FOCALPOINTThe Official MIPP Newsletter March 2015

www.mipp-malta.comIssue No. 49

Editor:Th erese Debono

Assistant Editor:Kerstin Arnemann

Design:Th erese Debono

Article Vetting:Vince DeBono

Articles:Various contributors

Editorial Advice:Kevin Casha

Contact:newsletter@mipp-malta.com

Newsletter Team

We recommend you get out there and brave the weather and capture those dramatic skies! March is here and cloud season will be at its best! I know that for some of you clouds are full of rain, but more oft en than not March off ers some lovely cloudscapes!

Th is month we also have a great talk which should inspire those members who are planning their yearly trip! Guido Bonett will be taking us for a walk in Africa during his talk with his wonderful imagery. Make sure you do not miss out on this one !

Also there are so many events happening this March, make sure you check out the

EDITORIAL If you want your photos featured on the newsletter’s front page just send the images to newsletter@mipp-malta.com. Your contributions are always welcome!

exhibitions which Kerstin put together for you. With all these events one can’t hope that eventually this bad weather will ease off and welcome spring into our lives!

Meanwhile enjoy a cup of coff ee with this newsletter and enjoy!

Th erese & Kerstin!

Top Image:EditorTh erese DebonoAbove:Assistant EditorKerstin Arnemann

Find us on:

CONTENTS

pg 2 President’s viewpoint Guts & Passion: Achieving your goals!pg 4 Featured MIPP member George Swindellspg 14 Out & About March Eventspg 18 MIPP Notice Give Malta a Centre for Photographypg 20 MIPP Talk Walking in Africapg 22 Past Monthly Event David Pisani Talkpg 24 MIPP Notice Kevin Casha at the US Embassypg 27 Invitation ‘Th e Overlooked Perfomance’ by Alex Attardpg 28 MIPP Calendar Mark your diariespg 29 MIPP Notice Studio Lights for hirepg 30 Member’s Gallery PTYA Standings

MARCH 2015

cover artist Romana Wyllie

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Th is month’s cover is graced by Romana Wyllie’s image called ‘Elenya’.

Her image was submitted in this year’s fi rst edition of PTYA Competition.

So far Romana is currently leading this year’s competition!

Keep it up Romana!

Guts & Passion: Achieving your Goals!

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I was recently pleasantly surprised by the work of David Pisani, who recently kindly agreed to share his experiences and passion with MIPP members. It was in-spiring to witness the diffi cult tasks and work that David not only set himself to do, but successfully accomplished. Due to his drive to engage himself in photography projects he believes in, without the shackles of a commercial brief, he has managed to come up with various photography ‘collections’ which not only have an interest-ing concept but have pictorially recorded various aspects of our urban life – aspects which would have otherwise been lost forever.

David is a very unassuming, quiet and refl ective person, but this exterior actually masks a boiling passion which internally pushes him towards his goals. He is not afraid to work on subjects which have no commercial prospects. When viewers en-gage with his work, the feelings and comments vary greatly – some love his work, others see it as only documentary – but that is the fascination of photography. Th e

Kevin Casha

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viewpoint

way viewers engage with photographs usually all boils down on their ‘conditioning’ and knowledge. Th at is one of the main reasons that viewers diff er in their opin-ions. Th is is benefi cial because if everyone liked the same things, the world would truly be a boring place with little variety in imagery!

I particularly like David’s ‘Vanishing Valletta’ images. In this work he has, on many occasions, managed to see and create aesthetic and meaningful images from sub-jects which most ‘photographers’ would not even glance at.

Yet, one project which particularly enthralled me is his night photographs of Paceville or PV (as referred to in the book, “Night and Day.”) Th is is one subject which is close to my heart and one that I had, for a number of years, been try-ing to instigate my students to tackle. Yet none took up the challenge until David brilliantly started this fascinating work. His work on this subject really brings out the decadent feel of PV and its trappings. Th e journalistic elements of the photo-

graphs aptly depict and touch on the life of Malta’s main entertainment area. In my opinion, David has borne out in his images even, alas, the boredom and the hopelessness that some revellers seem to experience in what is primarily an area of entertainment. Th e feelings that the mostly youthful crowd of Paceville usually bear do not seem to be of happiness, inclusion or a love of life, but rather of despair and escapism through alcohol, sex and other substances.

