Photography News Issue 35

Photography News | Issue 35 | absolutephoto.com

Competitions

Photo 24 The fourth Photography News Photo 24 event was the best and biggest so far with record numbers lasting the whole 24 hours In association with

Most notably, there was an hour-long heavy downpour at midnight during our night-time photo walk around the city that saw more than 50 photographers huddled under the Gherkin. On the upside, the rain and standing water produced plenty of photo opportunities and gave popular scenes a fresh look that our photographers eagerly exploited. Also, the ever-changing sky gave some photogenic cloud formations and great light particularly as the sun dropped lower in the sky. Sunset itself was good in some locations and less good in others. For those photographers at the top of the Shard or on the London Eye, unfortunately there wasn’t a great deal of colour to enjoy but there was still plenty to shoot. The biggest challenge of Photo 24 is staying motivated and occupied during the early hours and for this year’s event we hired two classic London buses to tour the city, stopping at strategic spots to offer the chance of some unique pictures. It was also a great experience and much enjoyed by the 60 photographers who managed to book a coveted place. Noon 18 June saw a record number of over 150 photographers, tired and footsore but happy, back at the starting point. As you can see from the winning pictures overleaf, they had a productive time shooting thousands of great images. Thanks to everyone who came along and made Photo 24 2016 such a massive success. The 2017 event will be launched next spring so keep a look out for that if you want to join the fun.

The fourth Photography News Photo 24, in association with Nikon and Nikon School, took place on 17 and 18 June with 250 photographers from all around the country attending. The aim of this free event is to share the experience of photographing London with like-minded folk and people could stay with us for a few hours or enjoy the whole 24 hours and basically photograph whatever they wanted. We had organised meet-ups, photo walks and several optional events that people could enjoy too. These included sunset meet-ups on the London Eye and at the top of the Shard, enjoying the city skyline from Tower Bridge, a morning boat trip down the Thames and a photo tour of the city on a classic London bus during the early hours of the morning. Most of these events sold out very quickly and it certainly added an extra dimension to the already massive picture potential of Photo 24. Nikon School, in central London, stayed open all day and night, offering refreshments, technical support and the chance for photographers to put their feet up for a while. It proved to be a very popular and useful facility, and its location made it the ideal base. The event kicked off at noon 17 June with a short briefing by PN ’s editor Will Cheung before the photography began in earnest with those inexperienced in such events offered an accompanied photo walk to get them into the swing of things. The weather forecast promised a mix of showers and sun, but the showers were torrential and prolonged which made life challenging.

Photo 24 contests

There were five themed photo contests running for Photo 24 participants with a long-zoom Nikon COOLPIX P900 for the winner of each category. This is a 16-megapixel compact worth £449 with an integral 83x optical zoom to help you capture the most distant action. For the image judged to be the best overall, the photographer receives a Nikon D500, the brand’s DX-format flagship and in the shops at £1729 body only. It is a 20.9-megapixel resolution DSLR, has a 3.2in tilting monitor and an extended ISO range to 1,640,000 – the native range is ISO 100 to 51,200. The D500 also has a large buffer and uses the high performing EXPEED 5 image processor so if you need to shoot 200 consecutive Raws at 10fps, then this camera can do it. Add 4K video shooting, typically rugged Nikon build, SnapBridge connectivity and XQD/CompactFlash storage card compatibility and you have a hugely impressive and capable DSLR.

nikon.co.uk