As astronomy enthusiasts from across WA, Australia and the world come to the Gascoyne to witness the upcoming solar eclipse, they will also be able to take a look at works from some of the State’s most talented astrophotographers at the Carnarvon Library & Art Gallery.
Visions of the Cosmos: Visionary Astrophotography is an exhibit which will feature a collection of West Australian astrophotography nighttime landscapes, constellations, deep space, planets, time-lapse images and of course, solar eclipse photography.
Organiser Dr John Goldsmith said astrophotography was all about finding new ways to look at our night sky, and he looked forward to sharing these examples with guests.
“As photographers, we love to document these amazing events, they often happen in fairly remote areas, and then through the exhibition we get to share them with the broader community,” he said.
Dr Goldsmith said his favourite piece was a photo featuring the Milky Way over Lake Ballard, near Kalgoorlie, featuring one of its well-known statues.
“It’s just a remarkable image,” he said.
For astrophotographers, moments like the upcoming eclipse are experiences to be treasured, and bring together likeminded stargazers from many corners of the globe.
“Total solar eclipses attract visitors from around the world . . . there’s going to be many international visitors, people from WA and around Australia as well.
“It’s definitely a highlight, astronomical events can be extraordinarily beautiful and memorable.”
The images will also be featuring in a book of the same name as the exhibition, which will launched at the same time.
The exhibition will launch the Carnarvon Library & Art Gallery on April 14 and run until May 20.
Digital Photography Review, a popular online resource for photographers, is shutting down after 25 years of service.
The website’s closure is part of the restructuring plans announced this year by Amazon, which acquired DPReview in 2007.
“The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content,” DPReview said in a message posted on its website on Tuesday.
“This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year,” it confirmed.
DPReview added that “everyone on our staff was a reader and fan of DPReview before working here, and we’re grateful for the communities that formed around the site.”
Within hours of DPReview announcing its closure on Tuesday, another site dedicated to photography, PetaPixel, revealed it was offering a home to Jordan Drake and Chris Niccolls, whose YouTube channel, DPReview TV, shares camera and lens reviews, along with photography tips and other related content.
The pair will be the faces of a new PetaPixel YouTube channel launching in May and offering similar content as DPReview TV while exploring a number of new photography-related themes.
It’s not the first time Drake and Niccolls have shifted sites, as five years ago they moved from The Camera Store to DPReview.
“The show is going on,” Niccolls said in a video posted on Tuesday. “Everything that you know and love about [DPReview TV] , you’re still going to know it, you’re still going to love it, we’re still going to be doing our technical gear reviews out in the field, which means out in freezing cold Calgary, Canada. That’s not going to change.”
So vast is DPReview’s database of reviews and other content that it’s likely you’ve landed on the site whenever you’ve researched a camera or lens, or sought out news related to the industry. It’s not clear if the site will remain online so that its valuable resources remain accessible to photography fans, but it will certainly feel like a waste if the site simply disappears from view next month.
The land of majestic saguaros attracts many visitors from across the pond each year. The diverse and prickly plant species that stand tall, like guardians that watch over the Sonoran Desert that is home to many resilient creatures. Even the kaleidoscope-colored sunsets are second to none. Many who leave, inevitably get back to where they once belonged.
Perhaps these are just a few reasons why Linda McCartney (nee Eastman) felt a kinship to Tucson.
UA’s Center for Creative Photography is hosting the North American premiere of, “The Linda McCartney Retrospective,” from Saturday, Feb. 25, to Saturday, Aug. 5.
It celebrates McCartney’s barrier-breaking career that spanned across three decades.
“We will have not only the exhibition at the CCP, but also an incredible range of campus and community events and opportunities for engagement,” said Andrew Schulz, dean of the College of Fine Arts.
The exhibition, which will include about 200 pieces, will be divided into three broad groupings including “Artists,” “Family” and “Photographic Exploration.” McCartney’s work opens avenues for investigation and exploration, Schulz said.
Roots in Tucson
Born and raised in New York state, McCartney was an UA art history student. Her formal photography training extended to just two lessons at a night school.
