Waiting: pictures by young homeless people

Did you know that there are over 10,000 homeless young people, aged 16 to 24 in Scotland? No, me neither. That’s a small towns-worth of young people with no where that they can reasonably rely upon to provide them with shelter and security. A bunch of them have had the opportunity to document their lives in pictures, and a touring exhibition opens in Glasgow today, before trundling on to Edinburgh, Dundee, and Stirling.

They weren’t just handed a camera and sent on their ways, though. First they went on a residential course, led by photographers Brian Sweeney and Christina Kernohan, next they attended two classes every week for six weeks. Then they created photo essays of their lives, which they had the opportunity to present to students and staff at the Glasgow School of Art. Now, their pictures are on public display.

You can see them at the Braehead Shopping Centre in Glasgow between today and 28 March, and then at Maryhill Library, Glasgow until 4 April before going on tour. Look closely, and you might see them on the Glasgow underground, too.

The project was a collaboration between Photovoice, a charity that seeks to give people who are usually the subject of photos the opportunity to take them, and Fairbridge, an organisation that supports young Scottish people who are somehow disengaged, perhaps through homelessness, substance misuse, or a history of offending, to make positive changes to their lives.

Many of the young people have said how it has given them confidence, as well as a new skill and something to build on. But I think that Gemma Cochrane, one the young people on the course, sums it best: ‘…it makes you see things from a different perspective.’ Same goes for all of us, Gemma.

Waiting is showing across Scotland from 18 March to end of August 2011:

• 18 to 28 March, Braehead Shopping Centre, Glasgow
• 29 March to 4 April, Maryhill Library, Glasgow
• 6 to 17 April, Edinburgh Room, Central Library, Edinburgh
• 26 April to 8 May, Central Library, Wellgate, Dundee
• 16 May to August, one week tour of each library in Stirling

ArtistBe.com - selling and buying images online

It’s a simple concept: a place where artists can display their work and people who might want to buy a photographic print, or an oil painting, or a watercolour, can, well, buy it. It’s called ArtistBe.Com (that’s artist become, of course) and it’s overstockart.com’s newest venture.

If you want to sell your photos, you can sign up for a free account, upload your images, and then assign them to the relevant galleries by subject – for example architecture, cuisine, or people – and also by style (abstract, Art Deco, pop art… ) so that buyers can find what they’re looking for. You get an individual gallery, too, with all your work in one place.

Find images by subject, style, or artist/photographer

If you’re selling an original piece, the buyer will communicate directly with you and you negotiate the deal and terms. That means you’ll be responsible for getting the piece to your buyer, but you won’t have to pay commission to ArtistBe.com; you get the entire fee.

Alternatively, you can also sell reproductions on canvas in a range of sizes. They vary in price; the cheapest I saw was around $30 and the most expensive almost $500. (Although doubtless there are more expensive ones, too.) The production and shipping of these is handled by ArtistBe.com, which removes that headache. But it does mean that you’d only take 15% of the sale. Swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

Sand Dunes Pattern by Harveys Art

It’s all new and shiny, so how well it is going to work remains to be seen. But having an easy-to-use venue to sell images can’t be that bad a start. Have a look for yourself at ArtistBe.com.

Inspiration in slow motion

Remember Glide 2, that awesome slow motion video of a train pulling into a station that we featured last autumn, made by research mathematician Graeme Taylor? Well, it seems as if it might possibly have inspired a music video by British indie folk band SixToes. The video for their song Low Guns is seven seconds of a tube train running through Ravenscourt Park Station slowed down to last almost four minutes.

Look familiar, and rather cool?

As for Graeme, he told me that he ‘rather likes it’. That’s a bit of a different reaction to David LaChapelle’s response to Rihanna’s S&M video, isn’t it?

Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 is go

Hot on the heels of Photoshop Express 1.5, which came out at the end of January, version 2.0 of Adobe’s on-the-move photo editing suite for iPhones, or anything running iOS 4.2, really, is available for download. That bit’s free, but there’s also a not-free Camera Pack that you buy for £2.39. Of course, it’s the not-free bit that you’ll be wanting.

