photokaboom.com Blog: December 2006 Archives

Favorite Blogs - photostream

By

on December 30, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

From the website: I was pretty sure that I knew, it is just that I hadn't articulated it. I had been meaning to put something on this page for some time when I came across a quotation from Margaret Atwood in 'The Week' which was a requotation of something from the 'Daily Telegraph' which was itself quoting something from one of her books called 'Dancing Girls'. Anyway, it summed up an idea quite well, and expresses my main purpose in writing Photostream.

From the website: "Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that is wrong. They know less. That's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted".

Favorite Blogs - The Online Photographer

By

Jim Beecher

on December 29, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - The Online Photographer

From the website: Photo-obsessiveness 24 hours a day, compliments of the 'net.

Favorite Blogs - Musings on Photography

By

Jim Beecher

on December 28, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - Musings on Photography

From the website: Musings on photography from an artist perspective and art from a photographer perspective

Favorite Blogs - Modern Art Notes

By

Jim Beecher

on December 27, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - Modern Art Notes

From the website: This is my chronicle of my thoughts of and passions for modern and contemporary art. It's updated pretty much every weekday, and occasionally on weekends when something particularly irks or emboldens me.

Favorite Blogs - the landscapist

By

Jim Beecher

on December 26, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - the landscapist

From the website: This blog is intended to showcase the landscape photography of photographers who have moved beyond the pretty picture and for whom photography is more than entertainment.

New Findings on Fate of the Christmas Tree Ship

By

Jim Beecher

on December 25, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

New Findings on Fate of the Christmas Tree Ship

From the website: Many Christmas tree ships sold their cargo to wholesalers, freeing themselves of the burden of selling off thousands of trees one at a time. Other captains, however, taken with the holiday spirit, turned their ships into floating tree lots along the Chicago River, welcoming customers aboard and taking great pride and pleasure in their business. One of these captains was Herman Schuenemann. Each November, Captain Schuenemann loaded the schooner Rouse Simmons to nearly overflowing with evergreens in Thompson, Michigan. After sailing to Chicago, Captain Schuenemann moored his vessel to a downtown pier, hoisted a decorated tree up the mast and strung electric lights throughout the rigging, turning his ship into a large Christmas ornament

Favorite Blogs - gmtPlus9 (-15)

By

Jim Beecher

on December 23, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - gmtPlus9 (-15)

From the website: A weblog late of Osaka, Japan, currently of Appleton, WI USA

Favorite Blogs - Conscientious

By

Jim Beecher

on December 22, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - Conscientious

From the website: Conscientious is a weblog about photography, art, and life in general. Predominantly, you will find contemporary photography, but I am not going to try to define what future or past posts will or did contain other than saying that it's photography or art that I like(d) or stuff that I was/am interested in. I am no professional photography critic, and I do not aspire to be one; hence there will be no long words. I think good photography doesn't need making too many words.

Favorite Blogs - Big Picture

By

Jim Beecher

on December 21, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - Big Picture

From the website: What I have discovered is that teaching and blogging are highly complimentary activities. I feel that many of my best ideas come from the feedback people give me off the blog. In a sense the experience of teaching is more global and interconnected to a diverse range of ideas than it has been previously. Teachers can no longer lock themselves away in an ivory toward, but must, instead engage students in a variety of ways - including blogging if they feel it is appropriate.

Favorite Blogs - APAD Weblog

By

Jim Beecher

on December 20, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Favorite Blogs - APAD Weblog

From the website: Juicy bits of photo goodness presented in manageable, bite sized morsels to get you thinking.

Photography Innovators of 2006 - PopPhoto

By

Jim Beecher

on December 19, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Photography Innovators of 2006 - PopPhoto

From the website: Our first annual roundup of the innovators who are changing the art and business of photography.

National Geographic Traveler: Photography Sites - Best of the Web

By

Jim Beecher

on December 19, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

National Geographic Traveler: Photography Sites - Best of the Web

From the website: The Web has become an infinite photo gallery where we can show our best shots without stepping anywhere near a printer or photo lab. Increasingly, cyberspace is also where photographers go to learn technique and stay current. But browsers beware. "A lot of the advice and opinions you get on the Internet is just plain off," says photographer Bob Krist. "Anyone can put up a slick-looking website. I want to take my advice from someone who's making a living making pictures." With that in mind, Traveler asked some two dozen photographers—mostly professionals—to reveal their favorite hangouts in cyberspace.

