Focal Digital Camera Guides: Sony A200 Just bought a Sony A200 and looking to combine practical know-how with inspiration? This one-stop, easy-to-read guide covers all the basic functions of the camera, and everything beyond.For the basics, turn to the quick start guide, which will get you up and running in five minutes.For an understanding of your camera's many controls and features, check out the section called "The Camera." If all you need is a quick explanation, you'll find it. If you're looking for the whole story, you'll find that, too. Settings that affect how your pictures look are accompanied by full-color examples that show you exactly what you can expect. This section also covers the camera's menus, playback features, memory, and power sources.The section called "Software" shows you how to get the most out of your camera's software. It covers RAW conversion, storing your images, managing your library, and backup strategies.Ultimately, this book's greatest strength isn't its focus on the camera or the software; it's the detailed, easy-to-follow instruction it offers on using your camera to take truly superior photographs. Sections devoted to lenses, subject matter, and light cover these variables in depth, always presenting the most effective techniques in the context of the Sony A200. Written by an experienced photographer, The Sony A200 Digital Camera Guide shows you how to get the shots you can see in your head but have never been able to capture with a camera. The quick start guide will have you taking great photos in ten minutes. In-depth coverage of every feature and control ensures that you have access to the tools you need for every shot. Full-color examples demonstrate how different settings affec

"An outstanding image consists of more than just acceptable exposure and sharp focus - the two components that most photography instruction emphasize. A fascinating subject doesn't necessarily result in a good image, and likewise, it's possible to create an impressive image from a mundane subject. How do you capture that perfect image, and more importantly, what makes it great? That's where this book comes in. Rather than wasting time trying one approach after another until something seems right or memorizing a list of rules, discover a new, more comprehensive and yet intuitive way to think about photography and see the world around you by using visual intensity. The quality of your imagery and the speed of your workflow will both vastly improve once you are able to use these techniques to articulate why you prefer one image to another. Mother and son team Ellen and Josh Anon have spent years perfecting their visual intensity based approach to composition, and in this gorgeous, full color guide, they'll share their techniques with you so that your overall photographic experience, both in terms of time investment and quality of output, will become far more satisfying."

Wright's photography has been featured in National Geographic Society publications, Smithsonian, Outside, Time, Islands, and The New York Times, as well as a number of books. The recipient of the Dorothea Lange Award in Documentary Photography for covering child labor in Asia, and a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, Alison travels the globe collecting raw, thought-provoking images. This retrospective of her illustrious, ongoing career features a portfolio of striking portraits of more than 200 individuals. From Asia to Africa, to the Middle East and back, she captures the tapestry of humanity in all its diversity and splendor. Warmth, dignity, and grace emanate from the eyes of monks and geishas, nomads and cowboys, tribal warriors and even inspirational icons like His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Together, these stunning portraits, accompanied by written testimonials, explore the universal interconnectedness of the human spirit.

The relationship between the practice of dance and the technologies of representation have excited artists since the advent of film. Dancers, choreographers, and directors are increasingly drawn to screendance, the practice of capturing dance as a moving image mediated by a camera. While the interest in screendance has grown in importance and influence amongst artists, it has until now flown under the academic radar. Emmy-nominated director and auteur Douglas Rosenberg's groundbreaking book considers screendance as both a visual art form as well as an extension of modern and post-modern dance without drawing artificial boundaries between the two. Both a history and a critical framework, Screendance: Inscribing the Ephemeral Image is a new and important look at the subject. As he reconstructs the history and influences of screendance, Rosenberg presents a theoretical guide to navigating the boundaries of an inherently collaborative art form. Drawing on psycho-analytic, literary, materialist, queer, and feminist modes of analysis, Rosenberg explores the relationships between camera and subject, director and dancer, and the ephemeral nature of dance and the fixed nature of film. This interdisciplinary approach allows for a broader discussion of issues of hybridity and mediatized representation as they apply to dance on film. Rosenberg also discusses the audiences and venues of screendance and the tensions between commercial and fine-art cultures that the form has confronted in recent years. The surge of screendance festivals and courses at universities around the world has exposed the friction that exists between art, which is generally curated, and dance, which is generally programmed. Rosenberg explores the cultural implications of both methods of reaching audiences, and ultimately calls for a radical new way of thinking of both dance and film that engages with critical issues rather than simple advocacy.

