Times photographer David Bebber’s prize-winning shot of Colonel Gaddafi.The best

The best and brightest talents in photojournalism are being honored this week as winners of the 2010 Press Photographer’s Year were announced, including the photograph of the year, a captivating image of Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi.

Pooled from 317 photographers in over 20 European countries as well as Asia and North America, and over 7,500 photographs, the Press Photographer’s Year 2010 awards showcase the very best in world-wide photojournalism.

Times photographer David Bebber’s image of Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi, shown observing a military parade in his honor from behind protective glass in September, was named photograph of the year.

Getty Images won five of the sixteen prizes in the online competition, the most of any organization. Among its awards were Best Folio for Daniel Berehulak’s moving images from war-torn areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Best Sports Folio for Laurence Griffiths collection of soccer and auto-racing photographs.

Billed as “the only competition that showcases the outstanding press photography taken for and used by the UK media,” The PPY awards aim to honor and help maintain the influence of photography in daily global news.

“Even in an age of rolling television news, internet and satellite communication, the traditional still image burns the keenest, fastest impression on the public conscience and is the most effective way to show the world as it really is,” read a press release for the organization.

You can see a collection of amazing photograph’s from this year’s winners, as well as purchase a 240-page book featuring the best of the best, at the Press Photographer website.

After you check out the images, do any of them inspire you to get out there and shoot? Do you have a favorite photojournalist whose work you think should be recognized as well? Tell us your thoughts.

Note we are now running a contest about this photo click for details.  Edith Shain, the woman depicted in an iconic photograph kissing a sailor in Times Square at the end of World War II, has died. She was 91.

The famed photo, snapped by Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, shows a young woman in a nurse’s uniform at the mercy of a particularly excited young sailor. The pair’s lips are locked in a vehement kiss — a scene that would become one of the most iconic images of the war.

As Eisenstaedt describes it in his autobiography: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all — young girls and old ladies alike. Then I noticed the nurse, standing in that enormous crowd. I focused on her, and just as I’d hoped, the sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her.”

For decades the woman’s identity was unknown, until finally in the ’70s Shain contacted Life magazine. She went on to reveal that she had been working at Doctor’s Hospital in New york when on August 14, 1945 she decided to take the subway to join a V-J Day (Victory over Japan) celebration in Times Square.

“This guy grabbed me and we kissed,” Shain said in 2008 of the sheer spontaneity of the kiss. “And then I turned one way and he turned the other. There was no way to know who he was, but I didn’t mind because he was someone who had fought for me.”

“As for the picture,” she said, “it says so many things — hope, love, peace and tomorrow. The end of the war was a wonderful experience, and that photo represents all those feelings.”

Over the years Shain would lead numerous memorial parades honoring World War 2 veterans, and she spent much of her later years educating others about the sacrifices made during the war.

As for the sailor in the photograph, his identity is still unconfirmed. Note we are now running a contest about this photo click for details.

This 1955 photograph of Marilyn Monroe by Eve Arnold is among the Magnum collection now open to the public

“When you picture an iconic image, but can’t think who took it or where it can be found, it probably came from Magnum.”

The Magnum Photo archive, widely considered one of the greatest photography collections in the world, with images from photography masters like Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and many others, is set to open its doors to the public next week.

With more than 1,300 boxes of photographic materials dating from the past 80 years, the Magnum Photos Collection features some of the last century’s most iconic photographs. That includes Steve McCurry’s haunting image from 1985 of an Afghan refugee in Pakistan, Henri Cartier-Bresson’s iconic puddle-jumper from 1932, Elliot Erwitt’s photo of a veiled Jacqueline Kennedy at her husband’s funeral in 1963, a series of photographs that chronicles the 1961 John Huston movie The Misfits, with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, and countless more.

The opening of the collection marks the end of decades of tight control around the images, after they were acquired by an investment firm earlier this year. Now they will be available for viewing by the public for the next five years at the University of Texas at Austin’s Ransom Center.

