New book contract

I’m please to say I have just signed a contract to write Basics Photography: Expsoure for ava books. The publisher decided to extend the series allowing me to cover this important topic. Publication should be in late 2009. 

FAQs Black-and-white and Basics Photography: Black-and-white  are both in the final stages of production and will soon be on the presses in Singapore. The Basics title should be available in September 2008 with FAQs following shortly thereafter.

The unreality of it all

A train of thought started early in the week when one of my ex-students emailed a link to the beta test download for Portrait Professional. I tried a very early version of this retouching software. It re-arranges features according to preferred norms while removing blemishes and improving skin tone. This kind of retouching has it place but for me the departure from reality is just too great.

Tuesday came with a press release about the Fujifilm FinePix IP-10 passport photo printer – this contains software that “automatically detects faces in the image data and then optimises face colouring to give quality, consistent results every time” – so identifying differences are to be wiped out to create some kind of image consistency. I guess this is for machine readability. So while we have a multicultural population with an endearing array of skin tones, the ID cards they carry will be uniformly coffee coloured?

Friday - idling away time at the supermarket check out looking at magazine covers and I spot this Lulu. It could be a Photoshop composite of two images but someone has seen fit to add a bright green foreshore and colour up a lump of green alien vomit in the foreground. I have never seen such colours in the real world and have never seen a landscape as poorly ‘retouched’ as this on a national magazine cover. I’m astonished that a magazine of Country Life’s reputation should publish this.

We really are in danger of forgetting how to see the colours and qualities of the real world.

Korean publications

I am delighted to see my first two books for ava now published in their Korean editions with new cover artwork. I’m told simplified Chinese language versions will not be far behind.

Basics Photography: Composition and Lighting