PhotoBox Blog

Wow it’s been a hot week, so I was pleased to escape the office for an afternoon. As PhotoBox is one of the sponsors of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, I was lucky enough to be invited along to see the exhibition for myself. It was a boiling hot day but because it’s an alfresco exhibition at Kew Gardens it was a real treat. The winning photos are a riot of colour and well worth a visit; what’s more once you’ve paid your entry to Kew Gardens it’s free. In fact, I enjoyed it so much I’m going back this weekend with a group of friends and a picnic.

Whatever your plans are for the weekend now’s the perfect time to take plenty of great photos and enter them in our latest competition. We’ve teamed up with Digital SLR User and Photo Pro magazine to run a competition to find 12 winning photos to turn into a Photo Calendar, with each winner getting to enjoy £100 to spend at PhotoBox. There’s no particular theme so get as creative as you like. Go on, enter our competition now.

Talking of the weekend and making the most of summer, I wonder if any of you are fortunate enough to be going to see Blur play in Hyde Park tonight. From what I saw of their Glastonbury gig (sadly only on the telly) they are back on fantastic form. As for the tennis, as I write this Murray is battling it out on Centre Court. It would be amazing to watch a Murray / Federer final on Sunday. Come on Andy you can do it!

Have a great weekend

Linda

The Editor

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Here’s the winning photo from our DK Eyewitness Travel Photo Britain competition shot by amateur photographer Frame Muller. Congratulations Frame, you even gained the approval of world-renowned photographer and judge, Tom Ang.

The photo was entered in the Heritage category and captures the magnificence of Leeds Castle basking in the late afternoon winter sunshine. The photo will now appear in pride of place on the front cover of the DK Eyewitness Great Britain Guide 2010. Frame wins £1500 of Landmark Trust holiday vouchers, £100 worth of DK books, £100 to spend at PhotoBox, and a PhotoBox Canvas Print of his fantastic winning photo.

A selected collection of entries will be exhibited at the Waterstone’s flagship store in Piccadilly, London from 6th-31st July.

Linda
The Editor

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A recent three week trip to China (mostly for fun but with a little business thrown in for good measure) provided an overabundance of photo opportunities and a range of fascinating experiences to impart with readers of the PhotoBox blog. With the Olympics soon to commence in Beijing and unprecedented economic growth stimulating a building boom the likes of which the world has never seen, the difficulty wasn’t deciding when to snap a photo but having the wherewithal to put the camera away at all!

Bustling street scene in dynamic and entrepreneurial Shanghai

During the trip, I visited dynamic and entrepreneurial Shanghai; the original ancient Chinese capital city of Xi’an; the rural outpost of Yangshuo; and the magnificent and alluring modern capital of Beijing. I look forward to sharing my photographic adventures in China in the weeks to come! First stop on the tour is Shanghai, an ever hustling town that gives New York a real run for its money when it comes to laying claim to the title of ‘the city that never sleeps.’

Shanghai gives New York a real run for its money when it comes to laying claim to the title of ‘the city that never sleeps.’

More to come,
Chris Osburn
PhotoBox blogger

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I took advantage of the sunny weather to visit the alfresco Photographer of the Year exhibition at Kew Gardens. This fantastic place has long been a favourite with photographers, but the arrival of this colourful exhibition is certainly an added attraction.

I was really impressed by the quality work on show, and it inspired me to take one or two scenic shots of my own around the rest of the gardens. If you get the chance I highly recommend you get along there too, it’s on until September. To tempt you I’ve created a Tableau page of just some of the images on display.

Linda Buttle
Editor

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St Paul’s Cathedral on a sunny spring afternoon

The first warm sunny afternoon of the season (along with a boring workload staring me down!) could only mean one time: grab my camera and head out for a nice long walk in the sunshine. Making my way to one of my favourite strolling areas, St Paul’s Cathedral to Tate Modern via the Millennium Bridge, I soon realized that I wasn’t the only one playing hooky. Plenty of City worker types seemed to have found excuses to escape their offices (a benefit of economic downturn perhaps?) for a bit. A few large school groups huddled here and there, and more tourists than I would have imagined milled about in equal measures of awe and exhaustion.

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Some guys have all the luck. Take Chris Cheesman for example, who’s been reporting on some nude photos of some of the world’s most famous beauties. While clicking around for some photography news on the Amateur Photographer website, I couldn’t help but take notice of Cheesman’s Friday 11th of April article entitled, “Nude Moss beats Bruni in photo bidding frenzy.” According to Cheesman’s piece, a photograph of British supermodel Kate Moss in the buff “narrowly beat” one of a similarly naked first lady of France, Carla Bruni at Christie’s in New York. Read more

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As mentioned in my previous post, a keen interest to check out the Bearing Witness: Five Years Of Reporting In Iraq exhibition had me heading over to East London’s Idea Generation Gallery the first minute I had some free time. The exhibition, featuring the work of the 100 Reuters correspondents, photographers, cameramen and support staff who have been covering the war in Iraq over the past five years, is definitely powerful and well worth a look. From photos of an emphatic Bush addressing US soldiers about “rising tensions with North Korea and the possibility of military action against Iraq” in January 2003… to a birds eye shot of antiwar protesters congregating in London a little more than a month later… to a January 2005 photo of an Iraqi police officer scanning a donkey with a handheld metal detector (along the lines of those devises used at airport security checks), Bearing Witness examines every aspect of this conflict with unflinching focus.

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Bearing Witness: Five Years Of Reporting In Iraq* - a recently opened retrospective exhibition of Reuters’ photography, video and graphicsrepresentative of its coverage of the Iraq War - presents an excellent opportunity to experience the power and acknowledge the importance of photography in today’s world. According to Said Jassim Ahmad (head of visual projects at Reuters) in a GQ article by Camilla McPhie, the exhibition “is a tribute to 125 journalists who have died in the conflict, including seven colleagues, and testament to the bravery and tenacity of those who have born witness through half a decade of conflict.” Read more

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The long Easter weekend found me in Marrakech and Morocco’s Atlas Mountains with my better half, Emiana. Most of the time she was in charge of our ‘main’ camera, a Nikon D70S (a few years old and we still love it!), leaving me to play with our camcorder, an equally beloved and fairly new Panasonic SDR-H200. The Panasonic is certainly handy for video but not so hot in the still photography department. Nevertheless, I’m pretty happy with some of the shots I took with my camcorder. However, I actually found myself in control of the Nikon while Emiana haggled with a snake charmer in Marrakech’s famous Place Jemaa el Fna. Read more

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Check out our latest gallery featuring your most amazing architectural shots. Read more

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