February 2013 Archives
February 15, 2013
The international jury of the 56th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected a picture by Paul Hansen of the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter as the World Press Photo of the Year 2012.
The picture shows a group of men carrying the bodies of two dead children through a street in Gaza City. They are being taken to a mosque for the burial ceremony while their father’s body is carried behind on a stretcher. Two-year-old Suhaib Hijazi and her three-year-old brother Muhammad were killed when their house was destroyed by an Israeli missile strike. Their mother was put in intensive care. The picture was made on 20 November 2012 in Gaza City, Palestinian Territories.
Mayu Mohanna, jury member from Peru, said of Paul Hansen’s winning picture:
“The strength of the pictures lies in the way it contrasts the anger and sorrow of the adults with the innocence of the children. It’s a picture I will not forget.”
Read more, and see a high-resolution slideshow of the winning photographs in Lens Culture.
February 11, 2013
Sharon Harper deliberately challenges the objective, scientific reality of photography in this delightful book of her chance-inspired artistic visions of the heavens.
She combines long time exposures with multiple exposures, and moves the vantage point of the camera in between, and often waits for hours, days, weeks or months to layer another exposure onto the same piece of 4 x 5 film.
The results are fanciful marvels, setting the whirling stars and sun and moon on changing, colliding trajectories behind luminous clouds and mists — or set against crystal sharp skies. She uses the visual language of scientific study to undermine its authority, or rather, to make us question assumptions about our own perceptions and about nature.
See and read more, in a review of her new photobook, From Above and Below.
Sharon Harper will be signing her book at the International Center of Photography on Friday, February 15th, from 6:00-7:30 p.m.
February 7, 2013
Lens Culture started out 8 years ago as a magazine published 3 times a year in my spare time. It's grown quite a bit since then!
Last year we organized screenings of great new contemporary photography on two continents, hosted our 3rd annual international portfolio reviews in Paris, awarded 9 prizes and 27 honorable mentions for the International Exposure Awards, and the UK Guardian called us “one of the most authoritative and wide-ranging sites” on contemporary photography.
In the past 8 years we’ve published 35 issues of Lens Culture, including more than 40 original in-depth video and audio interviews with photographers, lots and lots of photobook reviews, and shared our discoveries of photographers from more than 50 countries worldwide. We've stayed up all night working on high-resolution slideshows, editing captions, revising translations, linking out to other sites that we find interesting. We’ve lost some friends and family, welcomed newborn babies, published 750,000+ photos (last count), written 2,500 photography-related tweets, and helped to launch dozens of new careers.
We love what we do, and apparently a lot of you do too. We appreciate your support, and we rely on your generous donations to continue our work. We’ve never cluttered our site with commercial advertising, and we think you appreciate that as much as we do.
So today we're asking you to donate just $10 (or more if you can afford it) to keep us running.
It takes 200 hours per week to do everything we do. Many of us volunteer a lot of of our time, but we have real costs that include high-speed web servers, a dedicated part-time editorial staff, software, computer upgrades and video production.
If everyone who reads this donated $25, we could keep running for two more years.
Please act now, and donate something today. Keep Lens Culture vibrant and inspiring. And come back soon!
Thanks very much,
Jim Casper, founder and editor
Lens Culture
February 5, 2013
Sony World Photography Awards 2013
The jury for the World Photography Organisation announced 44 shortlisted photographers today for the Sony World Photography Awards 2013. These were selected from over 122,000 entries this year. Lens Culture is pleased to present a high-resolution slideshow of all of the finalists. Enjoy!
February 2, 2013
March 23-24, 2013 (Sat-Sun). Limited to 16 participants.
Photo © Marie Docher
Target Audience, Marketing, Branding, Networking, Social Media
These are the terms that we see all the time when people speak about selling, and building a business. But, how does this work when you’re a photographer?
During an intense two-day workshop, photography consultant Marc Prüst and Lens Culture founder Jim Casper will address these issues, and show how you can use them to build your business as a photographer. Through lectures and hands-on activities, this workshop covers essential and practical elements that are key to a successful career (beyond being a talented photographer). The workshop provides insight, hands you tools, and will help you understand what business model will work best for your photographic practice.
We review the rapid changes in the marketplace that are challenging and disrupting the “traditional” methods of the photography business. And we look to new methods and practices that are setting new paths to success.
The workshop helps you refine the verbal and visual ways that you present yourself and your work – in person, online, in your communications. We explore how to build and extend your personal and professional networks. How do you actually market photography? And how to gain exposure in new markets?
We also explore how to plan a photography project, from creative and marketing preparation through shooting, editing, sequencing and presentation.
All the elements come together with practical exercises, portfolio reviews, and discussions between the participants and Casper and Prüst. The theory will be clarified and put to use in recognizable exercises.
With a maximum of 16 participants, there is a lot of room for one-on-one feedback with the organizers, while the group is large enough to allow for peer-reviews and practical exercises with like-minded photographers.
Fee: 290 euros for two days (not including TVA). Limited to 16 participants. Deadline to apply: February 28, 2013.
For more details, see the Lens Culture Events page.
