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Issue 36 : September 2014

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It was great looking through all the entries for the Close-up Macro Competition. In some cases you had me guessing what the subject was! Macro is such

an interesting genre and I love the abstract results, or seeing those details that you normal would miss. Some beautiful and fascinating entries. If Macro was new to you I hope you enjoyed the opportunity to get out there and give it a shot, and maybe even caught the Macro bug! Congratulations to Louis Ng for his winning image ‘Dandelion’ – awesome detail captured Louis.

We have another great issue for you this month featuring Fine Art Photographer Jonathan Bourla. Neil Protheroe discusses level horizons and Scott Fowler shares his experience with competition photography.

This month the competition theme is ‘Spring’ using any technique you choose: show us Spring is here! Can’t wait to see those pics!

Hollie WightmanResident JudgeNZ Photographer

Well Done!{

ABOUT Whether you’re an enthusiastic weekend snapper or a

beginner who wants to learn more, NZ Photographer is the fun e-magazine for all Kiwi camera owners – and it’s free!

EDITOR Hollie Wightman, hollie@nzphotographer.co.nz

GROUP EDITOR Jennifer Liew

ART DIRECTOR Jodi Olsson

ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Phone Jennifer on 09 522 7257 or

email jenniferl@espiremedia.com

WEBSITE www.nzphotographer.co.nz

NZ Photographer is an Espire Media publication

Hollie Wightman

PCL’S NEW IPHONE AND IPAD APP FREE WEEKLY TUTORIALS!

New Zealand’s premium photo lab, PCL IMAGING, has made its latest evolution into the palm of your hand. They have launched this month the iphone and ipad app

which allows users to edit, enhance and order photographs directly from their phones.PCL has been a photographic industry leader for over 40 years and once again is enabling photographers with the latest technological development. The app itself is a direct result of another technology PCL has been using for several years called ROES or remote order entry software. This software was made available for MAC or PC and has been used to by thousands of happy customers.

PCL will be holding weekly tutorials for the new app for their customers and if you mention this article you can join them for a free cupcake, espresso photographic print. The relaxed tutorials will take place at PCL every Thursday at 11am.

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Next Month's Competition: Spring

GET SHOOTING AND WIN!Photographers - This is a great opportunity to improve your photography skills and get some feedback from professional photography judges in a safe and friendly environment. Here's what's up for grabs:

• The winning image on the cover of the next issue

• A high quality print of your image and cover to immortalise your achievement for your grandchildren, courtesy of PCL Imaging

• $50 cash

• And of course, bragging rights and the envy of your fellow NZ Photographer fans!

Check out next month’s theme and enter at www.nzphotographer.co.nz!

WIN!

The days are getting longer and the weathers getting warmer. Next month’s competition is Spring; entries close September 20th

Rules: Images submitted must be no older than 12 months from the date of publication of this issue. Entry to the competition is $5 and you can enter up to five images. Images must be no more than 100 dpi and no more than 1600px wide. Save them as jpgs in the prefered colour space of Adobe RGB (1998). If you don't know what this means, don't worry, but do Google it...●

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There’s nothing quite like a sloping horizon to ruin an otherwise perfectly good photograph. Keeping the horizon level is a basic and essential part of good image composition.

Level HorizonsBy Neil Protheroe

Although a sloping horizon is easy enough to rectify using post-processing software, when an image is rotated by just a few degrees to make the correction the composition is changed, because the corners of the image move.

In some images this may not matter, but in others it may make a noticeable difference. What was intended to be a small space of blue sky between a mountain peak and the corner of the frame may now be lost. A conveniently positioned rock on the bottom edge of a dramatic seascape

may now be sliced through the middle, or a tree trunk used to make an image border may look thinner at one end compared to the other. If possible, we should always try to get the composition right ‘in camera’.

Whilst most sloping horizons arise simply from the camera being held at an angle, it is also worth mentioning that some people do suffer from a common defect with their vision which affects their ability to see ‘level’ (I am one of them!).

www.imagesabound.com

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Solutions The fail-safe way to ensure a straight horizon every time is first to mount the camera on a tripod. Some tripod heads have a built-in bubble level, but more reliable and easier to use is a two-way hot-shoe spirit level, which simply slides into your camera’s hot shoe and can be easily read both vertically and horizontally; and the camera position minutely adjusted as necessary.

A useful feature of many DSLR cameras is the ability to display gridlines in the viewfinder. As well as being an aid to general composition, these lines also help to ensure that level elements of a scene, such as the ocean horizon or a lake shore, are indeed straight, as they should be.

Some advanced DSLRs now have virtual horizons built into their LCD displays, but a bubble level is easier to use. Once the camera is level, the photographer can concentrate on the image composition through the viewfinder.

Just one note of caution. A good quality bubble level costs around $20 from a reputable retailer. Don’t be tempted to save $10 by buying from an untrusted source. If you get into the habit of using it, and those little black lines are even slightly out of centre, every picture you take will have a sloping horizon. ●

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Jonathan Bourla Fine Art Photographer www.jonathanbourla.com

FEATURE ARTIST

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My journey as fine art photographer began when my wife Julie kindly gave me a book of photographs by American photographer Ansel

Adams. I found it inspirational. The images were really powerful, with a wonderful range of grey tones, and detail throughout, from shadows to highlights.

My methods and style are based on some of Adams’ techniques, with some later tuition from American photographer Howard Bond. To quote Bond: “I want the viewer of my print to have the impression that the subject was bathed in light which allows detail to be seen almost everywhere in the print”.

My primary camera is a large format view camera, made by the English firm Gandolfi. It resembles plate cameras from one hundred years ago, made of wood and metal, with a bellows! I’m sure it seems strange to most, in this digital age, to employ this camera using film, which is

bulky and heavy and needs a sturdy tripod. Not to mention the dark cloth I have over my head when composing, which can be fun in windy weather.

