Table of contents for January 2017 in Digital Camera Magazine

First, here’s to a jolly, creative and fun-filled festive season from the Digital Camera team and me! To make 2017 your best photo year ever, we’ve invited 12 of the world’s most talented, creative and inspirational photographers to set you an assignment. They’re not your run-of-the-mill competition challenges, but rather a set of intriguing and thoughtprovoking projects that I’m prepared to guarantee will make you a better photographer by the end of 2017 – no matter what level your photography is today. They’ll stretch your imagination, hone your camera craft and flex your creative muscles to their limit. There’s 12 of them too, so that’ll give you one a month. We’d love to see your results as well, so please send them through. And don’t forget to use our special…

LOTTIE DAVIES • Lottie is a fine art, travel, editorial and commercial photographer. She has won recognition in numerous awards, including the Association of Photographers’ Awards, and the Schweppes Photographic Portrait Awards. • Her work, particularly the Memories and Nightmares series, has garnered international acclaim; Quints won First Prize at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Awards 2008 at the National Portrait Gallery, Viola As Twins won the Photographic Art Award, Arte Laguna Prize in Venice in 2011, and her imagery as a whole won the Young Masters Art Prize in 2012. www.lottiedavies.com Send us your results! We’d love to see your attempts at Lottie’s challenge. Email them to digitalcamera@futurenet.com SUBJECT LINE: 12 Creative Assignments: Lottie Davies For my own personal work, I love to try and convey stories in single…

JJWEISS • Formerly professor of art and director of photography at the University of Delaware, jjweiss now leads travel photography workshops. He’s led seven photo safaris to Kenya and Tanzania, and 26 more worldwide. • jj has a three-day workshop in Los Angeles in September 2017. It’s titled Flex Your Street Photography Muscles at Muscle Beach, and is sponsored by the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. • jj’s images are in major collections, including Moma, New York, and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. His most recent exhibition was at the Center for Creative Photography Adelaide. www.jjweiss.com Most creative photographers go out shooting. They grab their cameras and gear, leave home, go to a designated location and make pictures. Then they return, organise their work, turn their eyes off, and go about their…

MARIA FALCONER • Maria’s speciality is performance photography. This tends to run through her personal projects as well as her commercial work. • Professionally, she creates images for dance companies, working in the theatre as well as the studio and out on location. She has collaborated with some wonderful dancers and choreographers over the years, making images that help to promote their work around the world. In the UK these images have been published in The Guardian, The Times, The Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman. • Her personal photographic work has been shown in the UK, the US, Ireland, France, East Asia and at Arles Photography Festival. This December, she is delighted to be exhibiting in Bruges, as part of the International Dance Festival ‘Crossing Channels.’ www.mariafalconer.co.uk If you’ve never…

NI CK TURPIN • Nick is a London-based street photographer, who started his career on the staff of The Independent and went on to shoot for design companies and advertising agencies in the UK and USA. • In 2000, Nick founded the international street photographers group In-Public, which has played a major role in the modern resurgence of candid public photography. He is a self-confessed street photography evangelist and has promoted the approach through workshops, exhibitions, publishing, film, TV and radio. • Nick has just spent three years photographing London’s winter bus commuters; the book On The Night Bus is published by Hoxton Mini Press (www.hoxtonminipress.com). www.nickturpin.com William Shakespeare wrote in his play As You Like It a few lines that sum up this underlying theme of this photo challenge: “All…

SEASONAL TREES Our latest Shootout took place at the world-famous Westonbirt Arboretum, where technique editor Claire Gillo invited two photographers to capture the sights of the season… READER 1 Michelle Harden CAMERAS: Canon EOS 5DS and 7D Mark II LOCATION: Hampshire FORMER teacher and hospital chaplain Michelle was faced with a diagnosis of eye cancer in 2012. Living through the initial shock and the treatment made her re-evaluate her life, and her desire to be outside enjoying nature became even stronger, to the extent that photography is like therapy. Michelle enjoys a wide range of genre, including sports and portrait photography, but landscapes, seascapes and macro are her main focus. She’s naturally an early riser and so gets to witness some amazing sights. www.michellehardenphotography.co.uk READER 2 Rebecca Hedges Camera:…

Bruce Davidson (born 1933) is known for his distinctive documentary photography focusing on social issues. Accolades include the Sony World Photography Awards’ Outstanding Contribution to Photography in 2011. When did he start taking photographs? He took his first pictures at the age of 10, in his hometown of Oak Park, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. Later, he continued to develop his work as a student at Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. While at Yale he shot behind-the-scenes documentary pictures of the university’s football team, some of which were published in Life. Then his promising career was interrupted by two years’ national service in the US Army from 1955-57. How did he manage to get his career back on track? While doing military service near Paris in 1956, he…

SOFTWARE PHOTOSHOP CC GET IT FROM WWW.ADOBE.COM GET START FILE FROM WWW.BIT.LY/DC185FILES JAMES PATERSON Editor, Practical Photoshop With a decade as a working writer and photographer behind him, James knows exactly which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter the most to you. STEP BY STEP BEST COLOURS WITH LAB Switching between modes can bring all kinds of benefits, like beautifully bold colours... 1 CHANGE TO LAB Lab is a mode that separates colour and detail, which makes it great for boosting weak colours. Go to Image > Mode > Lab Color. Open the Layers Panel, click the Create Adjustment Layer icon and choose Levels. Click the dropdown menu at the top. It shows Lightness, A and B. Select A. 2 SQUEEZE THE SLIDERS You can boost colours by dragging the…

SOFTWARE Photoshop CC GET IT FROM www.adobe.com Get Start files from www.bit.ly/dc185files Editor, Practical Photoshop With a decade as a working writer and photographer behind him, James knows which Photoshop and Lightroom tools and techniques matter the most to you. watch video www.bit.ly/dc185video Download the video www.bit.ly/dc185bonus Automate your workflow Speed up your retouching with our free actions, or make your own Retouching can be quite monotonous, so anything that helps speed things up is very welcome. If you find yourself performing the same task over and over, open the Actions panel (Window > Actions), make a new action and click Record. Then simply play the action back on any other image to automate the process, or go to File > Automate > Batch to run it on an entire…

Download the start files www.bit.ly/dc185files watch video www.bit.ly/dc185video Download the video www.bit.ly/dc185bonus 1 CREATE AN X-RA Y EFFECT The characteristic negative tones and cyan hues of X-rays can be easily applied to regular images. OK, you’re not really looking inside the subject, but the overall effect works a treat. First invert tones with Ctrl/Cmd+I, then remove the colour and add a blue tint with a Photo Filter adjustment layer. To get a soft X-ray-like glow, press Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+Alt+E to merge the visible layers into a new layer. Add a Gaussian Blur filter set to about 50 pixels, and change the Blend mode to Soft Light. watch video www.bit.ly/dc185video Download the video www.bit.ly/dc185bonus 2 MAKE YOUR OWN LIGHT SABRE The closest we’ll come to owning a light sabre can be achieved easily…

BRETT HARKNESS • Brett is a social portrait and wedding photographer based in the UK. • He mostly photographs people, whether it’s on the most important day of their lives at a wedding, on the beach as a family, or on location for a commercial portrait shoot. He loves getting out there and pushing himself every time he picks up a camera. • Brett is a UK ambassador for Ricoh/Pentax, Elinchrom and Manfrotto. www.brettharknessphotography.com The challenge is to turn a very ordinary scene – a back street, inside the car, a rooftop, a car park, a bathroom – into a film set, putting the extraordinary in the ordinary. The aim of the shoot is to produce a Hollywood-inspired portrait. This is a very exciting challenge, and will make you think…

Quintin LAke • Quintin is a British architectural and landscape photographer. He originally trained as an architect, and his interest in geometry and serenity informs all of his photographic work. • When not working on assignment for clients worldwide, he creates photographic artworks in series based on long landscape walks and aspects of the built environment, which are available as signed prints. • In 2015 he embarked on a 10,000km walk around the British coast in sections. He expects this project, The Perimeter (www.theperimeter.uk), to take five years. www.quintinlake.com Your goal in this challenge is to capture a landscape image that conveys silence and serenity. Think of somewhere you know that makes you feel calm and peaceful, and translate it into a photograph. Consider the weather and time carefully: fog,…

Charlie WAITE • Charlie is one of the world’s leading landscape photographers. His unique style conveys a spiritual quality of serenity and calm. • Charlie is the recipient of the Honorary Fellowship to the British Institute of Professional Photographers and Direct Fellowship in the RPS. • Charlie has been responsible for setting up the successful Take–a-View UK Landscape Photographer of the Year award (www.take-a-view.co.uk), now in its 10th year, as well as the USA Landscape Photographer of the Year award. (See Hotshots, page 10, for this year’s winners.) www.charliewaite.com Find geometry in a rural, urban- or water-based landscape, where intersections of arcs, diagonals, triangles, diamonds, rectangles and so on take place. There are many locations that will work for this challenge, but you may want to consider something such as…

