Stephen Gillette is a fine art photographer living in Trabuco Canyon, California, located an hour’s drive south of Los Angeles. Much of Stephen's work has been done with small sensor compact cameras. Serious Compacts contributor Eolake Stobblehouse interviewed Stephen in 2007 about his use of compact cameras for serious work (link to interview).

Stephen's recent work, "Big Sur Tondi" (Studies of Light on Moving Water), is currently on exhibition from November 2 - December 11, 2009 at Cypress College, Edouard de Merlier Gallery in Orange County, California. The series consists of prints ranging in size from 11.75 x 8.25”, printed on traditional Japanese mulberry paper, to 48 x 48" Lambda prints.

The project is visually striking, even in web-sized display.



More information:
- "Big Sur Tondi" micro site
- Stephen Gillette's main site

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While browsing the 'Buy and Sell' forum at Fred Miranda, I came across a thread which began, "Due to my never ending quest for the perfect hiking / mountaineering camera I am selling my GH1 in anticipation of my new GF1 and the recent acquiring of an Olympus EP1". After seeing the photographs in that thread started by Vern Dewit, I went and had a look at his Zenfolio gallery and asked to feature his work on Serious Compacts.

Vern lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and enjoys spending time outdoors in the Rocky Mountains west of the city. Looking at his photography, it's easy to see why. A few of his recent photographs, all taken with the GH1 (and various Micro Four Thirds kit lenses) are shown below. Click a photo to view a larger version.








You can see more of Vern Dewit's photography at http://verndewit.com. If you'd like to buy his GH1, which was used to make most of the photographs in his '2009 Favorites' collection, see the Fred Miranda thread here.

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I came across Byron Edwards' outstanding work in our Serious Compacts Flickr Group, which now has greater than 1,200 photographers.

Byron states in his Flickr profile: "I'm an ex-pro photographer turned web developer, but having bought a Ricoh GRD I'm having fun taking 'snaps' again."


Byron's work mostly falls into the category of street photography, most recently in Japan. To see more, check out www.byronedwards.com, his Flickr stream, or follow Byron on Twitter.

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Hugo Poon's photography documents his daily life in Hong Kong. I came to know of his outstanding work through the DPReview Fuji forum, where he is known primarily for the quality of his photography and secondarily because he is usually amongst the first to receive the latest Fuji digital compact cameras.

Hugo doesn't post much at DPR these days. You can find more of his work in the following places:

• http://hugopoon.aminus3.com/
• http://hugopoon.blogspot.com/ 
• http://www.pbase.com/hpicckcy 
• http://www.photo.net/photos/hpic
  

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shogunloverboy, Cow & Calf.

The SeriousCompacts.com Flickr Group is continuing to grow and improve. We're nearly at the 500 photographer mark!

Be sure to visit David's Flickr photostream.

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Yerg*, Le Louvre, Cour Carrée.

The Serious Compacts Flickr Group is flourishing, and we will continue to highlight some of the outstanding contributions from our group members.

The photograph above was taken by Yerg, a 23-year-old French political science student living in Paris. Yerg began photography around 2003. Using a Ricoh GRD and Fuji F30, he has made consistently strong contributions to our Flickr pool. Indeed, we had a difficult time selecting a single photo to feature and settled on a recent favorite. Be sure to visit Yerg's photostream on Flickr.

If you are interested in joining the Serious Compacts Pool, or if you already post there and would like your work to be considered for a feature on the blog, please see this post.

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André Takeda, Just another girl in Belgrano

We are fortunate to already have contributions from many talented photographers in the recently created SC.com Flickr Group. As announced last month, we would like to occasionally feature excellent photos from the SC.com Pool here on the blog.

For the first feature, Wouter, Björn, and myself are pleased to recognize the outstanding square format work of André Takeda. André, a Brazilian writer with two published novels, currently lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he is Creative Director for Fox Latin American Channels. André is no newcomer to advanced compact cameras; however, he is new to advanced digital compact cameras, having recently begun to use a Ricoh GX100. You can find more of André's excellent work with both film and digital cameras in the Serious Compacts Pool or by directly visiting his Flickr photos, sets, or collections.

If you are interested in joining the Serious Compacts Pool, or if you already post there and would like your work to be considered for a feature on the blog, please see this post.

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We're going to experiment with a new regular item here on the Serious Compacts blog. From time to time, the blog will feature one of the excellent photos from the SeriousCompacts.com Flickr Group. To learn more about the group and how to add photos to it, see this post. If you're wondering whether your camera is "serious" enough or "compact" enough to join the group, then wonder no more. It is ;-).

Interested? Here's the thing: In order for us to share your work, we need your permission to do so. There are two ways you can grant this. The easiest way is to change the permissions on your photo in from "All Rights Reserved" to one of the Creative Commons licenses. Click here for more information about using Creative Commons licensing on Flickr. If you want to maintain all rights reserved and still want to give us special permission to publish your photo on the blog, then add the tag "ptposc" (Permission to Publish on Serious Compacts) to your Flickr image. We won't alter your work in any way, and of course we'll credit you along with a link back to your Flickr page.

Featured images from our Flickr group will be available, alongside featured artists from the "outside" world, by clicking on the "Featured" tab in the menu at the top of the blog. I don't know how often or how long we'll continue this feature. It depends on the interest we get. Any of the blog contributors can feature your work from the pool at any time. Just remember to give us permission!

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One thing we'd like to do here at Serious Compacts is feature the outstanding work being done with advanced compact gear. To me, an "advanced" camera is one that offers a high degree of control over the process of making photographs. "Compact" is more difficult to define. I tend to consider the smaller DSLRs to be compact, particularly when they're coupled to small and light primes or the smallest of zooms. For example, the Olympus E-410 coupled to the ZD 14-42mm zoom is about as compact as a Leica M-series camera with lens. That's just my personal take on where the upper end of "compact" lies. An interesting phenomenon of today's DSLR makers is that they tend to equate "small" with "entry level." So what kinds of artists use these "beginner" cameras?

Today's featured artist is Mitchell Kanashkevich, a 26-year old Australian photographer originally from Belarus. In his PBase profile, Mitchell cites Steve Mccurry, Olivier Follmi, Henri Cartier Bresson, Eugene H Johnson, Paolo Pellegrin, Phil Borges, Sebastio Salgado, and James Natchwey as favorite photographers. His "compact-ish" kit consists of a Canon 400D and several small and light primes. Mitchell's portraits of the people of India, Nepal, Thailand, and Belarus are remarkably warm and engaging, highlighting the great importance of the relationship between photographer and subject. He has great success in capturing both the outer and inner beauty of people met throughout his motorcycle journeys around the Indian sub-continent. Mitchell Kanashkevich's work is best viewed online at www.mitchellkphotos.com.

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