foto Priority

Canon Australia and New Zealand today officially announced the EOS Masters.

The below information is from Canons recent media release: Canon unveils EOS Masters

Showcasing the talent and leadership of six of Australia and New Zealand’s leading professional photographers, the Canon EOS Masters aim to inspire and challenge photographers of all experience levels to grow their creative photography capability.

“The Canon EOS Masters represent some of the most gifted and awarded photographers in their respective fields,” said Cathy Hattersley, Brand Manager – EOS Professional.  “We hope photographers of all experience levels and interests will find inspiration through the Masters to get out there, experiment with their photography, develop their expertise, and have fun trying something new.”

The Canon EOS Masters are already playing a role in inspiring and developing the skills of photographers with their individual monthly photographic challenges on EOS 1Wall In coming months, keen photographers can also look forward to hearing the pros’ top tips for taking the perfect shot.

Introducing the EOS Masters

Graham Monro – Wedding and Portrait

Photographer Graham Monro is the founder of one of Australia’s leading wedding and portrait studios, GM Photographics. A prolific photographer, Graham’s work has been published extensively throughout Australia, and internationally. Graham’s passion for photography was born out of a hobby which grew into a successful career in fashion and advertising, and most recently portraiture and wedding photography for clients in New York, Sydney and Singapore. Graham is a Double Master of Photography with the AIPP (Australian Institute of Professional Photographers), a Fellow of the NZIPP (New Zealand Institute of Professional Photographers) and recipient of numerous industry accolades. He has been a Canon user from the start.

Mark Horsburgh – Sports

Mark Horsburgh is regarded as one of the world’s leading sports photographers and specialises in the high-speed world of motorsport, where he boasts such prominent manufacturers as Ford, Holden, Porsche, BMW, Audi, Mini and Volvo as valuable clients. Mark’s core business is as the series photographer for the V8 Supercar Series, and also provides action imagery from Formula One, Le Mans, Moto GP and IndyCar events to major international agencies. In recent years Mark has built his business, Edge Photographics, into an industry leader.

Urs Buhlman – Commercial/Advertising

Urs has been a professional photographer for 28 years and still loves it. Urs spent his early career travelling around Australia, shooting commissioned annual reports, before moving into specialist automotive work both in Australia and abroad. The passionate Urs “lives and breathes” photography and is recognised as one of the region’s leading Advertising and Commercial Photographers. Urs was awarded the Canon AIPP Australian Photographer of the Year 2006, voted Top Advertising Photographer in 2008 and 2009 and also has a couple of D&AD (British Design and Art Direction) gongs under his belt.

Yervant – Wedding and Portrait

Yervant was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1958 as the son of royal photographer Hagop Zanazanian. Yervant won his very first award in photography at age 11 with an African landscape image that he had photographed.
Yervant was the first ‘Wedding’ photographer to win the ‘Digital Image Maker of the Year’ award in 1996, a category never before attempted, let alone won, by a wedding photographer. In 1998 Yervant became the youngest Fellow of AIPP in recognition of his significant influence in refashioning traditional wedding photography to what is now a standard mode within Australia and moreover overseas. Since then, Yervant has continued to receive international recognition and awards including being listed as one of the ‘Most influential photographers of the decade’ in January this year. Yervant also received the WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International) Lifetime Achievement Award 2010 in March this year – the only Australian and one of the youngest in WPPI’s 30 year history.

Mike Langford – Commercial/Landscape/Education

Mike Langford is a Master and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography (NZIPP).
He has been a professional photographer for 30 years and an International Awards judge for 20 years. With a raft of awards to his name, Mike has been awarded Australian Geographic Photographer of the Year, Korean International Photographer of the Year, NSW Photographer of the Year, twice Australian Institute of Professional Photography Landscape Photographer of the Year and the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography Photographer of the Year, Corporate/Industrial Photographer of the Year and Landscape Photographer of the Year. He is co-director of the Queenstown Centre for Creative Photography with his wife Jackie Ranken.

Jackie Ranken– Illustrative/Landscape/Education

Jackie Ranken has been a photographer since she was sixteen and lives in New Zealand with husband and fellow photographer Mike Langford. Jackie has been awarded Master Photographer status multiple times in New Zealand and Australia. Her list of awards is long and includes, since 2002, eight category wins from the AIPP and NZIPP and a 2nd place title in the Nature and Environment series section of the Canon World Press Photo Awards. What matters to her most is that she is out there exploring who she is and expressing herself through her photography. She considers her ‘art’ to be classic black and white landscape photography. Her main career is pursuing her personal photographic practice and running the Creative Photography Workshops as part of Queenstown Centre for Creative Photography. Her main commercial work is editorial in content. She is the current NZIPP Illustrative/editorial Photographer of the Year.

Here is a pretty interesting little addition to your kit for all you lovers of low-fi images out there! If you don’t have a Diana plastic camera but you want to create those low saturation, soft surreal blurs, and unpredictable coloured images then you may be very interested in this Diana lens adapter for your Nikon and Canon DSLR.

All you need to do is attach the plastic lens and its adapter directly onto your SLR’s body. Your Canon or Nikon will be part Diana camera and park DSLR, a recipe for some pretty cool dreamy images!