So now you can have a noise reduction feature, called, rather originally Reduce Noise; you can self-time pictures at three or 10 second intervals; and there’s the Auto Review function that allows you to decide quickly if you want to keep your picture.

Version 2.0 will work provided that you’re running iOS 4.2 on your Apple-branded mobile communication device; but you need an iPhone 3Gs or more exciting, a third or fourth generation iPod Touch, or either of the iPads for the Camera Pack to work. Oh, and Photoshop Express can’t currently support the camera on the iPad 2. Just by the way. Very useful.

Photoshop Express 2.0 can be downloaded from the iTunes store, naturally.

Stop43's IP management ideas

Stop43, the dudes who took on the Government over the clause 43 of the Digital Economy Bill (the one that would’ve effectively stripped photographers of their rights to their images that were deemed ‘orphan works’), and won, have submitted their proposal to Professor Ian Hargreaves’ consultation on intellectual property. Of course, it focuses mostly on the concept of ‘orphan works’, but it has some pretty interesting things to say.

The idea is to create a free, online machine-searchable metadata registry. They’re calling it a National Cultural Archive. This archive will make work freely available to people for ‘cultural use’, allow ‘orphaned works’ to be re-adopted by their owners, act as a mechanism to aid copyright enforcement, and help people buy and sell licences to use images.

‘But if it’s a free system,’ I can hear you murmuring, ‘how would it be supported?’ They’re proposing a levy system on the sale of licences that it facilitates. It’d be self-supporting, then. They also reckon it’d be easy to set up and are keen to build a model. Easy to set up, if they manage to get people on-side with it.

They’ve also made suggestions that would help to allow the re-formating of work that would otherwise be lost entirely because it’s on decaying traditional media and it can’t be digitised without breaching copyright. That’s pretty important, considering how much crumbling paper and deteriorating tape is sitting in museums and libraries across the country, with no way of legally salvaging it.

They’ve really tapped into the business theme of the consultation, though. They’re very keen to point out how properly attributed work and the sale of licences will contribute to increased tax receipts for the Government and help to drive economic growth. Reckon anyone will listen?

Stop43′s National Cultural Archive: a one-stop shop for all your image licensing needs.

The Great Migration - in time-lapse

The Great Migration. It’s one of Africa’s most impressive, perilous, and at times chaotic mass animal movements. 1.5 million wildebeest make the epic journey from the Serengeti in Tanzania to the Masai Mara in Kenya (and back again) every year in search of greener pastures. Of course, being so impressive, perilous, and sometimes chaotic, it’s been documented thousands of times. But Will and Matt Burrard-Lucas, intrepid wildlife photographers extraordinaire reckon that they’ve captured it in way that’s original. It’s also mightily impressive.

They’ve created Migration, which uses a combination of telephoto video clips and time-lapse sequences, to show the giant herd’s encounter with the Mara river. Over 10,000 animals take on the river, its crocodiles, and its cliffs in one go. It’s astonishing. Take a look for yourself:

Migration from Will & Matt Burrard-Lucas on Vimeo.

There’s also a superb panorama image of 30 stitched-together stills. You can zoom in for a closer look!

Head over to Will and Matt’s website to read more about the migration, and of course to see lots more photos!

Ida Kar at the National Portrait Gallery

It was a shame that the NPG couldn’t manage to open the first exhibition devoted to Ida Kar in over fifty years on Tuesday, what with it being International Women’s Day. It would have been fitting for such an influential figure in photography. She was, after all, the first photographer to be honoured with a major retrospective at a London gallery. (That was at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1960, by the way.) But that’s a minor thing, because the exhibition itself is the important bit.

Dame Iris Murdoch by Ida Kar, 1957. Copyright: National Portrait Gallery, London.

