Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2021 i Australian Photography

Now in its third year, the Mono Awards 2021 featured a prize pool of more than $12,000 thanks to sponsors SanDisk, Momento and Momento Pro, in our hunt for the best black and white imagery in the region. Thousands of images from photographers in Australia and New Zealand were entered in the competition, with photographers Susan Sventek, Mel Sinclair and Diana Fernie taking out the People, Places and Animals categories, respectively. The competition was judged by a panel of eight professional photographers, selected for their expertise in the black and white format. For judge Alex Cearns OAM, the competition was a ‘visual feast’ of incredibly crafted images. “The high number of exceptional mono photographs entered made the judging process intense but thrilling. There’s so much talent out there!” she said.…

DIANA FERNIE JUST CHILL England-born professional diver Diana Fernie today calls Adelaide home, with the globetrotting photographer previously living in Europe, Russia, Asia, the Middle East and South America. She describes her passion as diving and photographing some of the world’s most exotic locations. She had to call on all her skills in the water to capture her Animals category winning image Just Chill, named after the exact words she used as she swam up to this saltwater crocodile in the mangroves of Jardines de la Reina, Cuba. “Snorkelling two at a time to save confusion in the water, we were warned to back right off if two crocs approached each other as they are territorial and that is the time that they are at their most dangerous,” She recalls.…

Coming out of COVID I found that my photography was in a lull – I couldn’t find inspiration like I had before. I was looking for something to kick start my photography again, so started to look at old images I had taken and ones I had entered into competitions. I revisited my Bronze CAPA submission from 2019, “Beauty in the Dust and Dry”. Looking back through my old images was a great reflection on my journey as a photographer and how far I had come. This process of reflection is something everyone should do from time to time. I started looking at images in the portfolio section on the webpage of the Australian Photographic Society, and at other CAPA submissions for inspiration and new techniques. I also utilised my…

It’s always been something of a mystery to me as to just why black and white photography somehow lost its perceived value and oomph when colour printing became mainstream. After all, if you step back half a century or so, black and white imagery has always been at the very core of photography. The grand masters like Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson were seen as artistic geniuses then, and it’s a tag that still very much holds true today. When I started shooting for a living (in the early 1990s) black and white was still the mainstream page currency for most publications. For my magazine work I always shot in colour transparency film, but for around 75% of the pages of a magazine those images were converted to black and…

YOUR BEST SHOT IS OPEN TO AP SUBSCRIBERS AND APS MEMBERS. TO ENTER AN IMAGE IN THE COMP, CHECK THE COMPETITION THEMES AND INSTRUCTIONS BELOW AND EMAIL YOUR BEST IMAGE TO YOURBESTSHOT@AUSTRALIANPHOTOGRAPHY.COM UPCOMING COMPETITION THEMES YOUR ENTRY 1. Email your entry to yourbestshot@australianphotography.com with the name of the competition theme in the email subject line, for example: Weather, Abstract, Landscape, etc.2. The image file must be the same as your name, for example Jane Smith.jpg. If you enter multiple images, each new image file name should be appended with a unique number, eg Jane Smith2.jpg 3. A maximum of three images can be entered per person.4. Images must be in JPEG format.5. Email file size must not exceed 7MB.6. Please include the following information about your entry in the body…

MEL SINCLAIR PICK UP STICKS Melanie “Mel” Sinclair is a landscape and creative photographer from Brisbane. A Master of Photography with the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) as well as an Associate of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography (NZIPP), she says it is the time alone in the landscape that is her meditation, an escape from the busyness of modern life. Her Places category winning image Pick up sticks was taken during a trip to Parkway, Canada, in November 2019, and depicts piles of trees killed off by a Mountain-Pine Beetle infestation. “Mountain after mountain of dead trees fallen next to the most breathtaking forests, glaciers and lakes - it was such a juxtaposition,” she says. “The image reminds me of absent-minded doodling-sketches that I used to…

When I was young my family travelled widely in eastern Australia. On these camping trips I was the designated photographer and used a second-hand Paxette, which was quirky and had a habit of shredding the film if it wasn’t wound on correctly. With this camera I developed a love of landscapes, both natural and urban, and this has remained with me. It was after I retired that I joined the Camberwell Camera Club and one of the results has been a keen interest in creating audiovisual sequences. I have also become very keen on street photography and taking candid shots of a wide variety of people going about their daily lives. When in Japan in autumn one year, my wife Diana and I stayed in Kyoto for two weeks. Our…

THIS MONTH’S WINNER ICY MYSTERY This image is from Cameron Hanks’ visit to Iceland. He said, “I had heard of this magical beach [Diamond Beach] in which glacial ice was washed out to sea only to be brought back to shore with the incoming tide. The combination of crystal clear and sometimes deep blues in the glacial ice on the jet black volcanic sand beach is something I will never forget.” This is an impressive image with a sense of mystery regarding scale, as that ice in the foreground could be two inches high or six foot - we don’t know, but as a viewer it is intriguing to look at as a result. A longer exposure would have been nice, but then it is a matter of how fast…