Sony World Photography Awards 2013 - Last call for entries

----- Press Release -----

All competitions close 4 January 2013 except Professional categories which close on 9 January 2013. Case studies of winning photographers plus entries from the 2013 awards available for publication.

04 December 2012: The World Photography Organisation (WPO) announces the countdown to the close of the 2013 Sony World Photography Awards, one of the world’s leading photographic awards programmes.

There is just one month remaining for professional and amateur photographers from around the world to select and enter their best images of the year. Professional photographers will compete for the coveted title of L'Iris d'Or/Sony World Photography Awards Professional Photographer of the Year 2013, plus a $25,000 (USD) cash prize. Amateur photographers will contend the Open Photographer of the Year 2013 title, plus $5,000 (USD). All category winners across the awards will receive the latest digital imaging equipment from Sony.

Both winning and shortlisted photographers across the many competition categories receive worldwide recognition and exposure as a result of the awards.

British photographers Palmer + Pawel, 2012 category winners, commented: “The awards allow you to reach a much wider audience, they open doors and enable you to take advantage of opportunities that otherwise might not be available. Winning the Professional Sport category not only allowed us to gain more exposure but it also resulted in us being funded to carry out our Sao Paulo Nights project - we shot the first part when we were invited by Sony Brazil to the city to talk about our work.”

Argentinean photographer Irina Werning described the support of the World Photography Organisation to its winners as “invaluable”. Following her win at this year's awards, Werning spent November 2012 on a five-country tour of Latin America, made possible by Sony Latin America and WPO. Alongside an exhibition of her images, Werning gave master classes and had the opportunity to shoot new pictures for her series ‘Back to the Future’ (which won the 2012 Professional Portraiture category) in each of the five countries.

All 2013 winning and finalist photographers will receive an exhibition of their work at Somerset House, one of London's historical landmarks, from April - May 2013. They will also be featured across the WPO website and all winners, as well as a selection of shortlisted photographers, will be published in the annual Sony World Photography Awards hardcover book.

The deadline for entries for the ten Open categories, for amateurs and enthusiasts, is 4 January 2013. The Professional competition, with 15 categories for serious photographers, will close on 9 January 2013. All entries are free via www.worldphoto.org and the shortlist will be revealed on 5 February 2013.

The 2013 Honorary Jury, who will judge the professional competition, is chaired by leading American agency director and newly appointed Magnum Foundation Director, Catherine Chermayeff. The panel comprises photography professionals from the World Photographic Academy including: travel photographer Macduff Everton; Guardian picture editor Fiona Shields; Magnum photographer Chien-Chi Chang and Director of the Moscow House of Photography, Olga Sviblova.

Further details about the Sony World Photography Awards and the World Photography Organisation can be found at www.worldphoto.org

Sky Rainforest Rescue 'Amazon' Exhibition

This week, Sky (in association with WWF and the Gallery of Photography) announced the Irish premiere of ‘AMAZON’. AMAZON is an exhibition in aid of the Sky Rainforest Rescue which features the work of two award-winning photographers - Sebastião Salgado and Per-Anders Pettersson.

The exhibition aims to highlight the plight of the Amazonian rainforest and its peoples. Through the two beautiful and distinct photography collections of xxx and xxx, the exhibition showcases the work of Sky Rainforest Rescue, the three year partnership between Sky and WWF. Sky Rainforest Rescue itself is aiming to help save one billion trees in the state of Acre, North-West Brazil.

The exhibition, which had a critically acclaimed six-week run at Somerset House, London in November 2011, is curated by Bakul Patki and will be accompanied by a programme of talks and events. For further information and updates see www.galleryofphotography.ie.


Exhibition Dates: 1 – 31 March 2012
Location: Gallery of Photography, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2
Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am - 6pm and Sunday 1pm - 6pm
Admission: Free

PhotoIreland VAI Professional Development Programme

Following an extremely successful 2010, PhotoIreland Festival is back for 2011. On top of a great lineup of exhibitions there are loads of workshops and seminars on, and the most interesting in my opinion is the PhotoIreland VAI Professional Development Programme. Visual Artists Ireland (VAI) in partnership with PhotoIreland Festival are running a limited series of professional development seminars aimed at emerging and established photographers to help in four key business areas: Professional Practice, Money Matters, Negotiation and Experience.

