Following the success of last year’s Judges’ training day, June 2010 saw the Coventry Hilton Hotel again playing host to a panel of MPA Fellows eager to hone the skills of members ‘rising through the ranks’ and assist the qualifications and awards processes. Introduced once again by Eric Jenkins, compared to the inaugural event the programme was very focused on refining the process of judging and the criteria on which images are assessed.

With a much faster introduction, few changes have been made to this year’s requirements for Awards, and only minor changes to the Qualifications – excellence is excellence, after all – and the Qualifications process was addressed in detail by Kevin Wilson prior to the Awards process. At the second training day members were able to give a little more feedback, both on their own qualifications experiences and on the process in general.

Dennis Hylander delivers one of his famous critiques

For MPA members looking to submit panels or images, the crucial thing is as ever to consider the entire panel as a whole. Mentors and judges alike are looking for very similar things, with many years of accumulated experience throughout the MPA’s history contributing to a detailed, consistent and fair assessment. Your mentor’s advice is valuable and combines with content such as this in the magazine to hopefully guide you to success; coming straight from the Judging committee you ignore this sort of information at your peril!

Most importantly, your panel as a whole can be affected by one or two flawed images as Kevin demonstrated with a rejected submission – later revealed to be from one of the judges who successfully qualified with a different panel. Even at this stage, the feedback and comments about the images were consistent, and agreement was reached very quickly.

Using your mentor is key to improving your scores in this process. Submit raw images (not raw files, but uncropped, unretouched prints) to give them a true impression of your capabilities as a photographer and remember, the advice you get about post-production will benefit from this. You’re not being judged at this stage, you’re being assessed for the best information and advice to go forwards.

Kevin Wilson engages an attentive Ewen Forsyth

This year the submissions process for Qualifications has been slightly revised, with profiles and portfolios being sent directly to the MPA and the workbooks being forwarded to the judges in advance. Working on your print quality requires at the very least attention to the finished results as much as the final image; Lisa Visser’s Fellowship panel went through several stages before she was happy, as she explained to the delegates.

“When I decided to do the Fellowship, my mentor told me I was ready to do it – I thought I was really rubbish, I wasn’t well in the awards. Being told that one picture was Fellowship standard was encouragement to just go with it, I felt I could run with it and focused on doing that.

“To create the panel, I had about four images that matched the requirements – the rest were produced between April and July; the images were reprinted, testing different papers, nothing was going to go that wasn’t perfect”.

The standards for assessing the images remain with lighting measured with an exposure meter to be 1 second @ ISO 100 and f/16.

The International Photography Award rewards the best photography worldwide, in any genre or subject. Now in its sixth year, it boasts two categories – a body of work prize and the single image prize. Both winners see their work printed by Spectrum Photographic pro lab and exhibited for a week in London. In addition, the body of work prize-winner will also pick up a Nikon D700 plus a 50mm 1.4G lens, while the single image prize winner claims a Sigma DP2s. www.bjp-online.com/ipa

Last year’s body of work winner, Edmund Clark, submitted a project exploring everyday life for the detainees and ex-detainees of the Guantanamo Bay detention centre. Clark’s previous project, Still Life Killing Time was published by Dewi Lewis and a finalist at the inaugural New York Photo Awards.

Shoot the Street picks out the best in street photography, shot anywhere in the world. The best photographer will see his or her work printed by MX Display and exhibited in a solo show at Format, the UK’s leading international contemporary photography biennale. The closing date for this prize is 30 June so enter now! www.bjp-online.com/street

Unveiled is a brand new competition for wedding photographers. Open to UK wedding photographers, Unveiled offers one photographer the chance to publish his or her work in Wedding magazine – one of the UK’s leading bridal titles, read by thousands of prospective customers. The winner will also get the chance to try out their dream piece of kit, courtesy of Hasselblad and the Pro Centre. www.bjp-online.com/unveiled .

Adobe encourages photographers to try out the newly added raw file support in this update and provide the product team with feedback on the Adobe User to User forum (http://forums.adobe.com).

In addition, photographers can also participate in the Lightroom 3 beta program and try out the new features in Lightroom 3 beta 2 for free. To learn more and download Lightroom 3 beta 2 visit: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/.

