Photography Archives - Page 4 of 10

New Object Selection Tool in Photoshop

Photoshop will soon have a new cut out tool which Adobe is calling the Object Selection Tool.

YouTube videos on the subject of cutting out objects from their backgrounds will try to persuade you that the marquee or lasso tools make selecting things easy. Perhaps it does with the simplest of subjects, but generally, I resort to a painstaking multi-click marathon with the pen tool.

How Does the Object Selection Tool Work

Adobe is using AI to make the process easier as the video from Adobe above demonstrates. Drag the rectangular marquee or lasso over the subject to be selected and Sensei the Adobe AI engine can distinguish the subject from its background.

By just selecting the general area of the things you’d like to include or exclude, Sensei identifies the correct subject and snips a precise selection around it.

“It’s like it reads your mind and shrink-wraps the object with the selection,” says Adobe’s Meredith Stotzner in the video.

When will The Object Selection Tool be Implemented

Adobe will not be drawn, (no pun intended) but anytime soon seems to be the answer.

Sally Soames

by John Gough

Sally Soames died this week, she was a portrait photographer who worked in Fleet Street until 2000. She started as a press photographer in 1963 with the Observer and then worked for the Sunday Times for 32 years. She also freelanced for the Observer, Guardian, New York Times and Newsweek.

There is a gallery of her work here

Her portraits of famous people, including well-known shots of Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Eubank, Iris Murdoch and Hilary Mantel, are now held in galleries and collections around the world.

There are also studies of Margaret Thatcher, Seamus Heaney and Tony Blair, the latter taken during the 2001 election campaign. Her arresting image of Andy Warhol was photographed through a pane of glass.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has 17 of her images. However she said that “I don’t like to call them portraits, they’re photographs of people”.

Soames worked exclusively in black and white, out of strong personal preference, refusing to work in colour, despite newspapers switching to colour photographs during her time as a press photographer

Getting a connection with her subject was the secret of her mesmerising portraits. Once she had only three and a half minutes to photograph Sean Connery. Two of those minutes she spent in conversation with him, the connection however brief was for her most important.

As she said, “I used to talk to them. Nowadays you don’t have the time with people – everything’s changed and PR people are timing you; it’s a nightmare.”

Her trademark mono images were nearly always shot in natural light. Her inspiration was Anthony Armstrong Jones who did the same, taking black-and-white pictures using available light.

Save for a few pictures she kept to pass on to her three grandchildren, she donated her archive to The Guardian Media Group’s Scott Trust Foundation.

Her top tip: “Don’t do it. You can’t get the same quality stuff as I did. It’s not going to happen again.”

David Hurn in Conversation

by John Gough

I have for a long time been a fan of David Hurn’s work. In many ways, he is the photographer’s photographer. This is because he cares so deeply about the medium, and is so anxious to encourage anyone who wants to seriously point a camera.

I first came across his work when I saw a BBC Two documentary: A Life in Pictures, which I have included above.

I also have a gallery of his work here.

Hurn is a massively successful photographer and a founder member of Magnum. In 2017, Hurn gifted two collections of photographs to the National Museum Wales; approximately 1,500 of his own photographs that span his sixty-year career as a documentary photographer; and approximately 700 photographs from his private collection of ‘swaps’, which he has compiled throughout the course of his career.

I have been reading, On Being a Photographer, A Practical Guide, written by Bill Jay. A conversation between him and his friend David Hurn.

On Being a Photographer

I have curated some quotes from Hurn, that are in the book and that should inspire any serious photographer.

“My advice is: learn from the best or teach yourself. And do not bother at all if you do not have an exaggerated sense of curiosity.”

For David, photography is inextricably linked with life; the photographer is not invisibly behind the camera but projecting a life-attitude through the lens to create an interference pattern with the image.

“just wandering around looking for pictures, hoping that something will pop up and announce itself, does not work. Sorry about that, photographers, if it offends your fantasy of how a photographer behaves!”

