Link to the article on the Daily Mail website: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2149899/The-American-West-youve-seen-Amazing-19th-century-pictures-landscape-chartered-time.html

This article on the Tucson Weekly website about Timothy O’Sullivan is also a good read: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/the-life-of-timothy-h-osullivan/Content?oid=1071872

You can find the video here http://vimeo.com/35396305

The rest of the project can be found here: http://projectyose.com/

“The Hasselblad Masters represent photography at its finest; at its most inspired, most communicative, most beautiful. They are young, old, western, eastern, classical, experimental, traditional, modern, and futuristic. They have perhaps but one thing in common: they are masters at conveying an instant, an emotion, with images. Masters of the art and craft that is photography.”

See all the winners at http://www.hasselblad.com/masters-2012.aspx

Fashion/Beauty: Wai Kuen Eric Wong

Winning entry was “What we are” by Lee Jefferies.

What we are by Lee Jeffries

A very bold image but not (I will confess) my favourite one from the entries.

The other winning entries can be found through the links below.

Landscapes winners

Action and Movement winners

Creative Licence winners

Documentary winners

Family and Friendship winners

Fashion winners

Gardens and Plants winners

Portraits winners

Travel winners

Wildlife winners

Commended photos

Adrenaline by Jon Wright

The Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2011 contest is now displaying the shortlisted entries in the various categories on their website.  Image above is the 2010 winning entry by Jon Wright.

This years entries can be found on the Photo Radar website

Categories are:

Landscapes

Travel

Fashion

Family & friendship

Portraits

Documentary

Gardens & plants

Wildlife

Creative Licence

Action & movement

Couple of images which stood out for me are:

Frozeniii by Emilstojek 

Poppy on the Wind by Magda Wasiczek

Sunrise Over Mamtor by Simon Berry561

To quote their website:

We’re in the business of making icons. From immortal covers to probing profiles to our annual Person of the Year, TIME has always shaped the first draft of history with the personalities and moments that mattered most. We get iconic. But 2011 has been a year of iconoclasm: powerful orthodoxies were challenged, notorious villains slain and dictators came crashing down. Along the way, people took photographs.

Our top 10 photos of 2011 capture a year as tumultuous and transformative as any in recent memory. The photos’ captions are in the words of the photographers who shot them. We take you from a tiny Washington control room, crammed with the great eminences of the capital, to the courageous multitudes massed in Tahrir Square. We behold the wrath of nature and the horrors that men inflict on one another. A scene of staggering human depravation in Somalia is joined by an uncanny glimpse of human genius: a NASA shuttle blazes into space, tethered to earth only by a thin line of smoke.

2011 will be remembered as a year of defiance and few acts of resistance will be as memorable to Americans as that ugly incident in California when a police officer fired pepper spray straight into the faces of the college students who refused his orders. Their rebellion — and viral send-ups of the pepper-spraying cop — will live on into the next year. But what of the young American soldier staring at the lens in Afghanistan? In his bewildered gaze is all the terror of war. It’s a look that must have lasted only a fleeting second, yet, haunted with a piercing sadness, stretches across centuries of human experience. It’s iconic. —Ishaan Tharoor

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2011/12/07/time-picks-the-top-10-photos-of-the-year/

TIME Top 10 Photographs

Rhein II

The image itself has been digitally edited to remove details which the photographer didn’t like.  More details on the BBC website.

It beats the previous record holder (Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96), below.

#96

Of course whether any of these photographs are worth anything like the prices being paid (which seem crazy to me when the world is hovering on the brink of global financial disaster) is questionable.  And neither seem to be particularly exciting, innovative or original compositions.  Not sure I would want either hanging on my wall?

This Wikipedia entry gives a list of the others in this list.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_photographs

Been meaning to put a recommendation on here for some time for Adam Knott who runs About U Photography in Aylesford, Kent.  We’ve been to Adam now for 5 photo sessions (maternity, newborn, 100 days, 6 months and 1 year) and each time we have got great photos.  Adam is very happy to take his time and be patient, especially when Rosemary hasn’t really wanted to sit still and have her photo taken, and if it takes a little longer then that’s fine.  No rushing and that will do like you get in commercial studios.

So if you are in Kent and want some great studio pictures I suggest dropping Adam an email.  You can also see his work on his Facebook page.

Here are a couple of pictures to give you a flavour:

Rosemary 1 Year

Rosemary-6 months 

Now I freely admit that my background is not in the arts and the meaning of phrases such as modernism and postmodernism are something that I don’t really understand, especially in terms of what it means photographically.  Indeed, does it even mean anything from this point of view and was there a significant shift in the way people took photographs at some point?

However, as these terminologies were used a number of times during the Art Photography course I wanted to look into this further and see if they would help broaden my understanding of the subject.