Once she married Paul McCartney, the two bought land here in Tucson, a ranch in the Tanque Verde area, near the Rincon Mountains.
“In addition to exposing the public to Linda McCartney’s iconic work, this collection will allow our students and faculty throughout the university to learn from her innovative creative process and devotion to important societal issues,” said UA president Robert C. Robbins in a statement.
“The McCartney exhibit is allowing us to really showcase the other extraordinary pieces of the CCP,” added Staci Santa, interim director of the Center for Creative Photography. “A lot of people don’t know that we have a robust archives collection and the breadth of work we have under that little roof, millions of objects and for us to be able to showcase that in a meaningful way while we’re engaging the music scene in Tucson.”
The Center for Creative Photography houses the work of more than 2,200 photographers including co-founder Ansel Adams, David Hume Kennerly, Lola Alvarez Bravo and W. Eugene Smith and houses close to 9 million objects.
Rebecca Senf, chief curator of the Center for Creative Photography, said it has an extensive history with the McCartney family in addition to their long-standing relationship to Tucson.
“I think the landscape here meant a tremendous amount to her and she’s a horsewoman so being in Tucson allowed them to keep horses,” Senf said.
A McCartney archive is in London where Paul and their children live. Senf and Megan Jackson Fox, associate curator of the Center for Creative Photography, visited the archive to see primary source documents and talk with the archivist Sarah Brown about McCartney’s work.
“Being in the archive and working with the archivist allowed us to do a kind of research that augmented the retrospective as it was seen in other locations,” Senf said.
In terms of Tucson, Senf said Fox is doing a show about McCartney’s teacher, Hazel Larsen Archer, which expands the discussion about McCartney’s photographic education as it happened in Tucson.
Archer was an American female photographer during the 20th century, who attended and taught at Black Mountain College in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was a hub for intermedia, cross-medium avant-garde work in the United States for dance or photography for painters, musicians and architects.
The “vibrant community” was known for matriculating influential individuals of the latter half of the twentieth century including Willem de Kooning, whose work “Woman-Ochre”’ was recently returned to the UA’s Museum of Art after being stolen in 1985.
In Tucson, Archer worked at Pima Community College and the Tucson Art Center, later known as the Tucson Museum of Art. She also helped found other colleges as a photographer, photo educator and art educator.
“She brought all of that knowledge, energy and dynamism with her,” Fox said. “That was really the foundation for Linda McCartney and her education in photography.”
Senf said the Center for Creative Photography wanted to explore McCartney’s work further and look at how she had experimented in photography through her process and practice by analyzing the results she had obtained through various experimentations.
click to enlarge
(Photo Courtesy of UA Center for Creative Photography)
To curate the exhibit, Fox said, took intensive research. From the McCartney archives to the Archer estate in Tucson. Fox said she worked closely with it and Archer’s daughter.
“We have a really long runway for creating these exhibitions, they can be three to five years if not more,” Fox said.
Additionally, about 50 undergraduate students from the college of humanities are working with the Center for Creative Photography, learning from the Archer images, materials from the McCartney exhibit and El Pueblo Neighborhood Center and building community projects.
“We’ll have the Hazel Larsen Archer exhibition open with the McCartney exhibition and then in May we will put the students’ projects in the center of that exhibition,” Fox said. “So, you have this intergenerational conversation happening.”
As a photo historian, Senf said that one of the center’s strengths is moving from archive to exhibition and using materials so audiences can benefit from the wealth of an archive.
“I think that it was really fun writing the labels of the musicians’ section because I was imagining various audience members seeing pictures of Neil Young, Jim Morrison or Bob Dylan from the time that they were young and listening to these musicians as young people,” Senf said.
The Center for Creative Photography has been working with students from the Honors College, building audio tour guides for the exhibition. “Sir Paul McCartney has even offered to respond to any of their questions that they have,” Fox said.
McCartney’s photographs include some of the greatest artists and cultural icons of all time such as Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix and, of course, The Beatles.
