November 2013 - Richard Spurdens Photography

FIAP Awards

I started on the FIAP Distinction trail in 2010 and when I entered some images in the GB Small Print Championship and managed to gain a number of acceptances, I started to see if I could achieve my AFIAP. That became my project for 2011 and I have been submitting to salons on a regular basis ever since.

Thankfully I have been lucky enough to have my work feature amongst the awards in a number of salons, and so rather then keep posting in my blog I have put this gallery together which features my images that have received awards.

Received Awards

FIAP Blue Badge/Best Author (x1)	PSA Gold Medal (x4)
FIAP Gold Medal (x 2)	PSA Silver Medal (x2)
	PSA Bronze Medal (x2)
FIAP Bronze Medal (x2)	PSA Honorable Mention (x1)
FIAP Ribbon (x6)
FIAP Honourable Mention (x13)	London Salon Medal (x1)
UPI Gold Medal (x1)
UPA Silver Medal (x1)	Salon Medal (x6)
AFFR Gold Medal (x1)	Judges Medal (x2)
FFS Gold Medal (x1)
RPS Silver Medal (x1)	Salon Praise/Honorable Mention (x2)
RPS Ribbon (x1)

Awarded Images

Artistic nude photographer - artistic nude photography

Portrait Photography - Portrait Photographer - — Richard Spurdens Photography – Synchronized bathing practice

artistic nude photography - artistic nude photographer - — Richard Spurdens Photography – Synchronized bathing practice

Count

To date my count stands at 481 acceptances from 172 images, 74 salons from 23 countries & 35 awards from 21 different images

Distinctions

AFIAP- June 2012
EFIAP – June 2013

FIAP

Good things come in Pairs

As I have mentioned in my previous blog post EFIAP Distinction Award, I enter images into international photographic exhibitions and with each salon there normally comes a catalogue (often a printed one, but some send a CD or DVD instead).

These are usually records of the award winning images and a selection of the accepted images from the exhibition. Now it is good to get acceptances with your submitted images in the exhibitions but when you get awards too it is good to have a record of that fact.
I recently received two packages on the same day containing catalogues and medals from two different salons.
One was from Serbia – the Photo Cinema club “POZAREVAC” who run the Salon of Art Photography “WORLD AROUND US ” and the other was from Spain from the Spanish Andorran Iberoamerican digital circuit.

The first was a good printed catalogue, the other a CD.
In both of these salons my images had gained acceptances and in Spanish Circuit my image entitled, ‘In Contemplation’ had been awarded a Gold medal and one of my other images entitled ‘Kapow’ had gained a FIAP Ribbon.

In the World Around Us Salon, my image entitled ‘Rainy day thought’s had picked up a Silver Medal and had a full page spread which is always pleasing.

fashion photography - fashion photographer - colour image of model seated on a wooden chair wearing an white top and pants looking off into the distance — Richard Spurdens Photography – In contemplation

dance photography - dance photographer - kapow — Richard Spurdens Photography – Kapow

Fine Art Nude Photography - Fine Art Nude Photographer - figure shape through the rainy windows of a door — Richard Spurdens Photography – Artistic Nude series

So as the Chinese say ‘good things come in pairs’

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Equipment

A few images from a visit to Cork (Ireland) with the Fuji XE-1

Now Cork is a great place to visit and when it combines with the Guinness jazz festival I thought it would be a good place to put my newly acquired Fuji XE-1 thought its paces. I had chosen to stay with prime lenses with this camera and so all these images were shot using the 18mm and 35mm Fuji primes, which equate to approx 28mm and 56 mm with the sensor crop.

Fuji have some great info on their web site as well as the mini-product site at http://fujifilm-x.com/x-e1/en/. Worth a look if you are interested, but do please come back here to finish reading my post.

I have to say I loved using the XE-1 camera – setting the aperture and shutter speed is easy and you quickly start to enjoy having it in the hand and framing the shot using the rear screen. I have yet to use the electronic view finder that the XE-1 comes with, but there is time to try this in the future. Overall I thought the XE-1 performed really well giving good details and colours. The lighting conditions in some of the venues were challenging to say the least and it needed an ISO setting of 6400 to have any chance of getting an image and yet I feel it returned some acceptable images despite the difficult lighting.

Outside on the street the camera performed equally as well capturing some of the things that attracted me as we walked around the streets visiting the sites off and around As Patrick Street. and also visiting some of the more interesting bars.

Travel Photography - travel Photograher - Jazz — Richard Spurdens Photography – Red hot Jazz

Travel Photography - travel Photograher - cork jazz festival — Richard Spurdens Photography – Red hot Jazz

Mutton Lane, with its candlelit dark corners and some fine tasty pints was again a good place to test out the XE-1 low light capabilities, they opened 20mins early for me so managed to get some images without customers. As well as the main Patrick Street.
One recommended addition to the XE-1 is a grip and following some research on the web I found a Fuji users website on which there were a lot of recommendations for the i_shoot grip for the Fuji XE-1. It comes from China and I think it is made there for the Really Right Stuff company as it looks exactly like one of their items but costs considerable less than the RRS grip.

I purchased it via ebay and it arrived in about 14 days and is a great addition to the XE-1. Far better than the Fuji grip as there is no need to remove it to change the battery or memory card. It also fits the tripod head mount so that is a win win for me.

Overall I really like the XE-1 and looking forward to using it again in trying it out in the studio too.