MARTIN PARR WINS PHOTO ESPANA

•  Martin Parr Wins Photo Espana, Gets Honourary Doctorate! – Britain's Martin Parr (Magnum), one of our most highly regarded living photographers, has been awarded an Honourary Doctorate by his alma mater, Manchester Met. He has also just won the Baume et Mercier Award at Photo Espana. Another British winner at Photo Espana this year was Olivia Arthur (who is one of just two new photographers accepted to join Magnum in 2008).

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MENCAP SNAP! AWARDS

• Mencap Snap! Awards! –
MENCAP held a prize-winners' party for their SNAP! Awards 2008 at the Proud Gallery in London's Camden last month. SNAP! is MENCAP's annual competition for photos of or by people with learning disabilities, sponsored by Fujifilm and supported by the Sorrell Foundation. Gold, Silver and Bronze prizes were awarded in six categories, and winning photos may be viewed here.

[pictured above is Chinese New Year, a SNAP! winning entry from Kwok Man]
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SEVEN PRINTS A MINUTE!

• Trainor DOES 7 Prints a Minute at Cannes! – Keith Trainor gave an impressive demonstration of the capability of modern event photography at the SONY World Photography Awards gala VIP ceremony at Cannes on April 24. In just 90 minutes, he and his crew shot and printed 625 live 6"x8" event photos – an average of almost seven a minute! [expand story >>>]

Keith used the new SONY Alpha a700 camera to take the photographs, they were displayed via ExpressDigital DARKROOM on SONY Bravia widescreen TVs, and printed on a bank of four SONY UP-DR150 fast event printers. You can see Keith's Event Portraits team in action at Cannes in the YouTube video below:



Keith used simple borders in ExpressDigital Darkroom to put a black keyline and border on the images, and to include the logos of the SWPA and SONY.

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SONY WORLD PHOTO AWARDS!

• SONY World Photo Awards! – The UK's Vanessa Winship has won the SONY World Photography Awards Photographer of the Year, in the professional category, for her portrait of two little Eastern Turkish girls, "Sweet Nothings – rural schoolgirls from Eastern Anatolia, Turkey". The award was presented last Thursday evening at the SWPA VIP gala ceremonies in Cannes, France.

Vanessa Winship has been working in the Balkans since 1999 and currently lives in Istanbul. She graduated with a BA in Film, Video and Photographic Arts from Central London Poly in 1987 and did her postgraduate Diploma in Photojournalism at the London College of Printing. In 1998 she won a World Press Photo first prize (Arts stories). [expand story >>>]

The 2008 Sony World Photography Awards are the inaugural SWPA awards. The prize for the World Photographer of the Year is $25,000. The judges include Nan Goldin, Bruce Davidson, Tom Stoddart, Elliott Erwitt and Martine Franck.

James Kennedy, General Manager Marketing Communications, Sony Digital Imaging Europe said, “The Awards really are a showcase for the photographic industry at its highest level. It has been wonderful to be part of an event that brings together such phenomenal talent.”

Founder of World Photography Awards Scott Gray added, “This event is the culmination of what has been a fantastic first year for the Sony World Photography Awards. We thank everyone who entered and look forward to the second year already.”

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KEITH TRAINOR CONFIRMED FOR CANNES!

• Keith Trainor Confirmed For Cannes! – SONY have chosen a UK photographer to be the official tog at their SONY World Photography Awards in Cannes on April 24! Keith Trainor, one of the UK's best known event photographers, has been confirmed in the role. This event is going to be one of the most prestigious in photography. The award for the World Photograph of the Year, the l'Iris d'Or, will come with a $25,000 cash prize. [expand story >>>]

Keith has a great deal of experience of shooting black tie events, including the annual Master Photographers Association Awards here in the UK, where his photos raise thousands of pounds for charity. (He is ably assisted at these gatherings variously by his Event Portraits team, his photographer/partner Beverly, and the couple's daughter.) Keith is well known for giving lectures, seminars and workshops on Event Photography throughout Europe and the U.S.A.

Event Portraits bought most of their event equipment – including SONY 6"x8" printers which they will use at the Awards ceremony, and the flight cases these will travel in – from leading eventing specialists www.photomart.co.uk.