“The photographer must have intense curiosity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures. This curiosity leads to intense examination, reading, talking, research and many, many failed attempts over a long period of time”.

“The best pictures, for me, are those which go straight into the heart and the blood, and take some time to reach the brain”.

“In all cases the pressing of the button is a reasonably continuous process, because you never know if the next fraction of a second is going to reveal an even more significant, poignant, visually stronger image than the previous one”.

“frames build up to a crescendo where a gesture, expression, or arrangement of shapes, signal that the image is captured — or the sequence abruptly ends because the event has collapsed”.

“Then someone who knows little about this way of working will see a single image, say in a book or at an exhibition, and think: that was a lucky shot!”

“Josef Koudelka who was shooting pictures around my cabin. I couldn’t understand what he was seeing, as the images seemed to have no connection with his known work. He said: “I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not ‘photographing,’ in order to keep the eye in practice.” That made sense. An athlete has to train every day although the actual event occurs only occasionally”.

The book is full of good advice and does not pretend that photography is easy and that anyone can do it.

Marketa Luskacova

by John Gough

There is now an exhibition by Marketa Luskacova at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol entitled By the Sea and I encourage you to visit.

Marketa Luskakova is a Czech documentary photographer, whose wonderfully gritty observation of humanity shows through in the cold tones of her black and white images. You can see her work on her website and I have collated some North East images here, and there are more on her website here and here.

Have You Seen This ….. Martin Parr in Conversation

by John Gough

This is an interesting video of Martin Parr talking to a group of students. It is a few years old now but worth a view. It is very short.

If you are not familiar with Martin Parr’s work then this is my Pinterest Board

Three things to take away from what he says:

First take a lot of crap photographs, without taking the crap you will never get to the good.
Connect with your subject. The only difference between your photograph and that of someone else is the quality of that connection.
The connection, however, has to be so powerful that the photograph will stand on its own. Does it talk to us without you being in the room?

Here is more of his work. If you want to understand the meaning of connection then look through this book.

Winner: RPS Monthly Competition May 2019

by John Gough

It was this Big! /John Gough / Canon EOS M

This picture was one of the winners of the RPS Monthly Competition in May 2019. It will appear in the RPS Journal in July. I was asked to write a few comments:

I live close to Bedford and originally started taking pictures of people in the town to participate in an exhibition a few years ago. I have continued this theme as a project.

These three ladies were chatting away, waiting for a bus. I just loved their expressions and can only guess at what they were talking about.

I used a Canon EOS M3 which is a small and inconspicuous camera. The flip out screen and wide angle lens meant that I could get in close and shoot at their level.

Photo London 2019

by John Gough

Photo London 2019 / John Gough / Canon EOS R

As a photographer going to an exhibition by Don McCullin or Martin Parr is uplifting and inspirational. What though if you could see the best work from hundreds of great photographers in one place. That would be amazing, and that is what Photo London which is now on at Somerset House in London delivers. Art dealers from around the world, gather to sell prints from the best photographers in the world.

Collectors can be seen buying photography at phenomenal prices. Not yet quite the price of paintings by the greatest, but obviously photography is now a sound investment. It has taken a long time but photography is now part of the art mainstream, as demonstrated by the partnership of Elton John and David Furnish with the V&A.

If you get a chance go to Photo London it is on for another couple of days

The Joy of Bokeh

by John Gough

May Morning / John Gough / Canon 6D

At 7 am the morning the sun was up and flashing at a near horizontal angle through the trees. The temperature was a bit fresh, but in my local country park, the opportunity to photograph wildlife, plants, flowers and trees was everywhere.

Blur were right:

…morning soup can be avoided if you take a route straight through what is known as Parklife

but for me, it was not just blur but the joy of bokeh.

McCullin – a film by Jacqui Morris & David Morris

by John Gough

I have put this film here so that I can share it and I can always find it myself. It was on Netflix but then dissapeared. Thanks to Stewart Wall on Twitter for finding it again.