So going back to these two phrases here is what I can gleen from the arts world about their meaning (a difficult task in itself):

Modernism: Modernism was a rejection of the beliefs of realism and came about at the end of the 19th and into the early 20th centuries.  For photography this was the time it was really becoming widespread and it was trying to establish itself as a legitimate art form.  In photography terms the most common ways in which I have found photography described as being modern are:

• Precisely defined photographs according to prescribed rules, such as rule of thirds and exposure.  Ansel Adams would possibly be an example to illustrate this point.
• The attempt to show new ideas and illustrate what was new with the modern culture which was emerging at this time.

Postmodernism: Postmodernism rejects the beliefs of modernism and seems to have come in during the early part of the 20th century (1914 is a date quoted for it in Europe although it seems to have occurred much later in the US) and runs until the 1980′s when it seems to be dropped as a phrase used in the arts world. In photography terms the most common ways in which I have found photography described as being postmodern are:

• In the referencing of other works, on the basis that there are no new original ideas.  For example the work of Cindy Sherman who used imagery from films as her subject, recreating photographs that have the look and feel of something else.
• In focusing on the ordinary, banal objects in society.  Objects found on the streets and ordinary people, such as those taken by Stephen Shore.

So modernism came as a reaction to realism and postmodernism came as a reaction to modernism.  Wouldn’t it be helpful saying what something is rather than what it isn’t? Presumably realism was a reaction to something before that.

One thing I have encountered in trying to understand this in terms of photography is that there isn’t really any clear guide to what it really means.  I’ve read a number of articles on websites discussing this issue and not really come away any wiser.  They seem to be phrases used to describe works by various photographers without really any explanation of why they are appropriate.  I find this somewhat of a frustration coming from a science background where definitions needs to be tight, accurate and precise in order for them to be useful.  Here the definitions are loose and fuzzy and seem to be used to keep the uninitiated out using language that is difficult to disentangle and seems deliberately difficult to pin down.

So does the little I have gained from my reading affect the way I personally take photographs or look at the photography of others?  Well, probably not.  The photographs I take are the ones I take because they are either a) the ones which interest me the most and I will go out of my way to take or b) the ones which are available to me at the time and I am keen to take photographs.

In category a) I do like from time to time to spend some time experimenting with different ways of getting images.  The photograph below (taken a couple of years ago as part of my “1 photograph a week” challenge) is a good example.  Trying to come up with a different way of taking a photograph of a simple object like an orange instead of lighting from above I decided to light from below, using a small bulb and a 9V battery inserted into the base of the orange.

In category b) there will always be times when the photographs are because you are away somewhere on holiday, out for the day visiting somewhere etc etc.  The event itself was not purely for the purpose of photography but this does not mean that the photograph itself has any less merit or worth to me.  The one below taken recently at a zoo is (I feel) a good picture of the subject.

But does this change the way photographs are considered?  Well possibly.  Having a tag which allows you to explore more artists work is very useful and with the internet you can bounce from person to person looking at different works.

So my apologies that this has been rather a journey into not answering the question terribly well.  But maybe I’ve found that for me it doesn’t matter.

One point against this is that every photograph really has some level of intention in it, otherwise the person with the camera wouldn’t have worried about taking the photograph in the first place.  The key issue is that they have taken the picture with the forethought of what they are attempting to project and in some way sought out that image rather than serendipitously stumpling across it.  That it is an image which they hope represents a particular emotion, feeling or situation and says something beyond the picture itself.  It is not a picture of a family member eating an ice cream and simply enjoying themselves, although the photographer took that picture with the intention of showing this very thing.

Whether the viewer can understand the intention of the photographer is another thing.  Some photography just doesn’t click with me (if you’ll excuse the pun) and therefore I am really not bothered about the intention behind the work.  Others I like a lot and consequently you want to explore more of the work and what the intention behind it was.  Ansel Adams (pictured above) took amazing landscape photographs but his intention was also to use these to show people the incredible landscape which existed within the United States and in doing so helped in some small part to create the US National Parks.

However, one thing I am really not a fan of is the way in which the arts community attempts to roll up the intention in a way which is difficult for anyone outside the arts world to really understand or access.  It feels more like the photographer is going around taking weird pictures and then a PR person is making up something, not akin to the Emperor’s New Clothes, to hide behind.  Once established the photographer can churn out any old rubbish and call it art and have some tagline to justify it (half a pickled animal anyone?).  The getting established and accepted by the art photography community is the hard part.

Perhaps the main difference is that the amateur ice cream snap isn’t intended to be displayed in a gallery and potentially sold for hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.  If you are paying out that sort of money then do you want to know more about the image?

So moving forwards myself I will probably think more deeply about what I’m trying to capture when I take a photograph, when it is beyond a shot of someone enjoying an ice cream, and try and ensure that the photograph reflects this.  For example, my intention with my Mobile London series is to try and capture images seen along my daily travels in a slightly different way and restrict this to mobile phone technologies.  It is a minor intent and I am not attempting to reflect social boundaries or make comment about Afghanistan, but hey I’m only travelling the same route back and forth across London.

And what is my intention with this website? For now this is basically a personal diary and learning journal as I try to develop my photography skills and practice from where they are now.  I will always take snapshots, I think everyone should, but maybe I will start to create more series of photographs with intent and objective to show some statement or personal issue.