These Are Our Golden Years: An Exhibition by Stella-Rae Zelnik and Bohie Palecek

Canberra-based photographer Stella-Rae Zelnik and Melbourne sign-writer Bohie Palecek have collaborated on a new exhibition, These Are Our Golden Years at Canberra’s Lonsdale Street Roasters. Combining raw documentary style photography with artisanal sign writing is a match made in aesthetic heaven. Stella-Rae has collected quite the catalogue of images and choosing which prints made the cut must have been like choosing a wife from 10 girlfriends. Get down to Lonsdale Street Roasters, choose your caffeinated poison (I recommend the Colombian Single Origin) and scope out the new look walls courtesy of Stella-Rae and Bohie.

An Instagram Generation – A Documentary

Earlier this month, Instagram users @projectlife365, @christianflorin, @alexanderpavone and @mattbg held an InstaMeet at the Santa Monica pier in Los Angeles, California. 115 people turned out for the event, and one of them, Ravi Vora (@ravivora), decided to put together a film about the day and what happens when the Instagram community comes together. It’s a nice piece about an emerging collaborative culture of creativity – as well as an insight into how mobile photography and Instagram is influencing our culture.

[via Instagram]

The Girl With The Vintage Camera Tattoo

Say cheese! Dutch tattoo artist Helma van der Weide’s tattoo for her daughter Lotte van den Acker shows a vintage 1970s Ashahi Pentax 35mm SLR, an iconic design that influenced generations of cameras. The picture has received more than 35,000 likes on the Tattooed Women Facebook page. Me likey!

via [news.com.au]

Madame Peripetie – Dream Sequence

I was having my morning coffee and surfing the Interweb this morning (as you do) and had to pick my jaw off floor after coming across the fashion photography and stylings of Madame Peripetie (aka Sylwana Zyburay). I haven’t seen fashion photography this compelling since scoping out Anne Deniau’s book, Love Looks Not With The Eyes, on her years with Alexander McQueen. As her Behance profile states, the stylings of Madame Peripetie explore “the boundaries between fashion, sculpture and the human body, experimenting with various fabrics and patterns; whilst infusing high-fashion elements with abstract and conceptual ideas, creating an eccentric escapade of color and texture”. This particular set of photographs is from a series titled “Dream Sequence“.

[via PSFK]

‘Razor’ by Stephen Ward for Russh Magazine

Love this photo series of Suzi Leenaars by Stephen Ward from the latest issue of Russh Magazine.

[Image via Models.com]

Nerhol – Misunderstanding Focus

Nerhol is an artist unit created in 2007, composed of Yoshihisa Tanaka, who “kneads” ideas (kneader=Ner), and Ryuta Iida, who “sculpts” them(sculpt=Hol).“Misunderstanding Focus” is a series of photo collages. Each artwork is made of a several photos which were taken in a 3 minutes time span and then layered like an onion to create a warped fanning effect.

[via Today and Tomorrow]

Nikki Toole

Daniel Whitechurch and Laura McKellar, Fitzroy, Melbourne, Australia 2009

Since July 2009 Nikki Toole has been making photographic portraits of skateboarders around the world. Her subjects are photographed in the spaces they inhabit, captured in still frontal pose against the textured backdrop of the urban environment or in landscapes at the edge of cities. A selection of Toole’s portraits are currently on display at the Australian National Portrait Gallery in Canberra until 2 May. The exhibition will then move to Geelong Gallery from 30 June to 9 September.

Justin Pendleton, Venice Beach, California USA

Bryce Campbell, Brick Lane, London, England 2010

Gienna Giese, Skatehalle, Berlin, Germany 2010

Lester Kasai, Anaheim, California USA 2009

The 2012 World Press Photo Winners

Photo by Samuel Aranda

The international jury of the 55th annual World Press Photo Contest has selected a picture by Samuel Aranda from Spain as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011. The picture shows a woman holding her wounded son in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011. Samuel Aranda was working in Yemen on assignment for The New York Times.