New features in this release include tethered shooting support for select Nikon and Canon cameras, the ability to import and manage video files from DSLR cameras for a streamlined workflow and additional behind-the-scenes architecture enhancements for faster importing and loading of images. The addition of luminance noise reduction to the color noise reduction options already available in the beta helps photographers achieve overall exceptional image quality from high ISO images. The import experience and watermarking functionality have also been modified to reflect feedback received from the Lightroom community during the first beta period.

The input from the photography community has been extremely valuable and Adobe would like to thank everyone who has participated in the beta program. Adobe encourages photographers to test this new selection of features and provide the product team with feedback so they can produce the highest quality final product.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is the essential digital photography workflow solution, helping serious amateur and professional photographers quickly import, manage, perfect and showcase all their images in one intuitive application.

Pricing and Availability
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 beta 2 is available as a free download to anyone on a Macintosh or Windows platform and is available in 12 languages. Visit http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom3/ to learn more and download the second beta. Feedback can be submitted on the Lightroom forums: http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/lightroom3/.

Reach out to us on the Lightroom Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/lightroom or on Twitter www.twitter.com/lightroom.

The Skillset Courses Database also helps users to find the best, industry endorsed media training available by indicating which courses and institutions have been awarded the Skillset Tick kite mark. The Skillset Tick indicates to students and employers that a course or institution has undergone a rigorous, industry-approved assessment and has been designated a centre of excellence in creative media disciplines. The database contains information on a total of more than 8,000 creative media courses at all levels – from undergraduate degrees to CPD short courses.

The database, which builds on work undertaken jointly with the BFI, allows users to perform customised searches and to create their own profiles so that they can save their preferences and searches for future use. It also contains dedicated sections on the Skillset Tick and Skillset-funded courses. These sections allow you to quickly find the courses and institutions that have been assessed by industry as offering the most practical and up-to-date training, as well as providing a comprehensive guide to courses that are being funded by Skillset.

Skillset’s chief executive, Dinah Caine, said: “Skillset’s new courses database is an invaluable tool for anybody who wishes to access creative media training in the UK. With more than 8,000 courses listed, this database allows media professionals and those wishing to enter the media industry to navigate the crowded, and often confusing, education and professional training landscape with ease.”

The database can be found at www.skillset.org/courses.

The tour will also take in the MPA’s Induction Day and Cherubs Partners Day, April 12/13th 2010, at the Hilton Hotel, Coventry, where a full working studio and a team of Hasselblad staff will be on hand for demonstrations.

Hasselblad is also holding evening sessions after each student day event – and these are open to all professional photographers. More details on www.handsonahasselblad.com.

In a two month-long, twelve venue tour stretching from Portsmouth to Edinburgh, a team of Hasselblad imaging experts will demonstrate the new H4D cameras and the company’s world-acclaimed Phocus software.

UCA Farnham – 2nd March 2010
Wiltshire College – 4th March 2010
University of Portsmouth – 9th March 2010
UCA Rochester – 11th March 2010
University of Westminster – 16th March 2010
Thames Valley University – 18th March 2010
Northampton University – 22nd March 2010
De Montford University – 24th March 2010
University of Wales – 14th April 2010
University of Gloucestershire – 16th April 2010
Edinburgh College of Art – 20th April 2010

Chris Russell-Fish, Hasselblad UK MD explained: “Students are the future of the imaging business so we decided to plan  a completely free of charge, nationwide educational roadshow to enable them to get some real hands-on experience with the  40 megapixel medium format H4D-40, which offers ultimate image quality and is as easy to use as any 35mm camera.

“We are using the roadshows to increase awareness and dispel any previous misconceptions about Hasselblad pricing and service. This is about winning hearts and minds – and there’s nowhere better to start than with students – tomorrow’s professional photographers.

“We want young photographers to engage with Hasselblad quality solutions from the very earliest opportunity.”

He added: “It’s the first event of its kind where students and tutors at leading educational institutions can work with all our latest H4D equipment within their own environment.”

David Summerfield, Hasselblad’s Roadshow manager said: “Reaction has been outstanding. We’re not hard-selling anything.  We are just giving students and tutors the chance to play with and test-drive this amazing camera in real time on real shoots. The later courses are really filling up too after students use Twitter to tell friends and colleagues to register for one of these events”.

