASKs ten minutes later.

One of the trade-offs a business makes when it chooses a lower capital investment printer like a thermal dye-sub, rather than a traditional wet lab, is that it’s marginal cost-per-print is typically higher. But this is less of an issue for a schools photography business than it might be for a photo lab, because the schools photographer sells packs, not individual prints.

Jenny says: “The cost-per-print of Fujifilm media for their ASK printers is very good, they’re very cost effective. For example, a 6 x 4 inch print costs us about 7p. We don’t sell individual prints, we sell them as part of packs, so our mark-up is quite satisfactory.”

Bringing so much of its schools printing in-house has also slashed South Cheshire Studio’s out-lab costs.

Keeping it Fujifilm

South Cheshire Studios also does enlargements up to A2 size on an Epson inkjet printer with Fujifilm Professional inkjet media. Jenny says: “I’ve always found Fujifilm inkjet media to be very high quality and cost-effective. I have a fine-art background, I’m quite a tactile person, and I like the feel of the prints.”

She continues: “I have a number of contacts at Fujifilm and I know them quite well. We’ve had an awful lot of advice and support and encouragement from them. At the Focus show they’re always really helpful, brilliant. They’re always available on the end of the phone. I don’t see any reason to go to anyone else.”

Fujifilm solutions

As a case-study, South Cheshire Studios illustrates how Fujifilm UK has the expertise and resources, and the willingness, to design and implement bespoke professional imaging solutions based on Fujifilm products and services, and to integrate them with products from other sources, to the requirements of its customers, no matter what their business size or how individual their requirement. For the imaging professional, Fujifilm is the natural partner.

To ask about Fujifilm professional photo imaging solutions in the UK, including Fujifilm ASK professional thermal photo printers, e-mail minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call Paul Austin, marketing executive, on +44 (0)1234 217 724 today.

Once you have your flash, the question is how to better use it.

Briefly, your decisions are:

• Where am I going to put the light – and why?
• How am I going to get it to stay there?
• How am I going to trigger it?
• What will the quality of the light be: Hard or soft?
• What will the beam spread of the light be – wide, narrow?
• How will I balance the strobe’s intensity with the ambient light?
• How will I balance the strobe’s color with the ambient light?

There you go. Seven decisions you get to make, with an infinite number of possibilities. And that is just assuming one strobe as a light source. Very soon, most of these variables will get to be instinctive, and you can concentrate on the two or three that will define the quality of light in your photo.

First, let’s think about what images are.

As photographers and artists we are image makers. We can make flat, two dimensional images that represent three dimensional scenes in the real world.

Another way of representing a three dimensional scene is to sculpt it; and in fact life-size realistic sculpture was one of the first expressions of thoroughgoing representational realism in Western art.

Forget colour, for now

Colour images have fundamental underlying achromatic tonal skeletons that embody all their shape and form.

We’re all at least passingly familiar with Classical Greek sculpture. We’ve strolled amongst the life-size figures on pedestals in galleries and museums. These are monochromatic now — marble-white or grey bronze — but originally they would have been painted to look more like living human figures.

Paint adds colour, nothing more. Without their paint these sculptures are not more difficult to see, it isn’t any harder to apprehend their form and volume — just the opposite in fact. And that’s a clue to what light is for in images.

Separating light values from colour

Let’s think of images as being made up of points that reflect light back to our eyes. (We’re saying images are made up of pixels.) Our vision discriminates only two fundamental properties of the light from any point: the intensity of it, and the wavelengths of which it is composed.

Our sense of the intensity of the light reflected from any point is derived from the rate we detect photons to be coming from it: how many photons per time period. We perceive this as the brightness of the point.

We perceive the wavelengths of light from the point as the colour of the point.

In colour theory, and in colour models based on human perception of colour, the property of intensity or brightness is also termed luminance. This property is a component of all colour. The measure of this property of a colour is its value. That’s to say, when we put a number on it, or some other measure, that’s a brightness or luminance value.

The term tone is very closely related to brightness. The values of areas of an image, and how they gradate, are its tones. It’s predominantly with tone, and tonal contrast, that the shapes of objects in images are delineated; and it is with tone, and tonal gradation, that their form and texture are modelled.

Colour images have fundamental underlying achromatic tonal skeletons that embody all their shape and form. When we remove colour from an image, what we are left with is its underlying tone, a panchromatic black and white version of the image. This is what a black and white image is: all the information about the brightness of light reflected from a scene, with no information about its wavelengths.

Form is modelled by how much light it reflects

It’s light that shows us the Classical Greek sculptures. It’s with light that we can see their shape and form, and get a sense of their voume in space.

Their surfaces reflect light to our eyes. Some parts may reflect most of the light falling on them directly back at us — perhaps the flat middle of a forehead, say. Others gradually reflect less light to us, and more in other directions, as they curve away from us — think of hips and thighs. There’s a gradation in the light they reflect.

Perceiving three-dimensionality

Most of us have heard that having two eyes gives us stereoscopic vision, that this is a hunter-adaptation, and that we depend on having both eyes for a good sense of distance and three dimensional vision. In fact most of us have a perfectlly good sense of the three dimensionality of the world around us, and the things in it, even when seen through only one eye.

Our instinctive understanding of perspective, and the way things should be, gives us a perfectly workable sense of relative distances and whether one thing is farther away than another.

And our instinctive understanding of gradation in the light that things reflect back at us enables us to get a near-perfect sense of their form and volume.

(Steroscopic vision is just basic range-finding on a single focus point, and adds little to our perception of the world. It might help you catch a ball, but it won’t improve your sense of how round it is.)

This is one of the reasons why we can appreciate the illusion of flat, two dimensional images as a satisfyingly realistic representation of the real world.

Coming back to colour

Classical greek sculpture is a high-point of realistic representation of the human form. When time removed the statues’ paint it allowed the underlying art of the sculptur to shine through — in a heightened, slightly hyper-real way — and it showed that aspect of it in a degree of isolation from the final statue considered as a whole. It’s not unlike what happens when a photographer makes a panchromatic black and white image of our, in-reality coloured, world.

Does the superficial surface matter? If we re-apply the paint, does it change the apparent form and volume of the statue? No. It might change the texture of the surface, and we do have a visual sense of texture. But it won’t alter how the underlying form models the volume of the figure in space. In a sense, this shines through the paint. If the statue were less perfectly modelled, and an enhanced sense of its volume had to be built up using effects of coloured paint, it would be far less satisfyingly realistic.

It is the angle of points on the surface relative to the observer that determines what proportion of the incident light they reflect to him. It’s this, not the paint on them, that models form. The form underlies the colour. Gradation in the brightness of any particular colour of paint we see on a statue is caused by the underlying forms beneath it, not by some property of the paint itself. The underlying form modulates the brightnesses we perceive, and this models the volume of the statue for us.

Still images

Classical Greek figures have something further in common with photographic images (and paintings): they are still. It’s interesting that their stillness often captures a moment of the figure in motion. The sculptor hasn’t just frozen a moment; he has carefully chosen to freeze the exact moment that most wholly represents and expresses the entire movement.

Becoming flat

In Classical times, and for long after, sculpture was the pre-eminent visual art. Painting images on flat surfaces would not even begin to rival it for many centuries. But there were flatter forms of the sculpted image. Figures sculpted or modelled in relief appeared on friezes and other features, like bodies half-emerging from the clay or stone.

We can’t walk around them, they are tableaux with a single definite (rather than implied) picture plane; but their shape and form are still modelled in three real-world dimensions, even if the third one lacks depth.

If we can flatten these reliefs completely we’ll have arrived at realisticly two-dimensional images of our three dimensional world. But we need to represent or simulate the way light is reflected differentially from forms, or gradates on them. We need to shade them in.

In photography you can learn to apply lights, natural and artificial, by rote. That’s to say, you can learn the set-pieces, the standard set-ups, in what circumstances and for which types of work to apply each one.

But some of us don’t learn well by rote. We need an explanation of the fundamental principles at work in lighting. And some of us would find a fundamental understanding of light and lighting more satisfying, particularly if it becomes so much second nature that we learn to apply it naturally, fluidly expressing elegant lighting solutions for each scene that we shoot, drawing simply on fundamental principles.

The medieval master mason was able to draught the plans for his cathedrals, and scribe the templates of their carved stones, using just simple compass and square, applying his fundamental knowledge of measure and proportion, step and repeat.

So let’s start learning what light is for in images, what it does and what we can do with it.

Next: Theory of light 2: modelling three dimensions

studio lighting equipment

Five stages of a commercial photo shoot:

• concepts, contracts and pre-production
• travel
• scouting
• shooting
• post-production
• delivery
]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/5-stages-of-a-commercial-photo-shoot/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/evolution-of-a-stylist-an-interview-with-toyo-tsuchiya/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/evolution-of-a-stylist-an-interview-with-toyo-tsuchiya/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:12:47 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=292 http://bit.ly/Qg9Ss]]> String Magazine: Evolution of a Stylist: an interview with Toyo Tsuchiya http://bit.ly/Qg9Ss
]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/evolution-of-a-stylist-an-interview-with-toyo-tsuchiya/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/how-to-estimate-an-advertising-shoot/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/how-to-estimate-an-advertising-shoot/#comments Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:06:09 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=284 http://bit.ly/4xcCEY Really good stuff]]> How to estimate an advertising shoot. APhotoEditor interviews an estimator http://bit.ly/4xcCEY Really good stuff
]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/09/how-to-estimate-an-advertising-shoot/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/leibovitz-wiped-out-by-loan-debt/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/leibovitz-wiped-out-by-loan-debt/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:55:49 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/leibovitz-wiped-out-by-loan-debt/ http://is.gd/2mvJZ]]> Annie Leibovitz getting wiped out by loan debt http://is.gd/2mvJZ
]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/leibovitz-wiped-out-by-loan-debt/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/aerial-photography-demo-for-liberty/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/aerial-photography-demo-for-liberty/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:01:23 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=200 Liberty invites you to fly and photograph a downloadable paper plane to protest against fast-track extradition. http://bit.ly/Xz6JU
]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/aerial-photography-demo-for-liberty/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/get-started-in-event-photography/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/get-started-in-event-photography/#comments Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:07:56 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=23 read more]]]>

Patrons at the TG club pose for John Fuller's camera. contact@theglorybox.co.uk

Event photography boomed in the UK in the five years prior to the recession. If you have time on your hands and a little capital, it can still be a good way to earn a living from the camera. Simon Towler explains what you need to get started.

What is it?

Event photography was invented in 1897 by the Lafayette studio. They took portraits of celebrities at fancy dress balls. Today the activity has diversified, but the core work is still to take photos of people dressed up at social or sporting occasions. Wedding and portrait photographers do a lot of event work, but there are many specialists now who do nothing else. Making prints on site and selling them there and then is the commonest business model.