“These are people who changed the course of American culture and Western culture and so it was really interesting to think about all of that and how to provide the supporting information that would allow different audiences to deeply appreciate the photographs that were there,” Senf said.
The more profound images include intimate family photographs of Paul, Linda and their children. Of Linda McCartney’s level of fame and visibility, Senf said that she displays a level of joy of family life the way anyone else might or playfulness between two romantic partners.
“I think she did a really exceptional job of making people comfortable in the presence of the camera so that you see people in a candid way,” Senf said. “The way she helped people feel at ease and able to be more themselves.”
McCartney’s techniques
McCartney mostly worked with a 35-millimeter handheld camera, which Senf said suits her style and her approach, allowing her to be more spontaneous and less obtrusive.
The exhibition will also include a group of about 60 Polaroids, or facsimiles of Polaroids because Polaroids fade really quickly when exposed to light. This feature of the exhibition can convey to the audience McCartney’s spontaneity and snapshots of casual moments.
“If you think about Linda McCartney as the centerpiece of the project, then everything is kind of coming from and inspired by her right as a photographer, as a person as an activist,” Fox said.
Calling the exhibition the heartbeat of McCartney’s photography, Fox said that there will be an accompanying lecture series starting on opening day.
“Women’s rights were an important part of her activism and her interests and so we’re going to have two photographers who are also entrepreneurs who are going to come and speak about their projects, on women in photography and what they’re doing to help amplify women in photography and to help steward their careers inside of the larger photographic field,” Fox said.
McCartney who was also a food and animal activist was well known for her vegetarian lifestyle. Fox said that the Center for Creative Photography will have a photographer and artist who works at the intersection of food studies talk about her work inspired by indigenous foods.
In addition to the lecture series, the Center for Creative Photography is planning pop-up community tables at the Children’s Museum, farmers markets and the Phoenix Art Museum to talk about sustainability and food issues, food equity in relation to photography.
“That’s another way for us to build bridges from the institution to your everyday world and I think that’s really important that we break the four walls of a gallery so that we are very open,” Fox said.
The Center for Creative Photography will also have weekly live performances from musicians. “That also harks back to Linda for her love of music and her relationship to music over the context of her life,” Fox said. “We’re trying to create doorways for every interest.”
Fox said that she hopes museum visitors get to know McCartney as an amazing photographer, but also as someone who had a variety of interests.
“You bring all of that life into an image and into a practice,” Fox said. “I hope we as an institution continue to do this for the photographers that we exhibit, that we show this entirety of a person and what that means to the photographs themselves.”
With less than two months to go, the full line-up of events forming the Dark Sky Festival has been unveiled as preparations for the April 20 total solar eclipse intensify.
The four-day festival will take place across the shires of Exmouth, Carnarvon and Ashburton to celebrate the rare, global spectacle which is happening right in our own backyard.
Thousands will flood to the region, which will offer the world’s best views of the eclipse, with accommodation in the main towns more or less sold out.
Live music, family-friendly activities, unique dining experiences, stargazing tours and photography lessons for budding astronomers are all part of the Dark Sky festival program.
The festival will include the inaugural Jamba Nyinayi Festival, a Baiyungu Aboriginal Corporation event hosted by traditional owner Hazel Walgar at Cardabia Station near Coral Bay on April 19. It will feature a drone show by Fremantle Biennale with storytelling from traditional owners as well as local and original Indigenous music, dance, food and fire.
Music lovers will be able to enjoy live performances from local and Perth musicians over three days at SolFest to be staged at Exmouth’s Talanjee Oval from April 19-21. SolFest is free to attend for those with existing accommodation in Exmouth.
A seaside seafood barbecue will be held in Exmouth, as well as a “Totality Brunch” at the town’s yacht club.
Fremantle Biennale’s Aboriginal-inspired drone show will also take place on Exmouth’s Town Beach in Exmouth on April 20.
The program also consists of a series of stargazing sessions with Astrotourism WA astronomy guides, an astrophotography exhibition and workshops, SciTech STEM-based activities for children and public talks, including from popular WA astronomer Greg Quike.
