Find out what’s happening in the photo world today
By Terry Sullivan / United Photo Press
New Software Tools And Tutorials: One of the benefits of having a cloud-based software suite, like Adobe’s Creative Cloud, is that the company can continually update individual apps or a series of apps to expand features. It can also provide guidance on using those tools. Earlier this week, Adobe did both: It released several new features for various versions of Lightroom, its photo management and editing app, as well as Adobe Creative Raw, and it also included new tutorials.
Adobe is including more expansive tutorials and help features in Lightroom.
One welcome feature that Adobe included in the May update is a new slider (to Lightroom CC for Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and ChromeOS, Lightroom Classic, and Camera Raw) called “Texture.” According to Adobe, it’s the first slider they’ve added to the app in a few years and it’s “designed to help either accentuate or smooth medium-sized details such as skin, bark and hair. By isolating only medium-sized details, Texture can smooth skin without affecting pore details (delivering a natural smoothing effect) or accentuate bark or hair without increasing the presence of noise or impacting bokeh.”
For those who want to learn about the tools they’re using in Lightroom (specifically Lightroom CC and Classic) Adobe has produced tutorials that provide step-by-step interactive guidance, allowing you to follow along with how the photographer made his or her corrections. The iOS and Android versions will also include tutorial help. According to Adobe, “instead of having to watch in a different window or even on another device and then attempt to follow-along within the app, the interactive tutorials provide access to the photo from the tutorial directly on your device and then walk you through each edit, step-by-step. You actually adjust each slider with guidance and instruction provided by the instructors along the way.”
Photography Book Competition: If you’re a photographer or artist who has never had his or her book published, listen up: The ICP/GOST First Photo Book Award is a competition that “aims to promote and support the work of previously unpublished photographers and artists through the production of a first book by the ICP/GOST imprint.” According to the website, “the winner will have their first book designed, edited, printed and published by the ICP/GOST imprint, including distribution, press and promotion with the opportunity to exhibit the work at a venue to be confirmed. The winner also receives a portion of personal copies of the book from the first print run.”
The website says the award is “open to artists of any age, working in the medium of photography whose work has yet to be published in book form by a mainstream publisher.” The contest is open now and will run through September 2, 2019, but there is an early-bird entry fee of $25 if you enter before May 31, 2019. After that date, the entry fee will be $35.
For more on the new competition, go to http://gostbooks.com/bookaward/
Photojournalism Blog: The Lens blog, a blog run by The New York Times, will stop publishing after roughly ten years in producing stories and projects on photojournalism and documentary photography, and be going on “temporary hiatus.” According to Petapixel, Meaghan Looram, the photo director at The New York Times, “announced the news in a note to staff sent out yesterday and shared by NPPA.” The blog was a vibrant resource for photojournalists, photo editors and creatives and highlighted many important issues during its ten years.
Street Scene 2019 Photo Contest: A great way to elevate the quality of your photography is to take to the street and work at capturing the energy and spontaneity you see there and turn it into an exceptional image. If you think you have an image that depicts that energy, consider entering it in our Street Scene 2019 Photo Contest. We want to see your best photographs that capture a candid moment, an interaction of people, places, forms and light that tell a unique story.
New Fine-Art Photography Book: Signs by Lee Friedlander, $75, Hardcover, 11.75 x 12.5 inches, 120 pages, 144 duotone photographs. There are few photographers who are better at finding poetry in seemingly mundane or hackneyed subjects, whether it’s the reflection in a storefront, a fence or a self-portrait. In this book, he turns his lens to lettering and signs. But in Friedlander’s hands, he’s not rehashing some dull homage to Andy Warhol. No, what Friedlander delivers is much more vibrant and alive. It’s because he depicts these hand-lettered ads, storefront windows, or massive billboards in carefully considered compositions that often have a sense of gentle humor mixed with a subtle pathos. The book will be published by Fraenkel Gallery (which will have a show in July, 2019 to coincide with the book), and include a wide array of signs, including wheat-paste posters, Coca-Cola ads, prices for milk, road signs, stop signs, neon lights, movie marquees and graffiti.
For more, go to artbook.com/catalog–photography–monographs–friedlander–lee.html
This photo was shot on an iPhone and captured by Rachael Short, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident and is a quadriplegic.
For more, go to artbook.com/catalog–photography–monographs–friedlander–lee.html
This photo was shot on an iPhone and captured by Rachael Short, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident and is a quadriplegic.
Inspiration & Mobile Photography: Yesterday was Global Accessibility Awareness Day. To mark the day, Apple published a moving story on the photography of Rachael Short, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident and is a quadriplegic. In the story she says she uses an iPhone because it’s lightweight and easy to use.
For more, go to: apple.com/newsroom/2019/05/photographer-rachael-short-explores-the-beauty-of-simplicity-with-iphone/
Photographer Rachael Short.