Clare Freestone has brought together a collection of pictures that charts Kar’s career from his first studio in Cairo, through her days in London photographing the movers and shakers in the artistic scene, including her exhibitions at Gallery One and the Whitechapel Gallery, and on to her later reportage and travel photography. It shows how Kar adapted to her surroundings and changing circumstances. Although, she did favour working in just natural light, her camera of choice was a Rolleiflex, and she rarely changed lens.

Kar was definitely an environmental portrait photographer. Yves Klein (‘the artist who painted nothing’) is pictured next to his blue sponge; Iris Murdoch is sitting with her back against her bed, surrounded by books and papers, Shostakovich is sitting at his piano. You can feel the souls of tortured artists and starving poets seeping through the bromide.

I have to admit that I’m not a great lover of environmental portraits, it’s a personal preference thing, but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying them and I did enjoy Kar’s. Still, it probably wasn’t surprising that I liked the picture of Barbara Hepworth best. She seems to be actually doing something towards creating a sculpture, rather than just being ensconced amidst her medium.

Royston Ellis, 1960 by Ida Kar. Copyright the National Portrait Gallery, London.

It’s these portraits, a who’s who of the London literati, that represent the pinnacle of Kar’s work. And they’ve impressed themselves on my memory better than the documentation of Kar’s trip to Cuba or her commission for The Tatler to Armenia, which was from where her family came.

You can get in to the Hoppé and Kar exhibitions on a double ticket, and I’d thoroughly recommend it. They make the most amazing contrast: Hoppé’s very personal, slowly generated and closely cropped portraits against Kar’s quickly shot environmental pictures. Hoppé who embraced technology and Kar who was much more set in her ways. It’s two very different means of telling a story through a photo, but both work.

Go see and enjoy. After all, as Sandy Nairne, the Director of the National Portrait Gallery put it, Kar is ‘admired by neglected’. I hope that this will change that.

Ida Kar: Bohemian Photographer, 1908-1974 runs from 10 March to 19 June 2011 at the National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE.

(Featured image: Dame Barbara Hepworth at work on the armature of a sculpture in the Palais de Danse, 1961, by Ida Kar (c) National Portrait Gallery, London.)

A week of copyright, and copywrong

Copyright infringement is galling at the best of times (that’s if there really is a ‘best of times’ for someone stealing your work) but when people who really should know better screw up, it’s a complete kick in the guts. You’d like to think that people who are creative themselves, who teach creative pursuits, or promote creative endeavours would stand up for other people’s copyright, not trample over it roughshod, wouldn’t you? We should be so lucky.

This week started with the Lady Gaga fiasco, when the bizarrely-dressed music mega-star who also happens to be the Creative Director of Polaroid, demanded that photographers on her Monsters Ball tour surrender the copyright of any pictures taken at the shows. Sheesh, woman! Who owns the copyright of the music that you make? How do you make (some of) your money? So who owns the copyright of a photo? How do photographers make their money? Think about it and get back to me.

Then Haje finds out that a school in Canada has been reproducing his work wholesale as part of its photography course. Yes dear students, some of you might wish to go on and make money by taking photos or writing books or producing music, but don’t expect to ever be able to make a living from it because people like your teachers can just rip it off without giving you any due.

Finally an open letter from the Association of Photographers to the Photographers’ Gallery dropped into my inbox last night. Here, you can read what it says for yourself:

8 March 2011

Brett Rogers
The Photographers’ Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street
London W1F 7LW

Dear Ms Rogers

It is with very great concern that we note the unauthorised use of a photograph made by John Goldsmith titled ‘Porcelain’ which resides on his Flickr Photostream and which has been used as part of a computer-generated impression to promote and publicise the new Photographers’ Gallery building.

As a trade body representing professional photographers, working to promote best practice and securing and protecting the rights of photographers everywhere, we are sure that you would not condone such a breach of a creator’s rights and would join with us in condemning what amounts to theft of someone else’s intellectual property.

