Category Archives: Photography

Stunning Sony World Photography Images

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Laurie says:

These photos are from the recently announced shortlist from The Sony World Photography Awards, an annual competition hosted by the World Photography Organization. They had nearly 320,000 entries from 200 countries.

The images below are from an In Focus post by Alan Taylor. The collection he showed is really beautiful. I had great difficulty in making choices. This is a very diverse group of images that each appealed to me for very different reasons.

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Mammatus. “Bolton, Kansas.
– Mitch Dobrowner, USA, Shortlist, Professional, Natural World & Wildlife (2018 Professional competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

Aside from the beauty of  his image, I once chased a tornado in the Midwest. I didn’t catch it, which was undoubtedly good for my personal safety, but it would have been amazing to photograph.

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Patterns of Glacial River. “Aerial view of a glacial river in Iceland. While crossing the bridge, I noticed some patterns in the water and wondered how it would look from the sky. I stopped the car at a turnout after crossing the bridge and flew my drone to capture this image. I included the bridge and the car to give an idea of the scale. This river flows to the ocean and becomes part of the sea.”
© Manish Mamtani, India, Shortlist, Open, Travel (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Award

This is abstractedly a very beautiful composition and gives one a  brilliant perspective.  I’ve been to Iceland and love its remarkable visuals, so this was in a way revelatory.

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Window. “This was taken on December 14, 2017, in my bedroom at sunset. It is a self portrait and was taken using a self-timer of 10 seconds. I used a tripod and some baking paper to soften the lighting. I took this to express the isolation and the need for room to breathe due to anxiety, a personal struggle for me.” #
– Mia Wignall, United Kingdom, Shortlist, Youth, Your Environment (2018 Youth competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

The use of darkness and subtle color is wonderful. I really appreciate color that is central to the composition.

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Vasiliki & Yiorgos. “A multicomplex image created by one single capture in real time on a Greek wedding. If you can observe any scene in this image you can find different actions in time. All of them combine one emotion: the joy of that day.” #
– Marios Kourouniotis, Greece, Commended, Open, Culture (Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Award

Compositionally this is difficult to do in a single capture.  It’s is a remarkable composition, and tells a complicated story.

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Human Grassland. “Photo taken in Xinjiang, China.” #
© Kaan Yuan Chiam, Malaysia, Commended, Open, Landscape & Nature (2018 Open competition), 2018 Sony World Photography Awards

Exquisitely beautiful. And again a subtle and central use of color in the composition.

The winners have been announced and you can see both the short list and the winners here. Tastes clearly vary – I like many of the short list images better.

 

100 Women Photographers From The African Diaspora.

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Laurie says,

A new biannual journal, MFON, features 100 women photographers from across the African diaspora. The journal is important and the photography is varied and stunning. These women should be far better known.

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–Samantha Box

From an article and interview in Dazed with Laylah Amatullah Barrayn & Adama Delphine Fawundu:
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–Eman Helal

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In 1986, history was made when Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe published Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers (Dodd Mead), the first book to showcase the history of African-American women behind the camera dating back dating back to 1866. It spanned more than a century of work, showcasing the work of artists whose work had gone largely unrecognised in photography, which the author described to the Chicago Tribune as a traditionally racist and sexist industry.

The book spoke to Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a young photographer from Brooklyn, who wanted to see more. As years passed, nothing occurred – so Barrayn took it upon herself to be the change she wanted to see in the world. In 2006, she and photographer Adama Delphine Fawundu put together a prototype for the project that would become MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.
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-Fati AbuBakar

MFON is a biannual journal that [has] launched a book of the same name featuring work of 100 women from across the diaspora, including Ming Smith, Delphine Diallo, Émilie Régnier, Lauri Lyons, Noelle Théard, and Dr. Deborah Willis, who wrote the introduction. MFON is named for Mmekutmfon “Mfon” Essien (1967 – 2001) a visionary Nigerian-American photographer who died from breast cancer the day before her photographs from The Amazon’s New Clothes, opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the acclaimed exhibition Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers…

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–Helene Amouzou
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 “MFON is a historical document on the history of photography. It also serves as a global contemporary voice of women of different generations and genres. Since the publication of Viewfinders, there hasn’t been much of an update. Several generations of these photographers have passed and it was time to create a document around their works.”

  – Laylah Amatullah Barrayn & Adama Delphine Fawundu

The work is remarkable. It is worth seeing all of it.