There are other challenges, such as simply focussing the camera. Exposure times also tend to be long, ranging from half a second to an hour or two. But there are very strong technical and other reasons for choosing to use such a camera.

Since 2006 I have printed my photographs digitally, with pigment ink on acid-free cotton rag paper. To do so I scan the negatives with a special film scanner. In digital terms, my scanned negatives have the equivalent of 125 megapixels.

There’s also the pleasure in using the camera. The viewing screen is large, and once you are comfortable with the slow process and working with the inverted image, any other camera doesn’t feel right, at least to

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me. I have a back-up camera, a Mamiya 7 medium format rangefinder, which is excellent. I bought it for use in windy weather but I just don’t warm to it in the way I feel with the big camera.

Sometimes the camera can draw its share of interested people. One day at North Head in Devonport, I had a coach-load of retired people walk past, fascinated that I was using a camera that looked like ones their grandparents and great grandparents had used. Another time, a young boy ran up to me and asked if I had a proper camera hidden inside, and if the outside was just for show!

My work is represented by two Auckland galleries, in addition to my own website. I have several collections of work, including Devonport, Auckland’s West Coast, Hidden Life of Water; in addition to individual photographs. In the last year I have been working on a new photographic project; and with my wife Julie and elderly dog Jessie have travelled around the country towing a caravan. I am looking forward to scanning the negatives and starting the process to turn them into fine art photographs.●

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LESS IS MORE NEW EOS 100D

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So You Want to Enter Photographic Competitions?

Start with local clubs: see how you get on. If you do well, try larger NZ competitions; there are many, if you get acceptances be happy. If you achieve

honours, well done, but remember even though you have achieved honours or even champion, when you try for the big exhibition like say NATEX, you are competing against the top members of the Photographic Society of NZ and the judging is different. This exhibition is an indication of the standard of the top work being created in NZ.

If you get nothing more than this out of this article, please make sure your image is the best it can be when you send it out. Make sure you have no dust spots in your image. If you have done any cloning, can you see it? If so, fix it. If you are not sure magnify your image to larger size then move around it and check.

To do well in a competition you need to impress the judge first and foremost. Remember, the judge wasn’t there or doesn’t know what caused you to take the image, they can only judge it by how well or not you have presented it to them.

It is not uncommon for a person to relive the experience they had when they captured the image. If in doubt, ask someone you know who will be honest, not tell you what they think you want to hear. Just because it impresses you doesn’t mean it will the judge.

If and when you enter International salons, you have to consider the country you are entering in, what will impress them. Think about what is unique in our beautiful country. Will you impress European judges with our old buildings? Doubt it. It has to be very impressive.

IF this is an area of photography you want to pursue it can potentially be very rewarding. It really depends on your level of photography. You have to constantly work on it. In some of the bigger salons you could have 10,000 images entered, so what you enter has to be good to get noticed. If you do well you have the opportunity to get letters after your name. To achieve this, you have to do well and achieve a lot of Awards.

You are asking potentially complete strangers to judge your work, the quality of it, and the level you are working at. If you enter International competitions/salons, as I have done, you want to know what level your photography is at on the world stage. This is a tough arena to compete in.

By Scott Fowler www.scoiwi.com

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When I achieved my Excellence level with the Federation

of International art of Photography, the minimum of 250

awards with 85 different images was required.

I often say it is not achieving the award that is the hard

part; it is constantly producing new work to a high

standard that is the challenge. From all the International

salons you receive a catalogue, either on DVD or printed.

These vary wildly depending on cost of the salon. They are

a wealth of ideas and wonder.

If you want to take your photography to another level, competitions are a great way of doing it. By challenging yourself to compete against the world’s best, can you IMPRESS the JUDGES?

If we do well the judge is wonderful and if we don’t the judge is a philistine. Either way, try; what have you to lose? No one died from not winning an award. It will challenge you to improve. Isn’t that a good thing? How will your photography grow and improve unless you challenge yourself? ●

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Dandelion by Louis Ng

Taken in our garden one morning. Really like the dynamic form of the dandelion up close.

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Pink Floral by Joanne K Wright

This is of a flower. I really love how pinks pop when you close into something, and the fine hairs that can be picked up with the right natural light surrounding it.

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Orb Spider byScott Freeman

This is an Orb Web Spider. I thought the colour of the spider’s back was quite striking and unusual. I took this photo with a Nikon D90 60mm micro lens f32 ISO 200 using a tripod at my home on the Otago peninsula.

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Triangles by Steve Harper

Taken with a 60mm Nikon Micro, 1/125 sec, f4.5, ISO 100, cold morning triangles.

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Cicada by Francis O’Hara

This is a cicada shell I found in the garden. Canon 450D, using a Sigma 18-50mm with extension tubes. 1/40 sec, f2.8. Hanging in front of the

lens with natural light background. Their shells are quite beautiful, but in macro also quite fearsome. An immortalised fearsomeness.

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Water Droplets by Kevin Marshall

This was taken in my yard of droplets on grass making the grass look like it has fingerprints. Canon 7D, 100mm, f2.8, 1/640 sec.

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Protea by Tanya Devis

Taken in Upper Moutere, Nelson using the Canon 100D on Macro: f5.6, ISO 125, 1/80 sec, no flash. I like the proteas, they remind me of home. I like the softness of the flower compared with the toughness of the plant.

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Fern by Kevin Marshall

New life as this tiny fern at home unfurls. Canon 7D, 100mm, f10.

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*As of October 26, 2011.

“Every child is an artist; the problem is staying an artist when you grow up”

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- Pablo Picasso