We trust that as an organisation dedicated to promoting the best in photography, you are equally committed to respecting and honouring the rights of others, and will ensure that the photographer is paid the commercial rate for the use of his image as a matter of urgency.

Yours sincerely

The Association of Photographers

You might need to pinch yourself, but I can assure you that you’ve not misread it. The Photographers’ Gallery, an organisation designed to promote and support photographers and their work, allowed John Goldsmith’s photo to be used as part of its marketing campaign for the refit of its shiny new building, without asking his permission or offering him recompense.

Above: Porcelain by John Goldmsith. Below: unauthorised use of Porcelain in publicity for the Photographers' Gallery (photo courtesy of Joni Karanka).

The AoP stepped in when Goldsmith was pushed from pillar-to-post by the Photographers’ Gallery and their architects, each denying responsibility for failing to get permission to use the image. O’Donnell and Tuomey, the architects, have had the cheek to argue that they don’t need to reimburse Goldsmith because they’ve given him months of free publicity. Hogwash!

Goldsmith points out on his website that the original image was a candid street shot not intended for commercial use: he doesn’t even know who the woman in the picture is. In fact, if you’re her, or you know her, he’d like you to get in touch.

There’s just so much that’s wrong with the attitude of the Photographers’ Gallery that I’m astonished. Exactly which photographers are they promoting and supporting here? Precisely whose work and income are they managing to protect? Something tells me that they’d better move fast to rectify this one, or their credibility will be on very rocky ground.

In fact, I’m astonished that anyone who works in a creative capacity isn’t prepared to stand up for the copyright of any other creative individual. It’s an uphill struggle for those of us trying to earn a living by writing books, making music, taking photos, or producing art, at least until we hit the very big time. A little bit of co-operation goes a long way. It’s far better than cannibalism.

And for anyone who says that copyright is complicated: hell’s bells people, it’s copyright, not astrophysics.

(You can read more about the Lady Gaga fiasco in Rolling Stone, whilst John Goldsmith gives the story of Porcelain in his own words on his website.)

February photo competition winner!

Last month, being February and February having Valentine’s Day smack in the middle of it, for our competition we set you the task of photographing your camera kit to show us just how much you love it. The awesome dudes at Fracture even offered to supply a prize! Some of you really took this to heart (snigger) and this really made us smile. Thank you to everyone who entered. After a bit of umming and ahhing, Haje and I are delighted to announce the winner…

Canon Love, by James Emery

Congratulations, James! We loved the partial desaturation and the use of mirrors. Get in touch, and we’ll arrange for a prize for you!

Well done and thanks to everyone who entered. We’ve a great theme lined up for March. We can’t wait to see your entries.

Our March photo competition

Seeing as Haje is gallivanting across the globe and I’m starting to plan what can only be described as a crazy-mental-trip that might not come off (but I really, really hope that it does; finances and Middle East stability permitting), we’ve taken that as the inspiration for this month’s competition theme. We’re looking for pictures of skylines. At dawn or dusk, in silhouette or technicolour, give us some new horizons to explore.

There will of course be a fabulous prize for the winner supplied by the lovely people at Fracture.

The competition is open as of the very minute that I press the ‘Publish’ button (which will be on 9 March) and it’ll run for three weeks, until Wednesday 30 March 2011.

The rules are exactly the same as last time, but for completeness, I’ve put them below. Now we just want to see your gorgeous, gorgeous photos. Good luck!