The contest draws entries by professional press photographers, photojournalists and documentary photographers from across the world, with 5,247 photographers from 124 countries participating this year with 101,254 pictures submitted by the mid-January deadline. A group of 19 internationally recognised professionals in the field of photojournalism and documentary photography convened in Amsterdam from 28 January until 9 February 2012 to judge the entries.

Check out a selection of some of my favourites below:

Photo by Vincent Boisot

A model poses in front of tailor stalls in the center of Dakar, Senegal. She wears the creation of a designer, Yolande Mancini, participating in the 9th edition of Dakar Fashion Week.

Photo by Johnny Haglund

A girl fishes in the Congo River, just outside the city of Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She holds the fish in her mouth, a common practice among people there, because the chance of losing it is less than when holding it in her hands.

Photo by Francesco Zizola

A scuba diver near Carloforte, Sardinia, shoots photos of tuna in the local Tonnara, a maze of nets traditionally set to channel tuna into an enclosed space where they are killed.

 

Photo by Ray McManus

Action from a rugby match between Old Belvedere and Blackrock played in heavy rain in Dublin, Ireland.

 

Say Goodbye to the DSLR?

If you’re in to photography you may remember the excitement we all felt when the Canon EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR was released. Now soon to be released is the new Nikon D4. But, one guy that’s not that excited is Trey Ratcliff.

Ratcliff runs the excellent travel photography blog, Stuck in Customs. He recently ran a thoughtful piece on the new wave of 3rd Gen cameras on their way to market. 3rd Gen cameras, as Ratcliff defines them, are “the new line of cameras that don’t use the 20th century technology of a mechanical mirror inside that flips up and down between photos.”

Ratcliff’s article, titled DSLRs are a dying breed – 3rd Gen cameras are the future, reads like well-measured 3rd Gen enthusiasts manifesto and is enough to make you question whether you need that new lens you were shopping for:

I’m not going to buy any more DLSR bodies or lenses. I’m waiting on the descendants of this first phase of 3rd Gen Cameras. Even though you can make a good case for great cameras like the Sony A77, the new lines of Nikons, Panasonics, etc etc — I want to wait for a few more iterations — but I won’t be waiting long.

3rd Gen Cameras are the clear future category for digital photography. Objectively, these cameras have more advantages than disadvantages.

While I’m certainly not going to be throwing out my DSLR anytime soon, this is food for thought and, moreover, indicative of the wave of technological change coming our way.

Claire Felicie

Claire Felicie‘s Here are the Young Men (Marked), is a series of triptych portraits of marines of the 13th infantry company of the Royal Netherlands Marine Corps. The series shows close-cropped portraits of the Dutch marines before, during and after they were deployed to Uruzgan, Afghanistan in 2009-2010. How do the faces of soldiers change — before, during, and then after, war? Can we detect profound or subtle psychological shifts just by looking at their portraits? Take a look at her series and judge for yourself.

Photographs of Girlfriends Bathed in Morning Light: Australia Says No

Just while I’m on the topic of photography, Vice Magazine is now running a regular feature in which they ascend into an ivory tower to deign which photographic clichés should be banished from the internet forever. My favourite from the series so far: photos of girlfriends bathed in light. I’m with Vice mag. Seriously, enough already. I love women, I love naked women, I love women in the morning. But I’m sick of seeing the same staged photos of that combination! As Vice says:

Let’s face it here, guys, you’re not “sharing a beautiful intimate visual moment” with us, nor are you “portraying a transcendental image of love and freedom through the medium of analogue photography.” You’re just parading your sickening, youthful excitement about getting laid in front of our jaded and bitter eyes.

Monster Children Magazine Photography Competition – Finalists and Winners

This year Monster Children Magazine ran a photography competition like never before seen in Australia. With $30,000 in prize money, and a two month period for aspiring photographers to upload their images in the respective categories: Student, Travel, Music, Lifestyle, Action & Girl – the aim of the comp was to showcase how the lifestyle MC embodies is captured and portrayed. Just shy of 3,500 individual entries were received, however, there could only be six winners. Scope the video above to see the finalists and winners.