What type of people make good event photographers?

People who will stick at event photography and make a go of it tend to be self-motivated and slightly extrovert. They’re entrepreneurial, hard-working, and good with people. They’re practical, independent, and self-reliant. And they don’t have a strong need for security or routine.

What to expect

Earnings: Most event photographers are self-employed. Established and successful ones trading in their own right might earn around £40K – £60K typically. Six figure earnings are exceptional, but possible. (New entrants to event photography should be aware that success isn’t guaranteed, and you might net just a few thousand pounds profit from your first year’s work — a modest part-time income.)

Lifestyle: The lifestyle of event photographers revolves around getting and doing jobs. If they get good gigs, ones that pay off, they only need a handful of them a month to earn a good living. They’ll spend all their spare days canvassing and prospecting for jobs. They travel continually, visiting prospects and getting to gigs. They work all hours, in all kinds of places, with all kinds of people. They sometimes need to stay overnight away from home, and for events like tournaments might have to camp out for a week or more. The pace of the work is fast, and it’s stressful. It involves co-operating with a crew, and dealing with the public.

Prospects: Event photography is typically a second career, one people get into after the age of forty, and expect to stay in till retirement. Once you have the equipment, know the ropes, and know photographers or organisers who will book you, you’re flying. It’s possible to build a good and sustainable level of work in less than two years. Event photographers who prospect for their own jobs, and build up their own client base, do well. Those who market themselves best are able to get more work than one crew can do. Their businesses grow. The few who have an especial talent for building a more complex business or a franchise network, or who develop new markets, earn the most.

Learning the ropes

You shouldn’t make up your own way of doing event photography from scratch. You’ll become much more successful, much faster, if you learn from the leading people who do it. They have it down to a fine art. You can learn as an assistant, by doing a course with a franchise, or by attending workshops. It’s not just about how to operate, it’s about how to run a gig to make money, the most money possible.

Business models

Your business model is the way you make money out of your events. One business model is to make prints on site and sell them there and then. Another is to shoot on site, sell online. Or you can charge the organiser a fee to attend. Most event photographers combine these models in varying proportions. More sophisticated business models involve mounting promotional photographic events yourself, on behalf of corporate marketing agencies.

Essential kit

Cameras: You’ll need a main cam, a backup, and a handful of batteries. All event photography involves shooting as many subjects as you can in the time available. You usually have to send images to a printer or server as soon as they are taken. Most event photographers recommend professional DSLRs that can produce good looking low resolution JPEGs straight from the camera. This keeps your files small for rapid transmission, and avoids any need for post-production. The body should be rugged, able to take some knocks. Event photographers favour cameras that support tethered shooting, sending images down a cable straight away, and also wireless transmitters. And they like a full range of options for connecting on-camera and studio flash. You don’t need the latest mega resolutions, but for some types of work you may need good low-light performance and fast continuous shooting speeds, just like sports photographers. Don’t spend any more than you need to.

Computer and software: You need a computer to send your images to, for printing or uploading to the web. And you need software to support your workflow and display images to customers. Most event photographers use a laptop, and improvise a workflow using common affordable software.

Printer: You need a fast event printer, a heavy-duty dye sub photo printer that takes six inch roll media. If you’re going to get your jobs from another photographer, get the printer they recommend. Otherwise, get advice from an experienced event photographer. Don’t forget you’ll need some kind of portable tables or stands to put your printers and computers on.

Web site: You’ll lose out if you don’t have an e-commerce web site to sell prints. A proportion of your sales from most events will come through your web site. A number of providers on the web offer sites with e-commerce designed for photographers, or can add e-commerce photo sales to your existing site.

Mounts and business cards: You earn more money from prints sold in mounts. You need mounts with your contact details on, and business cards. Re-prints and web orders depend on it.

Power cables: No length of extension lead is too long, no number of cables enough. And you need plenty of gaffer tape too, to tape them all down and make them trip-safe.

A phone: Your phone is your office. Get a well connected business smart phone with email, web browser and a good organiser. Learn how to use it and sync your calendar and contacts with your partner and home computer.

Transport: You need any reliable car or van that your kit will fit into.

Non-essential kit

Many well known event photographers and franchises use specialist set ups that may include studio lights and backgrounds, generators, sets, costumed models, flight cases, photo kiosks, wireless transmitters, barcode readers, 8in portrait printers, wide format printers, step ladders, custom vans, green screens, masts, special workflow software, etc. You won’t need any of this to begin with. And you’ll never need premises.

Partners and crew

It is possible to do event photography as a one-man band, but for most people the optimum crew size is two. Husband and wife teams are common, and the division of labour is usually between shooting and selling. For most jobs, needing more than two people would eat into your profit or wipe it out completely.

How to break into the business

Once you’ve learned how to operate at an event, you need to get work. If you’ve bought into a franchise, that may come as part of the package. Otherwise, the people you’ve learned from (if you’ve impressed them) may hire you as a second shooter from time to time. If they think you’re good, they may sub-contract jobs to you. As you build your experience and reputation, you can find more photographers to give you work, through networking and by browsing event photography forums on the web. As soon as you feel ready, you also need to look for jobs in your own right, by contacting organisers. If you have no idea how to do this, attend a one-day course with an expert, it will be some of the best money you’ve ever spent.

Finding a niche or specialisation

Probably the most valuable single piece of advice you can get in event photography is to shoot what you know. There are rifle club members who photograph all their club socials, bikers who shoot rallies and motocross, evangelical Christian groups who take the pictures at church picnics, clubbers who shoot night spots, and leather men who photograph fetish nights. An event is anywhere that people or their animals are dressed up for an occasion, something you can capture for them in a unique professional photograph.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/get-started-in-event-photography/feed/ 3 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/phottix-professional-photo-accessories-sets-up-in-uk/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/phottix-professional-photo-accessories-sets-up-in-uk/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:45:53 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=109


The unique Phottix Hero camera remote.


PRESS RELEASE: Phottix Professional Photo Accessories Set Up in UK

Phottix, a leading global manufacturer of photo accessories, has established a distribution hub in the UK.

Phottix, a leading global manufacturer of photo accessories, announced the official opening of its Distributor for UK and Ireland today, Phottix UK Ltd. The opening is being marked by a period of special introductory pricing from the UK website www.phottix.net, and by promotional competitions in the press.

Phottix professional photo accessories have long been popular in the UK and Ireland, but prior to the establishment of the UK distribution partnership customers had to make their purchases from unofficial overseas websites. The new company, Phottix UK Ltd, will provide an official channel for Phottix quality photo accessories, and will greatly enhance customer service experience and product support.

The Phottix product range has items compatible with major makes of camera, including Canon and Nikon, and includes unique units like the Phottix Hero wireless camera remote control which operates over a video link, the Phottix GeoOne GPS camera geotagging unit, the Phottix O-Flash affordable ring light, the Phottix Nikos digital timer remote release, and the Phottix Cleon II wireless/wired remote shutter release, as well as comprehensive replacement accessories ranging from camera grips to batteries, flash accessories, filters and complete studio lighting systems.

Phottix UK Ltd will import and distribute Phottix products in the UK and Ireland from warehouse facilities in Northamptonshire. The new company will sell Phottix quality photo accessories direct to consumers via the new UK website www.phottix.net, and will also supply a growing nationwide reseller network, wholesale. It will raise awareness of the Phottix range of accessories through nationwide advertising campaigns in print and online media.

It will channel all UK and Ireland technical support, servicing and warranty assessment and repairs, and will provide marketing support, including promotional collateral and point of sale. Information about the products in the Phottix range will be disseminated widely and authoritatively via the www.phottix.net website.

Phottix UK Ltd has been set up in association with long established environmental services company Metafix (UK) Ltd, a supplier to major photo players including ASDA, Fujifilm, Klick Photo, Max Spielmann, Noritsu, Snappy Snaps, Tesco and Tetenal. It is directed by the same senior management team.

Nick Dean, Managing Director of Phottix UK Ltd said: “Our opening as the official UK distribution channel for Phottix professional photo accessories means Phottix customers now have a source they can trust, from which they can buy in confidence, in Sterling or Euros, secure in the knowledge that their purchases are fully covered by applicable consumer law and trading standards, and backed by the warranty, service and support of the Phottix corporation. Our association with the long established UK industry leader Metafix means people know they are dealing with a substantial, experienced and well known management team that isn’t going to disappear overnight. It’s a new dawn for Phottix in the UK and Ireland, and I look forward to enhancing the product experience of the company’s many loyal and enthusiastic customers. They’ve deserved this for a long time.”

To find out more about Phottix professional photo accessories in the UK visit www.phottix.net. To apply to become an official reseller of Phottix photo equipment, call Phottix UK on +44 (0)1933 460894 today.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/phottix-professional-photo-accessories-sets-up-in-uk/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/schools-photography-chooses-fujifilm-solutions/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/schools-photography-chooses-fujifilm-solutions/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:27:29 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=82

John Hunt (l) with his lab manager, Martyn Headley (r), show off the new Fujifilm Frontier 770 digital minilab they installed for schools photography work at John Hunt Photography, in Radcliffe, Manchester, UK, 28/05/09

Schools Photography chooses Fujifilm Solutions
written by Simon Towler

Schools photography is part of our national culture. We all grow up with it as children, and as parents we later consume it. For the practitioners who provide it, the task divides into two major activities, capture and print. Photographers do the image capture, prints are made by a lab. Both activities may be combined in a single integrated business, although many schools photographers use the services of a specialised lab. Whatever the business model, though, all types of schools service choose Fujiflm solutions.

Schools businesses require individually tailored solutions. That’s what Fujifilm Photo Imaging provides. Fujifilm has the expertise to build a solution that matches the region, market, workflow and scale of any individual schools business, and provides the data capture, print packages and production capacity that suits it best.

For the product

In schools photography, the print is the product. The activity has a reliance on workflow. A single schools assignment can involve handling images of thousands of pupils, sorted into many classes, and output in multiple product variations. Each image has to be linked to the students’ unique ID numbers, and these are associated with their classes. All the prints have to be sorted into one job per pupil, and the packages have to be proofed before parent orders are taken. Because the season is so compressed, into two peak periods either side of the summer holiday, a schools photography business has to output all the work from each school in no more than a few days, so they can move on to the next one.

Two crucial points on the critical path from capture to fulfillment are rendering and printing. Rendering is the software process that turns the captured digital photos into the various product images they’ll be used for, complete with school logos, class mates, personalized text and so on. Rendering, rather than printing, will usually be the limiting factor in productivity. The extremely “bursty” nature of schools printing (thousands of prints are needed quickly in a burst at certain points of each job) requires lab printers with throughput rates so fast, most computers and software would have difficulty keeping up with them. That’s where Fujifilm comes in.

