FEP European Professional Photographer Of The Year Awards 2012

News from ePhotozine, posted on Dec. 23, 2012

The winners of the FEP European Professional Photographer Of The Year Awards 2012 have now been announced. Herewith the list of the Golden, Silver and Bronze Cameras 2012 and the finalists:

COMMERCIAL

• Jose Luis Guardia Peinado, Spain, FEP European Commercial Golden Camera 2012
• Gerry O’Leary, Ireland, FEP European Commercial Silver Camera 2012
• Daan Moreels, Belgium, FEP European Commercial Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Antonio Martín Ballesteros, Spain
• Nando Esteva, Spain
• Bryn Griffiths, UK
• Toon Grobet, Belgium
• Mathias Kniepeiss, Austria
• Donal Murphy, Ireland
• Xanti Rodriguez, Spain

ILLUSTRATIVE

• Eugenio Hernandez Guadilla, Spain, FEP European Illustrative Golden Camera 2012
• André Boto, Portugal, FEP European Illustrative Silver Camera 2012
• Toon Grobet, Belgium, FEP European Illustrative Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Jiri Jiroutek, Czech Republic
• Tom D. Jones, Belgium
• Igor Sakharov, Russia
• Vladimir Schukin, Russia
• Kirill Tcipilev, Russia
• Sjoerd van der Hucht, The Netherlands
• Martin Vrabko, Slovakia

LANDSCAPE

• Filip Kulisev, Slovakia, FEP European Landscape Golden Camera 2012
• Vincenzo Tessarin, Italy, FEP European Landscape Silver Camera 2012
• Franz G. Messenbaeck, Austria, FEP European Landscape Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Alberto Cob Garcia, Spain
• Gerry Coe, UK
• Lluis Oliver Fabrega, Spain
• Kelvin Gillmor, Ireland
• Václav Sojka, Czech Republic
• Radek Štandera, Czech Republic
• Jiri Stransky, Czech Republic

PORTRAIT

• Xanti Rodriguez, Spain, FEP European Portrait Golden Camera 2012
• Lluis Oliver Fabrega, Spain, FEP European Portrait Silver Camera 2012
• Vicente Esteban Abad, Spain, FEP European Portrait Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Javier Avis Barrado, Spain
• Andrey Balabasov, Germany
• Cormac Byrne, Ireland
• Antonio Gibotta, Italy
• Michael Grøn, Denmark
• Michael Schnabl, Austria
• Corwin von Kuhwede, Germany

REPORTAGE

• Peter Gordon, Ireland, FEP European Reportage Golden Camera 2012
• Carlos Felipe Ortiz Morel, Spain, FEP European Reportage Silver Camera 2012
• Antonio Gibotta, Italy, FEP European Reportage Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Edoardo Agresti, Italy
• Antonio Martín Ballesteros, Spain
• Robbert De Grove, Belgium
• Giovanni Giattino, Italy
• Pierpaolo Mittica, Italy
• Paolo Patruno, Italy
• Beniamino Pisati, Reportage

WEDDING

• María José Méndez Ubeda, Spain, FEP European Wedding Golden Camera 2012
• Jose Luis Guardia Peinado, Spain, FEP European Wedding Silver Camera 2012
• Clemente Jimenez Santander, Spain, FEP European Wedding Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Javier Avis Barrado, Spain
• Juan Manuel Camacho Guerra, Spain
• Peter Ellis, UK
• Vito Finocchiaro, Italy
• Josu Izarra, Spain
• Carlos Felipe Ortiz Morel, Spain
• Jan Štovka, Slovakia

INTERNATIONAL SECTION

• Ejun Low, Singapore, FEP International Photographers Golden Camera 2012
• Aaron Citti, Australia, FEP International Photographers Silver Camera 2012
• David Macias, USA, FEP International Photographers Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Stuart Chape, Samoa
• Desky Che, Hong Kong
• HK Akai Chew, Singapore
• Joseph Meng Huat Goh, Singapore
• Lengkeong Ong, Singapore
• Chee Loon Jericho Soh, Singapore
• Lucas Ting, Malaysia

