Australian Photography May 2022

Who would have ever thought we would see war in Europe once again? Following years of escalating conflict and failed attempts at diplomacy dating back to 2014, Russia’s tragic and ill-fated decision to invade Ukraine in February has brought Europe to the brink of wide-scale war once again and led to outpourings of grief around the world. At the time of writing, it seems that this war has every likelihood of grinding on for many months to come. It’s also a war unlike any we’ve seen before – for one, Ukraine is every bit a modern country surrounded by prosperous neighbours, which makes it seem even more real to us in the West as we watch images of refugees flooding Europe’s cities. Ukraine’s capital city Kyiv is a tech hub, home…

MITCHELL KANESHKEVICH Award-winning photographer Mitchell Kaneshkevich is a travel photographer, YouTuber, writer of ebooks and creator of educational photography courses. See more at mitchellk-photos.com SAMUEL MARKHAM Samuel Markham is a self-taught landscape and wilderness photographer based on the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia. See more at samuelmarkham.photography JACKIE RANKEN Jackie Ranken is an Australian born, multi-award winning landscape/art photographer based in New Zealand. See more at qccp.co.nz DOUG GIMESY Doug Gimesy is a professional conservation and wildlife photojournalist who focuses on Australian issues. His clients include National Geographic, BBC Wildlife, and others. See more at gimesy.com…

It was 4am. The sulfur miners we chatted to at a local eatery in Ijen, on the island of Java, Indonesia, had told my wife and I to get down to the crater before sunrise. That way we could see what they called ‘the blue flame’ and avoid the heat. But here we were, in one of the roughest workplaces on the planet, a dangerous terrain of rubble and jagged rocks all around us. It was dark, and we were lost. This is when we bumped into Paing, the man in this image. He was just starting his shift, coming down the narrow path with a flaming torch to light his way. But after years of working at Ijen crater, he could probably have navigated the place with his eyes closed. He…

AUSTRALIA’S BEST PHOTOJOURNALISTS RECOGNISED AT NIKON WALKLEY AWARDS NEWSCORP’S Alex Coppel has been named Walkley Press Photographer of the Year at an event in Sydney over the weekend. The Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism are presented annually to recognise and reward the best in the craft, and extend across all facets of journalism. Finalists are selected by eminent journalists and photographers with overall winners judged by the Wakley’s Judging Board. Coppel received the Press Photographer of the Year Award, the highest recognition for photojournalism in Australia, for a body of work spanning sport, breaking news, features and daily life, all loosely linked by the shadow that the COVID-19 pandemic cast over world events. The Melbourne-based photographer also took out the Sport Photography category for his series showcasing the 2021 Olympics, titled The Games…

CANON PLANS TO RELEASE 32 RF-MOUNT LENSES OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS HERE’S music for Canon RF shooters’ ears the Japanese company has confirmed it plans to release 32 RF-mount lenses over the next four years. The confirmation was shared in Canon’s Corporate Strategy Conference 2022 presentation materials, which also revealed details of the company’s growth strategy for 2022 and beyond. Canon says it plans to expand the scale of its optical technology by ‘cultivat[ing] new users’ and ‘develop[ing] new products,’ and has hopes of hitting one trillion yen ($11 billion AUD) in imaging group sales a year. Even in a market affected by a global semiconductor shortage, Canon is remarkably bullish about its prospects, and despite admitting the ‘market as a whole seems to be bottoming out,’ says it continues to see ‘firm…

Recently I’ve been reviewing the images I shot during a trip to Namibia, Africa, in 2010, including the panorama you see here. Anyone who has read these columns for a while will know how much I enjoy taking panos, but it’s not until recently that I began to consider what advances in image editing could mean for many of the panos I shot years back. In the last 10 years, image editing software has improved immensely and was I able to reprocess a handful of old multi-image panos, taking advantage of a decade of improvements in Lightroom. Photoshop offered stitching back then, but it had its limitations. 12 years later, images that were only OK before or needed a 'Photoshop touch up' suddenly have a new lease of life again with…