For speed and productivity

When John Hunt’s already sizable schools photography business in Radcliffe, Manchester experienced growth, he needed more speed from his minilabs. He studied the alternatives, then chose Fujifilm (the leading provider of photo imaging solutions in the UK). A new Fujifilm Frontier 770 digital minilab, installed this year, proved twice as fast as John’s old pair of hybrid labs. He needs to output all the 6×4 inch proof cards for any school within two days of completing a shoot. With his new Fujifilm solution, he can, and now prints between 2,500 and 3,000 proofs a day at peak seasons.

Software plays its part here too. John Hunt says: “The LiteBox Schools system supplied by Fujifilm processes schools packages more efficiently, so there’s less cutting and sorting. All the work can now be done by just one to two people.”

Major professional laboratory, Dunns Imaging Group, also use Fujifilm Frontier minilabs for their trade schools service. Dunns’ schools lab switched to Fujifilm machines three years ago, with the purchase of their first Frontier 570. Within eighteen months they added two more. The reliability of the equipment gives Dunns the confidence to run just three machines at capacity, rather than add a fourth for redundancy.

Gary Denham, director, said: “We chose the Frontiers because really we are, if you like, a Fuji lab. We already had other Frontiers in the building. They are very good machines, solid, so it was a natural progression for us.”

Fujifilm is the obvious solutions provider for smaller schools photography businesses too. In fact, this end of the market is often where innovation is introduced. For instance, it was the smaller businesses that first pioneered digital schools photography, and exploited the opportunity to link data to their images, something we take for granted today.

For businesses large and small

Dave Clarke runs a small and thriving schools photography business in Scotland, called Snapping Sam. He can adapt quickly to market changes. He switched to Fujifilm minilabs about a year ago, not for higher capacity, but to work more economically in shorter batches. Dave tells us: “A change in the way schools work needed to be printed prompted us to get the Frontier 570. These days we need to be able to run off prints in smaller jobs, and the Frontier is perfectly suited to that. It replaces a number of roll-to-roll printers that we had. You’d print something-hundred feet of paper on one, then you’d go and process it, then you’d cut it. That used to suit quite a lot of schools work. But you’d waste a four meter paper advance every time you cut, so you couldn’t for instance just do one 10x8in print in a hurry. With the Frontier, when you want a 10x8in print, it just comes out, there’s no waste.”

Supporting innovation

Larger schools photography businesses tend to serve an established and relatively static customer base that doesn’t demand much change. They generally offer a standard range of products that changes little over time. For them, introducing new products could be disruptive. Smaller operations, on the other hand, can have more to gain from change than to lose by it. They depend more on continual business development, and on differentiating themselves from the competition. This is where innovation happens.

Software can be a key to innovation. Dave Clarke uses LiteBox Schools from Fujifilm. He used it to pioneer composite group images with children’s names underneath their pictures. He tells us: “I wouldn’t say we’ve invented the product, but there are very few photographers doing this in Scotland. It has gone down well with a number of schools, though of course there are some where the parents prefer not to share their children’s names.”

Dave has also introduced letterbox format panorama images, composited from informal group shots of class members. He innovates in his papers and finishes too, exploiting sizes and surfaces you can only get on a wet lab. He prints the panoramas on distinctive Fujicolor Crystal Archive Digital Pearl paper, for a high-gloss pearlescent surface effect. And he prints his proof cards on Fujicolor Crystal Archive Writable paper, to make it easy for parents to fill in their order forms. This differentiates his products from work produced at larger schools labs, where issues of market demand, cost versus volumes and trade price sensitivity may restrict the choice of papers.

Dunns Imaging Group’s trade schools service is also standardised on the Fujicolor Crystal Archive family of papers. Gary Denham says: “It’s quality paper and we get the right results on it, it’s consistent. When you’ve got Fujifilm Frontiers, it’s the obvious choice if you want that consistency.”

For efficiency

Fujifilm schools solutions enable efficient data and image capture on Fujifilm S5 Pro DSLR cameras, equipped with barcode readers. Fujifilm LiteBox Schools Image Data Link can use this information directly, to greatly increase the efficiency of data capture on site. Dave Clarke says: “The S5 is the near-perfect schools camera. We were one of the first to buy into the S-series. The S1 was the first affordable camera that gave you good jpeg files straight off the camera. I’ve always loved cameras made by Fujifilm because, being a film company, they know how to make colours look good. Image Data Link enables me to use a barcode scanner that’s attached to the bottom of an S5. It has made the data capture extremely easy. It doesn’t impact at all on the speed of taking the pictures at the school.”

For flexibility

Fujifilm Photo Imaging has all the expertise you need, and all the elements to choose from, to tailor a schools solution specifically for your business. That’s what sets the UK’s leading provider of imaging solutions off from the competition. Fujifilm schools solutions have the flexibility to provide a solution that’s the right size, adapts to your regional needs, and accommodates your choice of add-on services.

Dave Clarke explains some of the options he uses with Fujifilm LiteBox Schools: “There’s actually a number of different software packages used by schools. In England the main one is SIMS. LiteBox is compatible with that. But in Scotland we also have another one called Phoenix. Phoenix is used by all but one of the Education Authorities here. LiteBox Schools also integrates with Phoenix, and that’s essential for secondary school work. Also, we’ve currently just added the ROES interface so that we’re now printing other photographers’ work, and that dovetails into the LiteBox workflow as well.”

For schools photography and printing, it’s Fujifilm

Fujifilm Photo Imaging is the outstanding choice of solutions provider for schools photography and printing businesses. Based in Bedford, the company has a long heritage in professional photography, and contains the expertise and knowledge to tailor a comprehensive end-to-end schools solution specifically for you. The company prides itself on striving to know your business almost as well as you do. That’s why schools photography and printing chooses Fujifilm.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/schools-photography-chooses-fujifilm-solutions/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/robert-knight-rock-n-roll-photographer/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/robert-knight-rock-n-roll-photographer/#comments Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:15:09 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=378

Doug McBride interviews music photographer Robert Knight for behindthehype.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpi1YvP3TZ4

Robert Knight was fortunate enough to build relationships with rock gods like Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Led Zeppelin. In the interview for the new documentary about his life, Rock Prophecies, he discuss some of his moments with these larger-than-life musicians.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/robert-knight-rock-n-roll-photographer/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/andy-earl-uk-music-photographer-on-canon-eos-5d-mark-ii/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/andy-earl-uk-music-photographer-on-canon-eos-5d-mark-ii/#comments Mon, 03 Aug 2009 05:34:16 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=340 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLiaF1bUPe4]]>

A short with professional photographer Andy Earl testing out the new Canon 5D MkII on a shoot in London. Director; Dave Haigh Camera; Hans Ravensberger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLiaF1bUPe4

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/08/andy-earl-uk-music-photographer-on-canon-eos-5d-mark-ii/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/07/a-modern-lab-for-modern-times/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/07/a-modern-lab-for-modern-times/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 11:34:02 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=244


John Fitzgerald in his modern pro lab on Guernsey


A Modern Lab for Modern Times
Fitzgerald’s Photographic Services: a progressive pro lab
ADVERTORIAL written by Simon Towler

John Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald’s Photographic Services, a medium-sized custom photo laboratory in Guernsey on the Channel Islands, is a progressive member of the photo finishing community. He keeps his lab up-to-date with the latest equipment and software, and follows trends in services. He tells us: “We’re of the mind that, especially with the way the market moves so fast, if you don’t keep up with it you’ll fall behind very rapidly, and eventually drop out, as a lot of labs have done.”

Fujifilm is John Fitzgerald’s preferred solutions provider. John explains: “I favour Fujifilm because they have that personal contact with me. I know various people there, I know what their areas of expertise are, they’re happy for me to phone them up and just chat to them every now and again, about my thoughts and problems, about what I’d like to see, and they see if there are ways they can accommodate me.”

Fujifilm has supplied a number of solutions to Fitzgerald’s recently, to help it develop and innovate in its business. The Guernsey lab is evolving from a traditional photo printer into the modern model, a digital imaging centre. Its new solutions include a Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press for high-end photo book production, a Fujifilm Frontier 770 minilab for high-speed productivity, Fujifilm SmartPix in-store and on-line photo kiosks, Fujifilm Epson large format printers, and a range of new inkjet papers.

Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press
John Fitzgerald first saw the Fujifilm Xerox 700 Digital Colour Press exhibited at PMA 2009 in Las Vegas, and had a hands-on interactive demonstration. The Digital Colour Press uses toner to print at 2400dpi resolution on papers up to 300gsm in weight and up to SRA3 in size, at a rate of 70 pages per minute. It does automatic duplex printing on papers up to 220gsm.

John told us: “I was interested in the machine before the show, but I hadn’t had the opportunity to see one. Because I knew it was going to be there, I made sure I had a good chat with the Fujifilm people, and have a look at it, along with the competing devices that were around, and see what the quality was like. I knew the Fujifilm Xerox 700 was going to be available through Fujifilm UK from chatting with David Hartwell, my Fujifilm rep. I usually bend his ear about what’s happening and what latest products they are producing. So he knew of my interest in this type of printing technology.“

David Hartwell, sales executive for Fujifilm business imaging, recalls: “Because Fitzgerald’s and Fujifilm have such a good working relationship, when John got back from Las Vegas he just rang me up and asked if he could come over from Guernsey to see the our new Digital Colour Press. So he came over to see us, we looked after him, and took him to see the printer at the Xerox offices. John was suitably impressed with the results it could produce. Then it was simply a case of how quickly he could get one installed.”

John Fitzgerald now uses the Fujifilm Xerox 700, in combination with its Light Production Finisher option, to produce high quality photo books, as well as short-run items, such as greeting cards, for the bespoke gift market. The Light Production Finisher is a stacker, stapler and hole-punch that can also collate and fold.

Fitzgerald’s custom laboratory is primarily for professional photographers and trade. John Fitzgerald tells us: “We weren’t doing photo books of this quality on this scale before. We have a small Xerox, the 7760, which came as part of another Fujifilm photo book solution. That’s still doing the work that comes through the SmartPix kiosks. But the Fujifilm Xerox 700 puts us in a completely different league. It enables us to do the higher quality photo books, the ones generated by the professionals’ own software.”

Fitzgerald’s is also a wholesale lab, doing photo sales fulfilment for many UK national newspapers. He prints copies of their published pictures to order for their readers. John is trialling different paper stocks on his Fujifilm Xerox 700 with a view to applying it to this work too. He expects to be offering custom greeting cards and calendars for the newspaper market from the autumn of 2009.

