User Profile Fields Own View
Robert Lebeck 4
Summary:
In this further installment on the great photojournalist Robert Lebeck, Lebeck will cover the 60's and his work during that period, which he photographed some of his greatest photo stories.
During this time he also had made a great experience working as an actor for a friend of his. The project was a TV mini-series based on the Writer jack London, in which Lebeck played the title character.
Lebeck further goes on to describe his switching from Kristall Magazine to Stern Magazine and working for the legendary Art Director of Stern, Wolf Gilhausen to whom everyone referred to as the "Eye". Lebeck tells of stories where the famous Art Director, sorts through photos and picking out the bad pictures that he referred to as pickles. One of the most famous photos Lebeck took was actually a collage of two photos. It was the legendary shot of Robert Kennedy’s funeral, in which one woman could be seen kissing the flag covered casket on one side of the photo and another woman on the direct opposite side of the photo can be seen laying a hand on the casket. Gilhausen was very amused and very proud of putting these two shots together. It would be a picture that was to be seen around the world.
Robert Lebeck 3
Summary:
Welcome back to our miniseries on Robert Lebeck. In this third installment we will learn about his most favorite photo and how he came about shooting it as well learn the obstacles he faced to get “The Shot”, something no other photographer present could do.
The most incredible thing about the photo is that it is a symbol of strength and the end of colonial rule. A regular African guy jumps up and steals away the sword of the Belgian king.
In other such conflicts the scenes were never photographed this way. This is an event would have landed in the columns of newspaper, had not the photos been created.
Robert Lebeck was at the right place at the right time and as he clicked away with his Leica he was already creating the shots that would become immortalized.
150 Years of Colour Photography
Summary:
In this FotoTV film, photographer Gert Koshofer takes viewers on a journey through 150 years of colour film.
2011 was the 150th anniversary of the first exhibited colour photograph in May of 1861 in London, England. 1911 would make today the 100th anniversary first patent registration of the first multi-layer colour film which people know of today. 1936 would make today the 75th anniversary of the first multi-layered colour slide film of Kodachrome.
Koshofer starts out by showing viewers the first print from a slide film that was ever made. It is a photograph of a Scottish meal ribbon, made by Professor Maxwell and was made available to the public in 1861. It was a big problem for Professor Maxwell because he had to go through a very intricate process of creating three different liquid colour filters to be able to project the image. He then projected the images overlapping each other to demonstrate the full colour image. A very time consuming and difficult procedure compared to the simple slide as we know of today.
The first commercially successful colour film material was the Autochrome plate from the Lumiere brothers in their factory in Lyon, France. It was slide positive glass plates. It was unique because paper photos could only be created by very difficult means. The structure that made up the Autochrome plate was the grain pattern consisting of the finest elements made up of potato grain starch colored in green, magenta and orange and having a diameter of 0.01mm. The disadvantage however was the colour shift or colour clumping where colours could form unpleasant color shifts. The light sensitivity from the Autochrome plate was very nominal. In comparison to the ISO values we have today Autochrome had an ISO value of about minus 10.
Koshofer continues on to explain more exciting information about the history of colour film and photography, including the creation of Kodak Kodachrome, a film that was very popular and used world wide until it was taken out of production and off the market, the last developing being offered to customers until 2010.
Creating Film Grain
Summary:
Film grain makes a picture look like it was captured on film. This analogue effect is something, many try to achieve.
In this video, Kate Breuer shows different possibilities, to achieve this effect.
At first, Kate Breuer explains the usage of Lightroom (or another RAW converter tool) to create film grain using the effect panel.
Then, Kate shows, how to achieve the effect, once you are in Photoshop using grey layers and different Photoshop filters.
In addition, Kate uses two filters of the Niksoftware filter plugin ColorEfex Pro. Each of those solutions creates an analogue film grain effect, but each of them with different possibilities and advantages.
Robert Lebeck 2
Summary:
In this special FotoTV mini-series we learn more about the famous German photo-reporter, Robert Lebeck, as he tells us first hand the hopes and dreams and struggles he had to get to where he was: At the top of the market of international photo-journalists.
In the second installment of the series Robert Lebeck gives us insight on his aspirations as a photojournalist and how he went about finding topics and events to shoot. On one occasion Lebeck read in the newspaper that the leaders of Kremlin wanted to make peace and reparation with the leader Tito. Lebeck then telephoned the editor in chief at Revue to tell of his wish to cover the event. He was guaranteed a full page and that was all Lebeck needed for him to be on his way to travel to Belgrade to cover the event. Even if his photos were not printed he would still receive the page guarantee price of 350 Marks. That was a sweet deal. On the way to Belgrade Lebeck stopped by the editorial offices of Revue to find that the editorial offices were located at the private villa of Helmut Kindler, the famous publisher and Lebeck experienced this time as the “golden era” of publishing. This is also a time of the inception and creation of one of the most popular and highest selling youth magazines of the world, “Bravo” and Lebeck discusses his experiences and contributions to the magazine.
One event Lebeck discusses and shares photographs of was being dispatched on an assignment in Friedland to document the returning soldiers who have been held for such a long time as prisoners of war. That was a poignant moment for Lebeck, knowing that he just narrowly escaped being held as a prisoner of war for that long amount of time, simply by literally running away to Schwerin. It was an emotional and moving moment for Lebeck. In part three we will learn more about the life and work of Robert Lebeck.
