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Welcome to "Digital Outback Photo" (Uwe Steinmueller, Editor 08/29/2000)Today we launch a new web magazine for quality outdoor photography using digital cameras. This year 2000 marks a turning point for quality outdoor and wildlife photography. Digital SLRs finally start to approach the quality of 35mm film. First of all this is not an Australian magazine or about the Australian Outback. Outback is more a term I will use equivalent to outdoors, in the wild, aside the beaten paths .... We will also try to start simple and not to be perfect. Our goal is mainly to produce good photos and this magazine is to help sharing the photos and the experience to get such photos. As always there is the question why again a new magazine. Let me try to go through all the buzzwords in the the subtitle: Web Magazine First it fits to the digital nature of digital photography. But there are also the aspects of being international and not bound to strict publishing deadlines. The content changes whenever there is new information available. In addition I believe a web magazine is easier to get out of the ground. Quality First I had used the term "professional" but besides the fact that I am not professional in the strict term of that phrase (I currently spend money) there are so many amateurs who produce great quality photos. For this magazine only the quality of the result counts. Yes, quality is very subjective in many ways but we will try to live up to this ambition and also be open to different quality definitions. Quality comes also in two forms: Technical quality and content quality. For us content is the primary goal but a good technical quality is the basis to present great content. Outdoor Photography This comprises a huge range of photography (nature, architecture, travel, environment, ...). But also see it the other way, it does not include wedding, portrait, product and most journalism photography. Thus in the area of commercial photography outdoor is just a niche but with a huge group of photographers out there to cover this aspect. Digital Cameras Why restrict to just digital cameras? From the result it would not really matter whether it is the result of a scan or digital. But digital photography is a challenge in the area of outdoor photography. For journalist speed is a quality by itself and that is why digital photography is mainstream by now. This is not the case for our subject. It is about quality, quality, ... The clients mostly don't care how we make photos. In this case we the photographers want to get faster access to the results, to be less dependent on a lab and finally want even to improve quality beyond the capabilities of film (I strongly believe that we are not quite there yet but will be pretty soon). So this magazine will therefore focus on this special challenge. There will be no focus on special brands and we will not judge by the number of pixels. Of course it is also clear that the resolution is an important factor of quality photos but that is not everything. We would like also to invite all camera vendors to provide us cameras for tests in the outdoor world whenever they believe they are ready for prime time to produce quality outdoor photos. |
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The Different Sections of the Magazine Outdoor photography comprises a rich variety of different subjects which are hard to categorize. But we have to put up some structure. It might need to change over time. News News will provide you with all new things we get aware of and believe it is of interest for outdoor photography using digital cameras. Its about new equipment, software and hopefully great new content. Nature Nature is about plants, forests, deserts, oceans and all sort of animals. We assume that birds will play a very big part in this magazine. Places Places are geographic localities which are presented using photographs. It might be a city, park, wilderness or just a mountain. At places nature, architecture and wildlife meet. Reviews Reviews will be mostly about technical equipment and software tools. There will be no rating of products. If a reviewer finds e.g. a camera very good for quality outdoor photography he will prove it by showcasing good photos and share his experience he got using it. Workshop The workshop is the place to discuss classic photo techniques and also especially all we need for capturing and enhancing digital images. At no surprise Photoshop will play an important role here. Resources We will provide links to other great resources on the subject of digital outdoor photography and also have some news groups set up to discuss all aspects covered by this magazine. Galleries Hopefully this grows to a interesting variety of links to galleries of great outdoor content. |
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Can you submit your own content? Yes, check here. |
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How does this all get financed? A very good question! We plan to finance it later by sponsors and/or ads. If you want to support this magazine click here. |
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You miss great English style? It is not a secret that English is not my first language. I would not be even a good writer in German and that is my first language. But I believe for this magazine photography is the universal language and we just use English as a common denominator. Please forgive me and I hope that native English photographers will compensate for it in the near future. |