Fujifilm Frontier 770 Digital Minilab
It was because of its work fulfilling photo print orders on behalf of national newspapers that Fitzgerald’s developed a need, in 2008, for the fast Fujifilm Frontier 770 Digital Minilab. The firm needed to complement its existing Fujifilm Frontier 355, to run glossy and lustre paper at the same time, to have a degree of redundancy, and to achieve the throughput rates needed for its newspaper work.

John Fitzgerald told us: “The newspaper work is very fast. We download it each morning and we have to have it all printed and packed by eleven o’clock, to go out in the post that day. So we’re only looking at a three hour turn-around. At our busiest time of year we need to print and pack maybe 1,500 prints in less than two hours. So we needed the Frontier 770.”

Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II
Fitzgerald’s uses Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II for all its RA4 process. The paper is optimised for digital exposure. It has the substantial base support that professional’s expect, giving a long-lasting product. And its whiter base colour and deeper shadows yield increased dynamic range.

John Fitzgerald says: “I like the quality and the handling. It doesn’t damage easily. And I like the look of it, not over-saturated or too contrasty. It has a professional look and feel. It’s a very nice paper.”

He also uses the Fujicolor Crystal Archive Professional Paper Type DP-II for prints up to thirty inches wide produced on his Durst Theta system.

Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro printers and Fujifilm Professional Inkjet Paper
Fitzgerald’s also make large format inkjet prints, including fine art reproductions. These are output on the Fujifilm Epson Stylus Pro 9900 and 7800 printers, on a range of Fujifilm papers. John tells us: “We use the Museum Rough, the Fine Art Rag, the Canvas papers, and of course the Baryte, as well as normal Silk. The most popular is the Museum Rough.”

He continues: “One of our customers is the museum here on Guernsey. They’re starting to introduce all their artwork online for people to buy copies of, and Museum Rough is their favoured paper. We printed various styles of their art, whether photographic or watercolour or whatever medium, on various papers, and let them decide which one they preferred.”

Fitzgerald’s use a Fujifilm Colour Hunter RIP to print this colour-critical fine art work on Fujifilm Epson large format printers. John says: “Using the Fujifilm Colour Hunter RIP is the only way I trust to run inkjets. I’ve tried running them directly from a computer and hated it. With the Colour Hunter you can just pop images straight in and rely on the Fujifilm profiles.”

Fujifilm SmartPix photo kiosks
Another area in which Fitzgerald’s is driving forward is kiosks. The lab has added two new Fujifilm SmartPix kiosks, and the Fujifilm online kiosk, in addition to a Fujifilm unit they already had.

Fujifilm SmartPix photo kiosks enable an outlet to sell much more than just standard 6x4in prints. They present compelling options to the self-service customer to easily choose up-sells to higher margin products, including photo books, posters, calendars, canvases and a wide range of gifts. Online, the virtual SmartPix kiosk lets the lab’s customers make these choices from home.

John Fitzgerald told us about price movements on kiosk products: “We did go through a phase of dropping our kiosk prices right down to try and compete with the PhotoBoxes and SnapFishes of this world. But since then we’ve put them up, and not seen any difference in numbers of prints coming through. That shows the public don’t choose cheap price over quality.”

Fujifilm solutions
John Fitzgerald’s own analysis of how Fujifilm solutions have enabled him to preserve margin while photo finishing has undergone rapid and exciting change is this: the corporation’s products provided the automation, productivity, first-time hit rate and added value that he needs. He says: “Our gross margin is probably lower than it used to be. But our production is much higher to compensate. In the old days of film we could often test everything twice then reprint it all. These days it’s all very high first time results. And a lot less time spent on the orders. The bulk orders basically fly through, and that’s it. We don’t even get to see the photographs, apart from when we take them out and pack them up. And we’re moving toward more value added and higher margin products, produced, for instance, on the Fujifilm Xerox 700 system.”

Fujifilm enabling the modern digital imaging centre
Fitzgerald’s Photographic Services is an example of how Fujifilm solutions can enable medium-size pro labs to cost-effectively provide many of the facilities offered by larger ones, and also stay ahead of the innovation curve. Fitzgerald’s is a modern lab for modern times, a comprehensive digital imaging centre, embracing the convergence of photo finishing and press printing, and the digital and online revolutions.

For more information on Fujifilm’s solutions, email minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call +44 (0)1234 572 144 today.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/07/a-modern-lab-for-modern-times/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/man-ray/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/man-ray/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:44:02 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=435 --Jean-Paul Fargier]]>

“Man Ray developed a few simple rules. He set the lighting before the clients arrived, to reduce session times to a minimum. He recommended that clients shouldn’t smile. He asked them to close their eyes, and then open them suddenly. Sometimes, to relax his ‘patients’ — as he called them — he would give them a prop to hold, so that their expression became serene and profound. The background was usually sober: hessian, chequer-board designs, plain white or grey background paper, on which he played with shadows. Sometimes he featured an object too. He took only a few shots, never more than twelve. He set up his camera at least three metres from the subject, to avoid distorting the face. He cropped his prints carefully. If necessary, he retouched the photos to correct any defects, adding a few pencil strokes to refine a face, or a hip. He didn’t like taking his equipment out of the studio, but he did so sometimes. He knew how to capture in the setting for his subjects some significant details of their personality. Even in his early New York portraits Man Ray understood that what makes a good photograph is the play of contrasts. It could be two faces, or even three; a silhouette and it’s shadow; the light and dark of an outfit; a face and a mask. It’s a lesson drawn from chess. As he put it, ‘The opposition between a white and a black square is fundamentally beautiful’. There are always two, almost equal, parts in a Man Ray portrait. Hands and faces are distributed symettrically. His fashion photos demonstrate his mastery of such contrasts.

Another type of contrast is called ‘solarization’. Man Ray said he discovered this technique by chance, accidentally switching on a light while developing a film. Maybe. In any case, it’s an effect that fitted wonderfully with the development of his aesthetic. Solarization accentuates the contours and intensifies the whites by inverting the values between the whites and the blacks. With this method photography becomes like drawing. The bodies appear to be outlined with a pencil, a sublime pencil which transforms matter, while a mysterious inner light radiates from the subjects. ‘The Primacy of Matter Over Thought’: this title is a manifesto proclaiming solarization as a sort of photo-chemical miracle.” –Jean-Paul Fargier

Documentary on Man Ray by Jean-Paul Fargier. YouTube video in seven parts. This documentary includes treatment of Man Ray’s commercial and editorial portraits, and fashion photography, and the techniques he brought to these.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

“Man Ray’s commercial success was due to the fact that he put as much care and research into commissioned work as he did into his so-called art photography. Whatever the objective of a commission he took the opportunity to explore his effects. In fact, he used fashion to further his art. Every material has its own lighting; each model is modeled in her own shadow. Although most of the sumptuous decors were dictated by clients, he took great liberties in how he used them. Every line has its own staging. The sophistication of the lighting emphasises the opulence of the clothes. He understood how one shape rhymes with another. He used friend’s artwork — here a Brancusi, here a Giacometti — or his own work, to introduce subtle harmonics. The decor amplifies the sophistication of the poses, which flatter the gowns: straight lines against curves; Chinese ink on rough paper. The painter’s hand guides the hand of the photographer: these touch-ups are the touch of Man Ray. Thanks to income from his fashion work, his portraits of rich Americans and his photos for advertising, Man Ray was never short of money.” –Jean-Paul Fargier

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/man-ray/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/richard-avedon/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/richard-avedon/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 10:35:36 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=454 --Richard Avedon]]>

“I am so grateful that I have the capacity and the ability to make a living, support my family — which is the definition of being a man for my generation — support my studios, support my special projects, by doing advertising.” –Richard Avedon ( http://www.richardavedon.com/ )

“Avedon was the first person to come into photography as a fashion photographer, as a commercial photographer, and then, in a sense, declare himself an artist. And that was not well received. And he declared himself an artist quite vociferously. He didn’t get all shy about it and say ‘O please accept me’. He said ‘Here I am, get out of the way!’. And it goes on till this day. People excoriate him for his ego and for his own self-agrandizement or self-selling. And if he hadn’t done that we might still not know about him. He wouldn’t be getting the museum shows, because that isn’t something people would have come to him to ask him to do. The nature of the photographic world was just simply too tense and too boundaried for that sort of thing.” –Owen Edwards, critic

Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light. On YouTube in nine parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/richard-avedon/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/fujifilm-dl410-dry-minilabs-at-doubletake-studios/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/fujifilm-dl410-dry-minilabs-at-doubletake-studios/#comments Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:51:11 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=131


Artur Krzykowiak at Double Take Studios


Fujifilm DL410 Dry Minilabs at DoubleTake Studios
ADVERTORIAL written by Simon Towler

DoubleTake Studios, the portrait, make-over and boudoir photography chain with branches in London, Manchester, Southampton (and soon Birmingham), installed their first Fujifilm Frontier DL410 Dry Minilab in March 2009, and by June had installed two more.

They use the DL410 dry minilabs to print 8 x 12 inch contact sheets for clients. This work was formerly printed on desktop inkjet printers. But the cost-per-print, wear-and-tear, breakdowns, and the need for frequent manual intervention, were all too high on these machines. What DoubleTake needed was an industrial strength solution.

Artur Krzykowiak, production and retouching manager for DoubleTake, says: “Producing the contact sheets on the desktop inkjets was very expensive if you compare the price per page. I think it’s almost ten times more to do it on an inkjet than on a dry lab. Although the inkjet printer only costs you maybe one hundred pounds to buy, and the dry lab is obviously far more, over the years it’s a massive saving. I think the price per print for an A4 page on the dry lab is about seventeen pence, and it replaces inkjets that were costing us up to one pound fifty, so it’s a massive difference.”

Each of DoubleTake’s four studios produce between 140 and 250 contact sheets a day. The studios were already a Fujifilm house, doing their production printing on Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, on Frontier 330 and 770 minilabs. After evaluating the alternatives, DoubleTake chose to buy their new solution from Fujifilm too.

Krzykowiak tells us: “We’d been using the Frontier 330 for about six years, and it was one of the most reliable pieces of equipment ever. We had really good experience of Fujifilm and Fujifilm support. We knew their after-care was great. Because we knew their service, and we knew what we can expect from Fujifilm, we decided to go with them, even though the price might have been slightly higher than some others.”

And DoubleTake discovered another benefit of installing Frontier DL410 dry minilabs. Because its prints are production quality, on an occasion when their main Frontier 330 went down, one of the studios was able to fail-over onto the Frontier DL410 dry minilab and print portraits on that.

Krzykowiak concludes: “Dry minilabs from Fujifilm are a great alternative.”

