For those who are not awake to the media gold mine that is the NFL Superbowl. The Big game was today, Superbowl XLIV was contested between The New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. The Superbowl is the Mecca for all types of media, with more money being spent on television advertising during the game then most Australian TV networks would see in a year. This is well and truly a circus.

As you can imagine with this much interest in a game of sport, photographers are all over it, with images from this years Superbowl to reach billions of viewers, images are in high demand and images will be delivered and posted via the internet faster then ever before. The game has only been over for 20 minutes (at time of writing) and I have found numerous photo blogs of professional imagery post processed laid up with fancy text and published for the world to see......within 20 minutes!!! and that was only how long it took me to find it. I would wager most of my money that these images were up and ready to go even before the final siren blew.

Media photographers in the 21st century work fast! and they can because of the internet. The photographers who will be the most successful from today’s events will be those who have their images ready the fastest, those with images in front of millions of viewers, some of these are guaranteed to be editors from the worlds media outlets looking for images to use NOW!

The message here is simple, if your planning to be a professional photographer in any field and you don’t have some kind of web presence.....Get one! Never has the ability to show your images to a global audience who are looking for them has never been easier, or cheaper! Photo blogs can be set up for next to nothing these days, and sites like www.photoartgallery.com give you a space to upload and display your images to a global audience for free!

So no web presence? Get crakin!!

and Well done Saints and Congratulations people of New Orleans!

Photographers all over the winning team in Superbowl XLIV.

Image on the net within minutes of the win. Getty Images.

Okay, so maybe I am craving coffee...I haven't had my morning hit yet :(

Lavazza are one of the few coffee companies to really go all out with their advertising. They even commission photographers David La Chapelle & Annie Leibovitz.

So here are few photos from the ever mesmorising, tasty.....delicious & addictive, Lavazza!!

Shot by Annie Leibovitz

I have a question before I devour some caffeine though! - Does advertising have an affect on your taste? For example, when I see coffee in ads, I ALWAYS feel like drinking un cafe......or deux!!!

xxKaterina

The digital camera in all it's guises proves to be an omnipresent wonder of capturing modern day life. When you think about it, it was not long ago at all that we were still stuffing film into our cameras for special events and of course for fun and the sake of art.

Present day is a far different story. Digital image capturing devices come in all shapes and forms like watches, phones, compacts, DSLR's.....even swimming goggles! When something even remotely interesting happens anywhere in the world it will no doubt be captured and shared within minutes. When something really interesting happens anywhere in the world, these technologies allow image sharing to spread virally and globally within minutes. Nothing and no-one is safe anymore. The next image taken at the top of Sydney's historic clock tower on Broadway  (courtesy of the daily telegraph) is a classic example of this but we have a feeling these two "friends" didn't mind one iota!

"Romp around the clock!"

Hi all,

Lots to talk about here so I'm going to jump straight into it.

Congratulations  angeliquejordonna for taking out Image of the Week! This particular photo is a wonderful example of composition. It just puts you on the bench looking at that beautiful scene unfolding. (and thinking that old yawn at the movies move is a bit old but still effective nonetheless)

The light is nice and soft and the colours nice and muted (for a sunset) Great stuff!

For those of you who still don't know, (I'm thinking you might be part ostrich) Photo Art Gallery announced that their brand spankin' Festive photo comp is open & underway. What a great way to kick off the festive season! When you go to the comp portal just have a good look at the prize pool. There's about $4000.00

worth of festive goodies to fill your stocking for the next four years! It's all pretty straight forward. Four Festive themes, Family, Friendship, Food (& beverage) & Fun. Four weeks to enter your best 5 images per theme. 20 finalists chosen from each theme that will go into the Grand Festive Finale where the best

overall Festive image wins... and wins the massive major 1st prize. There is also a weekly winner for best entry of that week! Awesome stuff!

So to coincide your best comp images with Christmas....Photo Art Centre are coming to the party. Just think of those awsome family shots as a book or canvas or those friendship shots as a unique card or canvas or all of that festive fun put into a photobook to capture the memories forever.

Just how are they coming to the party I hear you ask? With a whopping 15% Discount on EVERYTHING until Jan 15th 2010!! All you have to do is use the promo code   PHOTOG    on checkout to get your discount. There's an early Chrissy present and a half!

Good luck with the comp and have a truly festive season with your family & friends, with lots of food & lots of fun!

Paul (the festive season's so bright, I gotta wear shades...)

Oh yes people, it's time for some more photography links to satisfy your eyes til they turn square!

WebUrbanist brings us some awesome works of light graffiti.

Amazing insect photography by Igor Siwanowicz. Up VERY close and personal.

Wow-inducing examples of photo manipulation. My personal favourite is the man punching himself in the face.

Teenage photographer Arielle Nadel and her 365 Days of Danboard. Cute, and strange!

A few shots of the stunning Maldives.

The Chive shows off a collection of amazing photography. No particularly genre, and mostly awesome.

The story of Katie Kirkpatrick Godwin and the beautiful photos that go with it. I dare you not to tear up!

Sweet Rockabilly photos by Erik Refner. Did I mention they're saweet?

I have plenty more where these came from, but I'm sure you people have work to do! I can't have you glued to the computer for too long, so stay tuned, there'll be more soon enough!

Em.

There are certain accomplishments made by people pushing beyond the limits of what we think is possible. When you hear about these accomplishments, words are simply not enough to do the story justice. World number 1 hanglider Jon Durand fulfilled a lifelong dream to surf the rare phenomenon known as the Morning Glory Cloud in Queensland.  This is where photography comes into it's own as a spectacular vehicle of visual communication. Go here for the story. Extreme sports photographer and Nikon ambassador shot using a Nikon D300S + 10.5mm fisheye.

