Reflection Abstract 80

Check out the interview in BEHIND THE LENS, YOUR LENS

Craig Royal is an award winning visually impaired fine art photographer / digital artist from the Tampa Bay area. One of his photos was awarded the “Best in Show” at the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts Members’ Show recently. We talked with him about his work and his experiences.

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via Not Seeing is Believing : Playboy.com.

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Address:

http://tinyurl.com/29mxezb

Description:
I was about to delete some apparently uninteresting video clips of my wanderings around the city, when I realised that they were full of people’s faces that were anything but uninteresting.

This has a special poignancy for me as someone with macular degeneration who cannot ordinarily recognise faces easily. Some of the pictures are appropriately out-of -focus and others have the effects of glare, which I deliberately haven’t altered. That’s pretty much how I’d see them, if I’d seen them.

These people most likely didn’t know I was filming them, and I didn’t realise it either until afterwards!

Once again, the camera lets me see things I wouldn’t otherwise see.

Sourced from: The Blind Buzz

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Albany ARC holds summer transition program – WALB.com News – visually impaired students with ambitions. One aims to run her own photographic business. Trust me, somehwhere on this messy page, there is a video (Flash) and a text article.

Arts Victoria Funding – Blinkie Photography – tight arts funding jeopardises Andrew Follows’ exhibition.

Aurora: Local photographer sees through a different lens – Jim Braun Marfan’s Syndrome, which affects his eyes and many other things. Photography, however, gives him several benefits.

Authors@Google: Tony Deifell | Business Strategies 101 – Tony Deifell taught blind children photography, and learned what it means to see.

Blind Photographers on Facebook

Bllind Photography @ Losing Vision Gaining Insight – a feature on blindphotographers.org.

Capturing moments – a photography workshop in the Philippines included blind participants.

Field Test: Apple iPhone 4 Camera « The Phoblographer – some very strong features, but the iPhone 4 would not be everybody’s choice of primary camera.

Flickr: Help: Getty Images – your chance to have your images valued commercially.

Grants for Nonprofit Photography | eHow.com – USA sources of finance.

High Desert Sketches: Even Dust Devils Wear Prada In The Last Frontier – by George Covington, who is a photographer with about 10% normal vision. This is George in the day job, writing on this occasion about fashions.

In Blind Test iPhone 4 Camera Quality Bests All | AppCart – the 5 megapixel camera does well against several other phones and point-and-shoot cameras.

My world in Photography: By legally blind photographer Andrew Follows – My Nikon Life

New Book on Photography for the Web – SitePoint’s “Photography for the Web” looks really like a useful basic guide to the nuts and bolts of photography.

New photo of Eamon and myself – Blinkie Photography – Andrew Follows considers tha dvantages of manual camera settings.

New SeeAbility initiative encourages creativity (From Basingstoke Gazette) – project that encourages blind people to be creative inclues photography and other arts.
SeeAbility Web Site

One Day On Earth – The World’s Story is Yours to Tell – take part in a world-wide documentary project on 10/10/10

Photographers “Banned for Life” for Taking Photos in Public Parking Lot » Photography Bay – another confrontation between photographers and officers of the law, this time in Miami Florida. This is a situation, this article says, that is unfair to both parties. For an alternative view of photography in public places, visit
Here’s looking at you. ‘Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera’ at Tate Modern until 3 Oct – “There’s a moral blind spot at the heart of photography, writes Kerry William Purcell. It is a blind spot that was manifest in the recent outpouring of protestations and demonstrations concerning the possible criminalisation of street photography in London… ”

Some IPhone 4 Cameras Have Yellowing Problem – the iPhone 3 doesn’t have this. Maybe a white balance issue?

Top 10 iPhone photo apps | ZDNet – well, there are plenty of lists like this of iPhone apps, but this one was compiled on evidence of what apps photographers used when entering a competition.

Watch: Visually Impaired Photography Students at Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind | jacksonville.com – down-to-earth account of the way students were introduced to photography.

Sourced from: The Blind Buzz

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Creative Work: Blind Photographers – Feminists With Disabilities -S. E. Smith appreciates the Blind Photographers site, not only for the images but also for the way members write about their work.

Ghana: Visually Impaired Benefits From Photography Training – allAfrica.com – visually impaired woman was one of the students on a recent course provided by Foundation for Female Photojournalists (FFP). The FFP is an art and media organization that seeks to empower the vulnerable in society.

Images Without Sight – this blog follows totally blind photographer Susan Gjolmesli as she participates in a photographic project organised by Tess McMillan.

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montgomery sideways – a blind stay-at-home Dad who has a lot to say about the state of the roads in his area and takes a still and a video camera with him at all times to record his findings.

Montgomery Sideways RSS Feed

My story – nickbirchak’s Photos- powered by SmugMug – Nick is legally blind, and a course in black and white photography at college set him off on the royal road to photography.

Quiet Light Photography – Drew Bedo is an artist who works in large photographic formats. He is legally blind, having severely degraded vision in one eye only. Also visit
Legal blindness doesn’t stop photographer | Ultimate Fort Bend

Seeing Blind – Cyndy Otty has achromatopsia. She tries to explain how she sees, and illustrates this with her own photographs.

see(more) photography blog – several posts about guide dogs and how the author, Laura Landry, sees her world through the lens. One of her photos has been chosen to be part of the American Printing House exhibition later this year.
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Follow Laura Landry on Twitter

Laura Landry’s Flash web site

Laura Landry’s HTML web site.

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It’s my pleasure to launch Blind With Camera School of Photography
(
www.blindwithcameraschool.org< a
virtual school with step-by-step tutorials for the visually impaired to get
started with photography and provide guidance to sighted photographer for
starting photographic workshops with local visually impaired people. This
website is in compliance with accessibility standard for the visually impaired.

This alternative approach along with physical workshops & training sessions
conducted by Blind With Camera will widen and deepen the creative and social
deliverable, enriching the blind and the sighted community, and inspire social
change.

In 2010, Blind With Camera project is going strong. To know about our recent
Pinhole workshops and coming exhibitions click on links below -
http://blindwithcamera.org/events-news/

To view new works click below
http://blindwithcamera.org/category/photo-gallery/

Sourced from: The Blind Buzz

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Blind Insight LLC – a photography company funded in Seattle by William Madison, who is legally blind. He knows all about the possible physical and emotional effort involved in being a blind photographer. He will be exhibiting at theMaison Michel (1928 43rd Avenue E., Washington) this month. See
Madison Park Blogger: August Happenings for more details.

Blind photography, are you game? » Sumter Camera Club – at this event, participants will go off with a non-digital (yes, film!) disposable camera, and will see what they get without all their digital sophistications. Not sure this qualifies as blind photography, guys, unless I’m missing something.

Blinkie Photography – Andrew Follows’ new web site.

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Camera Plus Pro for iPhone Price Drops, Adds More Features « The Phoblographer – now 99 cents.

Fun With Photography « Losing Vision Gaining Insight – getting enjoyment from photography.

Photo Competition. | Blinkie Photography – post your reflective photo entry.

[Virtual School of Photography – Partho Bhowmick – announcement of the
Blind With Camera Photography School

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The Canon G11 review is over. As is standard with point-and-shoots on this website, less time is spent with them than higher end cameras. However, that doesn’t mean that the G11 is terrible. Not at all. In fact, it’s really quite a lovely camera that I may be picking up for myself.

Testing

Day 1: Got a feeling for the camera.

Day 2: Used the camera at a party. Without flash, it floored me with its performance for a point-and-shoot. When the on-camera flash went on, it was a bit disappointing. Using the 430 EX II disappointed me as well because of the fact that it should be able to meter with the camera.

Day 3: Used the camera at a museum with a new form of composition that I’m currently studying. The screen helped me to do this as it is maneuverable.

Day 4: Comparison against the LX-3, D-LUX 4 and EPL-1.

Autofocus

The G11′s autofocus is one of the best I’ve seen and used on a point-and-shoot. I haven’t regularly used a point-and-shoot since the Canon S5 IS and this system trumps the older one by far. While it isn’t as snappy as the GF-1, it will still satisfy the needs of most users. The reason for this is because the focusing system is still very intelligent and can guess what the user wants to take an image of. Like the Nikon D3s, it’s correct most of the time (despite them being two totally different beasts). Most users will be happy with it, but will be thrown off by when the camera says that it hasn’t focused correctly but still focuses on what the user wants it to.

The autofocus was tested with both moving objects (persons, rather) and still people. It worked without flaw most of the time.

For absolute best results, always manually focus. Doing that brings up a magnified version of the focusing point on the screen.