The lens adapter is available from the US at photojojo.com and for $60 USD you get;

• Adds a soft and dreamy focus to your photos
• Adapter for Canon or Nikon SLRs and DSLRs
• Included adapter works with the entire line of Lomo’s Diana+ lenses
• Three distance settings (1-2m, 2-4m and Infinity)
• Includes Canon or Nikon adapter and 38mm Super-Wide Diana+ Lens

Happy Shooting!

Jose

Hey all, this looks really cool, Canon have come up with a monthly challenge designed for amateur photographers. Each month Graham Monro from GM Photographics will give you a brief, you then set out and submit your best shot related to that theme.

Once uploaded you have the chance to become the people’s choice winner or the judge’s winner! The winner will receive an A2 printout of their image.

For more info check out the 1wall home page where you can find lots more info including conditions of entry and the “wall” where you can start judging for yourself.

Be quick at this months challenge “emotion” ends in 7 days, get shooting!

This years Canon Photo5 competition brought many challenges. One of those being the pair of cardboard spectacles. Andrew Foo submitted the below image to Canon and has kindly shared his insight to the creation and thought process behind it. Enjoy

© Andrew Foo

Getting creative… creative flash that is!

Thinking up an idea that is both original and witty for a creative portrait is hard. Well, actually I lie. Neither isn’t terribly difficult, it’s executing on the idea where the hard yards are.

The inaugural competition Canon Photo5 competition came and went again this year and there’s nothing better than a good competition to bring out the best in your creative side.

The “portraiture” brief commanded the use of a supplied black spectacles made from thin piece of cardboard paper. How you used it in the shot, was open to the photographer’s interpretation. In keeping with the competition’s judging brief I wanted to create an image that would engage and probe more questions from the viewer. In “Think it’s time for a new pair…”, I played with the idea of a different kind of portrait and uniting fake with reality. Having worn the spectacles, the main subject could not see any better and proceeds to attempt to clean the cardboard spectacles with a lens cloth. This somewhat felt like a surreal moment, so I thought a ‘dreamy’ cast to the image would be a neat idea.

Having had the opportunity to attend one of SPW’s recent Shots @ The Arthouse (Flash Dance night) I felt more equipped to introduce some off-camera flash in getting a bit more creative. Shot inside one of my rooms in my house later in the day I didn’t have much ambient light to play with. I started by exposing for the ambient lighting for the room’s background. The idea was to keep the foreground pin sharp and in focus, so I dialed in a higher ISO to maintain a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second to eliminate camera shake. Using a wide aperture of f/2.8 allowed me to keep the foreground sharp and throw the background out of focus in emphasizing the action and the object in hand.

A radio remote trigger fired off a flashgun placed left of camera through an umbrella for a softer light. Needless to say I had a lot of fun doing this and comps are a great way to focus on a specific theme and get your creative juices flowing!

Camera and Lens: Canon EOS 450D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8

Off-Camera Flash: Canon Speedlite 430EX II attached to stand and shot through umbrella @ ¼ power

Remote triggered by Speedlite Radio Kit

Exposure: Shot handheld at f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO800, Flash WB

Cheers,

Andrew Foo

Check out the link to the image – Think it’s time for a new pair

Some exciting news hot off the press – Yesterday the 20th October 2009 Canon announced thier latest addition to the Pro DSLR range, the EOS 1D Mark IV.

Some of the  incredible Mark IV features:

• 16.1 Megapixel CMOS Sensor

• ISO 100-12800 (expandable to an incredible L: 50, H1: 25600, H2: 51200, H3: 102400)

• Dual DiG!C 4 Processors

• 45 point Auto Focus (39-all cross type)

• 10 Frames per second (120 shots max using 90MB UDMA mode 6 compatible CF Card)

• FULL High Definition Movie Recording

So the 1D has finally caught up with the 5D Mk2 and now offering full HD video! ahem :p

Tne pricing for this baby will be around $4999 USD.  For the full spec listing check out the Canon Australia Website

Jose Fernandez

A few weeks ago we posted a story about the EOS Photo5 competition , by now those of you who registered should have received your little brown box and your mind is working overtime trying to come up with the winning image.

Well, meet Simon Harsent, Simon is one of the 5 judges chosen for this years EOS Photo5 competition.

With more awards than you can poke a stick at and a client list longer than a 600 f4, Simon discusses what keeps him inspired and who are his personal inspirations. He also shares some valuable hints and tips to set you on your way to create that winning image.

Simon’s work can be viewed at http://www.simonharsent.com/

Hi everyone, well it’s back for another year – the Canon EOS Photo 5 creative photography competition.

You will need to register to enter the competition to receive you’re brown box. Inside this box there are 5 separate photographic briefs to challenge you, follow the detailed briefs provided for each. For some briefs you will have to use the exact item provided, whereas for other briefs you will be able to source additional items.

To give you an indication, the previous years box contents are listed below

2007
-Balloon
-Cellophane
-Chalk
-Dots
-Box

2008
-Umbrella
-Red Ribbon
-Tea Light
-Crayon
-Bubbles

The registration period commenced on the 31 August and closes on midnight 27 September, or once the limited number of boxes has run out.

For more information and registration click Here, go on, release your creative juices!

Jose