The following photos are a poignant display of powerful emotive eye-popping photography. Incredible!

The video is in the blog here

Buenos Dias fotógrafos!

For some reason I can't stop thinking about travel and foreign countries of late. Spain is one of my favorite European destinations and from a photographic point of view it is simply stunning. From the wonderful cityscapes of Barcelona to the dusty plains and great fields of ye old countryside in central rural Spain.

This weeks curated photo of the week invokes memories of that countryside for me. LauraSmith"s main love is capturing beautiful black and white farmland landscapes where she lives on Eyre Peninsula, South Australia. Her image titled Hussshhh is striking in it's use of bright daylight with a slow shutter speed. Note the movement and life that is breathed into the landscape.The dramatic sky and clouds just compliment the scene and add a weight and balance to the photograph as a whole. An aperture of f/22 maintains her depth of field and gives an impression of a vast limitless field.

Amazing News Photography

These  amazing images are the 2009 finalists in Australia's top photojournalism awards, the Nikon-Walkley Press Photography Awards.

 Exhibition currently on at the Australian Centre for Photography. The winners are announced next month.

Just click on the photo to get taken to the gallery. Inspirational, amazing, inexplicable and many other superlatives!

Well as weeks go it doesnt get much bigger than that...well except next week maybe.

A big week of comings, goings, portals, competitions and Photos at the Gallery....but its Friday now and this glass of Vino tastes like Gold ( if gold has a taste ).

Spent two days in Melbourne with our new tech team Simon and Richard who are starting next week and just for the fun of it we launched a New look Home page, The Photo Art Centre and The Singapore Sun festival photo competition whilst we were at it. The team have worked around the clock to get it in order and whilst there is still much to do at least we have good vision about whats required and where we are headed. Its only getting better from here and the feedback from the members has been great.

Many interesting meetings both in Melbourne and Sydney too with potential alliance partners and investors with alot of interest in our new competition portal so it seems like thats going to keep us very busy. The Photo Art Centre promotion will start next week where we will be offering some great discounts and bonuses to members and have heaps of new products coming at that venue. Anyone with a website is welcome to talk to us about setting up the PAC on their site and we will gladly issue Promo Codes and some added benefits for interested parties to share the Photo love.

My monthly meeting schedule with buyers came out today and it looks like I will be pounding ther pavement and covering alot of ground promoting our members work around the country next month. Having a regular schedule of meetings every month does help and there are some really exciting projects on the cards so I hope we get to bag one of those elephants soon and get to give heaps of our members the opportunity to get some exposure.

Magic Hour Competition finishing Monday so I imagine its going to be a very big weekend of Curation for Team Ph.Art. Some amazing images in the Comp.....so judging will provide all of its usual challenges. Magic Hour might be the first comp we do a formal book of the Top 50 images for so that would be exciting and great for members to get some more exposure.

I made some comments on the name and brand changing in the PhOrum so no need to go over it again as you can catch the goss and leave a comment there if you want to.

So thats it for me this week...have a great weekend.

Coppo

Members - 8504

Images on display - 65,341

 Like sands of the hourglass.....these are the last days of our magic hours....

Ne ne ne ne neeerrrr neerrrrr na na ... yeah we think you get the idea...

Hello all!

Welcome to another week, and the end of another weekend (sad face)

I wonder how you all went and what you shot over the weekend, anything interesting, different or difficult?

Myself, I took a visit to Sydney's Taronga Zoo, A life long favourite of mine and an absolute special for great photos of subjects you don't get to see every day.

However as I mentioned I have been to this Zoo a couple of times already, and the inclination to just grab my 70-200 throw it on my 5D and get shootin' is almost an involuntary action. Once you have shot at the zoo a couple of times with a tele lens, good shots are almost present themselves, and this can be very VERY satisfying, especially when you get so close as to fool others into thinking you have captured the images on Safari on an African continent! However I wanted something different this day, I Wanted to create an opportunity to force myself to try new things, so, I left the 70-200 at home, slapped on a 50mm 1.8 and left.

Thats right, going to a shoot subjects that are quite happy to stay at the very back of their enclosures and make it extremely difficult for you to get a good picture of them, I chose to take a lens that would get me no closer then most of my friends could get with their compact digital cameras, much to their confusion when they made the assumption and asked "that looks like an expensive camera!, you must be able to get really close with that!?..." upon arrival of course you notice the abundance of other photographers, all with as expensive or more expensive cameras then mine and ALL with big, long, very impressive looking telephoto lenses attached to said expensive cameras, this can be off putting but I insisted that having to create interesting pictures in camera for myself would be far more rewarding then getting a nice image, simply because I used a long lens to get nice and close to my stationary subjects.

So I went about my day, having to think each time about how I would approach this shot, compose it and execute it. Knowing that if I could make a few good images today, they would be good because of my ability and knowledge and not because I had the expensive gear allowing me to get up and close and simply snap away.

Its because of this that I found these results a lot more pleasing.

let me know what you think, and also when have you gone about a shoot in a "non traditional" way as to give you a different set of results?

unitll next week!

GE

Today’s Photo Art Gallery Photographer of the Day is the wonderful Jodyandherart…

Check out their gallery. http://www.photoartgallery.com/artist/jodyandherart

Here’s a couple of gems to whet your appetite…