The Rules

• If you decide to enter, you agree to The Rules.
• You can’t have written for Small Aperture or be related to either me or Haje to enter.
• One entry per person – so choose your best!
• Entries need to be submitted to the right place, which is the Small Aperture Flickr group.
• There’s a closing date for entries, so make sure you’ve submitted before then.
• You have to own the copyright to your entry and be at liberty to submit it to a competition. Using other people’s photos is most uncool.
• It probably goes without saying, but entries do need to be photographs. It’d be a bit of strange photo competition otherwise.
• Don’t do anything icky – you know, be obscene or defame someone or sell your granny to get the photo.
• We (that being me and Haje) get to choose the winner and we’ll do our best to do so within a week of the competition closing.
• You get to keep all the rights to your images. We just want to be able to show off the winners (and maybe some honourable mentions) here on Small Aperture.
• Entry is at your own risk. I can’t see us eating you or anything, but we can’t be responsible for anything that happens to you because you submit a photo to our competition.
• We are allowed to change The Rules, or even suspend or end the competition, if we want or need to. Obviously we’ll try not to, but just so that you know.

(If you really want to know, the featured image is one of mine. I took it in Edinburgh, just after a thunderstorm.)

Bruce Davidson receives Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award

The World Photography Organisation has just announced the recipient of this year’s Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award. The 2011 honour is going to Bruce Davidson and he’ll collect his gong at the Sony World Photography Awards on 27 April at the Odeon, Leicester Square. (Yes, if you were wondering, it did used to be called the Lifetime Achievement Award.)

Davidson has been shooting for over 50 years; he’s run away with a circus, followed a New York gang, and documented the Civil Rights movement; his work has been exhibited at MOMA in New York, the Foundation Cartier-Bresson in Paris, and the Tate Modern in London, to name just a few; he’s worked for Life magazine and is a member of Magnum Photos; and he’s directed three films. That’s a whole heap of awesome.

The Dwarf, Bruce Davidson, Magnum Photos

Some of Davidson’s favourite pictures, including those from his time with the circus, will be on display in the Terrace Rooms at Somerset House in London from 26 April to 22 May 2011. From 4 – 28 May there’ll be a retrospective of his work at Chris Beetles Fine Photographs in London, too.

For more information on the Sony World Photography Awards and on Bruce Davidson, check out worldphoto.org

(Featured image: USA. Los Angeles. 1964. © Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos)

The battle of the Instagrams

It’s a very simple idea and it’s a little bit addictive, too. It’s a website where Lomo-fi can do battle against 1977; Toaster can take on Inkwell; and Apollo and Hefe can slog it out. Two Instagram images are placed side-by-side and you get to choose which you prefer by clicking on it. And then another two appear. And another two. And another two. Oh hell, before you know it, you’ve been sucked in and you’re late for your dinner date.

It’s called Pic A Fight. It was developed by Paul Stamatiou and Chad Etzel, because, as far as I could tell, they could. It entertained them. It’s been entertaining me this evening, too. Instagram users can sign up and submit their images to contest fights. The images that score the most highly get displayed in the Top Pics gallery. And, yeah, that’s about it.

Kapow! Fairy lights versus dessert

You can even send other users’ pictures into pitched battle if you fancy a bit of fratricide, though.

Pic A Fight: slightly addictive Instagram aesthetic contests.

(Headsup to TechCrunch.)

My Focus on Imaging round-up

I spent a lot of time wandering around halls 9 and 10 of the NEC yesterday. A lot. Partly this was because there was plenty to see, but also because I managed to get myself well and truly disoriented on a couple of occasions. (My legs are doing okay this morning; thanks for asking.) But apart from my cartographical vagaries, what were highlights, and what are my tips for anyone planning on going between today and Wednesday?

Fuji's X100. Gorgeous, but actually I'm not convinced

Highlights

I admit it, the first place that I headed to (and this one couldn’t be missed because of its massive green and white banners) was the Fuji stand where they had some X100s for us to play and fiddle with. I say ‘some’ because the queues were quite extensive so it didn’t really feel enough. Did I love it as much as I thought I would? Well, I wasn’t sobbing that I’m not on the pre-order list. The hybrid viewfinder is great; I liked the aperture ring; but I couldn’t see myself using it.

Kudos to Pentax who had knowledgeable staff manning their stand, unlike at least one other big name (I’m looking at you, Nikon). They also had a couple of 645Ds out for public delectation, in addition to a bank of K-r and K-5s. I did really like the 645, but I doubt I’ll be taking the plunge with a medium format for quite some time.