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/06/fujifilm-dl410-dry-minilabs-at-doubletake-studios/feed/ 4 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/make-up-like-robert-palmers-addicted-to-love-girls/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/make-up-like-robert-palmers-addicted-to-love-girls/#comments Fri, 22 May 2009 08:48:34 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=313 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhMTslI2oHQ]]>

Pixiwoo’s YouTube video tutorial on how to make-up models to look like Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” girls from 1986.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhMTslI2oHQ

…and here’s a link to the music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0U5JfGYx4c

“It’s really funny in the video. If you’ve watched – and if you haven’t, I would say you SHOULD watch the video – of the girls cos it’s so iconic, they’ve all got red lipstick, really pale faces, really dark eyes, and they all dance out-of-sync, which I find quite amusing… AND THEY HAVEN’T GOT BRAs ON! If you look really closely, none of them have got bras on, and it’s really funny. Makes me laugh anyway.” — Pixiwoo

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/make-up-like-robert-palmers-addicted-to-love-girls/feed/ 1 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/dry-minilabs-are-in-demand/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/dry-minilabs-are-in-demand/#comments Sat, 02 May 2009 10:53:25 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=1094 written by: Simon Towler

A dry lab is a minilab-class inkjet or dye sub photo printer. Minilab-class machines have an essential role as the main print engine at the heart of most retail photo centres. They used to use exclusively liquid chemical processes, with the advantage of a very low cost-per-print. But changes in costs, and in the environment for business, mean that dry processes will be more economical for many sites now.

“The economics of retail photo printing have moved around. Print volumes have declined, costs have gone up. New minilabs are needed that are economical at lower volumes.”

The economics of retail photo printing have moved around. Print volumes have declined, while the costs of consumables, energy, floor space and environmental and health and safety regulations have all gone up. New minilabs are needed that are economical at lower volumes. They need to be virtually zero-consumption while idle. They need to take up less space, and they mustn’t require plumbing or special power supplies. They need to be dry.

Dry labs are being sold to new sites. Photo-Me, for one, are targeting them.

“With our DKS 910 and 920 systems we’re interested in expanding the market to sites that wouldn’t have enough volume to justify a wet process photo lab,” Photo-Me marketing manager, Francois Alves De Freitas, said. “This includes community pharmacies, independent retailers and photographers’ studios. We want to give them a chance to have a slice of the photo gift pie.”

But many dry labs are sold to existing photo centres, through the natural cycle of replacing old equipment. Despite the recession, this cycle may have accelerated a little. Here’s why:

The problem with the old chemical labs at many lower-volume sites is that they aren’t paying their way any more. They can’t. They’re making fewer prints on dearer paper, and wasting power keeping their chemistry warm, while it goes off as they idle. They can’t cover their increased fixed costs, and are no longer earning their floor space. Replacing them with machines that have a higher marginal cost-per-print actually makes more sense, as long as the replacements are smaller, less wasteful, save labour, and slash fixed costs.

“We’ve saved a lot of money by going APEX,” Keith Hall of Dartmoor Photographic says, referring to his move to dry lab. “We’ve lowered our electricity bill by quite an amount, and saved about forty hours labour a week. Our shop used to have to open an hour early in the mornings, just to set the old R1 up for the day!”

CHOOSING A SOLUTION

The requirements of each photo centre are unique. They are uniquely understood only by its owner/manager. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all dry lab solution that can be applied to every site. The individual retailer will chose their ideal solution from the wide ranges offered by manufacturers.

“Unless the customer’s volume dictates just one choice, it’s the people that are buying who need to make the decision,” Paul Austin, marketing executive at Fujifilm says. “If their requirement is to do 12 x 24 inch prints for the wedding album market, or 2000 prints an hour, our only answer is the Frontier 770 wet lab. But if they only do 1000 prints a day, and it’s fairly steady, 100 to 200 prints most hours, and they don’t need many 12 inch prints, then we show them the wet lab and the Frontier DL410 dry minilab together. They make the choice.“

Buyers won’t make that choice based solely on which model of dry lab though. They’ll assess the overall retail photo system it’s part of, the manufacturer’s whole proposition. Some selling points of the solution as a whole will be critical to the retailer’s choice of lab.

“The key thing with the Kodak APEX dry lab,” Chris Castle, hardware sales manager at Tetenal, says, “is its versatility in combination with the Kodak G4 kiosks. You can produce a multitude of products from it: photobooks, greetings cards, invitation cards, calendars, etc.”

And Rohit de Souza, HP’s vice president of retail publishing, says that what their dry lab based solution offered to Tesco Extra’s customers was an unparalleled choice of printable assets. “Customers could quickly and easily create customized photo projects,” he said.

Ultimately, though, given certain other factors, purchase decisions will tend to resolve to issues of cost effectiveness. That is, cost effectiveness, given print quality, productivity, reliability, ease of operation, and versatility.

Tesco’s commercial hard-lines director, Graham Harris, said they chose HP (and the Photosmart ML1000 inkjet dry minilab) “for the reliability of its photo centre and its quality of output, which match the high levels of service we guarantee to our customers.”

INKJET OR DYE SUB?

One of the choices buyers will make will be between print technologies. There are visible differences between the image characteristics of dye sub and inkjet dry lab photographs, but both types have equal consumer acceptance.

“Our quality dry photo paper isn’t just like a traditional photograph,” Fujifilm’s Paul Austin says, “it is a photograph. People that put them next to traditional C-type prints can’t tell the difference.”

Noritsu’s marketing executive, Alison Hughes, agrees. “The kind of pictures you’re going to get produced in our shops are going to be far higher quality than those you can get at home,” she says. Her organization’s own D700 series printers are also used for the Fujifilm dry minilabs. “But Noritsu and Fujifilm are two independent companies,” she explains, “We compete against each other for business, as many customers can testify.”

Kodak can claim proven consumer acceptance of the dye sub media they use in their APEX system. “Kodak chose thermal because it’s a proven, stable technology,” Chris Castle from Tetenal says. “It’s used in the 90,000 Kodak instant print kiosks producing photographs all around the world. And it gives a cost-per-print on 4 x 6 inch photos of just six pence each.”

The market for dye sub media is mature, and the costs are known. Photo-Me say it costs four to five times more than traditional photo paper. The market for inkjet dry lab media, on the other hand, is relatively young. It’s arguable prices have yet to find their level. “Many people expect dry prices to fall,” Photo-Me say, “but production and distribution costs are always likely to give real photo paper the cost advantage.”

Keith Hall, lab owner at Dartmoor Photographic, points out a unique advantage of dye sub dry labs: a typical configuration includes a pair of redundant six inch printers. “When one of the printers in my APEX goes down,” he says, “I just keep on going on the other one, till Kodak send me a replacement. I’m never down.“

ARE DRY LABS GOOD MINILABS?

Hardware prices and feature sets for dry labs may not be mature. Manufacturers like DNP, Fujifilm, Kodak, Noritsu, Photo-Me, San Marco and even Mitsubishi all have stakes in RA4 wet chemistry printing. Those with really big stakes might be slightly inhibited about driving dry technology forward too quickly — especially traditional lab builders.

But all the inkjet dry labs do have an industrial design that could be read as suggesting a lineage from traditional minilabs. (They look like minilabs.) They typically have backprinting and job-sorter options too, suiting them to one-hour-photo workflow.

Kodak’s dye sub APEX system competes directly against the inkjets. It’s also clearly capable as a wet lab substitute.

APEX and the inkjet dry labs are the machines that encroach the furthest on wet lab territory. The latest software for APEX has focussed on increasing its functionality, adding more minilab-like features. Back-printing (or clear front-printing) is on its roadmap, due later this year.

APEX is based primarily on the Kodak 7000 series printers. This hardware is exclusive to Kodak. They’re not the most compact units, but they do produce all the commonest retail sizes from a single standard Kodak media kit.

Fujifilm and Noritsu dry minilabs are also becoming increasingly capable. The new Frontier DL430 and Noritsu D703 models offer dual-roll capability, allowing different media widths or surfaces to be loaded simultaneously, and introduce cassette loading.

THE OUTLOOK

What does the future hold?

An 1100 prints per hour Frontier dry minilab is on the roadmap for next year, and no one doubts that a twelve inch unit must start to loom on the horizon eventually.

And Mitsubishi Electric will join the fray within months. The corporation’s highly regarded dye sub printers will be housed in pairs in a new MPU mass production unit. They’re calling it The Tower. It will have a belt sorter transporting orders vertically to an output location on top, and standard two-line forty-character back-printing. Coupled with a Mitsubishi Click touch-screen, it should become yet another capable dry lab.

As someone has said, the outlook is dry.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/05/dry-minilabs-are-in-demand/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/rankin/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/rankin/#comments Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:16:50 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=370

“Rankin Exposed” a documentary profiling British fashion, advertising and editorial photographer Rankin. YouTube video in four parts.

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/rankin/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-linds-kurdish-pkk-women-guerillas/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-linds-kurdish-pkk-women-guerillas/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:16:32 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=309 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hds0c_AjlI8]]>

Video clip from a BBC documentary on war photography. This clip features UK conflict photographer Anastasia Taylor Lind who photographed Kurdish PKK women guerillas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hds0c_AjlI8

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-linds-kurdish-pkk-women-guerillas/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-lind-with-women-of-the-pkk-in-iraq/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-lind-with-women-of-the-pkk-in-iraq/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 23:56:32 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=343 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hds0c_AjlI8]]>

Excerpt from a BBC documentary on war photography. This uncritical excerpt features photojournalist Anastasia Taylor-Lind’s photographs and video diary from a trip to document the Women guerrilla soldiers of the PKK in Kurdistan, Iraq.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hds0c_AjlI8

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/04/anastasia-taylor-lind-with-women-of-the-pkk-in-iraq/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/mario-testino/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/mario-testino/#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:12:35 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=464 Mario Testino Revealed: a CNN Revealed profile of London-based international fashion photographer, Mario Testino.]]>

“I guess the editors noticed that I had a sense for clothes and it’s very hard to find professional photographers that are into clothes. A lot of them are photographers, and the editor will come and create a style and the photographer will shoot it.” – Mario Testino

Mario Testino Revealed: a CNN Revealed profile of London-based international fashion photographer, Mario Testino (http://www.mariotestino.com/). YouTube video in three parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/mario-testino/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/lartigue/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/lartigue/#comments Tue, 10 Mar 2009 08:42:59 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=469 J.H. Lartigue: The Boy Who Never Grew Up: documentary video.]]>

Jacques Henri Lartigue (June 13, 1894 – September 12, 1986)

“In 1962 Jacques Henri Lartigue, was travelling across America by Greyhound bus with his wife, Florette. With him he carried two albums of photographs that Florette had been repairing, to while-away the journey. In a chance encounter with a photographic agent at the end of the trip, these family snaps he’d taken as a child were uncovered. For Lartigue, this changed everything. Within a year he had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.”