Nick Moir - Storm Chasers

By

Jim Beecher

on December 18, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Nick Moir - Storm Chasers

From the website: Sydney Morning Herald photographer Nick Moir heads to the US to shoot the world's wildest storms.

Meredith Graham - Camera Toss: The Brave, The Reckless and The Chicken

By

Jim Beecher

on December 18, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Meredith Graham - Camera Toss: The Brave, The Reckless and The Chicken

From the website: I admit it. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie. There was no mistaking that feeling as I let my camera fly out of my hands after depressing the shutter. It was, in short, a thrill. Some people are too chicken to try it. Instead of risking it all, I used my older Kodak LS743. I mean, I'm brave... but I'm not reckless.

Cameo Appearance

By

Jim Beecher

on December 16, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

From the website: Among the conventions of "documentary" photography, whether used in an effort to convey suffering or dignity or beauty or calamity or whatever, is a more or less relentless focus on some individual. My own sense is that that convention is, for various reasons, politically dis-abling.

Cameo Appearance

From the website: Trot off to bed, I said finally.

From the website: I know I was there. One take

From the website: Is all they had time for.

From the website: We ran, and the planes grazed our hair,

From the website: And then they were no more

From the website: As we stood dazed in the burning city,

From the website: But, of course, they didn't film that.

Charles Simic

Jerry Dantzic - East River Raft

By

Jim Beecher

on December 15, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Jerry Dantzic - East River Raft

From the website: I often walked the piers with my father in the summertime, sometimes riding high on his shoulders, past thick webs of netting loaded with bananas and rare woods, touched by the breezes of distant oceans that mingled with the fragrance of spices and exotic teas; pausing to stare in awe at the huge smoke-clouded stacks of great ocean liners, sometimes eight at once, that loomed above the tenement rooftops.

2006 Photomedia Center Holga Show

By

Jim Beecher

on December 15, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

2006 Photomedia Center Holga Show

From the website: The 2006 Photomedia Center Holga Show is sponsored, in part, by Light Leaks Magazine.

More about toy cameras

Beauty, Cliche, and Other Empiric Tidbits

By

Jim Beecher

on December 14, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Beauty, Cliche, and Other Empiric Tidbits by Mark Hobson

From the website: Now, at this point, if we wish to don our angel wings, all join hands and spin in a little circle on the head of pin, we can come right back to, well, the notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But let's not go there. Instead, let's consider another idea about the use of the word "beauty" that might also be cause for embarrassment to Mr. Adams and a host of others (including me) as well.

Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams

Robert Adams at the Getty

The Ugly

By

Jim Beecher

on December 14, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

The Ugly by Mary Devereaux

From the website: Ugliness is a topic largely neglected by aestheticians. This neglect no doubt has many roots. Here I'd like to explore just one, namely our uneasiness with saying that people are ugly. We speak readily enough about the moral failings of our fellows, e.g., the duplicity of political leaders or the psychological shortcomings of neighbors, relatives and co-workers. Why then does calling someone ugly make us so uneasy?

La duchesse moche by Quentin Metsys (Quentin Matsys)

New digital photography guides from Adobe

By

Jim Beecher

on December 13, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

New digital photography guides from Adobe

From the website: Adobe has commissioned a number of digital photography guides from industry heavy hitters, covering everything from metadata to color management, digital workflow to black & white conversion.

How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

By

Jim Beecher

on December 13, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

From the website: Unlike pressed CDs/DVDs, 'burnt' CDs/DVDs can eventually 'fade', due to five things that effect the quality of CD media: Sealing method, reflective layer, organic dye makeup, where it was manufactured, and your storage practices (please keep all media out of direct sunlight, in a nice cool dry dark place, in acid-free plastic containers; this will triple the lifetime of any media).

Alec Soth's best shot

By

Jim Beecher

on December 12, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Alec Soth's best shot

From the website: The woman was called Melissa. I took her photograph just after she was married, right outside the room she was staying in. You'll notice that her husband isn't in the picture - it's such a difficult thing photographing a couple, because the power of a portrait is that you get to have a relationship with a person by staring into their eyes. When there are two people, it's kind of complicated - you don't know who to look at. So I realised I could separate out the couple and photograph them individually, which gives the picture a different kind of poignancy.

