Wednesday, 9 June 2010

Les Rencontres d'Arles - Workshops and Folio Review

Les Rencontres d'Arles - Workshop series announced

Continuing our coverage of the international photography festival in Provence Les Rencontres d'Arles: for 2010 a series of workshops are being organised. Workshops, with support from Olympus, vary from one-day "get to know" encounters to full weeks working under the guidance of top photographers offering the chance to benefit from their vision and experience. The list of distinguished international experts includes British photographer (and member of the F2 Freelance Facebook Group) Brian GRIFFIN, who draws on a vast commercial and fine art practice, along with: Sarah MOON, Paolo ROVERSI, Marcos LOPEZ, Véronique ELLENA, Claudine DOURY, Stéphanie LACOMBE, Antoine D'AGATA, Klavdij SLUBAN, Wilfrid ESTEVE, JH ENGSTRÖM, Grégoire KORGANOW, David BALICKI, Léa CRESPI, Diana LUI, Ludovic CARÈME, Grégoire ALEXANDRE, Jean-christophe BÉCHET, Gilles LEIMDORFER , Olivier CULMANN, Éric BOUVET, Jean-luc MABY and Martine RAVACHE.
More information from www.rencontres-arles.com
Contact: Fabrice Courthial stage@rencontres-arles.com Tel: +33 (0) 4 90 96 76 06

Arles - Photofolio Review

Opening week for Les Rencontres d'Arles Photographie is only a month away now running July 3rd to 13th. F2 Freelance editor, David Land, and publisher, Simon James, will be in attendance 6-9 July and looking forward to meeting up with friends old and new.

There is still time to submit your work to the keen eyes of international photography experts during the opening days of the festival from July 4th to 13th. 100 publishers, exhibition curators, museum directors, chief editors, agency directors, gallerists, collectors, critics, art directors and famous photographers are gathered to offer critical appraisal and useful advice regarding your practice and contacts that may provide outlets for your work. In the case of F2 Freelance we have participated in Photofolio Review for the past three years and every year to date have found a photographer whose work and practice has been featured in the magazine. Before signing up it's a good idea to check out the reviewers' biographies on-line to find experts who suit practice. As a new incentive this year, at the end of the review days, one of the participants' portfolio will be chosen by the reviewers, the Fnac and the Rencontres d'Arles, to be exhibited in the 2011 edition of the festival.

For further information contact Eléna and Rosie photofolio@rencontres-arles.com +33 (0)4 90 96 76 06 www.rencontres-arles.com

Friday, 14 May 2010

Portfolio construction and editing

Portfolio construction and editing is one of the all time arguing points of the freelance industry. This of course is hardly surprising when you consider exactly how important the folio is in keeping you in work. Looking again towards the June/July issue of F2 Freelance, for her feature Making the Final Cut, Miranda Gavin has been talking to London based movers and shakers within the industry about exactly what it is that makes a folio stand out from the crowd. June/July issue is on sale from 1 June

The June/July issue of F2 Freelance goes on sale 1 June

F2 Freelance Photographer - news stand availability

Several visitors to the stand at Manchester Photovision mentioned they were having trouble finding F2 Freelance Photographer in the shops since the demise of Borders book shops. We are indeed addressing this problem and getting the magazine out to increasing numbers of WH Smith outlets. For Manchester based freelances the magazine can now be found at the following four branches of WH Smith: Arndale Centre Manchester M4 3AD, West One Retail Park M30 0DX, Trafford Centre M17 8BA and Arndale Centre Stretford M32 9BD. For the present F2 Freelance is available in 127, of the 500 plus, WH Smith newsagents and we hope to be in quite a few more from October. At present you may find F2 Freelance on special promotional shelves by the tills rather than the photography section but please e-mail or call me if you are having problems and I will be able to tell you the nearest stockist to where you live.

Friday, 7 May 2010

Looking forward to the June/July issue of F2 Freelance, David has just done a major interview with Julia Fullerton Batten for the F2 Profile feature.

One of comparatively few UK photographers to successfully combine careers as a top advertising and fine art photographer, she's just back from Barcelona, where she's been shooting a Ford Focus campaign, which she says was the first time that she's been asked to use CGI in a shoot. Fullerton Batten echoes the increasing feeling at the top of the industry that moving imagery is the future, having first seen moving billboards on the underground in China seven years ago, and also makes interesting comment about the fact that, as her advertising work has taken a hit during the recession, sales of her fine art prints have actually increased.

The June/July issue of F2 Freelance goes on sale 1 June

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

Guardian/RPS 2000 GB Pound Photo-Essay Bursary

The 2010 Joan Wakelin Bursary has been announced, offering photographers £2,000 and the chance to have their work published in the Guardian. The bursary, administered by the Guardian and the Royal Photographic Society, is awarded to the photographer who presents the best proposal for a photographic essay on an overseas social documentary issue. Submission is open to all, with no restriction on age or qualification.

Entrants should submit a series of six images as examples of their work, along with a written proposal (maximum 500 words) describing their intended project, and a completed entry form, which can be downloaded from

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Me dia/documents/2006/05/17/JoanWbursaryfor m.pdf


Completed entries should arrive by first post on August 1 2010 at: Guardian Picture Desk, Kings Place, York Way, London, N1 9GU.

The shortlist will be selected by a jury nominated by the Guardian and the RPS. The winner will be announced at the 2010 RPS awards ceremony. The winning photo-essay will be published in the Guardian and the RPS Journal in 2010. Copyright will remain with the photographer, although licence will be agreed for the photo-essay to appear in the Guardian, the RPS Journal and any promotions associated with the bursary.

More information on the Joan Wakelin Bursary and past winners from www.rps.org/bursaries/home

Saturday, 13 March 2010

Medium Format Digital - do we need/want it?

Manchester based photographer Andrew Farrington ( www.andrewfphotography.com/ ) has just opened a new discussion on the Facebook site brought on by Pentax announcement of its imminent move into the Medium Format Digital/ Digital Back arena.

It would be interesting to know the thoughts of people on the whole issue of 'format' size:
Who uses MFDB's? Do you intend to buy into one of the systems at any time in the near future?
Or are they white elephants, given Nikon and Canon's forays into 'mega' megeapixel sensors? For that matter what is presently going on in the food still life studios that for so long shunned anything other than 10x8 large format despite the fact that the imagery often only appeared A4 size in magazines? Has the MFDB taken over from the the 10x8 or have still life shooters switched the whole way down to Canon and Nikon DSLR as the file quality continues to increase?

Thursday, 25 February 2010

Photographers' Web sites - the opening page

In the April issue of F2 Freelance Miranda Gavin will be contributing a feature on building the perfect web site for the working freelance.

Here at F2 Freelance we look at loads of photographers web sites every week and one of the things that strikes me is the sheer variety of solutions photographers arrive at when building their sites. This seems a particularly good discussion for the blog and on a personal note I'm very curious to hear what people think about web site layout. There are of course quite a few "givens" that few people would argue about. It has for example to be easy to read, easy and fast to alter and add work and sections to, and at some point make it easy to contact you either by phone or e-mail, while not giving away such details as an address in order to prevent a potential burglary. In the editorial and advertising arenas it's also pretty much now felt that the portfolio section should exactly match the analogue portfolio you may take along for a visit to potential clients - but this last isn't written in stone.

The opening page however seems to be the an area of significant dissagreement at very many levels of freelancing when in some ways it may well be the most important page on the site. It would be great to hear some opinions about laying out the perfect web site for the working professional, perhaps referring to different fields of freelance photography. Any thoughts?