News: Kingston’s “Icons of Photography” website (currently featuring Harry Benson)

Kingston Technology’s “Icons of Photography” website profiles some of the world’s most respected photographers and each month, the company spotlights a different Icon. There are many fantastic stories about what it’s like to be a professional photographer, and each photographer offers a lot of suggestions for how to make captivating images.

I highly recommend taking a look–I was truly inspired by the personal stories and images, and I learned a lot from the techniques.

The current Kingston Icon photographers with images and techniques on the site are as follows:

Barbara Bordnick
Claudio Edinger
Colin Finlay
Douglas Kirkland
Gerd Ludwig
Peter Read Miller
Chris Rainier

One of the prevailing bits of advice from a number of the photographers was to do research before a shoot, and learn about your subjects, whether they’re flowers or celebrities.

Here are a few suggestions for getting the most from the information on the website:

First, to go directly to the Kingston Icon Techniques and Galleries, visit this page. The current Featured Photographer is legendary image maker Harry Benson. Along the left side and top of the screen are links for Techniques, Bio and Calendar (see below). From the calendar link, I learned that Harry Benson will be at the Photo Plus Expo 2006, signing prints in the Epson trade show booth and speaking in the Canon trade show booth. The calendar has exact dates and times.

If you choose Techniques, you will find advice from each photographer in the main window, or you can see the technique in an easy-to-print format by clicking on the printer icon on the top right of the main window. A gallery of images for each photographer runs along the bottom of the page. The thumbnails will appear if you hover over the bottom of the main window. You can hover and navigate one by one, or you can select the slide show button on the left side (circled in the screen shot below) and a new image will appear about every 6 seconds. You can also use the forward and back buttons. One way to easily exit from the slide show mode is to click on the word Techniques, Bio or Calendar.

I recommend also looking at Harry Benson’s additional photo gallery which has more techniques and advice. It’s located in the Archives section. The gallery is filled with iconic political images by Benson from the last 40+ years. Barbara Bordnick also has two galleries in the Archives section that feature her excellent work.

I thought that this particular quote from photographer and Kingston Icon Claudio Edinger (located in the Techniques area of his page) was fabulous: “For those who want to enhance their own photography techniques, my suggestion is: Focus on photography. Shoot 12 hours a day…learn the works of accomplished photographers, painters, writers, musicians and artists in the world, and watch many, many movies.”

Gerd Ludwig’s Gallery section of the Kingston Icon site

Kingston will introduce a new Icons photographer on the 15th of each month. For more information about Kingston Technology, visit www.kingston.com.