Do not adjust your screen

By

Jim Beecher

on December 12, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Do not adjust your screen by Blake Morrison

From the website: "Is there even one photograph of the depression in colour?" the critic Max Kozloff asked in 1975. The answer seemed to be no, despite the fact that colour photographs had been produced (with variable results) since 1861. But the Eastman Kodak company began marketing their revolutionary new colour film, Kodachrome, in 1936, and it was known that several professional photographers in the US - including Jack Delano, Russell Lee and Marion Post Wolcott - made use of it. So where did their transparencies go?

Slide Show

Adam Bartos - Los Angeles

By

Jim Beecher

on December 11, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Adam Bartos - Los Angeles by Nicole Pasulka

From the website: The homes and streets of Adam Bartos's Los Angeles have a still, reflective presence. These photographs challenge common assumptions about the nature of life in LA. Here we find spaces that are at once intimate and desolate. The work tells a story of Bartos's moved to LA in the 1970s, when he arrived expecting Hollywood glitz and glamour and instead discovered the serene and all-American images in this series.

Los Angeles at Yossi Milo
525 W. 25th St.
Closes 1/20

Stephen Wilkes - Capturing the 'Dark Side' of Ellis Island

By

Jim Beecher

on December 11, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Stephen Wilkes - Capturing the 'Dark Side' of Ellis Island

From the website: Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom documents the weather-beaten remnants of the immigration hub's abandoned hospital buildings, where people who steamed past the Statue of Liberty on crowded ships were sometimes held back if they had an infectious disease or obvious disorder.

Kadir van Lohuizen - A Trail of Diamonds

By

Jim Beecher

on December 9, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Kadir van Lohuizen - A Trail of Diamonds

Movie Review - Blood Diamond - Diamonds and the Devil, Amid the Anguish of Africa

Global Witness - Combating Conflict Diamonds

Melanie Schiff - Underwater Photography

By

Jim Beecher

on December 8, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Melanie Schiff - Underwater Photography

From the website: Throughout Melanie Schiff's work multiple themes and symbols recur such as her playful use of light, landscape, the body, pop culture and ideas of spirituality and meditation. The moments she addresses are quiet and waver on the edge of a constructed poetic narrative and an instant found by chance. Her investigations and use of natural light through windows and objects such as empty CD cases and light fixtures form prisms of color and phenomenon of light and shadow. One might point to magic or alchemy as a starting point of her work, though these moments of chance and mystery infiltrate the commonplace detritus of an event including scattered beer cans, bottles, books, records and personal effects revealing what could be seen as a spiritual happening through a series of mundane objects.

Kavi Gupta Gallery
835 West Washington
Chicago, IL 60607

Photographic Gallery - South Street Seaport

By

Jim Beecher

on December 8, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Photographic Gallery - South Street Seaport

Group Show - We Cover the Waterfront

Helen Levitt - B&W, Color, NYC Streets

By

Jim Beecher

on December 7, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Helen Levitt - B&W, Color, NYC Streets

Galerie f5,6
Ludwigstr.7
80539 Munich

From the website: For Levitt street life is of great importance, the streets she considers a stage; this idea is directly associated with 1930th great interest in the city as a vision of the future, as well as the basic surrealistic thought. Her great interest in childhood also coincides with the surrealistic idea.

More Levitt

The Essential Landscape - The Visual Handicap

By

Jim Beecher

on December 7, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

The Essential Landscape - The Visual Handicap by Guy Tal

From the website: Still curious, I sought to learn what past masters of the visual arts had to say on the matter. Perhaps the most poignant observation I found was one from painter Edward Hopper who simply stated, "If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint." Yet my favorite perspective is one expressed by Rene Magritte who said of his paintings that "they evoke mystery and indeed when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable."

Stefan Heyne - Berlin

By

Jim Beecher

on December 6, 2006 6:00 AM | Permalink

Stefan Heyne - Berlin

From the website: So the pictures are not "finished" beforehand in your head?

From the website: No. For example, when I'm at the cash register at the service station or when I drive through the city, then I look in my wallet, because I have to pay, or at the display panel and, automatically, with half an eye to the side. When my eye gets stuck there, I try to take a picture. And then I take another and another. In the process, the motif changes, taking on a reality of its own.

From the website: And you experience this moment again?

From the website: There isn't really anything to experience. The picture that I see with my naked eye and the picture in the camera are two very different things. And the print is yet another thing. Two completely new levels enter into it. There are three very different decisions. A few months ago, while taking a train ride, I got stuck on a cropping in the compartment. So then I photographed this cropping again and again over three or four days. Of forty photos, in the end one remained.

• Learn • Inspiration • Energy • Fun

December 2006 Archives