Author: David Kilpatrick

Professional photographer and journalist, founder and editor of magazines PHOTOpro, Photon, Freelance Photographer, f2 and Cameracraft. For 25 years director of the Minolta Club. Fellow of the BIPP and Hon. Fellow of the MPA.

Sightsavers International photo contest

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From waves crashing on a beach to freshly cut grass, or someone dancing to a tune on their ipod, students across the UK are being invited to take a photo that best evokes the senses. The i:click awards are a brand new national photography competition, aimed at students aged 11-18, being launched by leading blindness charity Sightsavers International.

By focusing on the theme of the senses, Sightsavers hopes that students will be encouraged to think about what it might mean to live without a sense such as sight. Sightsavers works in over 30 developing countries to treat and prevent avoidable blindness and to also improve life for those who are irreversibly blind. 45 million people in the world are blind, yet a staggering 75% of all blindness can be prevented or cured.

Well-known photographer Mary McCartney is supporting the i:click awards and explains why sight is so precious to a photographer: “It’s a way of communicating ideas with other people. We all see things from different perspectives. If ten people took photos of the same vase of flowers, the chances are that the resulting images wouldn’t look anything like each other.”

Mary had this advice for students wishing to enter: “It helps to choose a subject you’re really interested in that you can explore and learn more about. Take some time to think through the end result so that you don’t waste time and have to reshoot.”

Three national winners, one from each category (11-14 years, 14-16 years and 16-18 years), will be selected from a list of regional winners. The three lucky winners will each receive an SLR camera and enjoy a day out at an awards ceremony in London in the autumn, where their winning image will be the focus of an exhibition showcasing the best photos. In addition, the winners’ schools will receive a visit from a professional photographer who will give a teaching session for aspiring snappers.

The judging panel is headed up by Graeme Le Saux, former England and Chelsea footballer and himself a keen photographer. According to Graeme: “I wouldn’t say I’m any good at photography, but I’ve always been interested in the story a picture can tell. I love the fact that you can be creative when taking pictures. From my point of view it’s the composition that’s important as well as the subject – it’s all about balance.”

Schools and colleges interested in participating in the awards can find more information at www.sightsavers.org/schools or by contacting the i:click awards helpline on 01444 446727 for a free entry pack. Entries can be sent in on disc, as prints or via email and must be submitted by 12th September 2008. Winning photos will be exhibited at the.gallery@oxo on London’s South Bank from 22-26 October 2008.

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Gary Friedman photo trip to Latvia

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We are announcing a very unique trip for budding travel and reportage photographers out there. This is a “Photo Expedition” – different from a traditional tour package – put together by professional photographer and camera system e-Book manual author Gary Friedman (who runs the stock photo website www.FriedmanArchives.com ).

Latvian Church

Says Gary: “Photo Expeditions are guided travel programs which cater to the unique needs (some people might say “eccentric needs”) of photographers. Getting up at 4:00am in order to catch the sunrise is not out of the ordinary. Taking you to landmarks only when the light is right makes perfect sense to us. Taking you to places off the beaten path and leave you free to roam and photograph a fishing village is exactly our itinerary. And you’ll be with fellow photographers who love to travel, make new friends, and tell the story via pictures. The whole tour is based on the premise that nobody ever took a National Geographic quality photo from the window of a moving bus.

“The event will be taking place in the beautiful Republic of Latvia on July 13-20, 2008. UK readers can book low-cost flights from Ryanair, typical costs for the return journey from Stansted and various other airports to Riga are around £130-£200 on the dates involved, including taxes.

“Where…? Not many people have heard of Latvia, but it was one of the most beautiful of the Soviet Republics. You can see pictures and read a detailed itinerary at
http://friedmanarchives.com/expeditions/latvia/ .
“The trip is all-inclusive – once you get your self to Riga, we take full care of you from start to finish. We have room for only 14 people, so if you’re thinking of going, signing up sooner is better than later!

“I feel especially proud that we were able to secure as our “home base” one of the best retreat properties in Latvia. From the website:

This property was once an exclusive retreat for KGB VIP’s where satisfaction was guaranteed for the Soviet elite: Deer were tied to a tree so old Generals could shoot it, and divers would secretly hang fish onto submerged fishing hooks to please their high-ranking vacationers.

“The new facility built to European standards and situated on Valguma lake where you can sit at breakfast and enjoy the view of the hills and woods.

“If you’re even thinking you might want to join us, please send me an email at [email protected] to let me know your intent and I can let you know when spaces are about to run out. This is going to be a fun trip!

“Check out the details at www.FriedmanArchives.com/expeditions/latvia and let’s hear from you!”

