Steve McCurry, the award-winning photographer responsible for the iconic ‘Afghan Girl’ portrait for National Geographic, has given an interview about his work and why, despite his fame, he maintains a blog of his latest images. In the interview, on the official WordPress blog, McCurry explains how photography as a career has changed over the course of the past few decades, and the vital role now played by the Internet. Click through for extracts and a link to the full interview at blog.wordpress.com, and to Steve’s own blog.
The Atlantic’s excellent ‘In Focus’ photo blog has published the third and final part of its 2012 Year in Photos. The three-part series includes 135 images from around the world, covering a great breadth of events and subjects. As you’d expect of such a review, there are some occasionally graphic images that some readers may find disturbing but there are also some astonishing photos giving a surprising views of other countries and cultures.
Financial news service Bloomberg is reporting Apple and Google are working together to purchase some of Kodak’s imaging patents. The companies are said to be working together – lending more weight to reports in the Wall Street Journal from back in August. The story suggests the two companies, along with the groups of smaller companies with whom they’d been preparing bids, will offer more than $ 500m for the patents. Such a figure would give Kodak access to $ 830m of external funding that is dependent on the value of the patent deal.
Leica has announced the Oskar Barnack Award 2013 international photo competition will open for entries from January 15th, with a first prize worth €15,000 (~ $ 19,400). The 2013 winner will receive a Leica M digital rangefinder and lens in addition to a €5000 (~ $ 6500) cash prize. To enter, participants need to submit a portfolio of up to twelve images expressing ‘the interaction between man and the environment.’ In addition, the Newcomer award, open to photographers under 25 years of age, offers a Leica rangefinder camera and lens as the prize. Submissions are open until 1st March 2013.
DxO Labs has announced version 1.1 of its ViewPoint distortion correction software, promising more accurate tools and faster operation. Viewpoint is designed to correct keystone distortions (converging verticals and horizontals), and restore more natural proportions to objects towards the edge of the frame when using wide-angle lenses. It is available either as a stand-alone tool or as a plugin for Adobe PhotoShop (CS3 or newer) or Lightroom (version 3 or newer), and for both Mac and PC.
Adobe has announced CS6 updates that are exclusive to Creative Cloud subscribers. Adobe Photoshop 13.1 offers among other things, the ability to apply Liquify and Lens Blur effects as Smart Objects and use conditional statements when creating Actions. However, these changes are unavailable to those who’ve bought traditional versions of Photoshop CS6, and Adobe has not said when, or even if, ‘perpetual users’ of CS6 will have access to these features. Retina Display support for Mac, also announced today, is available for all users.
Just Posted: an extensive update to our Fujifilm X-E1 preview. With a sensor and imaging pipeline that is identical to the X-Pro1’s the X-E1 promises much of the X-Pro1’s fun in a more compact and affordable package. We’ve been working with a production sample X-E1 for a couple of weeks and we’ve been working towards a full review, which we hope to publish early in the new year. In the meantime we’ve added seven pages to the preview, including our studio test shots and a sample gallery. Click through for a link to the expanded preview, including our 49-image real-world sample gallery.
Carl Zeiss has announced its annual photo contest for images shot with one of its lenses. Any Zeiss lens is considered valid, from Nokia smartphones through Sony compacts, such as the RX100, to the company’s high-end interchangeable lenses. This year’s theme is ‘The moment that knows no limits’ and first prize is one of the company’s manual focus SLR and rangefinder lenses, with a variety of other Zeiss-branded prizes for runners-up. The contest runs on Flickr until January 15th.
My entry for the Nuffnang Asia-Pacific Blog Awards. Took 8 hours to shoot and probably another 8 to edit. Shot on a Nikon D60, I love my little camera. It’s Krrunch time, get playful =) Video Rating: 4 / 5
Shot 100% on the HD HERO2® camera from GoPro.com Finally, after being sick for two weeks, I managed to edit my new “Gymkhana4.0” video. I was planning to add more shots from the side of the car and from the top, but I couldn’t do it due to me getting sick. I still had a great fun filming it and even managed to have a nice talk with the people who run the place. They told me I should come there on Sundays when there are more kids to enjoy it. Because I have only one camera, there are some shots with kids and some without… I left it like that just to show, that there was quite constant audience. I hope you will enjoy this video as much as I did making it I also made this soundtrack to the video. If you like any of my music, you can download it from the address bellow. Feel free to use it as long as you give credit to MSPDawgs/Kezo sutros.com If you like my videos, please SUBSCRIBE!!! Thanks for watching and happy drifting to you all! Car: Chassis – Yokomo Drift package Basic with Stage 2 upgrade Motor – Yokomo 27T drift tuned brushed Yokomo’s Front One Way Body – HPI’s Mazda RX-8 Tires – SURGING SDT-002C D60 for carpet High speed steering servo (FUTABA BLS-451) Transmitter is also Futaba (4PL-2.4G) NO D box!!!! Original music by MSPDawgs/Kezo Video Rating: 4 / 5
Microsoft has released an updated version of its Camera Codec Pack for Windows Vista, 7, 8 and RT. The latest update allows applications such as Windows Explorer, Windows Photo Viewer, Media Center, and Windows Photo Gallery to deal with Raw files from 34 additional cameras. The cameras include the Canon EOS M, Olympus OM-D E-M5 and Sony NEX-7.