STUDENTS AND YOUNG PHOTOGRAPHERS

• Antonio Pérez Rojo, Spain, FEP European Students and Young Photographers Golden Camera 2012
• Dawid Galinski, Poland, FEP European Students and Young Photographers Silver Camera 2012
• Nick De Clercq, Belgium, FEP European Students and Young Photographers Bronze Camera 2012

Finalists

• Eliška Fischerová, Czech Republic
• Amaury Henderick, Belgium
• Volha Kachanovich, Lithuania
• Jack Peilow, UK
• Jeroen van den Broek, The Netherlands
• Emmi Virtanen, Finland
• Aiden Zralka, UK

The overall winner will be announced and awarded at a special ceremony in Gmunden, Austria, on April 14 2013, during the FEP International Photo Days and he will be presented as the FEP European Professional Photographer of the Year. During the ceremony, all finalists and winners who are attending the Congress will be invited onto the stage to be presented with their certificates in front of an international audience.

The printed exhibition of the winning pictures will be displayed in the Gmunden Theatre from April 14th, 2013 until the beginning of June. The winning images will also be displayed in Atlanta, USA, during Imaging USA, January, 20th – 22nd , 2013

The Second FEP European Photo Book of the Year Award is now open for entries! The aim of this European prize is to promote the photographic book and photography and to acknowledge the outstanding work of professionals in the field. You just have to download the application form, send a copy of the book and pay the entry fee within March, 20, 2013. For more information please visit theEuropean Photographers website.

Christmas Sale of ArcSoft Multimedia Products

Christmas Holiday has already come, a wonderful time for family members to get together having dinners and celebrate the Christmas and the upcoming of New Year. To make your digital life better and easier in this big holiday, ArcSoft Inc. has given special offers to users who need photo software to edit Christmas shots and other multimedia software to play or convert your holiday videos.

ArcSoft Ultimate Bundle – 55% OFF for Christmas Sale:

• PhotoStudio 6 – A powerful and feature-rich image editor;
• ShowBiz 5 – Create movies, edit videos, and liven up your movie;
• Panorama Maker 6 – Create perfect panorama with your photos and videos;
• TotalMedia Theatre 5 – All-in-one media player with cinema-like experience;
• MediaConverter 8 – Convert video, audio, and photo files into formats optimized for portable devices;
• Perfect365 – Spice up your portrait photos with one-click virtual makeup templates and make your portraits perfectly.

Except for this ultimate bundle, users can get 10% OFF for all ArcSoft products (exclusive bundles) with the Christmas coupon.

Please note that these special offers for Christmas Holiday will end soon on Dec. 26, 2012! Hurry up if you want to buy ArcSoft products to experience a different and more wonderful Christmas holiday. To visit Christmas sale webpage, please click here.

To Get Nice Christmas Photos of People

joleenieweenie

Christmastime is the most exciting time to take photographs of our sweet family, imaginative decorations and the festive mood that is presented by all elements. People are always the subject of Christmas photography, so how to take great people photography during the wonderful time? The following are some tips to take a look.

Express relationships

Holidays are days that highlight the importance of relationships among family members and friends. Christmas is a big day after Thanksgiving and much more important than New Year’s Day to some degree. People will be glad to relax themselves and enjoy the long holiday to the fullest. They’ll be more expressive when you ask them to pose together, and open to suggestions on how and where to stand to capture the bonds among them. For instance, ask the couples to have a mouth-to-mouth kiss!

Capture the decoration stages

Photographer unknown

Christmas holiday is the time to have fun decorating the house. Trimming the tree is a special moment in creating the mood of Christmas, and most families have a cherished collection of ornaments, lights and stockings – all of which need to be hung on the tree. You could try to get people’s faces as they open the ornament boxes, especially the children’s; and find other decorating moments with people’s face inside the frame.

Take family shots

opencontent

Christmas photos can be used for memories as well as family’s Christmas cards. For this kind of shots, make sure that you, the photographer, are in some of the important family photos. After positioning everyone by the Christmas tree and have some presents in the composition, use a tripod for this group shot, set your exposure values (shutter, ISO and aperture), compose your frame, set the timer interval (between 3 – 10 seconds), then press the shutter and run into your family group. Well, a nice family Christmas shot is done. Of course, if you want to take family portrait shots, the frame should focus on the eyes.