Carnarvon will host the April 2023 Rocks Carnarvon Festival from April 15-22, which will offer community star gazing, virtual reality experiences, Aboriginal night sky stories with bush tucker and a day-long music festival on April 20.
The eclipse will occur over a three-hour period, with totality — when the sun, moon and Earth align — expected at 11.29am in Exmouth.
Exmouth will experience 100 per cent of the eclipse, while Onslow and Coral Bay will experience 99 per cent darkness and Carnarvon about 95 per cent,
The McGowan Government has invested almost $22 million to prepare for the eclipse, including improving the region’s infrastructure.
Tourism Minister Roger Cook said the Government was committed to making the eclipse and surrounding events a memorable experience for visitors and creating a “lasting legacy” for Exmouth, Carnarvon and Ashburton shires.
“The eclipse is not only going to be an extraordinary and rare astronomical event. It will also be an experience to remember for visitors who spend time in the region,” he said.
“This festival will also act as a celebration of Aboriginal tourism and culture, and Western Australian food and wine, for the lucky visitors already heading to the Shires of Ashburton, Carnarvon or Exmouth for the solar eclipse.”
Ticketed events for Dark Sky Festival went on sale last week. For more information, visit ningalooeclipse.com.
Mayor Cllr Sandra Holliday presented certificates to the winners and highly commended
To celebrate 35 years of twinning between the twin towns of Cheltenham and Weihai in China, an amateur photo competition was organised, with the theme ‘One planet … many ways to care for our environment’.
The entries were judged by representatives of Cheltenham Twinning Association and Cheltenham Camera club, who felt the successful photos captured people’s interactions with nature illustrating images that motivate us to live sustainably.
The winners:
Steph Gore, Ist place with the image ‘Peace at Last’
David Elder, 2nd place, ‘Weeding in Naunton Park’
Balcarras school pupil Joha Nawar, 3rd prize with the image of ‘Save the Bees’.
Highly commended went to Tim Howarth and David Hyett.
Mayor Cllr Sandra Holliday said: ‘’It’s always a privilege to see people’s creativity flourish to mark a special occasion. I was impressed by the quality of entries that demonstrate interactions with nature to help motivate us to live sustainably. Congratulations to all and special thank you to Cheltenham Camera Club for their assistance with this project.’’
All images can be viewed on the Cheltenham Twinning Association website.
Josh “‘Tinian Astro Dad” Brazzle is a Marianas-based astrophotographer, a photographer who specializes in images of the night sky and deep space.
He’s recently been capturing images of a rare green comet that last swung past Earth 50,000 years ago. Experts predict its closest pass will be on Wednesday or Thursday.
The Pacific Daily News will be talking with Astro Dad live on our Facebook page, barring any technical difficulties, at about 2 p.m. Saturday ChST.
You can watch the interview live at facebook.com/GuamPDN.
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Tinian ‘Astro Dad’ captures the magic of the night sky
The Land Conservancy of McHenry County invites amateur photographers who enjoy nature and are looking for a challenge to enter its 2023 Amateur Photo Contest, which is held in conjunction with its annual Art of the Land fundraiser in November.
For $10, photographers can enter the contest and have a chance to have their photos included in a public show and possibly win a cash award.
First-, second- and third-place awards will be given in the amounts of $100, $75 and $50, with honorable mentions receiving $25.
Photographers will be assigned to take pictures of one of TLC’s many public or privately owned conservation easements or [email protected] properties throughout McHenry County.
Entrants have from now until early October to visit the site and photograph its plants, animals, insects or inspiring scenic views.
Images selected will be shown during the 2023 Art of the Land art show and fundraiser.
Photos will also be posted on the Land Conservancy of McHenry County’s website and may be used in publications and social media to highlight the beauty of the land in McHenry County.
The deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 15.
Entrants do not need to be a McHenry County resident to compete.
The Land Conservancy of McHenry County considers an amateur photographer to be one earning less than a maximum of $2,000 annually from photographic work. For full contest rules and application visit conservemc.org/photo-contest.
The Land Conservancy of McHenry County is a member-based private nonprofit dedicated to preserving natural, scenic and agricultural land.
