Thursday 23 - Monday 27 June 2011
PMA Australia 2011 Digital Life Expo & Conference

DOWNLOAD the PIEA session notes - pdf

Friday 26th June 2009

3.00pm to 6.00pm

Capturing student creativity: social network use in photographic education
Ms Lynette Zeeng,
Photography Lecturer
Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria

The use of Web 2.0 technologies in education practices captures students' enthusiasm for the use of social networks and offers a unique, innovative and effective model of student-centered learning.

The use of Flickr in a blended learning environment has met the needs of students and engendered a spirit that has even the more reluctant students immersing themselves in creative, photographic skills and processes.

The dynamic nature of Flickr has enabled regular and immediate feedback between students and teachers. Students are motivated to reflect, analyse and critique there work, and work of their peers, establishing the use of effective visual literacy skills.

Evaluation so far indicates I have embraced a technology that enables students to learn and enjoy photography in a style and mode that is relevant to their technologically based lives. Flickr offers an enhanced and ongoing learning experience relevant to the Digital Age.

Covering Photography Online
Mr Wayne J. Cosshall
Publisher
The Digital ImageMaker, http://www.dimagemaker.com/
Preston, Victoria

The dynamics of information about photography have been changing for some time. While mainstream photography magazines held a dominant position 10 years ago, this is no longer the case. Declining readership and declining advertising feeds a mutual downward spiral for photography magazines that are mainly about equipment and techniques. What replaces this is a split between online magazines and print magazines whose focus is on the image.
In this talk and drawing from experience as a photography magazine editor and publisher of the leading Australian photography online magazine, www.dimagemaker.com, the presenter examines the reasons for the current split between excellent and a rising number of fine art photography magazines, and the dominance of online sources for technical information, what each media type can uniquely offer and what this means for the study of photography.

Commentary on Aboriginal photographs by J.W. Lindt
Victoria Garnons-Willimas, PhD
Visual Arts, Creative industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Brisbane, Queensland

Circa 1870, an album of original photographs taken in the studio of J.W. Lindt in Grafton, NSW, was gifted to the mayor of Grafton. The album consists of 19 tableau and portrait photographs and is housed in the Grafton Historical Society archives and the majority of the prints are immaculate.

This presentation is based on a QUT Creative industries funded research project, which considered technical, social historical and monetary aspects of Lindt’s work.

Colour photography in the 19th century
Ms Ellie Young
Gold Street Studios, Trentham East, Victoria

It is easy to think of colour photography as the great discovery of the 20th century. Colour film at a commercial level appeared on the market from the mid 1930's for 35mm colour positive film and the 40’s for 35mm colour negative film. This allowed photographers to easily produce full colour prints.

A little delving into the past shows that since 1810 aspects of capturing colour have been explored and terms such as ‘local colour’ and ‘naturally coloured photographs’ were used. In 1861 three colour images were produced, but why did the development of colour as a commercial venture still take another 80 years or so.

This presentation traces the development colour from the dawn of photography to the beginning of the 20th century. Many of these developments were not only fundament to Kodak’s success but also our understanding of reproducing colour today.

Calibration of colour rendition in the tri-colour carbon process
Mr. Tom Finch
Melbourne, Victoria

Carbon pigment prints are renowned for their stability and exquisite tonal rendition. This 150-year-old process makes use of a gelatin layer impregnated with archival carbon pigment, which is selectively hardened in proportion to the amount of exposure through a negative. Tri-colour carbon prints are an adaptation of this, involving the transfer of cyan, magenta and yellow tissues to a final support, producing a full-colour photographic print that a life spans in excess of 500 years.

Photographic Art: blending disciplines
Ms. Kaye Davis
Lecturer, Universal College of Learning
Palmerston North
New Zealand

This presentation outlines a research project that experimented with the use of microscopes, including the scanning electron microscope, radiography, kirlian process and macrography. From the resulting body of work, a number of the images have received awards in New Zealand’s professional photography awards - thus highlighting the end use and need for more collaboration between the disciplines of art and science. This also links with teaching on a multi-disciplinary program and demonstrating how disciplines are increasingly blending and working together.

Saturday 27th June 2009

10.40am to 12 noon

Establishing a Honours Program (B.Sc.Hons.) in alternative processes
Associate Professor Gale E. Spring
School of Applied Sciences
RMIT University
Melbourne, Victoria
Alternative and historic processes were first developed by professional and amateur scientists. Names like William Henry Fox Talbot, William Herschel, Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron and Louis Desire Blanquart- Evrard are noted for the techniques were quickly embraced by artists of the time and have continued to this day as a means of expressing images and imagery through non-traditional means. There are many practioneers of alternative and historic processes, but few are analysing these processes or attempting in a methodical and scientific manner to advance and refine the old processes or invent new ones.

The School of Applied Sciences at RMIT University, Melbourne, offers an Honours program in Alternative and Historic processes at its Bundoora Campus. The award is a Bachelor of Science – Applied Science (Honours). The program is not about learning the processes, but rather, is seeking students who wish to advance and refine the processes through proper experimental procedures.