The Center’s director, Thomas F. Staley, lauded the collection’s immense “scope and diversity.” He added, “Magnum photographers have artfully chronicled some of the century’s most critical moments and figures, from social unrest to war, from political leaders to celebrities, and their work has often given voice to those traditionally omitted from news reporting.”

What do you think about the collections availability to the public? Which of the original prints would you be most excited to see?

Have you ever wanted to capture the great moments in your travels, but just don’t know where to begin? Well, who better to learn from than a three-time Travel Photographer of the Year award-winner?

In the latest interview of Advancing Your Photography, Marc Silber sits down with award-winning travel photographer Bob Holmes to offer some answers to this question, as well as an in depth discussion of what you can do to improve your own travel and outdoor photography.

With a career marked by several successful decades in the industry, Bob Holmes is a globe-trotting photographer who has captured breathtaking photos everywhere from the snow-capped mountains of Nepal to the rocky shores of the California coast. He has worked for magazines like National Geographic, Lonely Planet and Departures, and has been the sole photographer for 46 books. Perhaps most impressively, Bob has been named Travel Photographer of the Year a record three times.

Watch the interview and you’ll learn all about:

1. Learning to See Light — As primarily an outdoor photographer, Bob does not like to use artificial light. Watch the interview as he talks about the importance of seeing light not with your eyes, but recognizing how the camera would see it. Most people don’t see, Bob says, because they’re too busy looking.

2. Composition — As a photographer, you are responsible for what you choose to leave in (as well as what you choose to leave out) of your photos. Listen to Bob talk about the importance of always scanning the edges of your frames, and why there should never be anything in it that you did not intend to be in it.

3. Photography is like a Violin — “Keep shooting,” Bob tells us. “Shoot as much as you can. Photography is deceptively simple. You can’t expect to pick up a violin and play it within a week, and you can’t expect to pick up a camera and take great photos within a week. It just doesn’t happen.”

To see more of Bob Holmes’ tips and techniques on how to improve your travel and outdoor photography, watch the latest episode of “Advancing Your Photography” with Marc Silber. Also, be sure to check out more of Bob’s amazing work at his website, www.RobertHolmesPhotography.com.

Photos Copyright Robert Holmes

Accomplished Australian fashion photographer Richard Bailey, who spent 30 years photographing the world’s biggest actresses and supermodels for magazines like Vogue, Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, has died after a battle with cancer. He was 52.

Bailey passed away on Tuesday night in Sydney after a fight with bladder cancer that lasted six years. Despite his illness, and even in his final moments, Bailey never stopped thinking about his next shoot.

“In the last few years he made every effort to keep working, even though he was very ill,” his wife, former fashion model Gillian Bailey, said of her husband.

Richard Bailey’s career began at just 21 when he started shooting for Vogue Australia, where he would remain an integral part for the rest of his career. He actually got his break as an outdoor photographer but soon moved indoors to work in more fashionable settings, winning top photography awards and building relationships with stars like Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Janet Jackson, Claudia Schiffer, Helena Christensen, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Eric Bana and Katie Holmes.

Campaigns for magazines like Neiman Marcus, Gap and Victoria’s Secret, as well as editorial work for Vanity Fair and GQ earned him recognition in the US as well.

“He was always really brilliant outdoors and had that northern beaches sensibility and a beautiful sense of light. All of his work had a quality that was above and beyond everyone else in the marketplace,” says Kirstie Clements, editor for Australian Vogue. “He was right up there with the best.”

“Tetons and Snake River” by Ansel Adams is one of the many images to go under the hammer later this month. Photo by Ansel Adams.

Over a thousand photographs from the Polaroid Collection, which includes images from some of the biggest names in photography, like Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe, will be put up for auction later this month.

Famed auction house Sotheby’s will put 1,200 historic photos under the hammer as part of Polaroid’s court-approved bankruptcy sale. The sale will include the most comprehensive collection of Ansel Adams photographs (400 Polaroid and non-Polaroid images) ever sold.