Ergonomics

After using the G11 for a while, it is still big and clunky for a point-and-shoot. If you’re the type that wants sex appeal, it isn’t here. However, the button layout and dials make for easy access to the most important parameters of taking an image. That’s where it really saves itself. Add onto that the rotating screen and you’ve got yourself a nice winner there.

And what’s with the viewfinder? As a constructive criticism, I hope that Canon will make it more useful in the future.

In contrast, one can tell from the image quality that sex appeal wasn’t the main selling point on this camera and that consumers know that when they purchase it.

Image Quality

Very, very good—for a point-and-shoot. In that case, its good enough for most people then. The best results come in steady hands and with the flash off for the CCD to show off all the wonderful colors that are capable of being produced. To be fair though, the best results come out in RAW. At high ISOs and in JPEG mode, you probably won’t be as satisfied.

The on-camera flash makes it look like any other point-and-shoot with the exception of warmer colors in my tests.

When shooting without the flash, keep as still as you can to ensure that you do not capture a blurry photo caused by camera shake.

High ISO Use

For a point-and-shoot it still is very good. It can’t keep up with Micro Four Thirds models but the camera is still capable of doing very great things at high ISOs.

In truth, this is almost negligible now as most software can remove noise very effectively. However, this is true of shooting in RAW. Otherwise, the camera will present problems with noise.

Metering

The metering on this camera is accurate and reliable. Users will appreciate looking at the LCD to get a preview of what their image will look like when they manipulate the aperture and shutter speed. What’s better is that the LCD still works very well in bright light and is still very viewable. Coupled with the back dial and selection button, changing the metering is also fairly simple.

As a point of comparison, I like the dials on the Olympus EP-1 and GF-1 more. Both companies take a slightly different approach that works very well for the tiny cameras.

Conclusions

The Canon G11 is an excellent point-and-shoot. Canon is close to creating the almost perfect small-sensor compact targeted towards higher end users. While the camera has some flaws it still is a good product. However, consumers have been rightfully asking for things like HD video in the camera.

For still images though, you won’t really get much better in the higher-end compact line of cameras. As a tip, try to constantly shoot at the widest aperture, which means not zooming in at all. Therefore, use it as if it has a prime lens.

Chris Gampat is a regular columnist on Blind Photographers. He’s been a photojournalist, events photographers, paparazzi,etc You can find out more about Chris on blog or by following him on twitter.

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I have hardly ever paid any heed to photos OF blind people, which tend to be, in my experience, miserable images of pity, and often purely voyeuristic. Often, the sighted person’s idea of us blind people is that we somehow live in the dark. Never mind that someone who is totally blind may never have grasped the concept of darkness, and those of us who can still see a bit may not want to embrace the idea of darkness either.

That’s what drew me to
Blanco by Stefano de Luigi (article and slide-show).

Here, the photographer starts from white light (hence the title, “Blanco”, Italian for “white”). Add all the colours together, and, if they’re radiant colours, at least, they make white.

These photos are not eye-candy. Stefano de Luigi has spent several years photographing blind people in many situations, and understands the complexity of blind people’s lives. The photography may be highly intrusive, but mere voyeurism it ain’t.

Sourced from: The Blind Buzz

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Now that the Nikon field review is over, here is a complete listing of postings for the complete review.

The different days were tailored towards the types of photographers that would use the camera. Choose whichever day is best for you.

Day 1: Getting a feel for the camera again.

Vs the 5D Mk II

Day 2: Street sports shooting

Day 3: Candid street photography for photojournalists

Day 4: Used the D300s more

Day 5: Shooting a Pokemon launch party event for event and party photographers

Day 6: Testing the High ISO conditions in St. Patrick’s Cathedral for wedding photographers.

Day 7: Cosplay portraits at PAX East 2010

Day 8: Concert shooting at PAX East along with a video test

Day 9: Celebrity Candids with Adam Sessler

Just some minor add-ons that I forgot to mention before:

* While filming the concert, the sensor overheated. I mean like really hot. I put it over my pocket with my wallet inside and someone’s business card literally melted onto it because of this. No joke.

* The battery was charged once when I started the review. It lasted throughout the entire review and I still never killed the battery.

Chris Gampat is a regular columnist on Blind Photographers. He’s been a photojournalist, events photographers, paparazzi,etc You can find out more about Chris on blog or by following him on twitter.

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