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Go To Amanda Jones.
Jim
Doggie Photog Deals with Slobber on the Lens by Amy Costello
Photographer Amanda Jones, who takes pictures of people's beloved dogs.
Her sessions run $1,400, not including the charge for prints.
But she has plenty of takers among pet fans.
Amy Costello
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Years ago, at Nightingale, a school for girls here in NYC, an astute student said, "Mr. Beeecher, if you say, 'It's interesting,' you don't like it."
Interesting, here, means something else.
Jim
Definition of Interesting by George Barr
"Photograph what interests you"
"Interest Comes First"
"Look for something interesting"
Sounds like this "Interesting" thing, whatever it is is pretty important so I thought I would talk about it.
Let's see if we can figure out what interesting really means.
We could start by describing some things that are interesting, then we might have a better idea of what it means, keeping in mind that we are talking photographically.
George Barr
Comments
In grade school mannerisms "interesting" can be a negative--a gentle way of saying "you got it wrong".
But in real life where the search for truth is difficult and the road never black and white, "interesting" is usually a compliment.
You learn something from an interesting photo.
Nicholas
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Mr. Heisler is known for his portraits, many of which have appeared on the cover of Time.
He assisted with Arnold Newman.
Go to Gregory Heisler.
Jim
Gregory Heisler Interview by George Jardine
Gregory sits down with George to have a conversation about working with Arnold Newman, his love of portraiture, and some of his thinking on a wide range of subjects including the value of the print, and the difficulties of developing a personal style.
George Jardine
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Street photography lives!
For more, go to Street Photography.
And, go to How to Photograph Strangers.
Also, go to Gus Powell and Jeff Mermelstein.
Jim
Street Photography in an Image-Filled Age by Sewell Chan
In our media-saturated culture, everyone is a picture-taker and image-maker, adding a new wrinkle to the work of those who practice the time-honored tradition of street photography.
Sewell Chan
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Sean Hodge has written a clear tutorial.
Jim
Create a Constructivist Inspired Poster by Sean Hodge
In this tutorial you'll learn how to create a poster design inspired by an art movement called Russian Constructivism.
We will cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design.
We'll then tie it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel.
Sean Hodge
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Today's theme is somewhat political.
To see Mr. Glaser's posters, go to Milton Glaser.
Read his essay 10 Things I Have Learned.
I especially like Mr. Glaser's concept of continuous transgression.
I quote it in Mistakes in my PATH book.
Jim
Art and Propaganda by Milton Glaser
A while ago, I was looking for a definition of art's purpose. I came across one that I liked; in fact, I liked it so much that I used it for the title of a film that was made about my work.
It's from Horace, the Roman philosopher and critic, who wrote, "The purpose of art is to inform and delight."
I've been thinking about the purpose of art all my life and Horace helped me to arrive at an understanding.
Art is a survival mechanism for the human species.
Otherwise, it never would have lasted so long.
Milton Glaser
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The techniques in the tutorial can be adapted to other brands of cameras.
Don't know much about about stereo photography?
Go to stereo photography.
Jim
Creating Stereo Prints Using Kodak Digital Cameras by Paul Gilman and David B. Goldstein
Nearly any film or digital camera is capable of creating left-eye/right-eye photographs that can produce stereo images with the appropriate effort and skill, but all of the most recent KODAK digital cameras now have features that make it easier than ever to create stereo images that may be printed or enjoyed in 3D on a variety of display screens.
Paul Gilman and David B. Goldstein
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Make sure you watch your slide shows in a basement rec room with knotty-pine paneling and a tiki bar.
Jim
5 Ways to Create Beautiful Slideshows of your Digital Pictures by Aseem Kishore
. . . I noticed that not too many of my friends nor my family really care to wade through hundreds of pictures, usually the same scene, just a different angle, because it's boring.
That's where photo slideshows come in handy.
You can make yourself look pretty suave by creating fancy slideshows with customized music, titles, and more using some very easy-to-use and free tools.
Aseem Kishore
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Tulsa is a great book, especially Skip's First Shot.
For more, go to Clark.
The Simon Lee Gallery is in London.
Jim
Larry Clark - The kids stay in the picture by Sean O'Hagan
Larry Clark's photographs document the secret lives of teenagers - drinking, drug-taking, having sex.
Shocking?
Not according to their creator.
"I'm just telling it like it is."
