f2 freelance photographer december/january issue

The new magazine is out now and should be with all you subscribers now, featured inside this issue:

The F2 Profile is Robert Wilson - top freelance portrait photographer Robert Wilson talks about his career to date and his recent journey to Afghanistan to produce his book HELMAND
Starting Out is Greg Funnell - not everyone goes to art school. Rising star Greg Funnell read War Studies at King's College London and now combines his cutting edge documentary practice with social, corporate and PR photography
Turning Pro is Centaur Photographic - directors Alec Whitby and Lucy Gale met through the Guards Polo Club four years ago and now supply a great deal of the club's photography as well as running their thriving business Centaur Photographic
Licence To Sell is interiors, food and travel picture library Narratives
Book Publishing - most photographers have a secret hankering to see their work published in book form - we look at some of the secrets of how to turn an ambition into a reality
Ultratravel - Joe Plimmer, photo-editor of the Telegraph Group's luxury travel supplement talks about opportunities in the magazine for the freelance
Point It - the best selling photo-book of all time
Definitive Moments - Buckinghamshire based social photographer Mark Seymour shoots in excess of 50 weddings per year - he talks to David Land
NIKON D90 - David Kilpatrick takes a close look at the Nikon D90
The Long View - Richard Kilpatrick reviews the Sigma Apo 300-800mm F/5.6 EX DG HSM

You can by this issue or subscribe online here.

You can also pick up a copy in Borders and The Photographers Gallery 

New Links on www.f2freelancephotographer.com

We're continuing to develop the F2 Freelance Photographer web site. Today's addition (so far!) is to the links page in the Profiles section, where you will now find a series of links to photographers' web sites.

It's something of an eclectic list with many already featured in the profiles in F2 Freelance Photographer - Starting Out and Turning Pro as well as the F2 Profile features - some we hope to feature in future issues of the magazine. Some advertising and editorial, some wedding and social, some mega-stars, some relatively new on the ladder, all we think of interest to other freelances - so please check them out and if you come across a great site of real interest to other freelances please let us know!

Associated Press Ban On US Military Photos Lifted

Associated Press has lifted its ban on US military handout photographs, which it imposed when a photograph of America's first female four-star general, Ann Dunwoody, was provided to AP and distributed before it was discovered that the background behind Dunwoody had been changed from an office environment to show her in front of a billowing American flag, and her three-star rank had been removed from her uniform.

AP lifted the ban on 21 Nov, after Goeff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, assured Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography in New York, that military service branches would be reminded of a Department of Defense (DOD) policy that prohibits making changes to photographs if doing so misrepresents the circumstances or facts of an event. However, the DOD says that images can still be altered by the military to protect privacy or for security. AP meanwhile strengthened its internal procedures for ensuring the integrity of photos from outside sources: from now on, at least two editors must examine any photographs coming from the DOD or other outside sources in Photoshop. If there is any doubt about the integrity of an image, it will not be used. In the rare circumstance that AP decides to distribute a handout image that's known to have been altered, the caption will explain that it is an altered image.

 

Deutsche Börse Shortlist

Four photographers have been shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2009, they are:

• Paul Graham
• Emily Jacir
• Tod Papageorge
• Taryn Simon

Graham has been nominated for his steidlmack  published book A Shimmer Of Possibility of which he said in an interview with Richard Woodward:

"I’ve been traveling around the States for a while now, and wanted to do something looser and freer, to take pictures of people at the most ordinary, everyday moments—cutting the grass or waiting for the bus, smoking cigarettes or traveling to and from the supermarket. I wanted to reflect Chekhov’s openness, his simple transparency"

Palestinian artist Emily Jacir is nominated for her installation Material For A Film, which was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2007. Jacir was awarded the Golden Lion award last year. Her project retraces Palestinian cultural figure Wael Zuaiter, who was the first of a series of Palestinian intellectuals and artists who were assassinated by Israeli agents in Europe.\

Passing Through Eden - Photographs of Central Park was exhibited at the Hoppen Gallery by Tod Papageorge earlier this year, and is a series of black and white images taken between 1969 and 1991 and runs alongside the first four books of Genesis, and tracks the park's development, beginning from the park as it was in the early 1970s.

Taryn Simon is nominated for An American Index Of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, which confronts the divide between the privileged access of the few and the limited access of the public and for which she used a large format view camera (except when prohibited).

The winners will be announced in early March next year, which gives you just about enough time to muse on the works nominated. 

Pictured above is an image © Tod Papageorge's Passing Through Eden.

Sigma Acquire Foveon

Sigma announced that it has bought 100% of Foveon's stock, after eight years of collaboration. All Sigma digital cameras use Foveon sensors, which were the first ever three layer image sensors. Not much will change however, Foveon folk will continue to foray further into sensor development, and Sigma will continue to use Foveon's technology in their cameras.

The Foveon sensor was unique in it's three layers, which piled a red, a green and a blue pixel on top of one another so that in each pixel location every colour is detected. Each of the three stacked photodiodes in a Fovean sensor has a different 'spectral sensitivity curve', so that the different wavelengths penetrate the silicon to the required depths. Each of the signals from the photodiodes is then transformed into data on each colour, red, green, and blue.

The name Foveon comes from the fovea (the dark spot in the image above) of the human eye, which mean that we can see images sharply, and is the only part of the retina which can do this. Our foveal vision is found on our line of sight, a notion discovered by Da Vinci. A line of sight is where the image is most in focus, as opposed to peripheral vision; the invisible line which runs between our fovea and an external object.

BJP Vision Friday 7 November

Today we're getting ready for BJP Vision at its new venue at the Business Design Centre in Upper Street, Islington, tomorrow (Friday 7/11/08).
As ever at Vision F2 Editor David Land and Publisher Simon James will be on our stand to view your portfolios, and we'll also have back issues and subscriptions at a reduced rate for the duration of the event. So if you're an established professional, working semi-pro or just starting out in the industry don’t forget to stop by and say hello.

Also attending this year is F2 Editorial Assistant, Jen Allan, who wrote our graduate guide to moving to London in the current F2, having done so herself in the summer – so if you’ve any questions or concerns about moving to the big city Jen’s the one to ask!

Lectures and seminars start at Vision at 10.30 am tomorrow with Sam Faulkner first up, closely followed by rising star Simon Roberts so make sure you get there early!

Pola(d)roid

While everyone else is lamenting the loss of the instant Polaroid film, the AOP Gallery have a Polaroid retrospective going on at their gallery on Leonard Street, London,  until the 14th of the month, which displays a characterful collection of polaroid pictures spanning the film's history from AOP members, and shows a lively variety of techniques and experiments, illuminating Polaroid's vast application.

Go take a look at:

www.the-aop.org

For procrastinators is the beta application Poladroid, which converts your jpegs to polaroid format in a few minutes with some really dinky graphics. A polaroid camera appears on your desktop, and photos are dragged and dropped onto the camera, to slide out and slowly develop on your screen. You could of course, do this yourself in photoshop, but of course, that isn't quite as much fun as watching your photos transformed before your eyes into the brown sludgy colours and cold shadows of classic polaroid instant film. Still only for mac and in beta, get it with French instructions only at:

www.poladroid.net