The four sessions take place over the closing weekend of PhotoIreland Festival on 23rd and 24th of July in La Catedral Studios off Thomas Street. While this is primarily aimed at Photographers it may be of interest to all artistic practices but places are limited so advance booking is essential. Prices are €20 for non-members and €15 for VAI members or €60 for all 4 sessions.

Professional Practice: Online marketing with Mary Carty
23/07/11 10:00 – 13:00
This session will teach you how to grow your profile, build your network and promote your work online. By using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Flickr effectively, you can grow your audience and position yourself as an expert in your field. I will use case studies and practical walk throughs to help you get the most from your time online.

Money Matters: Preparing Proposals & Grant Applications with Eilis Lavelle & Sarah Searson
23/07/11 14:00 – 17:00
This session will look at the proposal and application preparation process in detail exploring the strategic skills required to ensure that you submission is seriously considered. The session will include information on writing and preparing, documentation or visual packages, application forms etc. It is aimed at artists who wish to apply for resources and opportunities such as: funding; residencies; exhibitions and commissions.

Negotiation: Dealing with Public/ Private Galleries with Jerome O’ Drisceoil & Karen Downey
24/07/11 10:00 – 13:00
This training session is designed to give artists the confidence and knowledge to build strong relationships with curators and to get the most out of their experience when working with a private or public gallery. It will look at: Do’s and don’ts in approaching or presenting work to galleries. Being clear on why you want to exhibit; clarity of the artist’s intention for the artwork; clarity of ambition and expected outcomes for an exhibition. It will also examine roles and responsibilities for both the artists and the gallery. Understanding element of planning an exhibition, time-line, budget and production value. The expectations and motivations for an exhibition from both the gallery’s and artist’s perspectives.

Experience: Career Options with Anthony Luvera; Dragana Jurisic; Liam Campbell & Stephanie Joy
24/07/11 14:00 – 17:00
This session is aimed at emerging photographers and is designed to show them the variety of career options available to them. Our panelists have a variety of careers and availed of numerous and varied opportunities all within the umbrella of photography. From commercial photography to book publishing and from teaching to collaborating, each of our panelists will explain how they came to be in their current position and the opportunities and decisions that accompany them.


For more information and booking go to www.visualartists.ie/education or contact Donna on +353 (0)86 3505 722 or donna.kiernan@gmail.com

Helena Christensen’s Top 5 Photographic Tips

At the beginning of November I posted about Baileys ‘Let’s Do This Again’ Facebook photo competition to give one fan a chance to attend a VIP party in NYC. Helena Christensen, an accomplished photographer, is the personality of the competition and photographed a day in her life as part of the campaign for Baileys. Today, I'm delighted to post Helena’s top photography tips for the competition.

Helena’s top five photographic tips are as follows:

1. Shooting family and friends is all about capturing the natural moment, pieces of action as they happen. Staged photos and orchestrated set-ups really make people feel unsettled.
2. Always carry a camera / camera phone etc with you - don't be scared of shooting snap shots - these are the best, in all lights and at all occasions.
3. Don't be scared of dark lighting conditions, I love photographing people and places in dim light - just capturing the image without being too obvious, shooting in the overhead light of midday is far too harsh and you get very varied results.
4. Mixed weather is also very cool to shoot in - the rain against the window or a dark stormy sky, you'll look back on the severe weather conditions and remember the moment instantly, it’s like listening to an evocative piece of music.
5. Just be brave, with digital there is no pressure not to shoot - with film we always had to think about the number of shots we were going to be able to take, but don't let digital make you lazy or think less about what you are going to shoot, just because you can shoot hundreds of shots it doesn't mean you should or you need to, use your gut instinct, once you feel you have the shot, move on.

According to Helena; “Capturing these special moments on camera is very important to me, because those are the ones that stay with you forever, so to be able to look back at them for the rest of ones life is something to be grateful for and look forward to.”

The competition will give one lucky person in the Republic of Ireland the chance to attend an exclusive party in NYC co-hosted by Baileys and Helena. Facebook fans can simply upload a picture of themselves and their friends sharing special moments with Baileys onto the Baileys Facebook page before the 16th December to be in with the chance to win.

Tilt-Shift Soldiers March On Paris

To be honest there's not much to say here - just watch. This is one of the best examples of Tilt-Shift cinematography that I've seen.