STUART FREE DMAN • Stuart is an awardwinning photographer and writer based between London and New Delhi, and is a member of Panos Pictures. • His work has been published in Life, Geo, Time, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Sunday Times Magazine and Paris Match, covering stories from Albania to Afghanistan and from former Yugoslavia to Haiti. www.stuartfreedman.com Reportage is a deceptively tricky photographic discipline. How does one convey a story from real life – about real people – with something as intrusive as a camera? Classic magazines like Life or Picture Post presented easily understandable visual formulas to do just that, in a similar way to how one might construct an informative piece of written journalism. These photographic essays told their story in a narrative structure that introduced character, action…

Sketchy about shutter speeds? Disoriented by dynamic range? Send your question to digitalcamera@futurenet.com and let us provide you with a solution Our expert photo advisor is here to help Sharpen up I struggle to get my macro images sharp. Where am I going wrong? Sue Cook There are lots of things that could be causing problems, Sue. There’s no doubt that macro photography is a tricky genre to get right, but the rewards are there when you do. I suspect the biggest issue is a combination of the facts that depth of field is greatly limited with a macro lens and that subject or camera movement is very unforgiving, because that depth of field is so limited. When I shoot macro, I’ll fix the camera to a tripod whenever possible.…

Nikon D810 vs Pent ax k-1 A full-frame battle between a classic SLR and a fresh new contender FUJIfilm X-T2 From Fujifilm’s X-Series, we review the mirrorless and compact X-T2 Irix 15mm f/2.4 Firefly Find out what our tester Matthew Richards thinks of this seriously wide-angle lens Beginn ers’ cameras Just starting out? Then you can’t afford to miss this big group test GIFT GUIDE Stuck on ideas this Christmas? We have gifts galore for you to browse through at your leisure! Reviews you can trust Digital Camera is brought to you by the UK’s most experienced team of photography journalists, which means you can trust everything you read, and compare kit with confidence. We believe the best way to test a product is to use it as it was…

Selected products in this guide are available at competitive prices from Wilkinson Cameras. Enter the Quick Find code provided in the search box at www.wilkinson.co.uk for instant results. Save 10% Look for special offers from Wilkinson Cameras in this guide. Enter supplied code at checkout. Offers end 31st December 2016. Offers available to UK residents only. LE NSPEN ORIGINAL Eliminate dust and smudges from your lenses with ease. £9.99 at wilkinson.co.uk Enter 85517 KÚLA DEEPE R 3D LENS FOR DSLR Enables your camera to capture stereoscopic 3D images. £173/$179 www.kula3d.com DUST-AID PLATINUM SE NSOR CLEANER Kit Keep your snapper’s sensor in tip‑top condition. £39.99 at wilkinson.co.uk Enter 37888 MARUMI EXUS CIRCULAR POLARISER Premium polarising performance at a relatively practical price. From £57/$76 marumi-filter.co.jp/en Lastolite trigrip 75cm 1-Stop Diffuser Because hot…

Apple iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch Available on Get the free Digital Camera app for your iPad or iPhone at www.bit.ly/DC_app (UK) or www.bit.ly/DCW_app (the rest of the world), then browse through our back issues or buy a subscription using the app. Android, PC or Mac Zinio: www.bit.ly/DCW_Zinio Google Play: www.bit.ly/DCW_GoogleP Other options Digital Camera is available for Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Windows 8 and more. Check out all of our partners in the column on the right of this page. The digital advantage Your digital magazines can travel with you – even if you delete them, they’re free to re-download at any time Binders for your print issues Prefer print? Keep your mags together with our binder, which neatly holds a year’s worth of issues www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/photo ON SALE NOW Outdoor…

CLAIRE GILLO • Claire is the technique editor for Digital Camera, and has been taking photographs for the past 14 years. • Her discovery of the medium started in the school darkroom, where she would spend hours printing black-and-white images. From there she went on to do a BA (Hons) degree in Photography, during which she mostly explored cameraless photography and antiquated techniques. • Claire is drawn to the still-life genre. She loves to create home-made DIY set-ups, using found objects and backdrops. www.digitalcameraworld.com E LIVE our lives surrounded by objects. Every day we use a multitude of them to aid our existence; each object functions for a different reason to help with a different chore or daily task. Your own personal objects can be seen as an extension of…