Publicity for Lartigue’s photographs was boosted by a chance event: “The asassaination of J.F.K was so shocking that the world’s leading photo magazine, Life, shelved most of its November stories to cover the tragedy. But they kept a story on the newly dicovered French photographer, Jaques Henri Lartigue.”

‘The world got to know about Jaques Henri Lartigue, and I think it was probably one of the biggest selling copies of Life ever.’

“Lartigue was soon rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest names in photography. Fashion photographers like Hiro, Avedon and Bailey were inspired by the freshness, innocence and movement in his work.”

“At the age of 70, when most people have already retired, Lartigue began work as a professional photographer for fashion magazines like Harpers Bazaar and Vogue.”

J.H. Lartigue: The Boy Who Never Grew Up: documentary in four parts on YouTube:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/03/lartigue/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/pat-mcgrath-make-up-artist-backstage-at-aquascutum/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/pat-mcgrath-make-up-artist-backstage-at-aquascutum/#comments Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:14:04 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=325

Pat McGrath, Creative Director of Max Factor, chats exclusively to t5m about the pre-show madness and the inspiration behind the Aquascutum look, which this year is based on the iconic Eartha Kitt.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/pat-mcgrath-make-up-artist-backstage-at-aquascutum/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/portrait-lighting-basics-with-tony-corbell/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/portrait-lighting-basics-with-tony-corbell/#comments Tue, 10 Feb 2009 08:19:49 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=566 --Tony Corbell ]]> one light portraiture

One-light portraiture: “The beauty of working with one light source is the simplicity of what-you-see-is-what-you-get. So many photo shoots within the studios get so complex really really quickly, and what we want to talk about is simplifying our lives a little bit. So we’re going to go through a series of one-light portraits.

For the first one I’m going to move a light in really close to the background, almost touching the background. This is going to do a couple of things. I’m going to be able to be clever enough to let this light also light my background and my subject. It gives us a nice gradation, eliminates any shadow from the model, and really makes a nice one-light quick set-up.

The second one-light set-up that we did was very simple: it was one light set at 45 degrees to the camera, 45 degrees up high, and a reflector. It was a real simple shot. You’ve got to make sure that the reflector is forward enough so that it picks up where the main light stops off. If you look at the samples with the reflector and without the reflector, what you notice is that the reflector does make a tremendous difference.

The last of the one-light set-ups that we did is unique because it showcases the ability to make one light look as if it were three. I start by removing the softbox, and I create a situation where this one light source can become my main light, my background light, and my fill light all at the same time. I drop translucent fabric in between the light and my subject, that lets direct raw light skim past and light up the background. I bring in a reflector in front of the diffuser and use that as my reflector-fill, almost as a fill light.

Once you conquer one light, and once you can create a lot of different looks with one light, you can conquer anything.

The more lights we add, after we go past that one-light, it becomes more complex. Everything becomes a little more difficult, and you have to think through how everything might affect each other.” –Tony Corbell

two light portraiture

Two-light portraiture: “The interesting thing about working with two lights is the ability to not just separate the main light from the background, which we were able to do with one light, but now we can separate them and control them, and that’s totally different. On the second two-light set-up we’ve got a main light coming from on top and a fill light coming from below. This is kind of like a glamour set-up, some people call it clam-shell lighting. The beauty of this is that it really accentuates cheekbones.” – Tony Corbell

three light portraiture

four light portraiture

Four light portraiture: “I always start with my main light. That’s where my first exposure reading is taken. I establish that foundation, and then everything is then relative to that: my background lights are either brighter than that or darker, and everything is relative to that one main light. In order to keep detail in highlights you need to make sure that accent lights and any light coming forward is at least one / one-and-a-half to two stops below what you’re shooting at.” –Tony Corbell

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/portrait-lighting-basics-with-tony-corbell/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/cinematographer-lighting/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/cinematographer-lighting/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:32:02 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=580

“We can put the light over here, we can put it here, we can put it just in front, on the back: it changes completely. Any cinematographer, using this kind of light, can tell a story, can write with light.”

“There are three things that lighting has to do: it has to provide for sufficient illumination to record the image on film; it has to make up for the difference in contrast between our eye and the film; and it has to enhance the illusion of third dimension in a two-dimensional medium.”

“You walk on a set, it’s absolutely black, and you strike your first light for what you’re going to do, and that becomes your first brush-stroke. And then you add other brush-strokes all the way through, add different lights, till you come out with your complete picture. And then you look at it and say ‘OK, let’s do it!’.”

“I walk onto a dark stage usually I turn on one light. This light hopefully has been there before, I put it there earlier because I hopefully know where the light’s coming from in the scene. And then I decide what does that look like. And that’s theoretically the light that’s coming in the window, or the light that’s coming from the main lamp in the room, or something, and I’ll start with that. And the other lights all should be in place, then I’ll turn them on. I don’t turn on all of the lights at once. Usually I turn them on one at a time, and then I start turning them off again.”

“Usually when I show up on a set and get ready to shoot, I’ve already lit the set in my head.”

“My favourite thing in using light, for instance: I like relativity, I like light-to-dark, big-to-small. My favourite kind of thing is you have somebody standing by a window talking to somebody who’s standing in the corner. And someone standing in the corner is in the dark. So you’re cutting from this guy at the window talking to this girl who’s standing in the corner in the dark.”

“There are three things that lighting has to do: it has to provide for sufficient illumination to record the image on film; it has to make up for the difference in contrast between our eye and the film; and it has to enhance the illusion of third dimension in a two-dimensional medium. OK, that’s what it has to do; what it can do…”

“It can affect you emotionally, it can help tell the story. You have to know what story you’re telling before you even start to think about how you light it. And you have to think about whether you want the audience to see everything clearly, or whether you want to hold it back a bit from the audience, whether you want to throw the actors into a little bit of shadow.”

“Not adding, but taking-away is better, always. It’s like something’s not working, you throw another sand bag in the boat because it’s listing, and you keep throwing sand in till pretty near the whole boat sinks. You don’t put in more, you take away. Usually when something doesn’t work it’s because you’re doing too much, or you’ve made the wrong choice.”

“I remember when I first started out as a cinematographer the very first thing I was into was is there enough light.”

“Light can be flat or not-flat, and clearly flat is not good.”

“It’s not just to look at the screen. You’ve got to make the audience look at a some part of that screen that’s important, where the dialogue is going on.”

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/02/cinematographer-lighting/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/helmut-newton-by-june/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/helmut-newton-by-june/#comments Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:44:37 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=402 Helmut by June

“This film is about my husband, Helmut Newton. A few years ago I offered Helmut a video camera for Christmas. But he refused it. So I started using it myself. I looked through the lens and I knew exactly what I was going to do with it: film Helmut at work. This film represents extracts of certain assignments he worked on during this time.” – June Newton (writer and director of “Helmut by June”)

YouTube video in five parts:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/helmut-newton-by-june/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/diane-arbus/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/diane-arbus/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:47:25 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=351

“Diane Arbus was my mother.
[...]
In July 1971 my mother committed suicide and shortly after that Marvin Israel, a very close friend of hers, and I felt that we wanted to do a book of her work together. So we began collecting not just the pictures but whatever material we could find. In 1970 she had given a class in Westbeth, which was where she lived. And we found out that one of the students in that class was a Japanese photographer named Nikko Nakahara who admired Diane’s work enormously. The problem was that he barely spoke any English at all, so what he had done was to go to the classes and bring along a tape recorder to record everything that was said so that afterwards he could go home and see if he could try and understand it. So he leant us those tapes. The tapes were of very poor quality, so we asked Mary Claire Costello, who was a friend of Diane’s, to read Diane’s words over glimpses of her photographs.” — Doon Arbus.

A half-hour documentary on Diane Arbus, posted on YouTube in four parts. Made in 1972 after her death that year.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Review some of her work here: Diane Arbus: the photographic work

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/diane-arbus/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/kiosks-and-photo-gifts/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/kiosks-and-photo-gifts/#comments Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:43:51 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=1107 WHAT ARE KIOSKS ABOUT IN 2009?

written by Simon Towler

Photo kiosks, originally conceived as vending machines for instant prints, have moved on.

It’s not that instant print has declined. Sean Povey, Product Manager for Fujifilm Photofinishing, says it’s still big in 2009. It’s just that kiosks can do so much more now. Today they divide on the one hand into stand-alone instant print kiosks, and on the other into more-connected photo kiosks that may not even have printers built in.

In photo specialist outlets the connected kiosk has become a main interface between photofinishers and their customers. Fujifilm’s Povey tells us it’s not unusual for as much as eighty per cent of a photo specialist’s business to come through their kiosks. The customer whose film would once have gone in a job bag, with their order written on it, now pops a memory card in a slot and enters the order themselves. The kiosk then queues the job for the store’s lab machine, or large format printer, or other photo finishing option, as appropriate.

Less specialized outlets can get into photofinishing using compact and entry level instant print kiosks. These stores typically don’t have other finishing options. The upgrade path for them, then, is often to a larger instant print kiosk, rather than one with more connectivity.

So what are photo kiosks going to be about in 2009?

‘So much more than 6″x4″!’ chants the Marketing Executive of Fujifilm Photofinishing UK, Paul Austin. He unfolds a booklet that shows the range of photo gifts Fujifilm’s Smartpix kiosks now offer.

Austin is expressing an opinion that has some currency in the industry, and although it’s not new, it is held more firmly now than ever.

The conviction is that retailers can augment their profit from standard photo prints with higher-margin photo gift sales. Kiosks can enable this.

Kodak’s Lee Stones believes it too. “It’s all about increasing the value of each transaction,” he says. He tells us Kodak will introduce on-line photo gifting on their kiosks, “probably in the first half of 2009″.

While the idea is not new, what has changed is that the industry infrastructure needed to support it is now more developed.

Whereas many retailers produce photo gifts in-store, they also like to offer a wider range, fulfilled externally, but collected from the store. And less specialized outlets have no in-store fulfilment at all.

A tier of wholesale partners in the UK was needed for external photo gift fulfilment to become practicable. This is now in place. The gift services of these wholesale labs, such as CeWe, have matured, as have the technological arrangements for transmitting shoppers’ images and orders. These are sent to the labs automatically, via a photo kiosk’s connection to the Internet. The whole arrangement works so well that the big supermarket and drug store chains can already rely on it.

