Foto Week DC

FOTOWEEK DC seeks to establish itself as the nation’s premiere photography festival, and to recognize the most talented photographers in the DC, MD and VA area. The achievements of area professional photographers will be recognized by their peers through submissions of work in six categories.

A panel of judges will select images to be awarded on Saturday, November 22 at the FotoWeek DC awards ceremony and gala to be held at the National Geographic Society’s Headquarters.

The sponsors are the National Geographic, PDN, Discovery and the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) among others.

As always, please read the rules' fine print before submitting your photographs.

I found FOTOWEEK DC's definition of "professional photographers" very interesting...it defines a professional photographer as someone who "publishes photographs in books, magazines, newspapers, or online regularly."

Foundry Photo Workshop: Group Photo

Here's an out-take from a bunch of photographs taken of the instructors at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop (FPW) held in Mexico City. This is of the instructors asked to horse around at AAVI, where all of the panel discussions and presentations were held.

(L to R,back row): Eric Beecroft (FPW's founder), Guy Calaf, Tewfic El-Sawy, David Griffin (National Geographic).

(L to R, middle Row): Rodrigo Cruz,Shaul Schwarz, Stephanie Sinclair, Adriana Zehbrauskas, Benjamin Rusnak, Ben Lowy, Hugo Infante, Stanley Greene, Kael Alford.

(L to R, seated): Eros Hoagland, Andrea Bruce, Paula Bronstein, Michael Robinson Chavez, Renée C. Byer, Scott Mc Kiernan and (horizontally, Kadir van Lohuizen)

Conrad Louis Charles: Brazil

Photograph © Conrad Louis-Charles-All Rights Reserved
I met Conrad Louis-Charles at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City, he briefly described his background, but it wasn't until I returned that I discovered his work, and that the adage that still waters run deep is certainly true in his case.

Conrad is an independent photographer and cameraman currently based in Philadelphia and Sao Paulo in Brazil. He worked with various corporate clients, and he specializes in travel, documentary and editorial photography...making him a perfect candidate for the pages of TTP. He's represented by Getty Images.

His website showcases work from mainly Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Brazil. However, I was impressed by his Work-In-Progress gallery, which has a large number of his sensitive photograph of religious rituals and pilgrimages in northern Brazil. I'm not too fond of mixing color and black & white photographs, but Conrad kept the color photographs bunched together on his gallery, so it's not really mixing.

Explore his other galleries as well, and compare his Haiti work to that of the earlier post.

Anthony Karen: Voodoo

Photograph © Anthony Karen-All Rights Reserved
I came across Anthony Karen's work through NPR's website, on which he's described as having made a career out of breaking into secret circles from Voodoo rituals in Haiti to white-robed Ku Klux Klan initiations in the South of the US.

Indeed the work on his website centers around what he calls "intimate images of taboo people doing taboo things". His images are of swastika-clad families at the annual Nordic Fest gathering of white nationalists, Haitian Voodoo priests beheading goats and, even "Brother Number 3," a former official in the brutal Khmer Rouge regime hiding out in Cambodia before his 2007 arrest.

There are two links for Anthony Karen that are recommended: his website, and his interview with NPR which includes audio.

The Travel Photographer on Photoshop TV

I'm thrilled to see that The Travel Photographer blog was featured on PhotoshopUser TV, which is brought by NAPP (the National Association of Photoshop Professionals). Both Matt and Dave are industry icons, and present their weekly informative television episodes to an appreciative public.

My thanks to both Matt and Dave, the hosts of the program.

The episode is PhotoshopUser TV Episode 140 (June 30, 2008)

Loupe: Another Piece of "Uselessness"

Uniden, a Japanese camera accessory maker launched a new magnifying glass for LCD screens of digital cameras on their website. The magnifying glass can be used by owners of SLRs and compact digital cameras with LCD screen size of 3 inches. The images are magnified three-fold, and it's claimed that it will not scratch the surface of LCD screens.

I have no idea who will buy -and use- this utterly useless piece of equipment...unless it's an obsessive pixel/histogram-peeper, with $47 to burn.

Via CrunchGear

Nikon D700 Announced

I'm not a Nikon user, but I heard much about the newly announced Nikon D700 at the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop in Mexico City. It was just a rumor then, but some of its specs were being discussed among the photojournalists there. It was described by a fervent Nikon user as a certain Canon 5D "killer".

The British Journal of Photography has published an article describing the D700 as having many of the Nikon D3's features, including full frame, a 12.1 million pixel resolution, a 36x23.9mm CMOS sensor and a reinforced D300 body. The price is said to be GBP 2000 ($4000), however this includes VAT. I read elswehere that it'll be around $3000 here in the US.

The New York Times also has an article on the D700

Only time tell if the D700 is really a Canon 5D "killer", or if the rumored new 5D II regains Canon's momentum.

Michael Reichmann of the Luminous Landscape shares his thoughts about the D700 and the coming match-up with the Canon 5DII here