Sony still had the NEX-3 on display, even though it has been pulled.

To my surprise, Sony still had the NEX-3 on display. So I called them on it. Production has ceased, but they want to get rid of what they’ve got. I’m not sure that I would still have been displaying them, it’s not as if they’re cutting edge and all shiny and new, is it? But that’s me. Ah well.

As to why they’ve called time on it, I was told that the NEX-5 came down in price significantly and people realised just what more they could get for their money with it. Let that be a lesson to you, Sony: better product differentiation. Oh, and my thoughts on the NEX-5? Far too fiddly. I’d probably get used to it in time, but far too fiddly.

The general impression

Focus is always full of people selling photobooks and albums and frames, so unless someone is selling something that is outstandingly different (or their stand looks like a circus bigtop) it very much feels as if seeing one means that you’ve seen them all.

Was Canon missed? By me, yes. By others, no. As someone pointed out: it’s not as if they’ve released anything new at the top end for a while, but that’s not necessarily the point as there are new Canon products about to hit the shops. It’s just not a 1D mkV. Still, they’ve managed to generate publicity for themselves by not attending.

Top tips

It got very warm. Really warm. And I’m someone who usually complains about being too cold. Dress in layers.

Work out where you want to go and what you want to see. When you’ve done those bits, let yourself wander to soak up the atmosphere and find the stands you’d otherwise have missed.

I had one of the worst coffees ever there. Avoid. Please.

August Sander at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh

My overwhelming memory of this exhibition is just how big it is. There are over 170 of Sander’s prints on display – including ‘that’ portrait of the pastry chef – so if you had to pay for entry (which you don’t), it’d be excellent value for money. As it is, it makes for a very thought-provoking afternoon. Or morning. I just happened to be there of an afternoon.

My overwhelming impression of this exhibition is of the early 20th century obsession with human ‘type’ that pervaded society and stretched its tendrils into photography as well as any other aspect of life that you could probably mention. Around the same time that Sander was exploring his idea of human ‘type’ in Germany, Hoppe was doing something similar in London: taking photos of people who belonged to specific strata in society, or did particular jobs.

Pastry Chef, 1928, National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Antony d’Offay 2010 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne; DACS, London, 2011.

With 170 pictures, you do get to see a lot of ‘types’. Some of them were photographed in the studio, with nothing to suggest their background, whilst others were photographed in their working environment, like the pastry chef, or with clear signs of their trade, like the bricklayer with his hod. If you weren’t told that the subject was ‘An Intellectual’, would you ever know?

That was typical of Sander: he’d title his portraits according to the perceived ‘type’ of person the subject was and we don’t necessarily know their names. Seeing a woman labelled as a ‘Pastor’s Wife’ – defined by her relationship to a man – made me feel extremely uncomfortable. Was this the type of reaction he intended to provoke in his audience? Probably not. But he was a product of his time and I’m a product of mine.

Sander might have wanted to document society and give a picture of the age, but for me, what he has actually succeeded in doing is giving you a very clear insight into his own psyche. These pictures tell you a great deal about him, and the greater sense of the period in which he was living. They don’t, however, tell you an awful lot about the people in them. Whether or not that was how Sander envisaged his oeuvre being received almost 100 years later, I don’t know, but it is interesting all the same.

I didn’t walk away from this exhibition buzzing, but I did enjoy it. If you’re in or around Edinburgh, it’s worth a wander up to the Dean Gallery and an hour or so of your time.

August Sander: People of the 20th Century runs from 12 February to 10 July at the Dean Gallery, 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR.

(Featured image: Bricklayer, 1928, National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Lent by Antony d’Offay 2010 © Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne; DACS, London, 2011.)

iPad version 2; with cameras x 2

Apple made us wait for a camera on the iPad, but when it came, they gave us not one, but two of them. Yep, there’re both front- and back-facing cameras on the new tactile tablet. Self-portraits, video-calls (or Face-Timing, in Apple-speak), and photos taken with a device measuring 24×17.5cm are go. And so is Photo Booth. I do like Photo Booth. I can turn myself all Andy Warhol.