Discover nature's most colourful creatures in a major new book on colour in the animal kingdom. For many animals use of colour is essential to surviving in the wild. Both a built-in defence mechanism and a cunning tactic for attack, this biological advantage helps animals hide from dangerous predators and catch unsuspecting prey. It is used in many different ways, primarily to mask one's identity, movement or location, and changes over time as animals evolve and adapt to live. This stunning photographic collection reveals 100 creatures from around the world paired with fascinating insights from leading UK zoology author Steve Parker. Each animal will have a profile of 300 words paired with striking photographic examples featuring a wealth of colour and ingenious uses of colour for display or disguise. Learn how: The octopus can change its opacity, colour and pattern in response to threats. The walking leaf insect has evolved a strikingly similar shape and colour to the leaves it eats. The arctic fox changes its fur colour to white in the winter, perfectly blending in with the snow - but climate change is disrupting this age-old adaptation. This study of some of the most innovative uses of colour by animals, packed with beautiful photography and fascinating insights, will delight all lovers of the natural world.

"His work is insightful and provocative, linking ideas from a number of disciplines while he asks readers to consider the moral and ethical frameworks within which decisions are made about the publciation of disturbing photos."--"Journal of Mass Media Ethics"

What compels us to look at shocking photographs or, alternatively, to look away? Should the media use disturbing images to inform, at the risk of offending? How is our sense of politics, morality, and culture affected when we are exposed to gruesome images of accidents and disasters, murder and execution, grief and death?

In Body Horror, John Taylor addresses these questions by examining how the media presents unsettling pictures, especially those of dead and injured "foreigners." Drawing on recent experiences in the Gulf, Bosnia and Rwanda, Taylor argues that documentary photography, for all the horror it reproduces, ultimately defines a democracy.

Fully aware of the voyeuristic aspects of photojournalism, Taylor probes the difficulty of applying moral imperatives when separating the utility of showing images of suffering and violence from the risk of either insulting or gratifying public sensibilities. A compelling documentary of photography's cultural and political power, Body Horror analyzes the moral responsibility attached to publishing and bearing witness to photographs of violence, and the historical amnesia that arises when such imagery remains unseen.

This unique study offers a political analysis of the relationship between visual representations and the politics of violence both nationally and internationally. It emphasizes the spectator and his or her own involvement in, responsibility for, and potential responses to the conditions depicted in given images.Through a series of case studies which engage with visual representations of the politics of violence, such as the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the visualization of colonial memory, it analyzes the relationship between visibility and political agency and elaborates the extent to which people who have normally been subjects of the image production of others can become agents of their own image.This book's comprehensive analysis of different genres including photography, graphic novels, comics and paintings introduces a new research agenda for the emerging field of visual peace.

Defining photography is impossible. Revealing it is another matter, and that's what The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography does, with each turn of the page. History: The technical origins and evolution of photography are half of the story. The other half consists of the ways that cultural forces have transformed photography into a constellation of practices more diverse than any other mode of representation. Photographers can tell a more in-depth story through a photo like Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother than a journalist ever could with the written word alone. Major themes and practitioners: Over 25 entries, many with supporting illustrations, examine the figures, trends, and ideas that have contributed most heavily to the history and current state of photography. Contemporary issues: The issues influencing photography today are more complex than at any other time in its history. Questions of ethics, desire, perception, digitization, and commercialization all vie for attention. Hear what the experts have to say about crucial issues such as whether or not the images we take today will last the test of time, and if so, how? When material is covered this skillfully, "concise is no compromise. The Concise Focal Encyclopedia of Photography is packed with useful information, compelling ideas, and - best of all - pure pleasure.