Credits:
Photography: Albrecht Gerlach
Production: Tatiana Pereira @ Alta Media Productions
Camera Assistant: Tom Chabbat
Sound: Camille Michel
Canon 7D & 5DmkII for rent in Paris: photocinerent.fr

87 Cool Things

I found the following presentation over on If Only We'd Thought of That and I had to share it. It's a collection of cool things, put together by Google Creative Lab, that are just extremely inspiring and creative. Basically it's fairly comprehensive list of the most recent mashups, location-based games, video annotation, augmented reality, digital light displays, photomosaics and collaborative projects.

If the below SlideShare is too small to view, check out the full presentation on Google Docs.

Ruby Card on Pix.ie

I was out taking photos this morning in Sandymount and I remembered that Pix.ie were running a great competition with Ruby Card. There's €2,500 up for grabs and entering is incredibly simply. Basically all you need to do is either upload your photos directly to the Ruby Card group, or just join the Ruby Card group and tag your photos with "rubycard" and the county that you took the photo in (these will then appear in the group).

The aim of the competition is "to capture the beauty of Ireland for the next Ruby Card". The competition is based across the 26 counties of the Republic or Ireland and is calling on the public to showcase their county. One lucky winner will then get their photo used on the front of the new Ruby Card prepaid credit card, and €2,500.

Tilt-Shift Film

This is a fantastic example of Tilt-Shift Film. I absolutely love how the simple change in depth of field and perspective completely changes what we think we're looking at.

Samuel Beckett Bridge

Some photos I took yesterday of the Samuel Beckett Bridge arriving in Dublin. A more indepth review of the where, how and why can be found here.

SixthSense - The Future is Here

I love TED (not to be confused with Ted who I find funny and enjoyable). Quite simply the TED Talks have become the must see for everything that I find interesting and exciting in the world. I'm not going to go into what TED is and who has spoken etc. because you should go and explore it yourself.

What I will do, however, is share this latest piece of technology that has come to my attention through TED.

SixthSense is the very first piece of technology that I am truely excited about. Touchscreen blah. Solid-state memory blah. Quad-core Cell processors, you guessed it, blah. SixthSense is something so cool and so much more exciting then any of these things.

Imagine a technology that will make tactile interfaces obsolete. A technology that will make every piece of technology you use on a daily basis completely mobile. Imagine a technology that will give everyone access to supercomputing power. SixthSense is exciting.

At this year's CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) Conference in Boston, the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT's Media Lab unveiled SixthSense, the latest, most technologically advanced, wearable, gesture-controlled computing device. The device will allow users to access every computer based programme and interface through a reality augmented interface. Basically you use your hands in 3D space to control all actions. That could be drawing an @ sign in the air with your finger to access your email (with all information projected onto any flat surface infront of you), or checking the time by using that same finger to draw a circle (which produces an analog watch right on your wrist), or perhaps taking a digital photograph by putting your thumbs and forefinger together to make a rectangle (as you see photographers doing when setting up shots).

"We're trying to make it possible to have access to relevant information in a more seamless way," says Dr Pattie Maes, who heads the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT. "We have a vision of a computing system that understands, at least to some extent, where the user is, what the user is doing, and who the user is interacting with," says Dr. Maes. "SixthSense can then proactively make information available to that user based on the situation."

Wallpaper Graduate Directory

It's the Wallpaper Who's Who of 2009 - the people that will change the face of their industry.

Help! My dad's a graphic designer...

I StumbledUpon this series of photos and laughed my socks off. Check them out...

Photosynth Unveiled

Microsoft has finally released its much talked about Photosynth system. Described as "an entirely new visual medium", Photosynth allows you to input a collection of photos of a place, event or object, and after analysing each photo for similarities to the others, it will build a model of where the photos were taken, re-creating the environment and uses that as a canvas to display the photos.

It would seem that Microsoft see this as something more then just a fancy pseudo-3D creator. If all the company and development blogs are to be believed, this is going to be a whole new way to view all your photos. I'm not so sure, and doubt that this can be anything more then a fun piece of software, with limited continuous use. Having said that, it's a pretty cool way to slide show your holiday snaps.

Soft link - Glossy

I stumbledUpon these guys during the week and I love their work. The design is really sweet. Definitely worth 5mins to wander around the site and check it out.