BBC Wildlife Magazine faces social media backlash from users moaning about lack of trigger warning on photo of baby baboon clinging onto its dead mother in jaws of leopard
Users were offended when BBC Wildlife Magazine posted image on Instagram
Taken by photographer Igor Altuna in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park
Some users said they were going to unfollow the magazine
By Harry Howard For Mailonline
Published: | Updated:
It is a stark image that shows how nature really is red in tooth and claw.
But a photograph posted by the BBC of a leopard carrying a dead baboon in its jaws – as the primate’s baby clings in terror to her corpse has upset some on social media.
Some users on Instagram were offended that BBC Wildlife Magazine did not issue a ‘trigger warning’ when they revealed the image, which was posted to promote the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest.
One wrote: ‘Yes it’s nature blah blah blah but JEEEEEEZ!!! My #BlueMonday was sh*** enough without needing this punch in the face!!!’
Another said: ‘I’m unfollowing. You absolutely should not have posted this without a warning!’
It is a stark image that shows how nature really is red in tooth and claw. But a photograph posted by the BBC of a leopard carrying a dead baboon in its jaws – as the primate’s baby clings in terror to her corpse has upset the more sensitive among us
The photograph was taken by Igor Altuna in Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park.
The leopardess’s cub played with the baby baboon for more than an hour before killing it.
Responding to the BBC’s post, another person complained: ‘I loved seeing animals and wildlife but not this horror.
‘Most of us are not used to this behaviour, so it’s necessary to respect sensibilities and warn about the content. It is empathy.
A fourth wrote: ‘I agree with a lot of you that this should have come with a warning first.
Some users on instagram were offended that BBC Wildlife Magazine did not issue a ‘trigger warning’ when they revealed the image, which was posted to promote a nature photography award shortlist
‘Also had a terrible day and I’d prefer to have a choice in what I see. So also unfollowing.
‘For those of you who are saying things like “people can’t cope with anything these days/it’s brutal Mother Nature etc” it’s the people that are coping with a lot, maybe really horrible things/information on the daily that don’t want to see things like this to add to their pain or hardship, in the feed.
They added: ‘I only follow uplifting things to balance my world. My job is hard and harrowing at times.
‘I’d have liked to have had the choice, like many others have said. No need to be disrespectful or ignorant to peoples daily struggles is there.’
However, others were critical of those who complained about the lack of a content warning.
Others were critical of those who complained about the lack of a content warning
Another said: ‘Don’t follow nature then. It’s what happens! Yes, its a compelling image. But, don’t forget that Cheetah [sic] is just doing what comes naturally. It has to kill to survive & has probably got cubs of its own to feed’
One wrote: ‘Amazing shot. Also amazed that people feel the need to comment that this image needs a “warning.” It’s neither graphic nor tasteless, it’s reality.
‘This is nature, and nature is just as brutal as it is beautiful.
‘BBC Wildlife is a publisher that shares nature media, and this photo is documenting a rare and incredible moment…in nature.
If you can’t handle this photo, definitely don’t ever go on safari.’
The image was posted to promote the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022 – People’s Choice Award competition.
There are 25 shortlisted images in total, chosen from 38,575 entries sent in from around the world.
Voting closes at 2pm on Thursday, February 2.
The contest began in the 1960s and was first run by the BBC’s Animals magazine- which is now called Wildlife magazine.
The contest grew increasingly popular and by the mid-1980s, it had joined forces with the National History Museum, who now runs the competition and its accompanying exhibition.
The increased military activity has raised concern that Moscow might use its neighbour to mount a renewed ground offensive on Ukraine.
Belarus has said the joint air force drills it will begin with Russia on Monday are defensive in nature, but the exercises are taking place as concerns grow that Moscow is pushing Minsk to join the war in Ukraine.
“The exercise is purely defensive in nature,” said Pavel Muraveyko, first deputy state secretary of the Belarusian Security Council, according to a post on the Belarusian defence ministry’s Telegram app on Sunday.
“It will be a set of measures to prepare our and Russian aviation to carry out the relevant combat missions.”