Th is is a project that David should revisit and continue to slowly expand on. It will raise awareness and defi nitely fi ll in some glaring gaps that we have when docu-menting youth and society in our country.

Th e book NIGHT&DAY, by David Pisani and Elise Billiard, was part fi nanced by THE MALTA ARTS FUND AND co-sponsored by SO Galerie and Computime Ltd.

NIGHT&DAY is available online at www.edebooks.eu

Article by Kevin CashaImages by David Pisani from ‘Night & Day’

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featured member

featured member

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THE HIDDEN NATURAL WORLDGeorge Swindells is a regular at our monthly meetings, so this time round we decided to feature him. He came back with some amazing imagery which we just can’t not share! Read on and discover how George goes about his photography expeditions!

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Photography has been off and on, blown hot and cold with me for some 60 years now, but I only came to Na-ture Photography recently.

Previously my main interest lay in landscape, derelict buildings and street photography. I was not a people pho-tographer, too shy! With these subjects I was able to keep to myself but at the same time chase my quest for images with atmosphere, character and mood. In the analogue days that meant fi nd-ing subjects that conveyed all the at-tributes I wanted and rendering them on fi lm in my camera. Th e fi lm I used most would be colour slide, cheaper and quicker to see fi nal images.

How surprised I was to fi nd subjects that gave me the images I desired in my photographic quest literally right under my feet.

Please understand I was not and still am not any sort of expert on nature and I approach my subjects as photo-graphic models. But you cannot fol-low this genre of photography with-out some degree natural history being absorbed. In my case I have been very lucky to be able to walk on the wild side with my good friend and natural-ist, Guido Bonett.

Since taking an interest in Nature and Macro Photography I have come to realise how much of our world we

tend to ignore because we don’t see it. When you walk in the country side, or even down your streets, unless you are specifi cally looking for something dif-ferent you will miss the fact that you have seen 5 species of butterfl y (they are just butterfl ies) you’ve crushed various species of fl ora and scared away a whole range of fauna.It is not until you get intimate with the natural world and start ‘seeing’ what you have before your eyes that you re-alise that there is a vast landscape and range of micro seized subjects waiting to be photographed.

But here’s the rub, nature is ever changing and when you go out to pho-tograph her it is as though sometimes she is shy, as if though there is noth-ing to be seen. An awful truth is that there are many subjects that a couple of years ago would be in abundance, today you may not see any of them at all. But when nature puts on a show, be prepared to be amazed – like the Afri-can Monarchs, a butterfl y that had mi-grated from Africa in November 2013 and covered the island within a cou-ple of days. When Guido saw the fi rst one I thought he was going to have a heart attack. He told me it was so rare to see them. Some days later we stood in a Carob tree (Harruba) in Foresta 2000 at Ahrax in Mellieha and it was as though we were in a butterfl y house. I was also privileged to see for the fi rst time a chameleon hunting. I was pho-

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tographing a Red Admiral in brilliant condition in the same tree when I no-ticed a chameleon slowly creeping up. He became motionless and I realized he was going to strike. I managed to get some of the action but not the ac-tual contact.

I get ahead of myself. I wanted to cov-er ‘how’ we go about photographing the world of nature we follow, which is predominantly with macro lenses and whenever we can long lenses for birds.Macro is essential to get into the world of plants, insects and reptiles. Also it is essential to get down and dirty to get the right angles to give eye con-tact and subject isolation from back-grounds. Whatever we photograph we fi nd sound photographic techniques are just as important as they are in any other form of photography.

When I fi rst started out in this genre I was using a 70mm Macro Lens on my K10 PENTAX. In our world a true macro lens is one with 1:1 magnifi ca-tion, anything else will not do. I soon found out the 70mm Sigma, despite being a classic macro lens with bril-liant image quality, it was too short. I was having to get too close to the sub-ject, which frightens my subjects away. My next lens was a 100mm Sigma 2.8 lens now on a PENTAX K7. Th is was much better, however since it in-creased in length when focusing at 1:1 it also caused problems with being too

close to the subject, especially with in-sects and reptiles. In the end I had to ditch my Pentax cameras, as the lens I wanted and needed was only available for Nikon and Canon mounts.

