NEW SERIES: "PHOTO FINISH", Starts Thursday 14th June, 2012, ABC1 (Australia)

[Poisson Du Jour]

I squirmed and cringed in my chair, what with letter rank beginners who have never seen a studio set up, much less wrangle a Hasselblad H2 and come up with images to impress upon a professional curator (Centre for Contemporary Photography). That said, each individual came up with credible images given their very basic skill set. Adjusting lighting was painfully drawn out: given it is all digital, lighting is often tested via LiveView. This did not occur to the photographers, but they did see how lighting set up came out after the image capture, and learned a bit from that. I quite liked the images of Dick Smith and Vince Colissimo. If they had, say, 10 years' experience as photographers, the results would have shown an exponential increase in punch and pizazz, additional to speed, composure and improving with camera handling (they were all pretty jittery and nervous). As it went, it's all good, but still bizarre throwing them in at the deep end and expecting to come up with the goods. A credit to them that they did with persistence and consideration of process.

[Nige]

just watched it and did enjoy. Definitely better than watching Home and Away.

For those wanting to, you can watch online here

[hoffy]

I have commented on a few forums, so I will do a bit of a cut and paste (just a note, this reply is in response to quite a few who thought the show and contestants were poor - there is certainly a lot of "Pffft, should have chosen me, I'm much better" type comments on the net as well as a lot of people suggesting it lacked technical info):

I rather enjoyed it.
I think a lot of people are missing the point, though.

It wasn't about techniques or equipment, it was about Simplicity and connections – heck, even Heery talked about it at the beginning.

It was about photographer connecting with subject. Once they connected, the images came. As long as the setup was sufficient and the basics were covered, it was good enough.

I agree with the winning scene and photographer, but I would have chosen another shot – but hey, she didn't and it worked anyway.

Considering how much out of their depth both the guy from Adelaide and the Mum from the Central Coast were, I thought they did a stand up job in the end. As I said above, a lot of it came down to how they dealt with the subjects.

Cheers

[hoffy]

On a side note - it does appear that the host Andrew Günsberg is quite an enthusiast himself.

Looking through his stream, he does own camera's such as a Graflex Graphic View II

http://www.flickr.com/photos/andrewgunsberg/

He's actually gone up a level in my book!

[cepwin]

btw....for those not in Austrailia the ABC network has it on their website yeah!