Ricoh has announced it is to push back the availability date of its premium Pentax-D 70-200mm lens, as it needs more time to ensure it meets the standards required for a member of the Star-lens series. Initially due this Spring, the HD Pentax-D FA* 70-200mm F2.8ED DC AW is now set to arrive in Autumn. Read more
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Adobe has released the latest iterations of its Camera Raw plug-in and DNG converter software. In addition to adding support for more cameras and lenses, this update also adds Dehaze correction as well as local B&W adjustment sliders. Adobe has also reduced ‘color blur’ artifacts in Raw images from Fujifilm X-Trans cameras. More details
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Facebook has announced a new standalone app for iOS and Android called Moments. Moments allows you to share and sync images from events, such as trips, weddings, parties and the like, between a private group of users, in a very similar way to the Kolektio app that was launched only two weeks ago. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Sony continues to embrace the feature-adding firmware trend by adding high bitrate video recording to its a6000 mirrorless camera. Firmware v2.0 adds the ability to record in the XAVC S format to the 16-month-old camera, offering 50Mbps shooting at 24, 30, or 60p (and PAL equivalents). Aside from the updated firmware, a Class 10 SDXC card is the only other thing you’ll need to get started. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Hi FashionPhotographyBlog.com readers! Last week the world was introduced to Caitlyn Jenner, the new identity of former Olympian Bruce Jenner, with a stylish entrance; being on cover of Vanity Fair, as the magazine’s cover model.
Bruce Jenner was most known for his past Olympic exploits as a track and field athlete, winning gold in the men’s decathlon event at the Montreal Summer Olympics in 1976 and revered as “an American hero”. His gained television celebrity status when his former wife, Kris Jenner (formerly Karpashian) and their children appeared on the well-known reality TV series “Keeping up with the Kardashians”.
Following the divorce of Bruce and Kris Jenner in 2015, Bruce Jenner revealed in a public TV interview with Diane Sawyer (April 2015) for the 20/20 show that he was now living life as a trans woman and was in the process of transitioning. This news received major media attention, and many news sources label the celebrity as the most open and famous transgender person in the world.
I want to congratulate Caitlyn Jenner for the tremendous courage it took to take ownership of your life and living it as the true you. It is a difficult issue to deal with, gender dysphoria, when the world tells you that you have to look and behave a certain way. Not to mention the added pressure of having the media watching everything you do because you are part of a celebrity family that’s constantly the hot topic of public scrutiny and Hollywood gossip.
So what does this all have to do with fashion photography? Lots actually which I will explain, but first I want to compliment, renowned celebrity photographer, Annie Leibovitz for doing an amazing job in capturing the essence of Caitlyn Jenner. The Washington Post commented that Caitlyn Jenner’s debut on the Vanity Fair cover, shot by Leibovitz, had a significant impact to the subject “After all the magazine covers that featured the former athlete, once lauded as the ‘world’s greatest athlete.’ the Leibovitz photograph will be the most meaningful. Looking directly at the camera, Jenner is finally herself for the first time publicly.”
Caitlyn Jenner’s appearance on Vanity Fair, created a historic moment in the fashion industry as she is the first openly transgender woman to feature on the cover of the fashion magazine. I think it is really a great achievement to create a positive visual statement printed by a world-recognized publication, while bringing aware of the issues and hardships that transgender people face. This may just be the starting signs of the fashion industry finally realizing that the world is a lot more diverse than they thought it was, and that we can see more of the cross-section of humanity.
What do you think of Vanity Fair’s decision to choose Caitlyn Jenner as the cover model for their magazine and Annie Leibovitz as the photographer for the shoot? Please leave your comments below. If you like to find out more news and information about diversity in the modeling industry make sure you visit DiverseModels.com.
IMAGE SOURCE:
Feature image & images 1-4: courtesy of Vanity Fair.
[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
Using a staggering volume of LEGO bricks, a series of ten famous architecture firms has constructed a series of miniature built environments, deploying them on the High Line in New York City and encouraging the public to play with and reconfigure their work.
Organized by installation artist Olafur Eliasson (images by Timothy Schenck), The Collectivity Project features contributions from an all-star cast of local and international designers from: James Corner Field Operations, BIG, David M Schwarz Architects, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, OMA New York, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Robert A.M. Stern Architects, Selldorf Architects, SHoP and Steven Holl Architects.
The results range from pointy towers and crooked skyscrapers to giant trees and complex landscapes, all created from versatile white bricks that can be added, removed and used interchangeably.
These are also not meant to be finished or stand-alone works – visitors and passers by are encouraged to remake this scaled-down urban landscape according to their own whims, transforming the architecture piece by piece over the coming months.
Already, people have begun the conversion process, creating additions to bridges between the disparate LEGO buildings.
Sitting the shadow of Hudson Yards, a floating megablock toward one terminus of the elevated park, those interacting with the work are encouraged to draw inspiration from their under-construction surroundings as well the historical hybrid of raised rail and modern pathway that is the High Line itself.