The exercises, which will continue until February 1, will involve training for “aerial reconnaissance, deflecting air strikes, air cover of important objects and communications”, Muraveyko added.
The build-up of Russian troops in Belarus, combined with a flurry of military activity in the country, is an echo of developments just before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine when Moscow used the country as a springboard to launch the attack.
The latest build-up has triggered fears in Kyiv and the West that Russia could be set to use Belarus to mount a new ground offensive on Ukraine.
Ukraine has continuously warned of possible attacks from Belarus, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that the country must be ready at its border with Belarus.
The Kremlin has denied that it has been pressuring Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to take a more active role in the conflict in Ukraine. Minsk has said it will not enter the war.
Since the start of the war, Belarus has conducted numerous military exercises, including large-scale comprehensive drills in late August and a number of smaller ones on its own or jointly with Russia.
Together with Moscow, Minsk has also been adding weaponry and military equipment to the drills.
Unofficial Telegram military monitoring channels have been reporting a series of fighters, helicopters and military transport planes coming to the country since the start of the year — eight fighters and four cargo planes on Sunday alone.
The Reuters news agency was not able to verify the reports. The Belarusian defence ministry said only that “units” of Russia’s air force have been arriving in Belarus.
“During the tactical flight exercise, all airfields and training grounds of the Air Force and Air Defence Forces of the Armed Forces of Belarus will be involved,” the ministry said in a statement.
Muraveyko said the situation on the country’s southern border — the border with Ukraine — was “not very calm,” and that Ukraine has been “provoking” Belarus.
“We’re maintaining restraint and patience, keeping our gunpowder dry,” Muraveyko said. “We have the necessary set of forces and means that will respond to any manifestations of aggression or a terrorist threat on our territory.”
Last week, an official at Russia’s foreign ministry, Aleksey Polishchuk, warned that while the military drills with Belarus were designed to prevent escalation, Moscow’s closest ally could join the war effort if Ukraine “invaded”.
KINGSTON, N.Y. (NEWS10) — The Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) will be the recipient of a $1.5 million Restore NY grant that will enable it to begin rehabilitation of its future home. Its new hub, according to a press release, will be the historic Van Slyke & Horton cigar factory.
CPW is a community-based and artist-oriented organization dedicated to illuminating contemporary culture and society through photography, a spokesperson for the center said in a written statement. In late 2021, after 45 years in Woodstock, the nonprofit moved to a small gallery in Kingston.
In its larger city, CPW has begun expanding its exhibitions, programming, workshops, and digital lab services. But this new vision entails occupying more space, hence its bid to purchase the cigar factory.
Constructed in 1907, the four-story, red-brick Van Slyke & Horton building is a 40,000-square-foot industrial space in Kingston’s Midtown Arts District. It has open-floor plans, 12-foot ceilings, and windows on all four sides, with unobstructed views of the Catskills.
In its Kingston home, CPW aims to build a new model for photography and visual art organization that is an anti-museum, anti-gentrification space. CPW will do this by meeting the needs of emerging artistic voices, and by effecting social change through innovative public events, engaging online media, stimulating courses and workshops, and provocative exhibitions and publications, according to the release.
Once renovated, the space at 25 Dederick Street will be used for exhibition galleries, a digital media lab, classrooms, community meeting rooms, staff offices, a film screening theater, and a state-of-the-art collection storage vault.
“The intended uses will create a significant cultural hub in an economically distressed area targeted for revitalization in the City’s Arts and Culture Master Plan,” said Anna Van Lenten, a spokesperson for the center. “The building is located close to Kingston City Hall and the Kingston High School, and one block away from the Empire State Trail and the newly redesigned Broadway-Grand Street intersection, a key part of the City of Kingston’s recent business corridor improvements.”
![Another said: 'Don't follow nature then. It's what happens! Yes, its a compelling image. But, don't forget that Cheetah [sic] is just doing what comes naturally. It has to kill to survive & has probably got cubs of its own to feed'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/01/17/11/66658217-11643751-image-a-6_1673953639857.jpg)
