What's On! Photographic events for MAY 2013 in Wales

Diffusion Festival 2013

Various Locations around Cardiff 1 - 31 May

Diffusion 2013 is staged in Cardiff, Wales’ capital, a city that in recent years has undergone major economic and social transformation. The festival uses both traditional and new media to create a strong visual presence across existing venues and found spaces and through various interventions in the public realm. We encourage visitors and residents alike to navigate Cardiff and its environs in new ways and to discover facets of the city they would not normally expect to find.

Above all, Diffusion 2013 is a celebration of photography and the photographic image, in all its forms. Whether created, published, exhibited, collected or distributed in a physical or virtual way, the photograph has the power to inspire and provoke reaction, to reflect our own experience and that of society evolving around us.

Events are being updated but the following have been confirmed:

Wednesday 1 May

11am f&d cartier Wait and See unveiling at Oriel Canfas

5 – 7pm Festival Opening Reception and From common differences exhibition opening at St David's Hall

7 – 9pm Alicia Bruce Encore exhibition opening at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama

Friday 3 May

6 – 9pm Exhibition openings at Chapter:

Maurizio Anzeri But it’s not too late, it’s only dark (Gallery)

Gideon Koppel B O R T H (Studio)

Emma Bennett Thief of Time (Art in the Bar)

Saturday 4 May

12 – 2pm European Chronicles exhibition opening at The Cardiff Story (1^st Floor exhibition gallery)

2 – 4pm Exhibition openings at Tramshed:

The Valleys Re-Presented 

Peter Bobby High-rise

Structures of Feeling: The Photographs of Geoff Charles

4.30 – 6.30pm Edgar Martins The Time Machine exhibition opening at Ffotogallery (see below)

5 – 8 pm Wild Oats exhibition opening at Milkwood Gallery

7 – 10pm Barnraising and Bunkers exhibition opening at g39

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Edgar Martins: The Time Machine

Cardiff 1 May - 7 June 2013

In 2010 and 2011, Martins gained exclusive access to 20 power plants located across Portugal. Many were built between the 1950s and 1970s, a time of hopeful prospects for rapid economic growth and social change. The Time Machine records objects and spaces whose grand and progressive designs testify to the scope and ambition of the vision they were built to serve.    Ffotogallery, Plymouth Road, Penarth, CF64 3DH

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Sebastian Liste: Urban Quilombo

Cardiff 4 May - 23 June 2013

Eight years ago sixty families occupied the “Galpao da Araujo Barreto”, an abandoned chocolate factory in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Before that, these families lived in the dangerous streets of the city until they decided to come together and occupy this factory in ruins and turn it in a home. Liste has been working in this project since 2009, living with the families and their daily dramas. Documenting the daily life inside of this community, where the life moves between the universal bipolarity of harmony and chaos, hope and despair.    Third Floor Gallery, 102 Bute Street, Penarth, CF10 5AD

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Helen Sear: Lure

Cardiff 25 May - 21 June 2013

One of Wales’ most important artists, Helen Sear’s practice is characterized by her exploration of the crossover between photography and fine art, her focus on the natural world and the startling beauty of her work. The exhibition sees Sear continuing to explore the act of looking and relationships between nature, space and scale to present still and moving images of remarkable power.    Bay Art Gallery, 54B/C Bute Street, Cardiff Bay, CF10 5AF

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European Chronicles

Cardiff 1 May - 31 May 2013

European Chronicles puts forward a vision of contemporary Europe as experienced through photographic work reflecting various personal, family and community stories. The exhibition showcases the work of Mindaugas Ažušilis, David Barnes, Tina Carr & Annemarie Schöne, John Duncan, Anna Kurpaska, Catrine Val, Arturas Valiaga and others.

The exhibition is presented by Ffotogallery as part of Diffusion: Cardiff International Festival of Photography. A month long festival of exhibitions, discussions, screenings, performances, events and celebrations in both physical and virtual spaces and places.  The Cardiff Story, The Old Library, Cardiff, CF10 1BH

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Maurizio Anzeri: But it's not too late

1 May - 30 June 2013

Anzeri uses found photographs and embroidery to create subtly sculptural pieces in which strangers are given new identities; complex and mysterious. Anzeri sees photographic portraits as landscapes, exploring them in order to layer them with his own maps or orientation to invent what he describes as "other possible evolutionary dimensions for the people pictured". Labyrinths of forms and colours create intriguing geographies of faces, histories and souls with eyes that stare enigmatically from the centre of their 'masks'. Alongside this established practice, Anzeri will show new works that utilise embroidery and personal photography to create imagined or psychological space; private reality that becomes public fantasy.  Chapter, Market Road, Cardiff, CF5 1QE


Also at Chapter:

Diffusion Free Family Workshop 25 May 2013 Zine-a-thon: Join Mark Thomas and learn how to make your own photocopied zine. Diffusion Publishing Fair 25 May -26 May 2013 Diffusion Photobook Symposium 26 May Early bird booking before 1 May £15, after 1 May £20 Book HERE

CreativeLIVE - the world's best photography classroom!