If you’ve always wanted to design modern buildings, but don’t have any plans to attend architecture school, LEGO has just the tool you’re …
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A colorless LEGO kit may sound boring at first blush, but consider the spatial advantages of letting form, line and shadow stand apart from the profusion of …
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One of the most iconic buildings of the 20th Century, the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier outside of Paris, France has long been a symbol of Modern Architecture.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
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Think Tank Photo has launched two new bags, the Trifecta 10 DSLR Backpack and Trifecta 8 Mirrorless Backpack. Both backpacks are designed to hold a photographer’s ‘workhorse’ lenses, including ultra-wide, mid-range, and telephoto zoom lenses. As the names indicate, the bags are designed to accommodate DSLR and mirrorless systems. Read more
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
You will learn some important steps of enhancing a night sky photo in this tutorial. It is specifically useful if your photos were shot in areas with notable light pollution. Light pollution could spoil your photo by outshining the comparatively dim stars in the sky. Here are the tips for bringing back those spectacular stars in the sky.
First a slight digression, I recommend to shooting your night sky photos in RAW format if you aren’t already. This is because RAW has an incomparable dynamic range which enables you to bring back the details of the photo, including the night sky in post-processing.
The photo in the above screen capture is underexposed. We will need to play around with the exposure adjustments in a RAW Editor first. Generally, if the exposure of a dark image is boosted too much, there will be tons of noise. It is because the sensor failed to capture sufficient photons when the photo was underexposed. Therefore, the differences in the number of photons among pixels are significant. Such differences are the culprit of noisy images.
First, you have to increase the exposure until the brightness of the photo appears to be appropriate. While adjusting the exposure parameter, use the histogram in the top right corner as a reference.
You may want to play around with the value of the Highlight, Shadows, Whites and Blacks sliders for fine tuning the exposure. After that, add some contrast to the photo, this will make the stars stand out a little bit.
You will need to boost the Clarity here for the whole scene. This improves the sharpness of the photo, including the stars. In my opinion, a bluish night sky is far more impressive and, therefore, you will need to adjust the Temperature setting. I would recommend a color temperature between 3500-4100. This will strike a balance between realism and aesthetic. Then, click “Open Image” (if you’re using Lightroom right click and choose “Edit in Photoshop” to continue with the next steps).
Make a duplicate a copy of the Background layer after opening the image. Right click on the original layer, and click on “Duplicate Layer” from the pop-up menu. After that, create a layer mask for the duplicated layer. To create a layer mask, you will need to have the new layer chosen and click on the third button at the bottom of the Layer panel. Then, select the image next to the layer mask in the Layer panel.
Now you are going to add a High Pass filter to the newly duplicated layer. Choose Filter > Other > High Pass. This is to further enhance the visibility of the stars.
A pop-up window will appear, tweak the Radius until the stars are being highlighted in the preview.
Head back to the Layers panel. You will have to switch the Blending Mode of the layer from Normal to Overlay. The whole image will be sharpened noticeably. If you feel like the image is over-sharpened, you can lower the Opacity of the layer.
You may find that the areas outside the night sky are being oversharpened. In order to remove the excessive sharpening from the other areas, you will have to erase (hide) them by painting on the layer mask that you created earlier.
First, choose the layer mask in the Layer panel. Then, paint over the unwanted areas (the highlighted area in the above screen capture) with a black-colored brush.
Here is the final result:
BEFORE
AFTER
There are three techniques for enhancing the visibility of stars in the night sky. First, adding some contrast to the photo will help to a certain extent. Secondly, increase the clarity of the whole photo. Lastly, don’t forget to use the High Pass filter sharpening for the final enhancement. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.
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The post Tips for Enhancing Night Sky Photography in Photoshop by Chris Yiu appeared first on Digital Photography School.
[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
Designed to span a historic canal of Amsterdam, this cutting-edge structure will bridge traditional and automatic construction techniques using continuous extrusion technology to generate three-dimensionally-complex, self-supporting steel space frames. Imagine for a moment a pair of robots scaling the very structures they are building as they build them, walking themselves out over a bridge from both sides to meet in the middle. The approach of casting a material in place, generally associated with concrete, is suddenly possible for metallic substances as well.
Having already created a series of increasingly successful small-scale prototypes, Dutch design firm Heijmans (already well known for houses built in one day and glow-in-the-dark bike paths in The Netherlands), tech startup MX3D and designer Joris Laarman are working together to make this design/build concept a reality. Programmed to extrude and weld together steel segments, specialized robotic builders are able to assemble a network of structural lines and curves to form a load-bearing bridge in this case, but could be deployed to frame tall buildings in the future as well.
“Construction and design are currently rather separate factors in construction – the architect designs something and the constructor interprets the design and builds what he thinks is needed,” says Jurre van der Ven, Heijmans’ Innovation Manager. “But using 3D printing for a bridge makes design and construction operate hand-in-hand. For instance, both activities are done at the same time, instead of first building the structure and then adding the design later. This means we will also have to start looking at design in a completely different manner.”
Refined and optimized, such techniques and technologies will ultimately bring down the cost of construction, reduce building waste and help automate worksites. The first real-world application being a bridge is no coincidence, but rather a “fantastic metaphor for connecting the technology of the future with the city’s historic past, in a way which would reveal the best aspects of both worlds.”
Durable, reflective and often becoming even more beautiful with exposure to the elements, metal is an unusual choice in exterior treatment for houses. These 15 …
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This proposal for a pedestrian bridge in Amsterdam doubles as a public park with wildlife, recreation, a cafe and even a sloped roof for sledding in winter.
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Completed by a robot programmed to extrude material in midair, the world’s first fully 3D-printed metal furniture shows off a fresh range of …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
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With a 16MP BSI CMOS sensor, faster F1.9 lens and the addition of an optical image stabilization system the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge camera is, at least on paper, a clear improvement on the already very well performing module in the Galaxy S5. Our full review takes a look at the device from a photographer’s perspective. Read review
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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