Before I left for the Arctic this year for two months photography I was invited to participate in a project for a magazine called ‘Dispose‘. Dispose distribute throwaway disposable film cameras to a wide range of people living across the world. They ask contributors to document one day in 27 exposures. From the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep, these individuals shoot a minimum of one photo per hour including one self portrait. This was a fun project for me and it was great to be shooting film again – even if it was on a disposable camera. I chose to document my time spent between life aboard M.S Origo and Polar Pioneer in Svalbard. I am also excited to have been asked to work on another project with Dispose later this year in Antarctica. You can see the photographs from my time in the Arctic at Dispose’s website.
Category: Media
Media news including interviews, awards, print publications and articles
Live-Books Ambassador
A couple of months ago, whilst I was in Iceland on my summer photography workshop I was contacted by liveBooks and asked if I would be interested in joining their new Ambassador program. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with liveBooks, this USA based company specialises custom designed and pre-designed website templates for photographers. They are widely regarded by many as the industry standard for portfolio websites for professional photographers around the world and it is with great pleasure I join their Ambassador program. My own liveBooks website can be seen at www.jholko.com. Professional photographers need to stand out from the crowd and liveBooks have had a major hand in helping me grow my own business. I have been a liveBooks customer for more than eight years now (I was actually the first Australian photographer to sign up) and during this time have been continually developing and updating my website and blog. I have seen the company change hands and continue to grow with both new template and custom options (My own site at www.jholko.com now has quite a lot of custom flash programming for the workshop section of my website) as well as additional offerings such as Blogs and Video pages. During this time I have also seen many other prominent photographers choose liveBooks as their website of choice – both for the clean slick look and for the user friendly back end for managing images. One of the key factors that originally drew me to liveBooks was the time-saving back end support they offer. My time is very limited when it comes to allocating time for website maintenance and anything that saves me time and effort is a major plus. There are some very well known names amongst liveBooks list of clientele and if you are considering a move to a new web design or in setting up your first photography website it is well worth checking out their list of clients, example websites as well as their extensive range of template websites and custom designs.
Being an Ambassador for a company that has lead and continues to lead the industry in photography websites for photographers is an honour and I am very much looking forward to working with the team at liveBooks on some new projects over the coming year. I have several personal projects I am currently working on at present including a book on Polar and Sub Polar Photography, as well as an exciting project I will undertake in Iceland late next March (more to come on this soon). liveBooks will be assisting me with making these projects a reality and I am looking forward very much to the release of these projects.
Edit – The observant amongst you may have noticed that I have been a little slack of late in updating my photo of the month here on my blog. I did have the best intentions to update the photo of the month whilst I was in the Arctic but the little down time I did have between workshops and expeditions was spent catching up on email correspondence. This photograph of a large female Polar Bear is my photograph of the month for August (Yes – September is coming soon!) and was taken at approximately 80º North of Svalbard at the edge of the pack ice around midnight. We were fortunate to come across this bear on a fresh seal kill and we spent a couple of hours making photographs of this incredible animal. This particular image was shot with the Canon EOS 1DX and the new Canon 200-400mm F4L IS lens with inbuilt 1.4 Teleconverter and was actually shot through the open porthole of my cabin window on M.S Origo. M.S Origo is a wonderful ship for polar photography – with operable portholes that are only 60cm above the pack ice it provides the perfect vantage point for photographing these incredible animals. You can see a higher resolution version of this photograph on my Live-Books website at www.jholko.com
By way of full disclosure: I have always paid for all my liveBooks services out my own hard earned money – that includes my original website design, blog design and yearly hosting costs, plus all the custom work I have engaged them to complete. As an Ambassador I am entitled to a number of benefits with liveBooks that I negotiate on an as needs basis.
X-Rite Photo Webinar : Processing Images with Ice and Snow
Earlier this year I did a free Webinar with X-Rite and Nik Software on how I process photographs with Ice and Snow. The webinar covered my own personal workflow for working with images that contain snow and Ice to really get the most from them. I discussed my use of the X-Rite Colour Checker Passport as well as how I implement the Nik Software Plug ins into my workflow. You can download a copy of the Webinar directly from X-Rite’s archives HERE.