I bought the Nikon D7100 and the Sigma 150 2.8 macro lens. Th is lens is a classic but heavy.

Lighting wise we found the ring fl ash-es we were using were giving fl at im-ages. Guido also had a problem when photographing snakes for his fi eld work and wanted a rig that allowed the standard fl ash to be mounted in such a way that it was positioned over the top of the lenses front elements. I researched fl ash mounts for him and came up with a solution that resolved the problem. Th is is now the rig we both use.

It is also important to have a good angle fi nder to allow camera angles at ground level. One other essential piece of equipment has no photo-graphic technology in it and this is a pair of knee pads. Believe me you will not go on many macro nature expedi-tions without them.

And last but not least a fl ask of coff ee. Th e fi nal reward for a day’s shooting in nature is to sit and enjoy a cup of cof-fee in the tranquillity of natural sur-roundings. With all this packed in my backpack, a nice but not too hot a day

with light winds, and it is as close to heaven a nature photographer can be. Th e other branch of nature photography I love is the use of a long lens for birds. For me the ultimate experience was when we went to Bulgarian wetlands to photograph birds on migration. It was amazing. I am still trying to fi nish my editing of the im-ages taken and quite frankly I am amazed at some of the images I got that I had not realized were so good. But that’s another story.12

Article & Images by George SwindellsPage 4: African MonarchPage 7: Female Common BluePage 8: Egret FishingPage 10: Small Flowered Tongue OrchidPage 12: Chameleon with catch

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March EventsOUT AND ABOUTSince art is not only about photography, Kerstin came up with the brilliant idea of selecting a few monthly events and pointing them out to our members so that you visit these interesting exhibitions/installations/book launches and be inspired! Enjoy!

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Aft erselfi e – A Collaborative Maltese-Italian Exhibition

Venue: ST James Cavalier, VallettaDates: 13th February - 15th March 2015

http://valletta2018.org/events/aft erselfi e-a-collaborative-maltese-italian-exhibi-tion/

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Th e Overlooked Performance by Alex Attard

Venue: St. James Cavalier, VallettaDates: 7 March at 10:00 to 5 April at 21:20

https://www.facebook.com/events/781654661914718/?ref_dashboard_fi lter=upcoming

A Brush with Passion by Joseph Casapinta

Inauguration 9th March 2015 at 18:00hrsOpen to the Public 10th – 16th March 2015

Venue: Th e Palace, Valletta

Opening timesMon - Tues - Wed: 09:30 - 16:30Th ur - Fri - Sat - Sun: 09:30 - 18:30

https://www.facebook.com/events/789065714513739/?ref_dashboard_fi lter=upcoming

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Alluring Vignettes by Alfi eAlpha

Opening Exhibition: 5th March 2015 at 19.00hrsVenue: Malta Society of Arts, Republic Street, Valletta

6th March- 26th March 2015Monday to Friday 8.00 to 19.00Saturday 9.00 to 12.00

https://www.facebook.com/events/780366665350243/

Exhibition by Daniel John Bugeja

Dates: 7th February to 31st March 2015Venue: Palazzo de Piro

http://palazzodepiro.com/27-forthcoming-events/312-exhibition-by-daniel-john-bugeja

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Women in Malta by Amanda HsuPortrait Exhibition

Dates: 9th to 20th March 2015Venue: Malta Chamber of Commerce

http://amandahsu.com/exhibition-project-women-in-malta/

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We would like to appeal to all MIPP members, friends and photography lovers to go on Facebook and ‘Like’ this page. More important, please share the page and tell all those who are sensitive and believe in this genuine appeal. It is important that we have numbers so that perhaps the authorities might think it worth their while to listen. Let us all try and push for something which would benefi t all Mal-tese photographers. Th e link is: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Give-Malta-a-Center-for-Photogra-phy/403398533156103

Give Malta a Center for Photography!

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Walking in Africa Guido Bonett

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Guido’s talk this month is about his long journey of circa 5,700km through four african countries; South Africa, Na-

mibia, Botswana and Zambia on a truck and camping out in the wilderness!

