Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

Phew, what a weekend!

The Perfect Printing photography workshop concluded last night, after 2 days of intensive hands on digital printing and workflow down in lovely Margaret River.

Greg making a point

I would like to thank all the participants for making the course such a success, and an extra special thankyou to Trevor from Team Digital, who came down for the Saturday with a whole car load of toys, including Eizo Screens, screen calibrators, a awesome Epson 3880 printer, a whole selection of new Cancon paper and canvas to try, a Gigapan and the Phase One.  He certainly worked hard for his lunch that day with a whole room full of  enthusiastic participants firing hard questions his way.

Screen Profiling with Trevor

There was a wide range of experience levels within the course, and Greg and I tried to ensure we aimed our talks so everybody got something out of them. We then modified the planned presentations according to the discussions from the day before and the most common questions being asked, there was even a couple of impromptu info sessions to ensure everyone understood the concepts behind the topics, and a couple of bonus discussions on Photoshop tweaks and tricks.

Me talking with my hands

I do hope everyone enjoyed themselves and found this 3 day printing workshop fulfilling and useful,  any feedback from course participants would be most welcome right here on the blog, so dont be shy!

The first day of the Perfect Printing photography workshop for 2010 was last Sunday at the Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club,  it was the most concentrated day of the three, packed with explanations and printing terminology definitions.  There were a few confused looks during the talks, especially during my presentations on colour management theory (what the %#$@ is a Rendering Intent?), but most of those had changed to comprehension by the end.

The test of all of this will come  next weekend at Margaret River when the second component will be run;  it will be more relaxed and more fun with everyone working on their own images and making prints on the Epson 3880 printer, supplied by Team Digital.  We will soon find out who has done their colour management homework…

Back in 2003/2004 i spent a year travelling around Brasil, a country of amazing diversity.  Why i was there is another story for another day, but i took a vast number of images in that year (the majority of them on the Hasselblad XPan), most of which have never seen the light of day.  I put the first one up last week, and gradually i will be putting more and more of them here as i think the Blog is a great place to finally show them and eventually create a category on the website for that and other adventures.

During my stay in Brasil i lived in a city called Santos for several months, which is on the coast of Sao Paulo state. Santos has the dubious honour of being the largest port in South America, with all the pleasures that brings… Santos also has a very long open beach, and on any given day there are always loads of Soccer games running, of all ages, from 3 or 4 year olds playing with 2 sticks for goals, to semi professional clubs having play offs.
Being Brasilians, most of them are great soccer players, so the games are exciting to watch and the sheer number happening at once  is a fantastic thing to witness.

This particular day was a Sunday, a big day for beach Soccer, and about 10am a dense fog rolled in off the sea.  Now fog is great for photography, especially Black and White Photography, and fog in Santos was totally unheard of.  So i grabbed the XPan and ran off to the beach.

These teams playing here are in fact one team split into 2 sides for the day.  One side wearing white shorts the other black. You’ll notice all the team shirts are the same and this is in fact the seniors division of Santos Football club, the team made famous by the magical Pelé. He’s not in this shot…

The official name for this image is “Futbol na Paraia, Santos” Soccer player on Santos beach-Brasil, but the unofficial name is “Caralho!” because thats what the goalie was heard to shout just as this image was taken.  I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what it means…

It was shot on Kodak Tri-X 400 on the Hasselblad XPan with the 45mm lens, which due to the extended field of view, makes it the equivalent of about a 24mm in standard 35mm speak.

The fog gives it a beautiful soft look with the background fading away nicely.  The white disk visible in the sky is in fact the sun, and if you look closely (click on the image), you can see the edge of the water on the far left of the image.

Can you guess which player kicked the goal?

If you’ve been keeping up with the James Price Point Debate, and you are feeling angry by whats going on but also frustrated because you don’t know what you can do… Try these links for a good starting point.

Save the Kimberley

The Wilderness Society

It’s only takes a few minutes, and it’s a numbers game.  If enough of us sign up for these the politicians will have to take notice.

I was looking through some  folders on my computer the other day (while i was supposed to be working) and i came across my images from Brasil that i shot several years ago and have never done anything with.  I have been promising friends over there that these would end up on the website, and so far there has always been too much to do to actually do anything about it.  Well, i’m an expert procrastinator, so while i was supposed to be doing other things i sat down and worked up this image a bit.

I came across the old barman of Parati-Brasil, while walking through some magic coastal bush just out of a 15th century town of Parati (pronounced Para-chi).  The trail went out around some headlands covered in South American rainforest that ran right down to the waters edge, the coastline was craggy and beautiful with many inlets and deep, steep sided bays.

It wasn’t a particularly long or difficult hike, the path was pretty flat and the views were stunning, but it was certainly wilderness.

After about 4 hours of walking we suddenly came across this tiny house perched on the side of the hill at the waters edge, amongst the trees, and a bar… Yes, a bar.

Not quite what i had been expecting, but the beer was cold and welcome, and the barman had a great face.  If the face is the map of a persons life, this guy had been lots of places!  I had my Hasselblad XPan on this trip, its my standard travel camera, or was (until the 5D came along), and although not the usual portrait format i like the details of the mans life and work around him, it adds context.

I’m sorry to say i have forgotten his name, but i will always remember the experience