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Win €3000 in South Tyrol photo contest

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Following on from the success of last year, the second South Tyrol Young Photographers’ Award is back and is calling all up-and-coming photographers from all over Europe to show-off their work. Sponsored by the South Tyrol Marketing Corporation (SMG), the award offering a prize worth over £2000 together with a chance to shoot and travel in the area.

Interested? Here’s the lowdown on all you need to know….

Who’s eligible: Photo journalists from the print and on-line media, photographers (travel and photo journalism), photography students, trainee photographers and design students from the UK, Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Italy, the Benelux countries Poland and the Czech Republic. Entrants should be aged 30 or under.

What to do: Get clicking… a maximum of 8 photographs on ANY theme to be submitted by 30th April 2008

Entry: Log on to: www.suedtirol.info/press where you can find further information on the competition, register your details on the online entry form and email your photos (low resolution JPG format). In addition to your online entry and in order to be considered you MUST send postal prints to the following address (ensuring all your contact details are included).

Südtirol Marketing Gesellschaft (SMG)
South Tyrol Photography Competition 2008
FAO Ruth Torggler
Pfarrplatz 11
I-39100 Bolzano/Bozen
Italy

Format: A panel of international judges will make a preliminary selection from the pictures submitted. Six finalists will be chosen to travel to Italy’s beautiful and most northerly province, South Tyrol, from the 24th- 28th July 2008, to carry out research based on an overarching theme. The finalists will then have until the 16th August 2008 to submit their photo reports for assessment.

Prize: The six finalists will all be invited to South Tyrol in September 2008 where the overall winner will be announced and awarded a prize of 3000 Euros.

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Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Beta available now

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London— April 2, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta, a public preview of new and improved functionality to be delivered in the next major release. Lightroom is the professional photographer’s essential toolbox, providing one application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Lightroom 2.0 beta will feature enhancements such as dual-monitor support, localised dodge and burn correction and will be the first Adobe application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Microsoft Vista 64-bit operating systems.

“Photoshop Light room 2.0 beta provides early access to requested improvements over version 1.3 and continues our ongoing dialogue and open communication with the photography community,” said Tom Hogarty, senior product manager for Photoshop Lightroom and Camera Raw. “We’re excited not only for our existing customers, but also for the general public who will have an opportunity to take Lightroom 2.0 beta on a test run.”

New in Lightroom 2.0 beta

An improved layout in the Library module allows for a more intuitive approach to image organisation by simplifying the location of the features needed to find and filter photographs. A new feature called Smart Collections automatically updates collections with images that match desired criteria such as star-rating, keyword or other metadata. “The Suggested Keywords feature eases the task of keywording by making recommendations based upon keyword associations across a catalog as well as the use of keywords in neighboring images.”

Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta includes improved memory handling through 64-bit support for OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Vista 64-bit operating systems. Additional enhancements in Lightroom 2.0 beta include support for a dual monitor configuration that maximizes a photographer’s workspace and can be easily adjusted to meet a particular workflow. Additionally, the Develop module has been updated to provide the ability to correct specific parts of an image without affecting other areas. Now, fundamental photographic techniques such as dodge and burn can be performed using the same non-destructive approach, allowing unprecedented control within the Lightroom program.

Beta Availability

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta is available as a 30-day trial for free download on Macintosh and Windows platforms at http://www.labs.adobe.com/downloads. Existing Lightroom 1.0 customers will be able to test the beta for an extended period until Aug. 31, 2008 and can invite friends to take part in this trial period. Recommended system requirements are Macintosh OSX 10.4, 10.5 1 GHz PowerPC G4 or G5 or Intel-based processor, or Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, Intel Pentium 4 processor, 1 GBRAM and a 1024×768 resolution screen.

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Adobe Lightroom 2.0 beta available

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London— April 2, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.0 beta, a public preview of new and improved functionality to be delivered in the next major release. Lightroom is the professional photographer’s essential toolbox, providing one application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs. Lightroom 2.0 beta will feature enhancements such as dual-monitor support, localised dodge and burn correction and will be the first Adobe application to support 64-bit for Mac OS X 10.5 Intel Macs and Microsoft Vista 64-bit operating systems. Continue reading »

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Adobe Photoshop Express free web app

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London, — March 27, 2008 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced Adobe® Photoshop® Express public beta, a free Rich Internet Application (RIA) available to anyone who wants to store, sort and show off digital photos with eye-catching effects. During the public beta period, Adobe will solicit Photoshop Express user feedback on product features and functionality, which will continue to evolve over time. As the newest addition to the Photoshop family line, Photoshop Express has taken much of Adobe’s best image editing technology and made it simple and accessible to a new online audience. Photoshop Express allows users to store up to 2 gigabytes of images online for free, make edits to their photos, and share them online in creative ways, including downloading and uploading photos from popular social networking sites like Facebook.

