Shutter.Stutter

“Asian Geographic is looking for special photographs from both talented amateur and professional photographers from any country in the world that capture a striking image of Asia’s land, people, architecture or wildlife.

Prizes worth a total of over S$20,000 will be awarded to one winner and one runner-up from each category, plus a grand prize for the best overall picture entered.

The top photographs will be exhibited as part of an ‘Asia Without Borders’ Photography Exhibition in Singapore and published in the December Photo Annual Edition of ASIAN Geographic Magazine.”

“Lens Culture International Exposure Awards discover, recognize, reward, and promote talented, new, emerging and established photographers from around the world.

We’re looking for exciting images from every continent, and from diverse points of view: documentary, fine art, photojournalism, street photography, poetic, personal, abstract and human.”

“The focus of our year’s fundraising program is to raise funds for our homeless shelter in Surry Hills, Edward Eagar Lodge, homeless is one of the topics. Is it someone who doesn’t have shelter or is it someone with an inadequate experience of connectedness with family and or community’?

The other topic is the Our Community; submit an image, which depicts any aspect of community life in the City of Sydney.”

Sounds simple enough, and it’s for a good cause.

I have a lot of admiration for press photograpers. It takes a lot of skill to capture a communicative and visually engaging image under challenging conditions and tight deadlines. I don’t have anything to submit, but hey, you guys might :).

The 2009 News Photo of the Year is now open, and deadline is September 14th. Last’s years highly commended entries can be viewed here.

Shiho Fukada is last year’s overall winner, with his photo essay on China’s Sichuan earthquake.

And these are my favourites of the rest.

Todd Adams

Todd Adams

Mohammed Abed

Ross Taylor

Jonah M. Kessel

Amelia Phillips

Mary F. Calvert

Mary F. Calvert

“Be the official Groupie photographer and take photos like never before.

Olympus and Groupie are giving you the chance to win a job as the Groupie photographer for a month, trialing the brand new Olympus PEN Camera.

You’ll get two tickets to shoot for Groupie at up to eight gigs, including acts such as Art vs Science, The Cassette Kids, Children Collide, Yves Klein Blue and Wolfmother!

We’ll also give you a one-on-one session with professional photographer Chris Samuel, to give you some hints and tips on how to take the perfect gig photograph.

With your Olympus PEN Camera and your Official Groupie Photographer pass, you’ll be able to get amongst it and take photos like you’ve never taken before.”

Sounds pretty good hey? The only catch is that you would have to use the pen camera. I think I would be pretty frustrated at these gigs with an AAA pass in one hand and a teeny camera in the other.

Oh the upside, I read a few reviews on the Olympus Pen and it’s not as point-and-shoot as I thought. It certainly looks good.

Quick specs:
Model: Olympus EP-1
12.3MP Live MOS Sensor
Built-in Image Stabilisation
3in LCD
Micro Four Thirds Mount
100-6400 ISO
1/4000-2sec shutter
HD Video 720p
Lenses: Pancake 2.8 17mm (or standard 35mm) and 3.5-4.5 14-42mm (roughly 28-80mm)

Here’s a more detailed review.

The World Nomad Travel Scholarship is on for 2009! This year, the talented winner will be mentored by National Geographic photographer Jason Edwards, and the destination is …drumroll… ANTARTICA!! Excited yet? Did I mention my dream is to photograph for NG?

The deadline isn’t until early October, that gives everyone a fair bit of time to shoot. I’ve got a good idea of where to find a good story - now I’ve just got to chase it. I’m probably not a contender in this competition, as it’s globally run and the standard would be sky high, but this gives me a purpose and a deadline for a new photo project.

Here’s a few images by Edwards. Yup, it’s not portraiture. So I have to be smart about how to make my work appeal to him.

Quick, the Sydney Life deadline is 5pm tomorrow! The total prize pool is $10,000 - but what’s caught my interest is the 3m blow up of your photo in Hyde Park. Beat that for exposure.

Ross Honeysett was last year’s winner…

…but my personal favourite was from Scott McGale.

Here’s some shots of the 2008 exhibit, from UNseeN Magazine.

Yippee! I’m a finalist for the 2009 Olive Cotton Photographic Award.

Now I just have to rake out the cash to print large, mount and frame. Sigh.

This is last year’s winner of the $10,000 jackpot.

The Stone by Emily Portman

I’ve been pretty busy this past month trying to juggle my two loves - photography and design. While I’m happy that I’m not having trouble filling up my week, this poor blog has suffered and so has my reading material. Instead of burning through two or three books a week, I’ve read three in a month. Sad sad.

On the upside, I’m learning a lot from Mark Rogers, whom I’m currently working for as a photographic assistant. Learning so much that I’ve decided to start a new page, with the highly exciting title of “Things I have learnt from Mark Rogers“. Expect pearls of wisdom, one for each day I do with him in fact.

Here’s what I’ve got so far;

April 28
Always keep two copies of everything. Backup. Factor storage costs into your quote/invoice.

April 27
Always give a specific delivery time. Rather ‘by 2pm tomorrow’, than ‘probably tomorrow’. Much more professional.

April 23
Never apologise for an out-of-date portfolio. Saying that you’ve been ‘meaning to update’ immediately tells the client that it is not as good as it could be.

April 22
Be brutal when editing. Your work is as strong as your weakest photograph.

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Congrats too to Mark, who is a finalist for this year’s Head On Competition, with this photo of this baby daughter.

The awards night for the Moran Painting and Photography Prizes were on Tuesday night. I dolled up and crossed my fingers, but alas, no prize money for me this year I’m happy about being selected as a finalist, but well, one always wishes for more.

I was kicking myself for not bringing a camera, but figured it won’t be too hard to find photos on the net later. These are courtesy of smh.com.au.

This image won the AUD80,000 grand prize, phew. Dean Sewell, A Dry Argument.

The man himself.

And this is artist Ben Quilty with his winning entry of Jimmy Barnes. There But For The Grace Of God Go I No. 2. This has won him AUD150,000. (!)

I also met a talented young lady on the night, and winner of the photographic prize in the Years 11 to 12 category. Rachel emailed me the day before the awards night, and we were lucky enough to bump into eachother on the night.

This is her winning entry, Planes are raining down on us.

Head over to her blog, I still love your tits, to see more photos of the awards night. Maybe ask her about the name of her blog too :).