“It is the largest and best collection of works by Ansel Adams to ever come on the market, representing a broad spectrum of most of his career,” said Denise Bethel, Sotheby’s photography expert.

Masterpieces such as Adams’ “Bridalveil Fall” (valued at up to $100,000) and the massive “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico” (valued as high as $500,000) will go to the highest bidder. The sale also includes Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression-era “Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California,” which is valued at up to $80,000.

Working as a consultant for Polaroid, Adams helped build the company’s photography collection by acquiring works from masters like Lange, Weston and Imogen Cunningham, as well as those of contemporaries whose work he admired.

Many of the most well-known photographs from the 16,000+ images in the Polaroid collection will go up for sale, and they are expected to fetch a total of over $7 million. Sotheby’s will showcase the images for six days before they are auctioned on June 21-22 in New York.

So, what do you think about the auction? How much would you be willing to pay for an original Ansel Adams print?

This undated photo showing of two slave children was found by collector Keya Morgan at a moving sale in North Carolina.

A 150 year-old photograph of two slave children — ragged, barefoot and sitting solemnly together on a barrel — has been discovered in an attic in North Carolina. Experts are calling the Civil War-era image extremely rare and an important piece from a dark time in America’s past.

The photograph was discovered at a moving sale in Charlotte in August by New York collector Keya Morgan, who paid a total of $50,000 for an album of family photos (including the above image) and a document detailing the sale of a slave. The accompanying bill of sale details the purchase of John, one of the boys, for $1,150 in 1854.

Art and photography historians are calling the photograph an extremely important and rare find because of the scarcity of photographs of slave children, and also because it portrays yet another aspect of the horrors of slavery in America.

“It’s a very difficult and poignant piece of American history,” said Will Stapp, a curator and photography historian at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.. “What you are looking at when you look at this photo are two boys who were victims of that history.”

Stapp and others believe the image was taken in the early 1860s by the photography studio of famed Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee portraitist Mathew Brady. Though Brady himself likely did not take the picture, experts believe it was snapped by his Timothy O’Sullivan, who is known for shooting Civil War photographs that depicted the terrors of war.

For now, Morgan says he will keep the photo in his private collection, though he has received offers from museums to purchase the image. But no matter where it ends up, Morgan says the photograph will always be a window into the lives of slavery’s victims.

“This kid was abused and mistreated and people forgot about him,” Morgan said. “He doesn’t even exist in history. And to know that there were a million children who were like him. I’ve never seen another photo like that that speaks so much for children.”

**UPDATE**

Could Keya Morgan’s rare find actually be quite a common photograph? Here are new details in the mystery of the slave photo.

Photo copyright John Hedgecoe.

Photographer John Hedgecoe, author of more than 30 books on photography and creator of the most reproduced image in the world, the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that appears on British stamps, has died. He was 73.

With a career spanning fifty years, John Hedgecoe was an award-winning photographer who wrote dozens of books on the art of photography that have sold more than nine million copies (His most recent was The Art of Digital Photography in 2006), and was instrumental in establishing the department of Photography at the U.K.’s Royal College of Art in 1965.

However, Hedgecoe was most recognized as the photographer who snapped the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II that appears on postage stamps throughout the U.K. and the Commonwealth. The image is widely credited with being the most reproduced image in the world, having sold more than two billion copies to date.

“John Hedgecoe was hugely instrumental in ensuring that photography was accepted as a creative medium in its own right at the Royal College of Art,” said a spokesman for the college. “While emphasizing commercial, advertising and documentary photography, John also laid the groundwork for what later became known as ‘independent’ photography.”

Hedgecoe’s passing was also mourned by the British Royal Photographic Society, who called it a “very sad loss” and described him as a man whose books have reached millions of photographers.

© Silber Studios 2010, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

In my workshops I cover the 4 stages of photography which you can see in the slide above.

These break down roughly into:

1. Visualizing, composing and framing your image.
2. Knowledge and skill of use of your camera, lighting and equipment.
3. Post production: Processing and printing.
4. Getting your work out there whether you “share it,” sell it or show it.