The Christmas holiday is a heavily photographed event, I believe the most popular photos during the time on Pinterest, Facebook, Flickr and other SNS websites will be Christmas photos. Share your happy time with family members celebrating Christmas. Hope above tips could help.

PPA News: Improve Efficiency with ArcSoft Software (& a PPA Discount)

By PPA Staff on December 12, 2012 1:44 PM

If you're a professional photographer (and especially if you own your own business), you probably know how precious your time is. Whenever you improve your efficiency, it's a good thing, right? Well, what if we told you there were software products that could help double the speed of your workflow...without cloning yourself?

We're talking about ArcSoft Inc., a U.S.-based software developer offering both image and multimedia processing software solutions. There are many options out there, but when a good one with a special discounted price comes along, we are always happy to share the love. ArcSoft has been serving professional photographers with products like this for years, and they've just joined us here as one of PPA's discount partners to offer our members 25% off their products! 

Here's a little more about them:

By integrating its innovative software into popular and professional cameras manufactured by the industry leaders, ArcSoft software has been accepted by a group of talented pro photographers. (And we bet that you'll be among their groupies soon.)

Portrait+, their flagship product this year, is professional photo retouching software that is especially useful for portraits (as its name might hint). Designed for pros who need to spend a lot of time in post-production, Portrait+ is able to batch-process dozens of photos in a minute with all details preserved. Portrait+ is very user-friendly, adopts ArcSoft's proprietary facial detection technology, and provides customized styles and up to 20 pre-set styles to simplify the complicated process of portrait retouching. It also has an Adobe Photoshop plug-in version, which can be perfectly integrated into your current workflow. Oh, and no special training is needed. Ever!

And that's just ONE of their products.

Here's a reminder of the icing on the cake: To celebrate their cooperation with PPA, ArcSoft now offers a discount price of 25% off for PPA members! Get your special website link and discount code here. 

Note: ArcSoft Inc. partners with PPA, the world’s largest professional photography association, to provide worldwide professional photographers with innovative photography-related software. Get more information about ArcSoft products here: www.arcsoft.com.

6 Quick Tips for Christmas Photography

Originally posted By NewPortraitBiz on Dec 12, 2009, edited a bit by me

Opera on Ice II by .: Philipp Klinger :.

Christmas is an amazing time of year! So much color, so much fun and so many treasured moments! Here are a few Christmas Photography Tips that I find on web and choose the most useful ones to help you take memorable photos this Christmas Holiday.

Tip #1 – Make sure you have plenty of supplies

If you forget to have plenty of batteries and memory cards available, you may miss that precious shot of the delight on your loved one’s face when they open that special present.

Tip #2 – Get up close and personal

Fill your viewfinder or viewing screen with the subject to capture their expressions. You can capture amazing photos when you time your shots and snap that photo when they aren't looking at the camera. Don’t forget to take those ‘traditional’ group shots of your family and friends.

rocksmysox

Tip #3 – Use different angles

Have some fun and get interesting shots by getting on a chair and shooting down. Kneeling or laying down on your stomach can make your shots more dynamic and personal. Getting eye level with your subjects will also produce great shots.

Tip #4 – Using the camera flash

Most digital cameras have a zoom feature. Use this to your advantage when you are using the camera’s flash. Get as far from your subject as possible, then zoom in and take your shot. The extra distance you put between you and your subject will soften the sometimes harsh white flash. You can also diffuse the light by taping a tissue or some other opaque material to the pop-up flash. How about getting creative and attach a colored piece of transparent plastic over the flash. You may end up taking a shot of your very own Blue Christmas!

Tip #5 – Photograph the Christmas frills

Don’t forget to take photos of lights, decorations and the tree. A close-up shot of that treasured ornament will preserve that memory for you for a life-time. You will be amazed how shooting different aspects of Christmas will enhance your photo album for years to come.

Merry HDR Christmas by Stuck in Customs

Tip #6 – Take Outside shots

You can get some great shots outside at Christmas, but you might tend to think you don’t need your flash. Oftentimes, the faces of the people in the photo are dark while the background lighting is bright. Turning your flash on and using it will help to light up their faces.

Use these simple tips this holiday season to help capture those precious memories that will last a life time.

Hope these quick  tips from others could help you more or less. Next time I will tell tips in a more detailed way, wish you enjoy. 

Masquer – The First Real Image Blending App

ArcSoft Inc. has released its new image application on App Store last Saturday. That's Masquer, the first real image blender to boost your imagination and have endless fun.

Without adjustment on brightness, contrast, saturation and hue, Masquer lets you blend two images into one natural and creative composition smartly and automatically.

Basic Features: 

•Perfect compatible with iPhone 5

•Zoom in/out, move Base Image to compose and preview in its perfect size & position

•Zoom in/out, rotate and move Top Image

•Use lasso to outline the dead space in Top Image accurately

•It’s more convenient to brush the blending area than to erase the unwanted area

•Unlimited undo enables you to move back to any previous steps

•Output images into selectable sizes

•Output images to Camera Roll, Email or share on Facebook and Twitter

We are continuing to add:

•Add more blending effects, including blur effect

•Save works as labels for any future sessions use

•Open the latest session for discontinuous editing

•Add more than one Top Images to blend

•Support to create photomontage and stitching photo

•Share works on Pinterest and Instagram

•……

How it works: Import Base/Top Images->Creative Composing->Share & Save.

Note: User Guide is in the Option menu at top-left.

 

It’s time to share fun with family and friends, play tricks with colleagues, and create artworks for sharing and collection. Download Masquer now, please click here.

Follow us and share ideas with us on @MasquerApp at Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest. More detailed information, please visit here: http://www.masquerapp.com/.

The Most Popular Cameras and Settings for Reuters’ 2012 Photos of the Year

by Michael Zhang, Dec 02, 2012 on PetaPixel
 

Reuters has published its list of the best photographs taken in 2012, a massive collection of 95 powerful images showing different events that have occurred around the globe over the past year. In addition to large photos, descriptions by the photographers, and the official captions, each image is also accompanied by information about the equipment and settings that were used to capture it.

Photography enthusiast and Reddit user hallbuzz decided to copy, paste, sort, and tally all 95 EXIF data entries, and published a list with the ranking of cameras, lenses, and settings used.

Another user named mathiasa then took that list and turned the data into a series of charts. They offer an interesting glimpse at how some of the most powerful photographs recently captured by photojournalists were snapped:

Cameras

Prime Lenses

Zoom Lenses

Shutter Speed

F-Stop

ISO

A single photograph captured using the most popular equipment and settings (for Reuters’ top 95 photos of 2012) would be shot using a Canon 1D Mark IV with a 16-35mm lens attached, set at 1/320s, f/2.8, and ISO 200.

(via Reuters via Reddit)

Image credits: Photographs by Reuters, charts by mathiasa

Shoot in Low Light Conditions

Photography is not easy for those professional photographers who want to shoot in low light conditions. As there is no enough light, we have to risk taking photos that might be unsharp, noisy, or even flat out blurry. Then how to get better digital shots in low light conditions?

Use a flash

anthony b

Most of us will immediately think of using a flash, which is regarded as the biggest solution to low light photography. But with a flash, sometimes your subject in your digital photography might decrease its original beauty, as we all know that the built-in flash has the effect of lighting your subject on the front only which compresses the depth in your digital photos. So try another two ways to help get good images in low light conditions without a flash.

Carry a tripod

A tripod could really help when you’re shooting things that keep still or almost, like landscape or portraits. Since in this way, you could use longer shutter speed to get enough lighting. Of course, in many cases, for instance, if you’re shooting moving subjects in low light conditions, carrying a tripod is not realistic, but still could try if necessary.

Raise the ISO speed

Necrolyte

The ISO simply means the amount of sensitivity of light falling on the camera sensor. In low light conditions, it is almost always necessary to use a higher ISO speed, which will avoid camera shake and blurry photos to a certain degree. Don’t worried so much about the noise caused by the high ISO speed, because it can be reduced in Photoshop. Someone else also recommended other two noise reduction software called “Noise Ninja” and “Neat Image”.

Actually, we always take multiple ways together to get better shots if necessary. The key element of shooting in low light conditions is the light; thus, try all what you can to get enough light.