“Photoshop is trusted technology that has changed the visual landscape of our world. Now, Photoshop Express allows anyone who snaps a digital photo to easily achieve the high-impact results for which Adobe is known,” said Doug Mack, vice president of Consumer and Hosted Solutions at Adobe. “Photoshop Express is a convenient, single destination where you can store, edit and share photos whether you’re at home, school or on the road.”

Simple, Fun and Accessible

With Photoshop Express, digital photos can be uploaded and sorted anytime, edited non-destructively to always preserve the original image, and shared from anywhere, on any Web browser. In a few easy clicks, Photoshop Express empowers anyone to make standard edits, such as removing blemishes and red-eye, converting to black and white, cropping and resized, and much more.

No experience is required to add special effects that will impress friends and family. In keeping with its one-click approach, Photoshop Express offers tricks like Pop Colour which selects an object in an image, mutes the background colour of the photo and allows the user to swap the object’s colour so it jumps off the page. Sketch effects help photos look like drawings and the Distort feature allows you to distort facial features or objects within the images for a comical or artistic effect. Even users with limited photo editing knowledge can simply select what looks best from a line-up of sample photos with visual hints showing different variations of the added effect.

Photoshop Express offers a variety of creative sharing options, including uploading and showing off photos and slideshows in your own online “Gallery” hosted by Adobe, or conveniently embedding or linking photos to social networking sites and personal blogs without having to leave the application. Slideshows never looked better with animation that makes photos float and fly across the screen, allowing for viewer interactivity and unique presentation styles.

Adobe Photoshop Family

Adobe Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop CS3 Extended are at the heart of the Photoshop family, joined by solutions for users at every level who want to bring out the best in their digital images. Photoshop Lightroom™ addresses the workflow needs of professional and serious amateur photographers. Photoshop Elements provides exciting tools and sharing options for photo hobbyists.

Photoshop Express is the latest step Adobe is taking to leverage the advanced technology that underpins its award-winning creative products and deliver it to new online communities. In early 2007, Adobe also announced the availability of Adobe® Premiere® Express, an online video editing and mash-up tool on partner sites such as MTV and Photobucket. Adobe Premiere Express leverages the functionality found in Premiere Elements, a fully-featured desktop video editing program.

Free and Available Now

Adobe Photoshop Express beta is available now for free via any Web browser at http://www.photoshop.com/express. Photoshop Express was created with Flex, Adobe’s free, open source framework for building RIAs. Flex applications provide a consistent, rich user experience across operating systems and all major browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and others. An Internet connection and an up-to-date Flash® Player 9 are all that are required to experience Adobe Photoshop Express. In its early phases, Photoshop Express is available to US residents-only in English. Users may experience slow performance if accessed outside of the US. Future plans include availability in other languages and countries.

Warning to users!

Until corrected by Adobe, who have promised to do so, the terms and conditions include the following: ‘With respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed’.

This outright rights-grab is not, they say, what was intended and the terms will be amended. 

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Adobe Camera Raw 4.4 released

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Adobe has released updates to Photoshop Lightroom and the Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, both available immediately as free upgrades for existing users. The releases provide added raw file support for nine additional digital cameras, including the Canon EOS 450D and Nikon D60. Lightroom 1.4 also provides updated printer driver compatibility for Apple Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.

The camera raw functionality in the Adobe Photoshop software, including Photoshop Lightroom, Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements, provides fast and easy access to the latest raw image formats produced by many leading professional and midrange digital cameras. Working with these digital negatives allows greater artistic control and flexibility while still maintaining the original raw files. Photoshop Lightroom and the Camera Raw plug-in also support the same functionality for TIFF and JPEG files.

The Lightroom 1.4 update and Camera Raw 4.4 plug-in add support for nine additional digital cameras including the Canon EOS 450D (Digital Rebel XSi /EOS Kiss X2), Fujifilm S100FS, Nikon D60, Olympus SP-570 UZ, Pentax K20D, Pentax K200D, Sony A200, Sony A300 and Sony A350.

Pricing and Availability

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.4 update is available as a free download for existing Macintosh and Windows customers on http://www.adobe.com/downloads.  Recommended system requirements are Macintosh OSX 10.4, 1 GHz PowerPC G4 or G5 or multicore Intel processor, or Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, Intel Pentium 4 processor, 768 MB RAM and a 1024×768 resolution screen.

The Adobe Camera Raw 4.4 plug-in is available with the purchase of Photoshop CS3 and as a free download for users of Photoshop CS3 Photoshop Elements 6 and Premiere Elements 4 by going to the Adobe Web site at www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/cameraraw.html. 

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