BORUT PETERLIN in a rabbit hole of photography

Fotopub Festival 2010 will happen between 26 – 31 July!

It will be tenth edition of Festival in a row, so expect even more then we delivered in last years. For the first time Fotopub will offer two masterclasses. In addition to Fotopub masterclass, we will host the masterclass of the famous UK Photo agency Panos Pictures, leading in documentary photography.
Apart from that various exhibitions will be shown from the Balkans, Cold war relics, Africans telling African stories and a number of multimedia productions.
Applications will be open in May, so please visit our website for registration and information: www.fotopub.com

Here are few Fotopub souvenirs from last years. (Hoover over the image for a caption. )
Many more images on Flickr…

My next portrait in Striptiz rubric of Mladina weekly is Matjaž Schmidt. I didn’t had any preconceived idea because we were working on a double issue of Mladina (soccer), so we had to work intensely. After speaking a little with Matjaž we figure out that we have many good friends in common. Even when I was climbing the stairs I immediately fall in love in this old Ljubljana’s house and wondered if I should do the portrait on stairs. I decided for a portrait through a window. First I tried with a wide angle lens in front of the window, but then I decided from a balcony far right (second panorama picture) and use a tele-lens (Nikkor 70-200mm f/2,8). Telelenses are not distorting lines so, if I’m building a picture on symmetry I need straight lines. I added a studio flash in the room with Matjaž and trigger it with Profoto Air Sync.

PS: Do you know the easiest way how to make a panorama like this? Use Photoshop / File / Automate / Photomerge or watch this tutorial.

Muay Thai – Slovenian national league. Črnomelj 17.4.2010

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I know this images are light years away from my editorial portraits, but I won an important job. My pictures will decorate a hotel and I need to produce 100 square meters of photographs in very short period of time. Please forgive me, I know artists should be consistent in their aesthetic, but it’s so much fun! Not to mention it will pay for a few bricks of my new house that is being build

A theater performance “Livingstonov zadnji poljub” is based on a book “Jonathan Livingston Seagull“, directed by Nana Milčinski. I was so impressed that words can’t describe and unfortunately also this pictures can’t. I came to a theater just after a training completely exhausted. In this trainings I push myself as far as I can go and although rarely people understand what’s this all about, it’s actually an exploration of physical and psychological boundaries of a being. And this was exactly what Richard Bach was describing in his book and when I saw the interpretation of the theater director Nana Milčinski it moved me deeply, profoundly.

Here is my portrait of Nana Milčinski, published in this issue of Mladina in Striptiz rubric.

Boxing match between Dejan Zavec, Slovenia’s best professional boxer against Rodolfo Ezequiel Martinez of Argentina. Dejan Zavec defended his IBF welterweight title with a last-round technical knockout.

As you know I’m specialized in portraiture, so I rarely cover sport events, but since I intensively train Muay Thai, I decided to photograph this boxing spectacle. I’m satisfied with pictures, although they could be better. Photographically I learned few things: ISO at least 3200, preferably 6400. Shutter speed 350 or more. Aperture minimum f/4. Lens 70 – 200mm (under the ring viewpoint). Pictures that you see are taken with 1/250s, f 2,8 and ISO 1600, with Nikon D3 and D300s cameras. I took 2231 pictures. Next Saturday there is a Muay Thai fight in Črnomelj, so I’ll try my settings there.

More images in my on-line archive: http://archive.borutpeterlin.com/
A video of the last, 12th round on RTV SLO.

PS: Please rate. I reckon that ranking of the post is higher when better rates. I’m not sure. Anyway it’s useful info.

New cover page of Mladina weekly. I took that picture when they signed the coalition contract 13.11.2008. Few more images of Prime Minister Pahor and Minister Kresal you can see in my on-line archive http://archive.borutpeterlin.com/

Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com

I’m planning to buy a Nikkor lens 85 f/1,4 (eventually) and I test it last Sunday. The inspiration was a book “At Work” by Annie Leibovitz , where on page 161 she’s describing how she took a portrait of Philip Johnson in his garage, so I decided to do something similar just before Sunday’s family lunch. I really like the result and I’ll take more pictures like that but in the meantime I hope you’ll enjoy the behind the scene movie & music of DMP, a song Otrok (A Child). On THAT link you can see also images of Enja, taken for DMP.

PS: More images on my on-line archive:

Janja Majzelj, an actress was portrayed for Mladina weekly – Striptiz rubric. The assignment was in the contest of her theater performance “Chrysanthemum on Grand Piano” in Mladinsko gledališče. My first association was fantastic portrait of Stravinsky behind grand piano by Arnold Newman. I had a few scenarios that didn’t work out. First of all there is a grand piano in Mladinsko gledališče, but it was in a storage, unaccessible. We had to use a small piano. I was trying to get a chrysanthemum, but I couldn’t get a fresh flower and I wasn’t impressed by artificial chrysanthemum. On the end I decided to build a picture around a reflection on small piano.

I used a two studio flashes. One behind a piano, facing a wall and second one with a honeycomb grid, that focus the light.