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PULITZER PRIZES FOR PHOTOGRAPHY!

• Pulitzer prizes for photography! – The 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography has been awarded to Pakistan-born American photojournalist Adrees Latif of Reuters, for his shot of a mortally wounded video journalist, fallen and lying amongst protestors, as they were attacked by Burmese troops in Yangon on September 27, 2007.

The prize for Feature Photography has gone to Preston Gannaway for the series of photographs she took to accompany a Concord Monitor feature documenting a woman and her family as she was dying prematurely from cancer. [expand story >>>]

The Pulitzer Prizes for Journalism may be awarded to entrants of any nationality, as long as the work in question has appeared in a U.S. daily or weekly. Pulitzer's are arguably the world's most prestigious awards for journalism.
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SONY WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS!

• Sony World Photography Awards! – The SONY World Photography Awards will be presented at Cannes on April 24. This is the inaugural year of the awards, and coincides with the arrival of SONY's Alpha system (the corporation's new family of DSLR's and lenses). The presentations will take place at a VIP gala evening in the Palais des Festivals and will include an award to a noted individual for their contribution to photography. [expand story >>>]

Winners in the amateur category have been announced already, and include two Britons – Martin Kharumwa and Kerry Grainger – as well as overall winner Dr. Arup Ghosh, an Indian amateur with a remarkable portfolio of travel photography – shot in the subcontinent – who won with his photograph of a barber at work.

The SONY World Photography Awards are richly endowed, and they're judged by some of the leading names in photography today. The awards ceremony will make a big splash. And SONY have enlisted Magnum to curate an exhibition of the winners, to be displayed alongside some of the most iconic prints in the history of photography.

SONY is an established leader in broadcast systems, and in professional and commercial photo printing. Their sponsorship of these awards, and the corporation's introduction of professional Alpha DSLR models, could be read as indicating how serious they are about competing with Canon and Nikon for mindshare amongst pro photographers. [add comment]

KODAK MPA WEDDING & PORTRAIT AWARDS 2008!

• Kodak MPA Wedding & Portrait Awards 2008! – It's come around again! The 2008 MPA Kodak Wedding & Portrait Awards is now open for entries! Entry fees are just a pound a pop, you can submit as many entries as you like, and all the money goes to the PACE Centre, a charity for physically disabled children, based in Aylesbury, Bucks. [expand story >>>]

The competition is open to any professional photographer (not just MPA members) but the materials used need to be from Kodak. Closing dates for entries are May 31 and August 30, 2008.



The Pace Centre (shown in their YouTube video above) helps children with motor disorders (such as cerebral palsy). PACE provides education and therapy for children from 6 months to 12 years and beyond. [add comment]

DOLI 0810 MINILAB WINS DIMA

• DOLI 0810 MiniLab wins DIMA! – The Shanghai Doli 0810 minilab has won the 2008 PMA DIMA Digital Printer Shoot-Out competition in Las Vegas this year, in the Industrial High-Speed 4"x6" RA-4 printer category. [expand story >>>]

The DIMA win is based on image quality, as measured by quantitative factors used by colour scientists, and also by qualitative factors, such as flesh tones and neutrality, that were assessed by a panel of expert judges. The win is a testimony to the engineering and design of the Doli 0810. It sends a message to photo lab owners that when they buy the affordable Doli 0810, they're getting a machine that will produce better prints than some systems costing twice as much. [add comment]

SONY UPDR150 IS A DIMA WINNER!

• SONY UP-DR150 Is A DIMA Winner! – The SONY UP-DR150 photo printer won the DIMA Digital Printer Shoot-Out in the 6" dye sub roll printer category at PMA in Las Vegas last month. The competition was judged on image quality. [expand story >>>]

UP-DR150 has been a great success for SONY. In the UK it spearheaded the corporation's further penetration of the event photography market, where it was well received by 6"x8" users for its unbeaten speed, and for image quality the public loved. In the kiosk arena, it was the machine at the heart of the scores of kiosks sold by SONY to ASDA in what must have been the coup of the year in 2007 in the imaging industry.

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