World Press Photo Awards

World Press Photo is focused on supporting professional photojournalism though seminars, exhibitions, educational programs, and an annual contest. It is the annual contest that attracts the most attention form both the public and photojournalists. A World Press Photo award is a high honour and a sign out outstanding work.

World Press Photo publishes a yeakbook annually of the award winning work, which is well worth reading. Besides the yearbook, the worldpressphoto.org website now has online interview with the award winners about their work. Each 5-10 minute short includes a large view of the award winning photographer, with a small video in the lower left corner of the photographer discussing their work. It's amazing how much skill and effort goes into this work that if often taken for granted by the public.

Good photography is a LOT more than point and click.

Take a Tablet and Call me in the morning

Now, if you're like me, you've heard of tablets and how handy they are to use with photoshop. If you're also like me, you've been doing just fine with a mouse and involved in too many other things to learn a new technology unless it's critical.

When I was at Imaging USA in Florida earlier this year, Jed Toufler (www.v-gallery.net) showed me what he likes about tablets. He had a small Wacom Intous 4x6 tablet (www.wacom.com/intuos) with his laptop for use on the road. He was actually showing some interesting stuff in Photoshop, but I got distracted by how fast he was with the tablet.

Jed's enthusiasm is a bit infectious and I soon found myself in front of one of the vendor booths, buying a 6x8 tablet for myself. Of course, once I got back home, I found myself with several problems. I didn't have a long enough USB cable to reach from my system to the monitor on the other side of the room and other projects soon consumed my time.

Well, along comes my office move and I found myself at the electronics store looking for a few things and remembered the USB problem. With the addition of a USB extender, I could now play with my not-so-new toy.

Jed was pretty honest and said it would take a little bit to get used to the tablet, but would love it. He was absolutely right. I'm not an expert yet with the tablet by any means, but I found myself proficient with it within 10 to 20 minutes - and I love it.

Using a tablet has some pleasant surprises. It's a lot more sensitive than a mouse (or at least my mouse) and you have the added dimension of pen pressure, which affects the brushes particularly. Photoshop brushes now act like real brushes with a tablet, rather than crop circles, as with the mouse.

It doesn't seem to care if you use your left or right hand and even a 6x8 is a comfortable size for desktop work. I haven't even really explored the programmable keys on the tablet, but I can see how they would be useful.

There are larger sizes, from 6x11, to 12x19 and one smaller size, the 4x6, which I'm told works well for laptops. I have no problems with the 6x8, but may play with one of the larger units in the future.

Wacom does another line of tablets called the Cintiq, which actually display the picture on the tablet itself. It's an interesting ideas, but I don't really like. I found mu hand blocked what I was trying to do and was a bit of a hassle. Since artists have been using pens for some time, I presume this may simply be a case of me needing to get used to the tablet screen, but who knows.

I recommend trying a tablet the next time you're working heavily in Photoshop. I found it particularly useful while retouching portraits.