These 4 stages are actually a continuous spiral that interconnect: As you improve your visualization you then need to be able to know how to capture your vision with your equipment and lighting; in processing you get an idea for showing your work, which might lead you to a new visualization of an image, etc.

As you’ve probably gathered, my belief is that there’s far, far too much concentration on stage 2– equipment, being obsessed and geeked out with it!  As Bambi Cantrell said, “cameras don’t take pictures, people do.” Or Chase Jarvis’ “the best camera is the one you have with you!”  But having said that, it’s important to know your equipment, just don’t get so obsessed with it and think it’s the end all; remember it’s part of the ecosystem containing these 4 stages. (Yes, it looks like there other aspects of photography such as how you relate to and direct your subject or models, or the business end of photography, but even these slot into their stages above.)

Now your next step in teh Marc Silber Photography School is to evaluate yourself: How do you rate in each of these stages? Are you confident? so-so? or in the dark? — on each one, and their sub categories.

For example, you may be confident with your camera but in the dark about artificial light (excuse pun .)

Take a moment and rate yourself (yes, we’ll put up a more formal survey soon, but start now.)  Rate yourself and let me know what you come up with. This helps to establish your goals, and gives a yardstick: as you progress you can red-do this exercise and chart your progress.

How do you score?

Photo copyright Jim Goldstein

It’s two interviews for the price of one today at The Marc Silber Show!

We’ve been busy here at SilberStudios.tv, and now we have two great interviews to share with you. Acclaimed landscape photographer Jim Goldstein and award-winning wildlife photographer Florian Schulz each sit down with us for a set of engaging, informative interviews.

In the first, watch as we chat with Jim Goldstein and pick his brain on how to capture captivating images of nature.

Jim’s nature and fine art photography has been featured in numerous publications such as Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography, as well as Penthouse Magazine and Huffington Post. His work is characterized by a deep passion for landscapes and travel, and this comes across in the enthusiasm with which he offers tips and techniques that you can use to improve your own photography.

Watch the interview and you’ll learn all about:

1. The Importance of Foreground — Try to craft a very sharp foreground. Jim advises to give your viewer something clear to latch on to in your photographs (whether it’s a rock formation or an animal’s eyes), and then their attention will go to somewhere outside of this focus point.

2. Golden Hour Lighting — The short hour when the sun is resting on the horizon offers a nature photographer some of the best lighting of the day. And since choosing the right light is half the battle, take full advantage of Golden Hour Lighting.

3. Exploration — For Jim, exploration is as important as creation in photography. This is because the exhilaration of discovering something unique can propel you to strive harder for that original image, and this eagerness and curiosity will show up in your photographs.

In our second interview, watch as wildlife photographer Florian Schulz discusses his thrilling career photographing planet Earth’s most beautiful creatures.

Florian’s work has earned him multiple accolades, including the award for BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and Conservation Photographer of the Year by the National Wildlife Foundation. He has photographs featured in the Natural History Museum in New York, as well as a number of exhibits currently touring the country.

Florian believes photography should be a mix of adventure and gaining world experiences, and this enthusiasm for life is matched in intensity only by his dedication to long-term nature conservation photography projects.

Watch the interview and you’ll learn all about:

1. Capturing the Natural World — Listen to Florian as he discusses the importance of “immersing yourself in the natural world.” As a wildlife photographer, you are working on nature’s terms, so it is essential that you familiarize yourself with them.

2. Thinking of the Bigger Picture –Before you shoot, think about the story that is connected with the image. Watch Florian as he describes how to capture the narrative behind the photograph.

3. Dramatic Foreground– Watch as Florian talks about the importance of creating  eye-catching foregrounds that will leave viewers wanting more.

To see more tips and tricks on how to improve your wildlife photography, watch our interview with Florian Schulz. Also, to learn more about capturing incredible landscape photographs, watch our interview with Jim Goldstein.

After you watch the videos, let us know what you think. What did you learn from Jim and Florian?