Photographers can join free live photo shoots and see demonstrations of latest products from some of the biggest names in the imaging industry.

Francesca Munden, Calumet’s PR and events coordinator explained: “Any photographer who couldn’t get to Focus can catch up at our one day show.

We’ll have experts on hand all day from 10am until 8pm at Calumet Manchester on Tuesday April 27 and Calumet Drummond Street, Euston on Thursday April 29.

Hasselblad will be using professional models as they demonstrate their latest capture equipment. Nikon will showcase a comprehensive range of lenses, flashguns and DSLRs, including their flagship D3X model.

Lighting experts Bowens will demonstrate latest products and Canon camera specialists will be on hand with the company’s innovative 550D and 1DMK IV models, plus accessories.

Lowepro will showcase latest camera carrying solutions; Giottos will be displaying a comprehensive range of tripods, monopods and heads suitable for all photo-shoot situations, including latest Vitruvian VGR models – complete with reverse leg technology.”

She added: “onOne software will be there too, along with Sigma, Blubox photo compression software, MTA, Parkers, and of course, Calumet Own Brand.

Epson will be showing their flagship A3 and A2 R2880 and pro 3880 photo printers and will offer ‘on the day only’ free prints (one per customer) from supplied images

We’ll have some exclusive special offers available and Calumet will offer photographers a free CCD cleaning service.”

More information at www.calumetphoto.co.uk

onOne Software, has now released two fully-functional Photoshop plug-ins: PhotoTools 2.5 Free and the new PhotoFrame 4.5 Free. The free plug-ins for Photoshop are based on the award winning versions of PhotoTools 2.5 Standard Edition and PhotoFrame 4.5 Standard Edition and are compatible with Photoshop CS2, CS3 and CS4.

PhotoTools 2.5 Free and PhotoFrame 4.5 Free provide photographers with select content from the Standard Editions of each product, while maintaining the full-functionality, unlike the traditional restrictions of 30 day timed trials.

The free presets for Lightroom 2, Adobe Camera Raw and the onOne Exchange allow photographers to streamline their workflow and get the most out of the onOne products they already own. The new onOne University underscores onOne’s commitment to helping customers get the most out of their software investment by providing over 100 free training videos with even more training content planned.

onOne Software Free Products and Resources include:

PhotoTools 2.5 Free Edition – Based on the same feature set as PhotoTools 2.5 Standard Edition, PhotoTools 2.5 Free includes 15 of the most popular effects found in PhotoTools 2.5 Standard Edition. PhotoTools offers powerful action based effects that can improve images dramatically, making it easy to find, experiment, combine, apply and fine-tune effects in an easy to use interface. The 15 effects available in PhotoTools 2.5 Free range from reproducing classic photographic effects like Bleach Bypass and Cross Process, to reproducing film stock such as Kodachrome and Velvia, to modern effects including automatic skin smoothing.

PhotoFrame 4.5 Free Edition - Based on the same feature set as PhotoFrame 4.5 Standard Edition, PhotoFrame 4.5 Free makes it easy to add the perfect finishing touch to images, with 20 professional grade edges, backgrounds, textures and adornments. PhotoFrame 4.5 Free offers an extremely easy way to browse, preview and add effects like frames, backgrounds and adornments to images, with the ability to stack multiple elements and control opacity, size and color.
Presets for Lightroom 2 and Adobe Camera Raw – Users get over 140 time saving Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw presets designed by Photoshop Guru Jack Davis that help quickly correct color and tone and easily add creative effects.

onOne Exchange - The onOne Exchange is a free online resource that offers regularly updated content for PhotoTools and PhotoFrame and encourages users to upload their own actions and content. There are over 65 presets from onOne Software and customers to date.

onOne University - Features over 100 free video tutorials to help customers quickly learn and get the most out of onOne Software products. New video tutorials covering a wide range of subjects are currently in the works.

Availability
PhotoTools 2.5 Free, PhotoFrame 4.5 Free, Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw Presets are available immediately at no cost as downloads from onOne Software at www.ononesoftware.com/free

The onOne Exchange is available at www.ononeexchange.com
The onOne University is available at www.ononesoftware.com/university