Sean O'Hagan
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Two "bad" boys of photography, today.
For more, go to Mapplethorpe.
Jim
Robert Mapplethorpe - Polaroids by Rosecrans Baldwin
Polaroid recently announced that it will stop producing film for instant cameras, now that the world's gone digital.
What are we losing?
For photographers, the Polaroid was toy and tool, means and end, and Mapplethorpe handled it magnificently: roughly with sex, playfully with himself, carefully with faces, studiously on the body.
Rosecrans Baldwin
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For more, go to infrared photography.
Jim
Infrared Photography: Images of Unseen Color by evad
In infrared photography, the film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light.
The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging.
Wavelengths used for photography range from about 700 nm to about 900 nm.
Usually an "infrared filter" is used; this lets infrared (IR) light pass through to the camera but blocks all or most of the visible light spectrum (and thus looks black or deep red).
evad
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Jamie Maxtone-Graham is a cinematographer.
He has shot numerous films (features and documentaries) in Vietnam, including From Hollywood to Hanoi.
Currently, he's photographing youth culture in Vietnam on a Fulbright research grant.
Have a look at his Flickr website!
Jim
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Ctein is a great writer, especially reviews of films (way back then) and articles about printing.
Polaroid film was great when I challenged myself, years ago, by photographing black boots on black velvet.
Jim
Polaroid Made Me the Photographer I Am Today by Ctein
There's a good chance, in fact, that I wouldn't even be a photographer today were it not for Polaroid.
Until I got a Polaroid camera, my photographs were extremely ordinary.
I've gone back and checked.
I was usually the one wielding the family camera, but any other family member could have done exactly as good (namely, bad) a job as I.
That all changed early in my teens.
My grandpa gave me his Polaroid Highlander 80A rollfilm camera, with Wink-light flash and a modest number of filters.
Ctein
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Spend some more!
Jim
Framed and Exposed: Camera Accessories You Just Gotta Have by Ben Long
As photographers, we have needs.
We need good light and good subject matter, of course.
But we also need precise, well-engineered optical instruments to capture our chosen subject matter under that good light.
Most importantly, we need a constant influx of new hardware to buttress our hopes that it's only gear that stands between us and a huge portfolio of jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring photos.
Ben Long
Comments
Absolutely love my GorillaPod!
I'm a garaphic design student and I do a lot of my own photography.
The most frequent question I get, is "how did you get that shot?!"
GorillaPod.
lnynbird
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Joe McNally's book, The Moment It Clicks, has garnered great reviews, such as All About the Moment by Jack Crager.
Jim
Interview with Joe McNally by Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel
Nancy Aldrich-Ruenzel, publisher of Peachpit, speaks with National Geographic photographer Joe McNally about his new best-selling book, The Moment It Clicks--the first book with one foot on the coffee table, and one foot in the classroom.
Joe describes his book as a compilation of years of storytelling, and shares his stories, as well as advice.
Peachpit Press
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Digital has changed photography.
But, the essentials of 1889 remain the same in 2008, such as "We strongly advise him to give away no prints of early work, or he will most surely rue the day when he did so."
But, Emerson didn't think his advice was timeless.
Emerson recanted his 1889 book, Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, below, in 1891.
He wrote, in the The Death of Naturalistic Photography, "I have...I regret it deeply, compared photographs to great works of art, and photographers to great artists."
"It was rash and thoughtless, and my punishment is having to acknowledge it now... In short, I throw my lot in with those who say that Photography is a very limited art."
"I deeply regret that I have come to this conclusion..."
For more, go to Emerson, including The world in the ground glass: transformations in P. H. Emerson's photography by Charles Palermo.
Jim
Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art by Peter Henry Emerson (1889)
"We strongly advise those desirous of doing artistic work to begin by studying tone, expose (always giving two exposures to each subject) on selected subjects, especially fit for the study of tone; for example, a figure in a white dress against a white background, another in a black dress against a black background, and then a white dress against a black background, and a black dress against a white background; some white flowers against a sheet of white paper; yacht-sails against the sky; faces against the sky; black velvet in bright sun- shine, and on a grey day; yellow flowers (with orthochromatic plates) on a white background.
In short, the student should think of all the possible harmonies and discords that can be found indoors and out of doors, and he should, before taking a plate, make a mental translation of the subject into black and white, and put on paper roughly, with a piece of charcoal, what he expects to get, by drawing rough masses in tone of the subject.