For this post I thought I'd share with you one of the best online photography education sites out there,  creativeLIVE.  Based in Seattle, this company provides free online training for photographers, film makers, web designers and much more but the bulk of it's content is for photographers.  Each week they have an industry leading professional come in to their studio and they stream the work shop live and for free.  The workshops can last from a few hours up to mammoth 5 day events.  Not everyone has hours free each day to watch these work shops and so creativeLIVE makes the files available to download.  These files cost money to download but if purchased prior to, or during the workshop, there is a good discount.  For a three-day workshop (the typical length) the cost is $79-$99 for pre-orders and then $149 after the event.  The video files are all released in HD and are broken down in to chapters - great for jumping straight to the section for complicated bit you wanted to look up.  Occasionally creativeLIVE will have special offers and give discounts on some of their older courses so following their twitter feed @creativeLIVE makes sense.

Some of the courses that I've seen and are worth a look are listed below.  The images are screen captures and so any links there don't work.  I have provided a link to each workshop after a brief description of what you get for your money:

Jasmine Star Wedding Photography

This is a five day workshop that covers almost everything about wedding photography.  Jasmine is one of those really annoying happy American photographers but she is enthusiastic about her work and her tutorials contain loads of great information.  Her style of wedding photography has the american slant and is more the reportage style that is slowly gaining popularity here in the UK over the line up and grin pictures that are traditional.  The course covers subjects that include branding, second shooters, shooting during the ceremony, lighting, posing, working with groups and what to do after the wedding.  The six students on the course are taken to a set-up wedding and talked through everything and then, for one of the sessions, all their images are worked through by Jasmine.  You can find details on the workshop HERE.

Sandy Puc Babies and Bellies

So once you've done the round of wedding photographs then some time later your friends will start having kids and will be looking for a photographer to help them out.  This next workshop is a three-day affair that covers how to shoot from pregnancy to one-year old babies.  As with many of the creativeLIVE workshops the first day is taken up with business information and tips for actually making some money from your work.  It then covers twelve different actual 'live' shoots with babies of different ages and talks through all the different posing, lighting and baby wrangling techniques to create some brilliant images.  With only a few bits of inexpensive lighting equipment she shows how you can build a mini-studio at home to recreate some of the effects.  Sandy's workshop is HERE

Jared Platt The Ultimate Lightroom Workflow

If you still think you need Photoshop to sort out your images then you have obviously never some across Adobe Lightroom.  I was a real sceptic when I was introduced to this software as it just seemed to be a big database for my pictures.  The more I learn about Lightroom the more amazing I find it.  Yes it is a great way to catalogue and store my pictures but it does sooooooo much more!  It's a powerful image editor, it can apply filters to my images, convert to black and white, store geo-caching information, fix badly exposed images, crop and rotate pictures, fix red-eye, get rid of dust and spots, sort out noise, create books that can be ordered from Blurb, or give me total control over my printing from home.  This workshop is a real must and it delves into almost every function of the software.  Aimed at everyone from the novice to pro user there is something here for everyone and I still refer back to it frequently.  You can find the workshop HERE.

Lesa Snider's Photoshop CS5 Intensive Workshop

Whilst Lightroom is perfect for the majority of photo 'fixing' tasks you did still need software like Photoshop if you need to push pixels around a screen or create special effects (as seen in my first blogpost).  I've been fumbling around Photoshop for several years now but could have saved hours of my life if I'd watched workshops like Lesa's in my early days.  Some of the images and effects that are used in the videos seem ridiculously basic but it is all about building an understanding of the way that Photoshop works so you can apply the techniques to your own images.  You can find this workshop HERE.  Her workshop is one of the most popular in the creativeLIVE catalogue and she has recently returned for four one-day workshops that go into specific areas of Photoshop in real depth.

If you love Photoshop then you should also check out Ben Willmore's brilliant creativeLIVE workshop HERE.

John Greengo DSLR Fast Start Courses

What if you've always wanted to make the leap from a point-and-shoot camera to a 'real' DSLR with interchangeable lenses?  You take your shiny camera out of its packaging and realise you are entering a world of confusing buttons and dials, abbreviations and incomprehensible manuals so you end up shooting in 'full auto' mode and never unlock your camera's potential.  CreativeLIVE has this eventuality covered too!

They run regular workshops hosted by John Greengo.  Each of the workshops looks at one specific camera  and then goes through absolutely every function in a few hours.  With the video files you also get a pdf handout you can print for reference.  I thought I knew my way round my Canon 5D Mk2 but John really knows his stuff so I bought the workshop to keep in case I ever get a shooting situation I cant figure my way out.  The major Canon and Nikon semi-pro models are all covered and you can find the workshops HERE more cameras are added if a new model is released (and one for the Olympus OM-D EM-5 is available).

And so much more...

I've just touched the surface of the creativeLIVE back catalogue.  They have workshops on studio lighting, shooting fireworks and light trails, creating websites using Wordpress, getting portraits of strangers in the street, running a professional fashion shoot, creating apps for the iPhone, using Illustrator and so much more. New videos are streamed live most weeks from Thursday-Sunday, as I type this John Greengo has been teaching me how to use the Canon 650D - should I ever buy one :) and this weekend is a two day workshop on creating wedding and portfolio albums.

Check out creativeLIVE!