Clinical Photography: Revision of Clinical Photography Techniques
Mr Paul De Sensi
Chief Medical Photographer
The Children's Hospital at Westmead
Westmead, New South Wales

Looking at the importance of clinical photography, the main objective will be illustrate the process of taking images for the Craniofacial Clinic Patient and how this can be used for other clinics such as Cleft palate and Microtia. This will include techniques of taking the images and editing of the images will be covered.

A new look at Ziatype
Mr Gene Bagdonas
National Film and Sound Archive
Canberra, ACT

What is Ziatype and what is an “alternative” photographic process? Traditionally the term “alternative” has been used almost universally to describe processes (photographic and photomechanical) that do not use methods or technology of current photographic materials (e.g. silver gelatin). Perhaps better terms to describe these processes would be “historical”, “antique” or “old”. Most “alternative” process prints are handmade and the processes date back to the beginnings of photography or were evolved from them.

What is Ziatype is a bit easier to answer – it is a Palladium based hand coated contact printed printing out process. The lineage of Ziatype dates back to 1887.
This session, besides introducing you to Ziatype, will also acquaint you with the concepts common to most “alternative” processes. Ziatype is easy to learn, can be done at home, in a darkened room, using plain tungsten lamps as safelights. All you need is a room with some open counter space, running water in or near the room, and an ultraviolet (UV) light source such as the sun for exposure.

Saturday 27th June 2009

1.00pm to 4.00pm

Techniques for digital imaging through the microscope
Mr Philip Ramsden
Foto Riesel
364 Kent Street
Sydney, New South Wales

The use of digital cameras on microscopes has quickly replaced the film cameras used in the recent past. There are many ways to adapt cameras, from simple point and shoot types, SLR cameras and more specialised cameras from microscope manufacturers.

These cameras will be introduced and discussed and sources for adapters will be given.

Magic Mesh: Creating effortless illustrations with Adobe Illustrator
Ms Madeleine Kersting,
Illustrator
Queensland Institute of Medical Research
Brisbane, Queensland

People who multitask are always an asset in any field. Photography is no exception, especially if you are working in a multimedia department that provides other graphic services.

You may have never considered offering illustration services to your clients, assuming that you could never “skill up” quickly enough to produce quality work.

If you own Adobe Illustrator, but have never used it, this short “how to” presentation will have you creating your own fantastic fully rendered illustrations in minutes, not hours. This is especially of value to those who work in an institution with a large and diverse client base and, of course, those who have always wanted to just try their hand at being an illustrator!

GeoTagging and Digital Photography
Mr Greg Humphries
Lecturer in Digital Imaging
RMIT University
Melbourne, Victoria

Digital cameras are ubiquitous these days with GPS devices not far behind. But getting these technologies working together has been difficult. However, there are now several methods of getting GPS data into your images and, more importantly, software tools are now becoming available to allow average users to take advantage of this data. In this paper I will explore the methods of integrating GPS information into your images as well as some of the ways an average user can benefit by having location information within their images. I will also examine some of the limitations and pitfalls of integrating GPS information into digital photography.

An evaluation of cyclegraphy and its application during a bike fit
Ms Charmion Phillips
School of Applied Sciences
RMIT University
Melbourne, Victoria

This research concerns cyclegraphy and a cyclist’s bike position. Cyclegraphy visualises motion by using small lights and a still camera with a long shutter speed to produce traces showing the whole motion path. The technique was applied to a bike fit to evaluate cyclegraphy as a visualisation tool.

Using a shutter speed matched to the cyclist’s cadence, with LED’s placed on a cyclist's hip, knee and ankle joints, two variables of a bike fit were adjusted incrementally to determine what changes could be seen in the trace. The traces indicated that a cyclist's ideal range of positions could be determined by the technique.

Test subjects with different specialties were chosen, including one with an artificial leg, to determine if differences in riding styles and physical constraints were identifiable using the technique.

The research indicated a correlation between trace shape and riding styles. I am now undertaking an honours project to further analyse this correlation.

Exploring the ultra violet sensitivity of digital cameras
Mr Jair Garcia
School of Applied Sciences
RMIT University
Melbourne, Victoria

In the last fifty years, photography has been the principal method for visualising UV reflectance. This application is possible thanks to the intrinsic sensitivity of photographic emulsions to UV radiation.
In our research, we are directly measuring the UV sensitivity curves of a dedicated UV/IR digital camera designed for scientific and technical purposes, a commercial camera with known UV sensitivity and a general-purpose camera with UV correction.
So far, preliminary results show that UV sensitivity is only attained by one colour filter. This sensitivity is produced by a leaking of UV that occurs in wavelengths longer than 350nm. At shorter wavelengths the sensitivity rapidly drops.
This means that only one colour filter leaks ultraviolet radiation allowing the CCD to register it. However, due the strong absorption of the colour filter, the camera sensitivity in this range is quite low. This explains the long exposures normally needed for this kind of photography. At this stage it is feasible to predict that “transformed” cameras will not show an improved sensitivity because the transformation involves the removing of the infrared cutting filter not any of the sensor’s colour filters.
As there is not a direct physical way to improve the UV sensitivity of a commercial digital camera, in the near future the objective is to test a digital imaging processing method to improve the images obtained from ultraviolet recording.