Peter Henry Emerson
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These mug shots have gotten around.
They've appeared in an exhibit in NYC as well as in the Smithsonian Magazine.
Jim
Mark Michaelson - Mug Shot Gallery by Jennifer Brandel
Photography collector Mark Michaelson is fascinated by the people who don't make it in the history books. When he went to Rome last year, he wasn't interested in the palaces. He wanted to see the slave quarters. "I wasn't really thinking about Caesar or Marc Antony — I was thinking about the guy who lays the bricks. What did he do at night? Where did he go home to? What did his house look like?"
Jennifer Brandel
Least Wanted's photos Flickr
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Great light and color.
For more, go to Eastman.
Jim
Michael Eastman - Vanishing America
Over the past thirty years, Michael Eastman has produced a body of fine-art photography on subjects ranging from European architecture to Midwestern storefronts.
Young Gallery
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printRates can help you to find the best online lab.
I've got a list of the prominent online labs in the Spend section of photokaboom.com.
Jim
Save money on digital photo printing by comparing digital photo printing prices and reading reviews. Compare dozens of digital photo printing sites read and write reviews choose the right one for you.
printRates
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Software is shifting from your computer to being online.
The software for this blog is online, and the survey software used on photokaboom.com for Ask Jim and the Creative Energy Questionnaire, is online as well.
Photoshop will be online soon.
Here are some online editors for fun and quick fixes.
Try Picnik, first.
It's gotten great reviews.
Jim
Snipshot Formerly Pixoh
Splashup Formerly Fauxto
Comments
Shankar recommends flauntR.
Jim
It's a set of tools really, with the typical editing features, a whole range of photo frames, and a CS3 ColorMatch like tool (PicasR).
Shankar
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| Ramesh Raskar |
Computational Photography by Brian Hayes
From the website: The digital camera has brought a revolutionary shift in the nature of photography, sweeping aside more than 150 years of technology based on the weird and wonderful photochemistry of silver halide crystals. Curiously, though, the camera itself has come through this transformation with remarkably little change. A digital camera has a silicon sensor where the film used to go, and there's a new display screen on the back, but the lens and shutter and the rest of the optical system work just as they always have, and so do most of the controls. The images that come out of the camera also look much the same--at least until you examine them microscopically.
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| Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis (1888) |
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| Hand Colored Lantern Slide (Circa 1900) |
Recovering the Complex Legacy of the Photographer Jacob Riis by Verlyn Klinkenborg
From the website: If you have seen any of Jacob Riis's photographs, you have probably never forgotten them. Riis was the Danish-born police reporter who in the late 1880s brought magnesium-flash photography into some of the darkest and most troubled spots in New York City — the tenements near Mulberry Bend, where Columbus Park now stands. New immigrants were crushed together there in some of the worst squalor and highest population densities ever recorded on this planet.
More Riis
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| Artist Not Credited |
'Some Things Are Private' reexamines a mother's controversial photos by Cate McQuaid
From the website: . . . photographer Sally Mann has been through a few firestorms in her career - most notably the uproar around "Immediate Family," her book of nude photos of her young children, published in 1992, which was met with cries of "Pornography!" and made her one of the top selling fine-art photographers of her time.
More Mann
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| Shelby Lee Adams |
Children should be seen by Mark Feeney
From the website: A very basic, and fascinating, opposition drives "Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children." It's between photography itself, an arresting of time, and childhood, an unfolding of time. Tension between form and content doesn't get any more fundamental than that.
'Presumed Innocence: Photographic Perspectives of Children' Slideshow
From the website: Children are seen in a vigorous new DeCordova exhibition that offers a refreshingly wide range of photographic styles. Take a peek at some of the photos on display.
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| Christian Bloch |
An Introduction to High Dynamic Range Imaging by Christian Bloch
From the website: Think of it like this: HDR imaging is the next generation of a RAW workflow. Right now, they go hand in hand and extend each other. But sooner or later all digital imaging will happen in HDR.
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| Anne-Marie Concepcion |
Throw Photoshop's Crop Tool into Reverse by Anne-Marie Concepcion
From the website: Normally, the Crop tool makes the canvas smaller. But it can also make the canvas bigger. And it gives you a preview and the flexibility to adjust size on the fly. Take that, Canvas Size!
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