Fotoviva Art Prints

We recently came across a website that offers an online course for bringing out the better photographer in you at Proud Photography. The 13 segment interactive course has been developed by prize-winning professionals who will give you personal feedback as they help you develop at your own pace.

Once enrolled you can expect comprehensive and thorough lessons loaded with information designed carefully to teach you how to take over your camera. Online quizzes will refresh your memory from every lesson and homework assignments will give you the confidence you need to put your skills to the test. You will also receive a personal 500MB online gallery that will give you more than enough storage to organize, share, send e-cards and even order your selected prints online.

And if that isn’t enought to get you excited, they are so confident about the quality of the course that they offer a full one year money back guarantee. What’s more right now they have 35% off the enrollment fee so there really is no better time to sign up.

Peter Timko, the CEO of Proud Photography, sums it up perfectly when he says “Unlike other online photography courses, we don’t just gloss over the basics, take your money and run. We cover everything, from the most important basic techniques to how to take the best photos in very specific situations.”

Researchers in Germany have developed the first liquid camera lens. The lens has no moving parts and is capable of switching between two levels of magnification and is considered an important step on the development of liquid zoom lenses. It works by bending light using the curved boundary between watery and oily liquids, and focuses by the application of a voltage.

Although this sounds like something out of Star Trek, it is potentially smaller and cheaper to build than conventional optics and could have a major impact on camera technology in the near future. Samsung have already begun using liquid lenses by building them into some cellphones.

“The creation of a liquid zoom lens would remove the need for mechanical parts, which would be a major advantage,” says Peter Schreiber, a researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute. Changing a zoom lens’s magnification also affects its focus, and causes problems such as pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration. In order to preserve image quality across a range of magnification, zooms require 20 or more lenses. So far nobody has come up with a liquid lens design that can do that. A first step, however, is to design a lens that offers different levels of magnification rather than a continuous range.

Schreiber and colleagues worked with Varioptic, French pioneers of liquid lenses, to come up with a design that switches from a normal view to 2.5-times magnification. The design consists of four liquid lenses and three fixed plastic lenses and offers a magnification of 2.5 times, while when all four lenses are at their flattest there is no magnification.
“The complete length of the system from outer lens to image sensor is 29mm, but it should be possible to reduce that,” says Schreiber. Varioptic is now considering how to take the design on to the prototype stage.
“The lenses are arranged to prevent image distortion while minimising colour distortion. Red, green and blue images must be recorded in sequence and then combined digitally, a process that would increase exposure times,” says Schreiber, “finding less distorting liquids to build the lenses out of is the answer to that problem.”

So although it potentially sounds like great news, this is probably another new technology which won’t find its way into  DSLR cameras for a few years yet. For smaller lenses such as camera phones it could find a market, but we’ll have to see how this one pans out.

We are pleased to announce the upload of our 100th photographic image to Fotoviva! Don Tiffney’s Band of Gold picture became the photograph to help us hit the milestone, which is a beautiful sunset view over a classic English landscape. As with all our prints, it is available to purchase in a range of sizes to suit your walls, as either giclee canvas art or poster print.

Our collection of inspiring prints has grown so much over the last few months thanks to our dedicated team of photographers who’s work is making Fotoviva become one of the best art prints sites on the web. Our brand name is becoming well known and we shall continue to bring you many more unique shots that you won’t find in high street shops. So if you want to have some individual art for your home or office walls check back on a regular basis, or sign up for our newsletter to see what is happening at the Fotoviva store.

We are very happy to announce the arrival of Tim Wallace to the Fotoviva contributor team. Based in the North East and with over 20 years experience in the field of photography covering fields such as public relations, Media, commercial and business, Tim delivers a unique style of work that is both creative and contemporary. He owns a photographic company called Ambient Life that provides high quality photography to both corporate and domestic clients.

Tim says “I believe that the mark of a good photographer is not simply being technically capable but to have the imagination, and drive to pull off that ‘great’ image that lasts in peoples memories.”

His interest in photography started at the young age of 8, fascinated by the way a print appears when being developed. From that point it’s been a major passion in his life. At the age of 16 he started work in the darkrooms of the Western Morning News (Daily Mail Group) where he learned the art of printing and had a baptism of fire into the world of photojournalism, working with many great photographers from both the National Press and agencies such as The Press Association.

At 19 he joined the DCP Photographic Agency based in the South West and went on to spend all his time behind the camera rather than in the darkroom. Tim’s strong knowledge of lighting conditions and exposure controls allowed him to gain much success and mixed with a more ‘contemporary’ style to his work soon found favor with UK the National Press having work published in The Guardian, Independent, and Times to name but a few.

At the age of 23 he had a change of plan and joined the Royal Navy, serving with 42 Commando Royal Marines in many parts of the world. After 5 years service he followed a more corporate route working with Companies such as Hutchison Telecom, Orange, Freeserve, and NTL (Virgin Media).

Tim currently shoots a large volume of work for Aston Martin that has been viewed in such high regard that a specialised ‘Aston Art’ online print gallery will be launched later this month. We have a large range of his work coming to the store over the next few weeks but you can find a few of them in the Modern Art section already. We are very happy to have Tim sell his art through us and look forward to seeing more of his work in the near future.

Just came across this image from the National Geographic website and had to make a post about it. It’s certainly an usual image and fair play to the photographer - I don’t fancy being in his shoes, even if there is a glass screen between the two of them! From the article:

Vallejo, California, May 30, 2007—Cats swimming may seem about as likely as pigs flying, but Odin the tiger is proving the exception to the rule at a U.S. theme park.

Raised by humans at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom outside San Francisco, the white Bengal tiger has been diving for dinner—happily, according to his trainer—since he was a cub.

Big cats in the wild aren’t known to be generally fond of water, though they have been photographed bathing or hunting in the wet stuff from time to time.

Bengal tigers with white fur are extremely rare genetic aberrations. Because the propagation of white tigers in captivity requires inbreeding, their presence in zoos, parks, and theaters is controversial among animal-welfare groups.