Jessops’ Head of Photo, Chris Carr, states that a main reason for the company’s recent nationwide roll-out of Lucidiom photo kiosks was to enable photo gifting and photo book ordering in-store. Jessops uses the kiosks to replicate the experience of their new JPics on-line printing service. Photo books and gifts are then fulfilled for Jessops by CeWe, and either delivered to store or despatched direct to the shopper.

Independent photo specialists can start to plug into this way of doing things too.

Fujifilm’s Smartpix photo kiosks, for instance, will provide the same fulfilment facilities to independents as they do to multiples, from a choice of partners. Finished gifts can be shipped to store, for collection by shoppers. Not only do you gain an up-sell, you also win a second visit to your shop!

Natalie Purdie, Product Manager for Digital Photography at Sony PSE, agrees that Internet gifting is important for kiosks. The facility is available with selected Sony packages. But she warns that dealers may need to adapt their sales cycle before selling this feature to independents. They should assess the buyer’s existing Internet connection, and give guidance if it needs to be enhanced. Store owners without additional photofinishing options may still increase revenue from a stand-alone Sony instant print kiosk, by offering options like borders and effects for a premium.

Mitsubishi Electric’s entry-level compact instant print kiosk, the EasyPhoto, also provides value added options that can be applied by stores that are not photo specialists. Carla Quartley, Marketing Manager for Mitsubishi Electric UK, says that all the optional modules for this low-cost unit are now fully available, including ones for creating calendars, collages and mosaics, and a module for potentially lucrative ID photography.

For Photo-Me, Marketing Manager Francois De Freitas says that consumers are now sufficiently familiar with photo kiosks to accept added value products more easily. Photo-Me develops the software for its instant print kiosks itself, and the latest versions add gifts and montages to a repertoire that has long included ID photos and greeting cards.

Graham Jackson of Retail Photo Solutions says that HP photo gifting will go on-line in the UK in 2009, with both collect-in-store and deliver-direct-to-customer options available. HP’s hopes for their kiosk and associated output solutions are some of the most ambitious of any manufacturer. As the hub at the centre of a complete solution, it can have connectivity not only to a wide range of HP output devices in-store, but also to Snapfish, the global on-line photo sharing site owned by HP. As an only distributor, Retail Photo Solutions will continue to spearhead the penetration of HP’s photo kiosk solutions into the UK in 2009.

The market for kiosks in photo specialists is quite saturated, but there is a replacement cycle, and owners will displace current installations to gain new facilities. If you’re an independent looking for a photo kiosk in 2009, the good news would seem to be that there are a large number of competing players keen to offer you one. They have models to suit all requirements and all purses. Not only that, but they all offer ways for you to potentially enhance your revenue from photofinishing, beyond standard 6″x4″s.

The only question is, if the economy impacts even 6″x4″ printing in 2009, how will it effect premium photofinishing options like posters, gifts and photo books? An economist’s answer might be “no more, and no less”. True, photo gifts are what economists call “luxury goods”, susceptible to a decline in demand. But so are common photographs. The economic slow-down is not a reason for photofinishers to shun gifts. If you’re a Porsche sales person, you won’t improve your sales revenue in a downturn by refusing to sell soft tops. Happy gifting!

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2009/01/kiosks-and-photo-gifts/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/12/master-printer-chooses-fujifilm-for-large-format-printing/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/12/master-printer-chooses-fujifilm-for-large-format-printing/#comments Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:18:35 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=237


Fujifilm Epson 11880 GreenBox large format printer at Farnells Photographic


Master Printer Chooses FUJIFILM For Large Format Printing
ADVERTORIAL by Simon Towler

David Farnell has chosen the FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox system for Farnell Photographic Laboratory’s new digital print service. Farnell, who has been printing since 1978, chose the 64″ FUJIFILM solution for his Lake District pro lab based on the quality of its prints on FUJIFILM papers.

“It was the quality of work on the new papers that finally convinced me,” Farnell said. He had evaluated 11880 prints on FUJIFILM Fine Art Fibre Baryte paper. “Prior to that I’d been reluctant to offer digital prints because I had concerns about black and white quality, skin tones, and longevity. These are not a problem now.”

The installation of the 64″ FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox printer was done by specialists from FUJIFILM Photofinishing UK, who also provided the training and a follow-up post-installation visit, just to make-good. Farnell was reassured to be working with a corporation with a heritage in professional laboratories and fine art photo printing.

Farnell has also been gratified to find the new prints have gone down well with established clients, even traditionalists who are quite conservative. “It gives them something new to offer their customers,” he said, “and they want that.”

“We used to do Lambda prints up to 60″x30 but now we can do much bigger, in-house, with confidence” Farnell said.

His new 64″ FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox has enabled him not only to offer digital prints, but also to follow the trend for larger print sizes. “We used to do Lambda prints up to 60″x30″,”Farnell said, “but now we can do much bigger, in-house, with confidence.”

The FUJIFILM Epson Stylus Pro 11880 GreenBox also wins out against traditional kit on costs. “The service contracts on some of our legacy kit had meant we couldn’t justify extra machines to provide redundancy and backup,” Farnell said. “But the cost in down-time and call-out charges would have been unaffordable if something went wrong. The FUJIFILM system doesn’t have those costs, and it means we have another digital unit we can move jobs onto when something else fails.”

For more information on FUJIFILM’s GreenBox large format photo printing solutions, email greenbox@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward, Commercial Manager of FUJIFILM UK Photofinishing, on +44 (0)1234 572 135.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/12/master-printer-chooses-fujifilm-for-large-format-printing/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/11/fujifilm-expands-professional-inkjet-papers/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/11/fujifilm-expands-professional-inkjet-papers/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:51:50 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=31 Fujifilm Expands Professional Inkjet Papers
by Simon Towler

Fujifilm UK have expanded their range of professional inkjet media, with additions that include a popular new satin finish canvas type, and an outstanding genuine fibre base gloss baryte. The new papers are available now from all main Fujifilm stockists.

The Satin Canvas 350gsm is one of two new canvases introduced by Fujifilm UK. Satin has become the canvas finish most favoured by US consumers, a trend the UK is expected to follow.

The other new Fujifilm canvas is Fine Art Natural Canvas 290gsm, a single-weave natural matt.

But the big news in Fine Art must be that two completely new baryte type papers have joined the Fujifilm range of large format print media. The extensively tested new papers are available in gloss and matt, the base paper is genuine fibre based baryte media.

Artist Nic Gaunt used the new Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Gloss 310gsm for each of the 42 large format prints in his “The Rotunda Project – 21 Stories” international touring exhibition.

“My printers and gallery both said this new paper’s fantastic,” Nic said, “It’s so good it seems a shame to put it behind glass. The framers had so much respect for it, they took extra care in the dry mounting, to make sure they didn’t spoil it. I don’t think it’s that good, I think it’s better than that! I’ve waited so long for a paper of traditional quality to come along, and now I’ve got something that beats it!”

“My printers and gallery both said this new paper’s fantastic,” Nic Gaunt said, “It’s so good it seems a shame to put it behind glass. The framers had so much respect for it, they took extra care in the dry mounting, to make sure they didn’t spoil it. I don’t think it’s that good, I think it’s better than that! I’ve waited so long for a paper of traditional quality to come along, and now I’ve got something that beats it!”

The new Fujifilm baryte papers have a premium look and feel, wide dynamic range, luminous neutral whites, and hold deep, rich blacks. They even have the scent of traditional baryte papers! And they give exceptional, museum standard, archival life.

Graham Diprose, Lead Tutor in Photography in Graphic Design, LCC, and colleague Jeff Robins, researched with Mike Seaborne, Senior Curator of Photographs at the Museum of London, before choosing Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte as the archival medium for both new and digitally restored Victorian images in their ambitious “…in the footsteps of Henry Taunt” project, when they knew it was to be placed in English Heritage’s National Monuments Record archive.

“We carefully researched a number of alternatives,” Graham said, “but we chose Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte over digital storage, and any other paper, for its exceptional archival life. Wilhelm Imaging Research data indicated that only with Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte could we be confident of being able to send digital photographic images 300 years or more into the future.”

Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Gloss 310gsm and Fujifilm Fine Art Fibre Baryte Matt BW 310gsm are available now, in cut sheets and rolls, from dealers of Fujifilm professional large format inkjet media.

For more information, email greenbox@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward, Commercial Manager of Fujifilm UK Photofinishing, on +44 (0)1234 572 135.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/11/fujifilm-expands-professional-inkjet-papers/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/10/fujifilm-offers-previews-of-latest-epson-printer/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/10/fujifilm-offers-previews-of-latest-epson-printer/#comments Sun, 26 Oct 2008 23:11:16 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=39
Fujifilm Offers Previews of Latest EPSON Printer

Fujifilm UK today unveiled a pre-production demonstration unit of their eagerly awaited GreenBox 7900 wide format printing solution. The Fujifilm GreenBox 7900 is a unique bundle of EPSON’s forthcoming Stylus Pro 7900 24″ inkjet printer and Fujifilm’s ESP Easy Studio Print software. It’s a complete solution for anyone ready to move up to the latest standard in image quality and productivity, and comes with full support direct from Fujifilm Photofinishing in the UK.

“Fujifilm GreenBox 7900 is the obvious choice for businesses ready to replace their EPSON 7880 or older large format inkjet printers,” said Peter Hayward B.Sc., Commercial Manager, Fujifilm Photofinishing. “It’s at least 1.8 times faster than its immediate predecessors, and nearly four times faster than some older units. It takes much higher capacity ink cartridges, up to 700ml, and the inkset has been increased to include green and orange inks. The new Ultrachrome HDR high dynamic range inks greatly enhance gradation, particularly in skin tones. And they give a much wider gamut that can match more colours, particularly spot colours. Fujfilm’s solution for the EPSON 7900 allows stunning images to be easily and swiftly produced.”

In keeping with the corporation’s commitment to lead innovation in digital imaging, Fujifilm are welcoming visitors to preview GreenBox 7900 at the Fujifilm demonstration suite in Bedford. A pre-production demo unit will be available from today, right up to the end of November, when GreenBox 7900 will start to ship to customers. Fuifilm are accepting customer pre-orders now so to book your demonstration, or for more information, email minilabs@fuji.co.uk or call Peter Hayward now on 01234 572 135.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/10/fujifilm-offers-previews-of-latest-epson-printer/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-choose-a-printer-for-event-photography/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-choose-a-printer-for-event-photography/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 18:25:45 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://stowler.myzen.co.uk/?p=6 New Photo Digest, giving some thought to how you might choose between them. This is what we found. ]]>

Fujifilm ASK2000 - a fast event printer

Which Printer for Event Photography?
by Simon Towler

Event photography has evolved from being just another way to earn some money, into a whole contemporary subculture. Instant photo printing is the technology that has enabled modern event photography. The printers used in eventing today are a class of machine known as “Fast Event Printers”. A fast event printer is a dye-sub unit that takes a roll of media 6″ inches wide and produces its maximum-size print in less than 20 seconds. These machines are about as closely related to the small dye-sub photo printers used at home as main battle tanks are to the mini metro. This month I tested seven of them for NewPhotoDigest, giving some thought to how you might choose between them. This is what I found.