Do not miss out on this talk!

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There was a good turn out for David Pisani’s talk on 12th February titled ‘Th e Professional Artist: Confl ict & Compromise’. David Pisani gave a good talk men-tioning how he barely shot anything on his fi rst assignment in Sicily whilst on a voluntary event due to the culture shock. His fi rst exhibition was in the Binneale in Paris, and he got his Dubai assignment aft er his Valletta Project. Aft er that he went on to Cyprus photographing buildings which were destroyed by the war and never restored, and also how he progressed onto Japan.

He emphasized alot about the delicate balance between being an artist and a com-mercial photographer, how both are good in their own respects.

David Pisani published two books, ‘Transit’ and ‘Night & Day’ and both can be purchased from http://edebooks.eu

Past Monthly Event

Above: David Pisani

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Above: Kevin Casha introducing David Pisani

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Kevin Casha at the United States EmbassyMIPP President, Kevin Casha, recently delivered an informative lecture on the work of iconic American coloured photographer, Gordon Parks. Parks was an incredibly talented person whose star studded career included working with Life Magazine and Vogue as well as being the fi rst Afro-American to Direct a movie. Th e Embassy talk which was very well attended, was the fi rst in a series of lectures on iconic American photographers who historically, have left an indelible mark through their photographic work as well as in their outstanding personal achieve-ments.

Th e lecture, which was held at the United States Embassy, in Ta’ Qali, was also at-tended by the United States Ambassador to Malta, H.E. Gina Abercrombie-Win-stanley and the Deputy Chief of Mission, Mr Terry Flynn.

Caption shows Kevin Casha being greeted by Deputy Chief of Mission, Terry Flynn

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THE OVERLOOKED PERFORMANCE Exhibition by Alex Attard

This Friday 6th March sees the opening of Alex Attard’s Exhibition called ‘Th e Overlooked Performance’, curated by Dr. Vince Briff a.

‘Renzo Piano’s parliament for Valletta is nearing completion. For over two years, photographer Alex Attard observed the site as it developed and recorded the ephemeral art beneath the face of this historic architectural intervention’

Alex Attard is an MIPP member and he kindly agreed to give a personal walk-through of his exhibition in order to informally discuss the concept, preparation and work involved in producing his engaging exhibition.

Family and friends who are interested are invited to attend on Friday 20th March at the Upper Galleries of St James Cavalier, Valletta at 19:30hrs. Th e exibition will be open for the public from the 7th March till the 5th April.

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CALENDAR

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3rd MarchMonthly Talk with Guido Bonett19:30hrs, Le Meridien

10th MarchInt. Online Competition - Session 2

19:30hrs, Le Meridien

22nd MarchOne Day Seminar Venue and schedule tbc

7th AprilModels & Portable Flash on Location,

Keith Darmanin; 18:00hrs; TBC

14th AprilPTYA Judging Session - Live Events19:30hrs, Le Meridien

Th is set of electronic studio fl ash units has been kindly donated to the MIPP by PHOTOIMAGES (photoimages@maltanet.net ) of Laurent Ropa Street, Birkirkara, who are now under the management of Matthew Briff a. Photoimages are the distributors of Interfi t lighting and a host of other accessories useful for both the hobbyist and the professional photographer. To further increase the service we give to MIPP members, we are happy to announce that the MIPP is now in possession of an INTERFIT EX150 MK.3 KIT.

Th e MIPP intends to rent out these lights to members at a very nominal fee, thus members who could hitherto not aff ord to practice studio photography, because of lack of studio lighting equipment, will now have an opportunity to do so. Th is adds another tangible benefi t to our members, and I would also like to remind members that there is also the possibility of being loaned picture frames from the MIPP for exhibition purposes.

Th ose who are interested to rent out the lights are to contact Sergio Morana on sergio.morana@gmail.com.

STUDIO FLASH UNITS AVAILABLE FOR RENTING

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MEMBERS’ GALLERY

Above: Th ree by Romana Wylie

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b Th b l

Above: Th e Mask by Tom Lee

Above: Th e Sheppard by George Abdilla

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PTYA Session 1