The back camera has a 5x digital zoom and 720p HD video recording capability to 30fps with audio. The front camera gives you VGA-quality stills and VGA video at 30fps with audio. Exposure is touch-controlled, and when you want to manipulate your Photo Booth images that’s done with touch, too.

Seeing as you can make videos on this here iPad2, you can edit them with iMovie. Makes sense. Then you can share them on YouTube or Vimeo or FaceBook or, or, or…

Front- and back-facing cameras for 'Face-Timing'

I was terribly restrained when the original iPad came out and repeatedly told myself that no, I really didn’t need one. But I’m not so sure I can convince myself otherwise with this shiny beast. Especially as Apple have said that it’ll be shipping at the same price as iPad version 1. And it comes in white from day 1. And it’s 33% thinner than the original one. And I’m just going to shut up now.

iPad2, available 11 March 2011, starting at $499. All the details from Apple.

The mobile megapixel battle continues

Oh heavens make it stop, please. We don’t need 17 megapixels of resolution on our mobile phones. The lenses are terrible, the lighting is rarely sufficient, and… urgh. Can someone please send a memo to Sony? Maybe even Samsung, too? Until a few of the basics in taking pictures have caught up with the sensor size in mobile phones, it looks just as if they’re embarking on a pointless megapixel escalation battle.

The rumours are the Sony has come up with a 17.7mp CMOS sensor for use in mobile phones. It might even have 120fps video. When it’ll be available, or how, isn’t known yet. Are they planning on using it in digital cameras as well as phones? Maybe.

Yes, it is awesome that they can squidge going on 18 million pixels of sensitivity into something so tiny. That really is a fabulous engineering feat. But right now they’re not especially useful because so much else about mobile phones is well below the spec that they need. Stop. Take a breath. Let everything catch up with itself. Then perhaps we really will be impressed.

Still, I’m waiting for Samsung to up the ante.

(Headsup to Engadget.)

(And that’s a picture of Sony’s 16mp sensor, announced in October.)

Gearing up for the Format Festival

The superb Format Festival opens in Derby on Friday. The organisers have taken their lead from the whole ’2011 is the year of street photography’ thing and the show this year has been called Right Here, Right Now: Exposures from the public realm. Yep, it’s all about pictures taken in public places. From 4 March to 3 April, there’s a shed load of interesting photographic stuff going on in Derby and close by. Here are some of the highlights.

The In Public exhibition features the work of 20 photographers who have the ability to notice the unusual nestling amongst the everyday. It’s held at Derby Museum and Art Gallery and runs from 4 March to 17 April.

Mob FORMAT is an online gallery of images that have been submitted by the public. And they’re being exhibited very publicly, too: on the BBC Big Screen in Derby marketplace, no less! The images need to fall into one of six categories: Street noir; In the crowd; The decisive moment; When worlds collide; Street surreal; and Shoot from the hip. You can get more information on how to participate in it here.

The Lonely Ones by Gus Powell, from the 'In Public' exhibition

Two groups of teenagers, one from Derby and another from Kolkata got to experience life in each other’s cities. They took photos along the way. To have a look at life in a foreign city through the eyes of a young person, head to Derby Museum and Art Gallery from 4 March to 17 April for the Street Life exhibition.

Of all the learning activities that are taking place, the two that most caught my eye were the photo storytelling workshop on 5 March and Crazy Lenses on 19 March. (You can make a kaleidescope. Who wouldn’t want to have a go at that?) If neither of those appeal, though, take a look here. I’m sure you’ll find something to take your fancy.

And not forgetting the host of other exhibitions and events, such as seminars on the relationship between photography and these here intergoogles, and a session run by the picture people from the Guardian, which sounds very cool.