Current models of fast event printer include the Copal DPB6000, Fujifilm ASK2000, ICI ImageData OP1000, Kodak 6850, Mitsubishi CP9800DW, and Sony UP-DR200.

PRINT QUALITY

I’m going to stick my neck out in this review, and suggest that print quality is not an important factor. All of the photo printers on test here are capable of producing photo quality your customers at any event will be perfectly satisfied with. There’s not much to choose between them, and the choices would be personal and highly subjective. A photographer’s eye will clearly see differences, but their customer’s won’t. The Sony UP-DR200 though, does deserve a special mention for its paper-based media and its ability to produce matte prints from the same roll as gloss.

PRINT SPEED

Event photographers are obsessed with speed. They need to make every sale they can in as little time as possible. If you’ve got, for example, 700 people at an event, and just a 90 minute window to offer them prints, then your maximum revenue possibility is to make and sell 700 prints in 90 minutes. Every second counts. The speed of your printers is not the only factor here. Arguably it’s not even the most important factor. But it is something eventers focus on.

All the printers on review here are fast. That’s the class they’re in. It proved very difficult to make speed comparisons between them. However, I did find that the manufacturer rated speeds were reliable, at least as a comparitive measure. In the real world, average times per print are very different when producing multiple different images, and it’s problematic to isolate all the factors in this.

The Sony UP-DR200, though, does take the laurels as the fastest event printer on test, although the ICI Olmec OP1000 and Kodak 6850 weren’t too far behind. If there’s one printer that could be faster, it’s the Mitsubishi CP-9800DW, but it partly makes up for that with its ability to maintain average print speeds over long runs.

MAXIMUM PRINT SIZE

These machines divide into two categories of maximum print size: 6″x8″ inches or 6″x9″ inches. All event photographers in the UK can agree that one of these sizes is the optimum for eventing – but not which one! The Sony and the Kodak are 6″x8″ machines, producing standard 6R photo sizes. These, their users say, are easy to find mounts and frames for. The other printers go up to 6″x9″, which matches the aspect ratio of digital camera images. Event photographers that use these say they can print 6″x9″ images straight away, without having to waste extra seconds editing the crop.

The debate as to which is the better size for events is an irreconcilable schism. Choose your preferred print size before you choose your printer! (6″x9″ users will tell you their printers can do 6″x8″ too. But the 6″x8″ folk say this is a cheat, and uses 9″ inches of ribbon anyway!)

OTHER PRINT SIZES

UK photographers claim they can charge more for 6″ inch prints.

Interestingly, in the States 5″x7″ is a common size for event photos – photographers there offer 6″ inch prints as an up-sell. If you want to sell 5″x7″ in the UK, all these machines will do it (although they may need spacers), except the Kodak 6850, which requires a special irreversible conversion to 5″x7″, and then can’t do 6″x8″ prints.

DRIVER COMPATIBILITY

None of these printers can print by themselves, you need to attach a computer for that. Compatibility needs to be checked. They all ship with drivers for Windows XP, but how about support for Vista and the Apple Mac? (A lot of event photographers use MacBooks, or laptops with Vista.)

All the manufacturers featured here now have their own Vista drivers available for these printers. If they’re not in the box with the printer, your dealer may write them to CD for you, or you can download them from the Web. Mac drivers are also available for all of them, except for the Kodak 6850 and the ICI ImageData Olmec OP1000. (However, the OP1000 is the only one of this current crop to already have a fast direct driver in ExpressDigital Darkroom, the workflow software used by many eventers.)

In summary, if you absolutely have to print from a Mac, avoid the ICI and Kodak machines. If you’re an ExpressDigital user and need to pare every precious second off your print times, consider the ICI Olmec OP1000.

PHYSICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Having dealt with print size and compatibility, we now examined our test machines for another important set of properties: weight, dimensions and ergonomics.

It’s in the nature of event photography that you will have to manhandle your printers around – into the gig and back again. That’s one of the reasons why eventers use as few printers as they can get away with (just one, if possible). It’s also the reason most of them avoid excessively heavy units.

When it comes to weight, fast event printers fall into two broad categories – heavy weights and lighter machines. Heavy weights weigh 25Kg+ unloaded, while the lighter machines weigh significantly less – around 20Kg at most. The market for event printers favours the lighter machines.

Three machines here are heavy-weights: the Copal DPB6000, the physically identical Fujifilm ASK2000, and the Kodak 6850. They all weigh 25Kg. (Kodak do have a lighter machine, the 605, but not in this class.)

Of the lighter machines, the Sony UP-DR200 wins the laurels for lightest of the bunch at 17Kg, while the Mitsubishi CP9800DW is not far behind at 21Kg. The ICI Olmec OP1000 is a 44-pounder, a perfectly manageable 20Kg. If weight is a crucial factor for you, choose one of these three lighter machines. They’re built just as well as their heavier brethren.

If weight is important because you’re going to lift the machine, then ergonomics come into play here too. The dimensions need to be grabbable, and there need to be plenty of grab points built into the housing of the printer. Any assessment of this must be a bit subjective, but having handled them all my personal opinion is that they rank in ergonomics exactly as they do in weight, with the Mitsubishi and Sony being the most carry-friendly, the ICI machine holding the middle ground, and the heavy-weights coming in later.

PRICE, WARRANTY AND SUPPORT

The prices of these machines, the amount of media included with them, and the warranty periods offered for them, vary so much over time as to make comparisons difficult. It’s a constantly moving target. So instead of looking at what you get for your money, let’s consider what backs it up.

Fast event printers are mission-critical equipment – when they’re down, the eventer’s business is interupted, and he’s losing money. So what’s support like in the UK for these machines, if you need a warranty repair, out-of-warranty repair, or just help, assessment and advice?

It’s difficult to assess objectively. In my experience, though, Fujifilm have shown an edge in the levels of backup they provide for their machines. Help is provided by their Photofinishing Help Desk in Bedford, where their own engineers are also based. Bedford has been known to be quite proactive in resolving customer issues with individual ASK 2000s. And this is one of the main things that distinguishes the ASK2000 from the hardware-identical Copal DPB6000. First-line support in the UK for the DPB6000 is provided by the dealer who imports it.

ICI Olmec are also UK based, and have always had the confidence to offer a standard two-year warranty with their OP1000 PrintBox, which is anyway a legendarily reliable machine.

The Kodak support process always moves inexorably toward resolution of any issues with individual printers, but the price of their spare parts can be eye-wateringly prohibitive.

Sony offer a well-thought-out PrimeSupport package, mediated in the UK through dealers and third-party engineers.

Mitsubishi also offer a professional-level warranty with good backup, ultimately from their own engineers(if necessary).

CONCLUSION

The seven printers on test here represent a fair selection of the fast event printers currently available in the UK. They are all excellent machines, well designed, well built, high performance, high quality and great value for money. Each of them has some unique selling point that will make you as an individual choose it rather than any other. Whichever one you choose, you won’t regret it. Happy eventing!

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/08/how-to-choose-a-printer-for-event-photography/feed/ 3 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/06/annie-liebovitz/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/06/annie-liebovitz/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:53:39 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=362

Annie Liebovitz profile: YouTube video in six parts

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/06/annie-liebovitz/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/nachtwey-captures-a-mob-killing/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/nachtwey-captures-a-mob-killing/#comments Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:03:54 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=367

A description of James Nachtwey photographing a mob as they pursued a man and hacked and beat him to death. YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4f30ah3ss8

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/nachtwey-captures-a-mob-killing/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/james-nachtwey-works-with-his-printer/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/james-nachtwey-works-with-his-printer/#comments Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:02:41 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=302 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7u_y-__62w]]>

Video clip from Christian Frei’s documentary on American conflict photographer James Nachtwey.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/04/james-nachtwey-works-with-his-printer/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/philip-jones-griffiths-50-years-on-the-frontline/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/philip-jones-griffiths-50-years-on-the-frontline/#comments Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:11:52 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=346 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhXFno0_chE]]>

“50 Years on the Frontline”: Magnum EPK for a 2007 retrospective of Philip Jones Griffiths (since deceased)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhXFno0_chE

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/philip-jones-griffiths-50-years-on-the-frontline/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/morgana-in-a-bath-of-milk/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/morgana-in-a-bath-of-milk/#comments Sun, 16 Mar 2008 11:52:22 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=118 Morgana in a bath of milk

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/03/morgana-in-a-bath-of-milk/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/02/ansel-adams/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/02/ansel-adams/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:29:11 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=415

A half-hour TV interview profiling fine-art photographer and printer, Ansel Adams. YouTube video in four parts.

“The thing that excites me is that in not too many years we’re going to have an entirely new medium of expression: the electonic image. I’ve seen what can happen to a print reproduced by the laser scanner and how that is enhanced, and that’s just the beginning. I’ve also seen some magnificent electonic images direct – direct electrical images, not pictures of pictures – and I know the potentials are there, I know it’s going to be wonderful.” – Ansel Adams

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/02/ansel-adams/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/01/henri-cartier-bresson/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/01/henri-cartier-bresson/#comments Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:27:08 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=584 Henri Cartier-Bresson: the impassioned eye A documentary about Henri Cartier-Bresson.]]> Henri Cartier-Bresson: the impassioned eye

A documentary about Henri Cartier-Bresson. The photographer talks us through the photos in his albums, intercut with commentary from notables including Norman Mailer. On YouTube in ten parts:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9

Part 10

Cartier-Bresson featured in The Genius of Photography

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2008/01/henri-cartier-bresson/feed/ 0 http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2006/03/strobist-lighting-101-blog-thread/ http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2006/03/strobist-lighting-101-blog-thread/#comments Sun, 19 Mar 2006 08:05:43 +0000 NewPhotoDigest http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/?p=329 Lighting 101" blog thread is probably the best place to start when you first decide to move your flash off-camera. And it's not a bad place to start learning about lighting in general. Really very highly recommended. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKAD7leNOVY]]>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKAD7leNOVY

The Strobist “Lighting 101” blog thread is probably the best place to start when you first decide to move your flash off-camera. And it’s not a bad place to start learning about lighting in general. Really very highly recommended.

]]> http://NewPhotoDigest.co.uk/2006/03/strobist-lighting-101-blog-thread/feed/ 0