PAUL HI LL • Paul became a freelance photographer in 1965. He photographed regularly for The Guardian and The Observer. • He has written two books – Approaching Photography and Dialogue with Photography – and has had two monographs, White Peak Dark Peak and Corridor of Uncertainty, published. • Paul has received an MBE for services to photography. He is the recipient this year of the RPS Education Award. hillonphotography.co.uk Most photographers rarely think that there are interesting photographs to be made in their own back yards. How often do you see images of domestic interiors or personal spaces made in people’s homes in photo mags and camera club competitions? Not often enough, I think. The discipline of restricting yourself to working within a radius of 50 feet is really…

YOSHINORI MIZUTANI • Yoshinori attended the Tokyo College of Photography after graduating from Nihon University College of Economics. In 2014, he was selected for the LensCulture Emerging Talents Awards Top 50 and the Foam Magazine Talent Call. • Yoshinori has amassed an impressive list of solo exhibitions in numerous galleries, including IMA, Tokyo; Aura Gallery, Beijing; Ibasho Gallery, Antwerp; Christophe Guye Galerie, Zürich; and Webber Gallery Space, London. • His work has been published in four books from IMA Photobooks: Tokyo Parrots (2014), Colors (2015), Yusurika (2015) and Hanon (2016). yoshinori-mizutani.com For my work, I have been creating photographs for which I get lots of inspiration from my everyday life and the familiar things in my life. Through taking photographs in everyday life, I started to realise that there are…

Get Involved! If you’d like to take part in any of the features in Photo Active, please send us an email at digitalcamera@futurenet.com with one of the following in the subject line: Rate My Photo, Shootout, Portfolio or Photo Answers. Please include your full name, contact details (including a daytime phone number) and a sample of your work (max 10MB) Facebook www.facebook.com/ ENTER TODAY! Enter this month’s assignment at www.photocrowd.com/a/current Closing date: 2nd January 2017 Facebook www.facebook.com/digitalcameraworld Twitter www.twitter.com/digitalcameraw Flickr www.flickr.com/groups/digitalcameraworld Twitter www.twitter.com…

It’s 12.45pm on the first Thursday in August, I’m about to start work at the biggest fringe festival in the world – Edinburgh – and things are about to get very hot at Scotland’s National Centre for Dance… Production shots (as they are known) for theatrical productions like dance take place in the venue during a dress rehearsal. As a rule this involves photographing fast-moving dancers, usually in low light, often with a black background – and sometimes even wearing black costumes. It has to be said that I do like a challenge. It’s winter in the gardens of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. I’ve been commissioned to photograph a live outdoor production involving a stunning laser show and an aerial dancer suspended from a…

SOFTWARE Lightroom CC/6 GET IT FROM www.adobe.com Get Start file from www.bit.ly/dc185files Photographer and writer Sean McCormack is a photographer and writer based in Galway in the west of Ireland. He’s the author of The Indispensable Guide to Lightroom CC. seanmcfoto.com Lightroom watch video www.bit.ly/dc185video Download the video www.bit.ly/dc185bonus Just like fashion, there are trends in photography. They’re hard to ignore, and so they should form part of your photographic arsenal. For a long time, high-key portraits (where the background is white, and the rest of the image is above middle grey) have been popular – but low-key (where the background and clothes are dark) is definitely on the way back in. With many rock star photographers shooting this look, perhaps it’s time to consider it. Vintage lenses are…

D xO OpticsPro 9 is unique as far as imaging applications go: it analyses your images and applies automatically adjustments based on content and equipment used. The results can be dramatic and have been made possible by DxO’s background in the imaging market. The DxO team tests every new camera and lens released, so when it comes to image quality they really know   what they’re doing. They’re also the company behind the software we use for our own camera reviews. OpticsPro’s presets are a big part of the program – they’re a great place to get start when you’re enhancing your images. The preset styles are very good, but it’s only when you start to adapt them and use your own settings that you get to see the full…

www.danielbeltra.com Which photographers (living or dead) would you like to have round for dinner? The founders of Magnum, especially Henri Cartier-Bresson. Which photographer’s work should be more appreciated? Richard Kavlar. What did you want to be when you were five years old? A fireman or a rescue swimmer. What was your first camera? A Yashica FR I kit with 28, 50 and 135mm lenses. What’s the most expensive piece of kit you’ve ever bought? My first CompactFlash cards cost $550 for just 512 megabytes. It was a long time ago... What’s in your kit bag right now? A pair of Nikon D810s, Nikon 70-200mm and 24-70mm zooms, and a couple of Zeiss Otus fixed lenses, all in a MindShift Gear bag. To crop or not to crop? Get the photo…