All the groovy details are on the Format website.

(Featured image from the Street Life exhibition.)

GRID: keeping track of all your social media photos

How many different places do you post pictures? On Flickr, perhaps? Maybe to FaceBook? How about on Twitter? I could on listing sites, but you’d get bored. I don’t want that. But the point is that people post different pictures to different places, and keeping track of them can be a bit tricky. How would you like a site that tracked all your images by date and displayed them on a huge grid?

Guess what? Someone’s thought of it. It’s called GRID, it was inspired by Mike Harding’s Coffee by week, and it’s being developed by a start-up called vvall. Right now, it can only track images uploaded to DailyBooth, FaceBook, PicPlz, and TwitPic. They’re working on Flickr, Instagram, and the like. With so many different platforms to share pictures, and so many ways to get them there, it’s taking a bit of time.

I don’t actually make that many of my pictures public, and I’ve a favoured place for those I do unleash on an unsuspecting world, but I do love the idea of being able to see all your pictures in one place organised chronologically. It might be the historian who likes organisation in me coming out, but I doubt I’m the only one.

GRID: social photos displayed chronologically.

(Headsup to TechCrunch.)

Very pretty science

We’re used to taking pictures with our Nikon D5000s, our Olympus E-PL2s, and our Canon S95s. But there are some highly talented scientists out there making images with CT scanners, electron scanning microscopes, and confocal microscopes; astonishing pictures of moth wing scales, fish embryos, cells dividing, and plant stigmas. It’s not the sort of thing that you’ll find on Flickr, but you will find some of them – in fact a lot of them – at the Wellcome Collection.

Every year, the Wellcome Collection acquires thousands of images that document scientific exploration, development, and discovery. They’ve been doing this for a long time, but for the past 11 years, they’ve awarded prizes to the ‘most informative, striking and technically excellent’ images submitted to them that year.

Zebrafish retina, Kara Cerveny, Steve Wilson's Lab, UCL

The winners, all 21 of them, of the 11th Wellcome Image Awards have just been announced. It’s worth taking a look.

It’s also worth knowing that all of the images held by the Wellcome Collection are freely available for non-commerical personal and academic use. If you’d like to use images commercially, contact them to discuss fees.

Wheat infected with ergot fungus, Anna Gordon, National Institute of Agricultural Biology, AND Fernan Federici, University of Cambridge

If you can’t get to the Wellcome Collection to enjoy the exhibition, you can also peruse the gallery of winning images. You can also find out more about Wellcome Images in general.

Wellcome Image Awards exhibition runs until 10 July 2011 at the Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.

(Featured image: Honeybee, by David McCarthy and Annie Cavanagh.)

Film gets a look in at Sony World Photography Awards

Although the shortlists for the Sony World Photography Awards have already been announced, there’s still one category for which entries haven’t yet closed. It’s the Moving Image Award, which was introduced this year in recognition of the awesome things people are doing with their cameras that moves beyond still images.

If you get your skates on, you can still submit an entry as the deadline is 1 March (but you do need to be an Advanced World Photography Organisation member). The judging panel will be looking for ‘…an approach that combines the unique strengths of the different media forms and brings them together in a powerful interpretation that goes beyond forms and into the realm of memorable and narrative experience.’ All in a three minute film.

Win that, and along with a shiny Sony NEX-VG10 Handycam you get to attend the awards ceremony at Odeon in Leicester Square on 27 April.

However, we, the general public (or at least a few of us who like photos and pictures and films and happen to know about the competition) get to form our own judging panel, too. We get to decide the People’s Choice award. (Somehow, the term ‘People’s Choice’ makes me think of megalithic supermarkets and bulk quantity dog food. But never mind.) The other judging panel, the one that selected the Overall Moving Image award, will shortlist a selection of films, and we can vote for our favourites on the WPO website. The winner of that one bags a Bloggie camera.

Want to know more? It’s all over on the WPO website.