Robert Lebeck 1
Summary:
In this special FotoTV mini-series we learn more about the famous German photo-reporter, Robert Lebeck, as he tells us first hand the hopes and dreams and struggles he had to get to where he was: At the top of the market of international photo-journalists.
In the first part of the mini-series we focus on Lebeck’s youth and how he got his start in photography. Having to serve in the Second World War at the age of 15 was quite a normal thing for many German youths at that time. But what was unusual about Lebeck’s story was how he persevered and how he wanted to change his life after the war and see the world. Shortly after the world ended Lebeck went to his uncle to continue on with his studies, then consequently he studied Ethnology in Switzerland and the United States.
Ethnology proved satisfactory to Lebeck, but after the experience he had with the war he wanted to see the world and meet new people and learn about new cultures. Lebeck kept that thought in the back of his mind, kept it warm on the back burner. His wife gave him a Kodak Retina camera for his 23rd birthday and it was there and then when his journey as a photojournalist began. He suddenly realized that this kind of work as photographer fascinated him. He bought a Vespa and rode through all the American zones taking photos indiscriminately. With his first photos he went to the Reinecker Daily to sell his pictures, only to find out they were not looking of big brown bears shot against a dark brown background. But Lebeck was intuitive and clever. He put together shots of what he thought the magazines and newspapers were looking for and soon sold his first photo. His journey was happening.
In the second part of the mini-series, we will learn more about Lebeck’s political ambitions as a photojournalist.
Umberto Stefanelli
Summary:
In this FotoTV interview Fine Art photographer Umberto Stefanelli discusses his career and also shares some techniques from a project of his. an homage of the late Pope John Paul II and youth around the world.
Stefanelli began his career as a photographer in London and New York. In New York he tried doing fashion photography for a while but the market in New York was so tough that he could not sustain himself as an artist so he went looking for a job. The job he ended up finding was at an art gallery as a curator’s assistant. It was at this point in Stefanelli’s life when he realized his passion for fine art photography. At the gallery his first exhibition was a retrospective of some of the great photographers, including Ansel Adams and soon after Stefanelli called himself a fine art photographer.
Stefanelli describes fine art photography as emotions and passion, “either you have it or you don't”. He further says it does not matter what medium the photo was created, film or digital, but the photo has to have a quality of likeability.
Stefanelli goes on to talk about his project, an homage to the late Pope John Paul II, "not to religion" as he points out, but an a homage to the Pope and all the youths that he touched when he traveled around the world. Stefanelli also shares stories about his move to Japan, which was difficult at first.
.
Sylvia Plachy
Summary:
Sylvia Plachy describes in this video her life and her photography using examples from 'Waiting', an exhibition in Berlin.
Born in 1943 in Budapest, the daughter of a Hungarian aristocrat and a Czech Jewish mother, fleeing at 17 years of age with her family from the Hungarian Revolution to New York, Sylvia’s life reflects the upheavals of the twentieth century. And her work reflects her life. The lost homeland and the feeling of being lost in the world are tangible in her pictures. Pictures that are poetic and melancholy, witty and bizarre, sometimes disillusioning, always moving. Sylvia Plachy has an eye for the little but meaningful things at the edges of our perception: People, animals, places, and things. They are all subjects for her camera.
And she uses cameras of all kinds: Toy cameras, Leicas, panorama cameras, in black and white or in colour. Plachy unites diverse techniques into an organic and characteristic whole. Black and white suits her style better than colour, which she says, is good for entertaining but can detract from the real meaning of an image.
"My father”, she reflects, “often walked ahead alone, deep in thought, his state of mind one could only guess at. I, on the other hand, have always liked to linger and watch unseen, to take my pictures without confrontation, to look at backs and imagine what's inside."
Plachy’s photographs can look at first sight like amateur snapshots, a little blurred, skewed horizons. But they are perfect in their imperfection. They work on you at a deeper level. Her images linger hauntingly in your consciousness. It’s worthwhile trying to find out why.
You can see more Sylvia Plachy images on her website. Readers of New York’s Village Voice will have been seeing her pictures there for the last thirty years.
She has published several books of photographs that are worth looking at. Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005), is a personal photographic journey through Plachy's childhood in Eastern Europe. Unguided Tour won the Infinity Award for best publication in 1991. Of Signs & Relics (2000) with a foreword by Wim Wenders, Richard Avedon says, "Not since Robert Frank's The Americans have I experienced a body of work of such range and power. She makes me laugh and she breaks my heart. She's moral. She is everything a photographer should be.”
Storing and Archiving Digital Photos
Summary:
Photographer and “Naturfoto” magazine editor Hans-Peter Schaub discusses the steps and the pitfalls to creating and maintaining a digital and analog image archive. Schaub focuses on the workflow involved and how to optimize photographic images so that archiving images runs as smoothly as possible.
Starting with the basic tools necessary to begin an analog image archive, Schaub shows viewers the different materials and equipment needed, such as the right archival sleeves, scanners and data storage software and devices. One main point of the video is definitely data back-up, data storage and data security. Schaub list several different methods to store analog material and several different methods to safely store and back-up complete archives and data files to prevent loss or damage.
Many photographers will benefit from Schaub’s experience and comprehensive examples, as well as his useful tips and information. One thing Schaub recommends is creating a clear and concise method of assigning keywords for the images to be archived. This is one piece of advice a photographer preparing to archive his images cannot do without.
In the long run Schaub’s methods will save photographers lots of time and undoubtedly stress, when searching for images or sending the images out to prospective clients for viewing.
The Digital Pinhole Photography I