I will be doing a follow up Webinar with X-Rite and Moab paper on processing ice and snow images later this month on the 25th of September at 7pm EDT. In this new Webinar I will give more examples of how I utilise the colour checker passport in my workflow and how I process my own photographs to really maximise the texture and tone in the ice and snow. I will also talk briefly about printing images with ice and snow and the importance of paper selection to match the photograph. You can Register Online and the Webinar is free. Due to bandwidth limitations between Australia and the USA I will be pre-recording the Webinar, but will be online during its presentation to answer any questions or queries.
Edit – In case you have stumbled across this page with a search – you can view an archive of the webinar HERE
2013 APPA – Australian Professional Photography Awards
The 2013 APPA Australian Professional Photography Awards have come and gone for another year. This was the third time I have entered the APPA awards and it was the first time I have had to do so remotely. I was in Greenland leading a fourteen day photography expedition during the entry process so had to select my images and have prints made before the updated 2013 rules where published and before entries were officially open. My thanks to Kim at the National AIPP office for looking after and entering my prints in my absence. This was also the first time I entered the Science, Environment and Nature Category in lieu of the Landscape category. This was an interesting experiment in that the criteria for judging is very different to the Landscape Category. Pretty much anything goes these days in terms of what is and isn’t allowed when it comes to Photoshop work in the landscape category. Extensive use of textures and multi-image composites are the norm rather than the exception which has seen the boundaries of this category somewhat blur between Landscape, Fine Art and Illustrative. The Science, Nature and Environment category on the other hand has far more rigid rules on post production and as a result I felt this category would perhaps be more appropriate to my general minimalist post production techniques. This year I chose to enter four images from Antarctica that I felt conveyed a feeling of wildlife in the landscape in brooding overcast conditions. I was fortunate to receive a Silver Award and three Bronze Awards (all of which fell one point short of Silver) for the four prints I entered. All four prints were made on Moab’s Exhibition Lustre paper.
This year also marked my 2nd year as a full member of the AIPP which meant I was finally able to receive my Associateship status. An Associateship is awarded to full members of the AIPP who accrue 5 or more points within 4 consecutive years at the APPA awards. I had actually accrued sufficient points for this award in my first year of APPA entry but had to wait for the mandatory two year period to elapse before I could receive the award (which I did last night at the APPA dinner). My current APPA points total sits just a few points away now from a Master of Photography award and I look forward to the challenge of banking these last few points in my fourth year of entry at the 2014 APPA awards next year. 
The Digital Show September 2013 – Guest Speaker
I returned home to Australia a few days ago after two incredible months leading and participating in four different photography expeditions in the Arctic. I will have more to say on each of these individual and amazing trips over the coming weeks as I settle into catching up on email correspondence and sorting, editing and processing the more than 18,000 photographs I made in Iceland, Svalbard and Greenland during the high Arctic Summer. In the meantime, for those of you in Melbourne later this month I will be giving a presentation on Iceland at the Digital Show at the Exhibition Centre this September. The presentation is at 2pm on Saturday the 14th and will focus on the breathtaking landscape of Iceland.
Moab Master Photographer, Gura Gear Pro Team and X-Rite Coloratti Joshua Holko presents Iceland – Forged in Fire and Ice. Iceland is one of the most exciting and rewarding photography destinations in the world. Probably nowhere else in the world is there such a diversity of subject matter in such a relatively small area. Glaciers and geothermal areas, waterfalls and lush green valleys, majestic mountains and black volcanic beaches. Along with ever changing weather and spectacular light conditions. Iceland is geologically a very young country and very much a work in progress. It’s a photographer’s dream come true.
The Digital Show is one of the largest consumer technology events in the Southern Hemisphere. Whether you’re newly passionate about photography, a seasoned creative professional or simply looking to further unleash your creativity, there will be something for everyone — entertaining demonstrations, local and international experts, exclusive product launches and dozens of inspiring talks and lectures.The Digital Show runs from September 13 to September 15 at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre and entry is free is you pre-register online.
www.WILDNATUREPHOTOTRAVEL.com 