Month: December 2012

Travel Photographer of the Year : Highly Commended

Posted in Iceland, Landscape Photographs, Media, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

The winning entrants into the Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 competition were announced yesterday and I am very pleased to report that the photograph I chose to enter into the competition (‘Blue Berg’) was ‘Highly Commended’ with third place in the ‘Single Shot Water Category’. Those of you who may be familiar with my photography will no doubt recognise this photograph as it was also awarded with a Gold Award at the 2011 Australian Professional Photography awards and also won the Extreme Environment Photograph of the Year People’s Choice Award in 2011. I had not planned to enter this photograph in any further competitions but was inspired to do so by the category title: ‘Single Shot Water’ and its description ‘Water in one of its many forms. An image which encapsulates water as a liquid, solid or vapour’.

The winning prints (including my own) from Travel Photographer of the Year 2012 will be exhibited at the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in London from 12th July to 18th August 2013. Unfortunately, I will miss the exhibition in London by a single day as I need to be in Iceland for my 2013 Summer workshop; which commences on the 12th of July. I then head straight from Iceland to Svalbard and the Arctic to lead two expeditions (The Jewels of the Arctic) that take in the very best of Svalbard, Spitsbergen and Greenland. I will transit back through London in early September and thus will sadly miss the exhibition. If you are able to make it please let me know what you thought.

Footnote: What inspired me to enter the Travel Photographer of the Year competition was that it is one of the few photographic competitions today that still judges the ‘print’ rather than a compressed jpeg. I wrote recently of my disillusionment with so many of the photography competitions that market themselves today and that make their judgements solely on a compressed jpeg file. Call me ‘old school’; but the craft of producing a beautiful fine art print is one of the most enjoyable aspects of photography for me and is how I prefer to have my work judged.

Updates and Changes to Website and Blog

Posted in News and Updates, UncategorizedLeave a comment

You may have noticed there have been some changes to the look and design of my blog over the last few days. I have been working with Live-Books to redesign the blog to better integrate and match my website at www.jholko.com. The new design does mean a number of significant improvements, but it also means some changes had to be made and a few things may have subsequently gotten lost or broken along the way.

One of the features that has been lost is the WordPress ‘Like’ button; which was previously found at the bottom of each post. The ‘Like’ button is particular to sites hosted by WordPress and as I have moved my blog hosting over to Live-Books this feature has been lost. If you had previously clicked the ‘Like’ button and ‘Liked’ a post I apologise for this being removed (it was unavoidable). The good news is that all of the comments should have been captured and migrated over to the new site.

One of the key benefits (other than better matching and integrating with my primary website) of moving to the new design is larger pixel dimensions for images and the ability to now click on an image and have it open in a new window whilst the surrounding background dims. This feature provides a much better viewer experience when looking at photographs. I am still in the process of updating a lot of the images on the blog so you may find a few that are not quite positioned correctly, or are not as yet correctly sized. Please just bear with me over the next week or so whilst I update any strays. Likewise, I am still updating the ‘topic categories’ and ‘tags’ so not all posts as yet will show up if you are using these features for browsing the blog.

With over three years worth of posts and hyperlinks on my blog it is quite possible that there may be some dead links amongst the many pages. I will endeavour to fix these as I work my way through the site. If you do stumble across a dead link please drop me an email so I can fix it.

If you had previously subscribed to my blog by either an RSS feed or via email you should still continue to receive notifications whenever a new post is made. I am currently working with Live-Books on adding a new subscription option to the blog and hope to have this finished in a few days.

I have also redesigned the Workshops and Expeditions page at my website and this page is now up-to-date with trip information, including detailed PDF itineraries of each workshop. You can now also register to book onto a workshop or expedition directly online. I will continue to make workshop and expedition announcements and updates here on my blog as well as on my website so if you are just browsing past you can still get all the news. I will be making further refinements and changes to my website at www.jholko.com over the coming weeks. A reminder that you can also follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and please don’t forget to hit the ‘Like’ button as that helps me share my content with more people.

Ice Sanctuary – Photo of the Month December 2012

Posted in Antarctica, Landscape Photographs, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography1 Comment

The photograph of the month for December is from Wilhemina Bay in Antarctica. Some of the most beautiful and unusual icebergs we encountered on my last expedition to Antarctica were found in both the Gerlache Strait and Wilhemnia Bay. This particular photograph was taken in Wilhemina Bay as we slowly cruised the area looking for icebergs. We were fortunate to encounter more or less continual snow fall with dark brooding skies during much of our time in these areas which proved simply wonderful for photography. I will be heading back to both Wilhemina Bay and the Gerlache Strait on my November 2013 Antarctic Expedition with my good friend Daniel Bergmann. There are still a few places available on this expedition if you would like to join me.