Recently in photography Category

Umida Akhmedova is an Uzbek photographer whose album called “Men and Women from Dawn to Dusk” shows Uzbek people and their way of life and traditions. The album was published in 2007 contains about 100 pictures, 10 of which can be seen here.

It all sounds fine. But it isn’t. Umida is being accused of defamation and insulting Uzbek traditions because the authorities feel that she is depicting Uzbekistan as a backward country. A special commission set up by the general prosecutor has already found that her images distort reality. She has been banned from leaving the country and faces up to 6 months in prison and up to 3 years of public labor.

This is simply outrageous. Something is depicting Uzbekistan as backward, alright. But it is definitely not Umida Akhmedova’s pictures. They are one of the best examples of photojournalism I have seen recently. More of her fine pictures can be seen here.

I think this is a clear case of the ones in power reflecting their own dislike and disrespect for their own people to Umida. The Uzbek state can only see backward and uneducated people in those pictures because they think of those people as backward and uneducated people which need to be modernized, educated and westernized, to fit in with the image of the ideal Uzbek citizen the Uzbek state have in their mind.

This quite a common mindset of the state in many countries who had to go through a period of nation building in their recent history. Similar issues can still be seen in Turkey after almost eighty years of the independent republic. In Uzbekistan’s, case this is clearly even more drastic, having gained their independence from the USSR less than 20 years ago.

I came across a small but really impressive portfolio by the photojournalist Peter Turnley on T.O.P. I thought I’d share. Here are two appetizers:

Somehow I don’t get to photograph much when I’m in Amsterdam. Here are the only ones I like from the last two times I was there.

If you ever wondered how to attach SLR lenses to your iPhone, well, Bhautik Joshi did and documented it all here.

Great work. I think this is hilarious and genius at the same time.

Finally some photos from my last trip to Prague…

A cold and snowy afternoon on the Karlov Most in Prague.

American Society of Media Photographers prepared a large and apparently very informative website about best practices in the digital photography workflow.

It seems very interesting but I haven’t been able to take a real look and I am posting this as a self-note…

After reading Phil Coffman’s post about TiltShift Generator and Mill Colour, I became curious and downloaded those two apps.

TiltShift Generator is aimed at replicating the look of tilt-shift lenses with their oblique focus planes. This can be used not only to generate more of the the ubiquitous photographs of “miniature” objects but also to simulate the selective depth effect of a bigger camera with a shallow depth of field. Moreover, you can also change color using saturation, brightness and contrast settings and apply vignetting to further isolate your subject. A great little app!

Mill Colour on the other hand is a great free app to change the color of your photos. It comes with some quite nice presets made by the color professionals at The Mill. But you can tweak these presets to heart’s liking. Unfortunately, however it’s not possible to save your own presets.

I hear that iPhone 3GS’s camera is supposed to be better but there is no fooling anybody, those small lenses and sensors are severely limited. But that’s OK. Not every camera has to have brilliant image quality. That’s not really the point of photos. Polaroid wasn’t sharp or grain-free either, but that didn’t stop André Kertész from making great photos.

I think that’s why such small photo apps are important. They make iPhone’s little camera, a better camera by giving its photos a little character which makes the person behind the touch screen a little more open.

Here are some examples of these two small apps can do: