Updates and Changes to Website and Blog

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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.

2012 International Loupe Awards and Photography Competitions

Posted in Antarctica, Landscape Photographs, Media, News and Updates, Photographs, Travel Photography, Uncategorized, Wildlife Photographs8 Comments

The 2012 International Loupe Awards are now in the final stages of judging and if you entered any images into the competition you may have already received an email with your results. If you did enter this year I wish you all the very best and hope you do well. This is the third year I have entered the Loupe Awards (formally known as the Aperture Awards) and I feel it will also be my last. There are now so many online photography competitions that I have decided next year to enter only those competitions that actually judge the final ‘printed image’ (rather than on screen jpegs). In 2013 this will include the Australian Professional Photography Awards, the Victorian Professional Photography Awards and the International Travel Photographer of the Year Award. There may well be more competitions out there that do judge the ‘print’ that I am not aware of but I am going to limit myself to just these three. My decision to abandon the remainder of the competitions is multi-fold and is something I have been pondering for some time. I  have found over the last twelve months that I just do not have sufficient time to devote to these competitions in order to ensure I am conforming with the all the different rules. Secondly the cost to enter many of these competitions has become excessive and I feel that the spirit of the competition in many cases has become lost in the revenue generation machine. Thirdly, more and more of these competitions are proving nothing more than ‘rights grab’ attempts and I feel these particular competitions are muddying the waters for the legitimate ones. Finally the sheer number of photographic competitions has diluted the market and I feel somewhat devalued photography by turning it into a competitive sport. I do not view photography as a competitive sport with my peers where the aim is to out score them. I enter photographic competitions because I want to better my own photography and to continually raise the standard of my work. I am in essence competing against myself and the results I received in the last competition.

Whilst the International Loupe Awards are not a rights grab attempt they have become excessively expensive to enter in my opinion. As a result, this year I decided to enter only two images into the awards.  The first photograph was from my last Antarctica expedition and the second from my summer Iceland workshop earlier this year. I chose these particular photographs as I felt they were somewhat striking and more likely to get the judges attention and stand out from the crowd. It seems I managed to split the judges with two of them scoring the image from Antarctica in the 90’s (including a 95 Platinum Award) and another at a Bronze of 77. Unfortunately the lower score did pull down the average and resulted in a solid Silver Award; which is still a result I am very pleased with. Silver in the Loupe Awards is regarded as a high quality image worthy of recognition in the competition. More importantly for me it tells me my work is consistent since I have consistently received Gold and Silver awards in three years I have been participating. I have no idea as yet what my second entry into the Loupe Awards this year has scored as I have not yet received notification via email.

My decision to abandon the International Loupe Awards next year has nothing whatsoever to do with the Silver Award this particular image scored; or indeed any score any of my work has ever received. Since I have received my share of Gold and Silver awards in the Loupe Awards I feel I have gone as far as I can with this competition and the judging of jpeg files on back lit monitors. I really do not feel like I have completed an image until I have made a print and held it in my hands and as such if I am going to have my work judged in competition my preference is for it to be on what I consider to be the ultimate output – The Print.

X-Rite Coloratti Appointment

Posted in Media, News and Updates, Uncategorized1 Comment

I was delighted and honoured early this week to be invited to become a member of X-Rites Coloratti Photographer Program. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with X-Rite they produce the well known X-Rite Color Checker Passport, the i1 Display Pro colorimeters for calibrating computer displays and a whole host of other color related products for photographers including the i1 Photo Pro 2 and i1iO for creating profiles for printing. Many of these products have been an integral part of my colour managed workflow for some time and are used daily in my studio and in the field in the case of the Color Checker Passport. The X-Rite Coloratti program is an invitation only group that includes some of the world’s top professional photographers whose vision, passion, leadership, and partnership are recognised and valued by X-Rite. I am very honoured to be included amongst them.Just a reminder in case you missed it I was recently interviewed by Scott Sheppard over at Nik Radio. If you are a subscriber to the Nik Radio Podcast you can download the interview directly in iTunes. If you are not yet a subscriber then simply open iTunes and type Nik Radio into the search bar in the iTunes store for a direct link to the Nik Radio Podcast. There are some fantastic interviews with Pro photographers in there and best of all its free. If you don’t have (or want) iTunes you can download an MP3 of the interview HERE for playback in the program of your choice. The download is around 20 megabytes. Enjoy.

Nik Radio Interview

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Over the last year I have become a really big fan of several of the Nik software plug-ins for the Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom programs. In particular, Silver EFX Pro 2, Viveza 2 and Nik Sharpener Pro 3 have become indispensable tools in my image workflow. Not to mention the amazing and very popular Snapseed for the iPhone; which we had a tone of fun with on my last workshop to Iceland earlier this year. I will have more to say about Snapseed in a future blog post; suffice to say for now that this is one amazing application for photographers.

Post production work can be a major consumer of my time so I like to try and minimize my time spent in front of the computer wherever possible and these plug-ins from Nik allow me to more quickly reach the finished result I am after. The guys at Nik Software got wind that I was super keen on these time saving plug-ins and Scott Sheppard from Nik Radio and I hooked up a week or so ago to do an interview via Skype about the workshops and expeditions I lead and all manner of other photography related topics. It was a lot of fun and a great chance to chat about not only the Nik range of products and their use in my photography, but also my own thoughts on the craft of photography, workshops and expeditions and of course the inevitable gear talk that goes along with anything photography related.

If you are a subscriber to the Nik Radio Podcast you can download the interview directly in iTunes. If you are not yet a subscriber then simply open iTunes and type Nik Radio into the search bar in the iTunes store for a direct link to the Nik Radio Podcast. There are some fantastic interviews with Pro photographers in there and best of all its free. If you don’t have (or want) iTunes you can download an MP3 of the interview HERE for playback in the program of your choice. The download is around 20 megabytes. Enjoy.