Category: News and Updates

JHolko Photography Latest News and Updates

Canons New 200-400mm F4L IS Lens

Posted in Antarctica, Arctic, China, Equipment, Iceland, News and Updates, South America, Sport Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized, Wildlife Photographs, Workshops and ExpeditionsLeave a comment

I find myself getting very enthusiastic about photographic equipment again lately with the pending release of Canon’s new 200-400mm F4L IS lens with inbuilt 1.4x teleconverter. This new super telephoto zoom lens promises to be a game changer for photographers who shoot at these kinds of focal lengths thanks to its inbuilt 1.4x teleconverter and reported superb optics. Canon claims that this new lens “will offer an unsurpassed combination of versatility, first-class optical performance and an enhanced weather-proof construction.” They also claim it will be just shy of a wallet smashing eleven thousand dollars MSRP; which is going to give a lot of photographers serious cause to stop and consider whether this lens is going to be worth the price of admission. The good news is that Canon had a slew of prototypes of this new lens at the London Olympics a few months ago and by all reports and feedback this lens is an outstanding performer and lives up to Canon’s claims.

For Photographers who need a super-telephoto zoom in the 200mm – 560mm range with superb optics this lens is likely to be worth every cent. After spending time shooting from the deck of ships I have come to the realisation that there is no substitute for a high quality super telephoto zoom lens. For shooting wildlife such as penguins, seals, polar bears, walrus and birds from the deck of a ship where the required focal length is always different I expect this lens will likely prove the ultimate no compromise choice for ‘getting the shot’. It is the lens I have decided to take with me on the expeditions I am running to the Arctic and Antarctic in August and November next year. I will also take it to Iceland in March and China in May.

With a focal length of 200mm – 400mm or 280mm – 560mm with the 1.4 TC in place this lens will also be very popular with sports photographers simply because of the extreme versatility it will provide. It is not quite as fast as a 300mm or 400mm F2.8 but I expect this small sacrifice in speed will be a small price to pay for the added flexibility this lens will bring to many sports shooters. I expect this lens to be in hot demand with sports and wildlife photographers when it is released early next year; even with its horrendous price tag. I am hoping to take delivery of this lens in late January next year and will be doing some extensive testing with it before I head to Iceland in March. Look for a full review early in the New Year.

Blog Subscriptions and Updates

Posted in News and UpdatesLeave a comment

The majority of behind the scenes changes to my blog have now been completed and it seems that some readers who may have previously been subscribers have been accidentally ‘dropped off’ the subscription list during the site migration. If you are no longer receiving updates via email when a new post is made then please just enter your email address in the subscription box on the left of this page and re-subscribe for updates. You can of course choose to opt out at any time. The new subscription service is more powerful than the previous and now provides you with a choice of receiving your updates via email or directly to the Social Media platform of your choice (such as Facebook or Twitter for example).

Photography Exhibition : Source Photographica

Posted in Antarctica, Iceland, Landscape Photographs, Media, News and Updates, Travel PhotographyLeave a comment

For those of you in Melbourne over the pre-Christmas period Source Photographica are having an exhibition of photography  from the 7th – 14th of December at their gallery in Brighton which includes some of my own work from Iceland and Antarctica. Source Photographica are located at 1A Rose St. in Brighton and the exhibition is open from 11am – 6pm daily. Entry is free.

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.