February 2008 Archives

Amanda Jones

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

George Barr

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

Gregory Heisler

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

Gus Powell

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

Sean Hodge

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

Milton Glaser

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

Paul Gilman and David B. Goldstein

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

Microsoft Photo Story 3

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

Larry Clark

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

Robert Mapplethorpe

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

Cap'n Surly

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

Jamie Maxtone-Graham

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

Jamie Maxtone-Graham - Youth Culture in Vietnam

Eugene McCarthy by Ctein

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

Gorillapod

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

The Moment It Clicks by Joe McNally

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

Peter Henry Emerson

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

Steidl & Partners Publishing

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

Slide Show

Least Wanted's photos Flickr

Michael Eastman

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

printRates

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

printRates

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

Picnik

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

FotoFlexer

Picnik

Snipshot Formerly Pixoh

Splashup Formerly Fauxto

PXN8

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

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.

Bandit's Roost by Jacob Riis (1888)

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

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.

Trinity Repertory Company

More Mann

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.

DeCordova Museum

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.

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!

Disguised Bandit

Ken Gonzales-Day - Erased Lynching

From the website: The Wonder Gaze, presents a series of appropriated lynching postcards and images in which the lynch victim and the ropes have all been been removed; a conceptual gesture intended to direct the viewers attention, not upon the lifeless body of lynch victim, but upon the mechanisms of lynching themselves: the crowd, the spectacle, the photographer, and even the impact of flash photography upon this dismal past. The perpetrators, if present, remain fully visible, jeering, laughing, or pulling at the air in a deadly pantomime. As such, this series strives to make the invisible - visible.

Amy Stein

Amy Stein - Domesticated

From the website: Amy Stein is a photographer based in New York City. Her work explores our evolving isolation from community, culture, and the environment.

Elle Perez

The Ones We Love

From the website: The Ones We Love is a project highlighting young and talented photographers from around the world. Each artist contributed six photographs of the person(s) who is most important to them, taken outdoors in a natural setting. The goal of the website is to portray the people who are loved, cherished, and inspirational to these artists, and also showcase the differences and similarities in the photographs each of them took within the same guidelines.

Kenneth Libbrecht

Kenneth Libbrecht - No Two Alike? by Jack Crager

From the website: Having made more than 7,000 pictures of snowflakes, Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht is in a pretty good position to say each one is unique. "People make a lot more out of that saying than they ought to, you know," he says with a laugh. "I've addressed that on my website, snowcrystals.com, in all it's gory detail, just for the record. And as I like to say, the question of no two snowflakes being alike depends on what you mean by snowflakes and what you mean by alike."

Judith Joy Ross

What makes a great portrait? by Joerg Colberg

From the website: When discussing what "makes" a great portrait with Exposure Compensation's Miguel Garcia-Guzman, we quickly realized that we couldn't really agree on much. So we figured we might as well ask some other people, and we sent out an email to a large number of photographers, fine art and commercial, bloggers, curators, editors, and gallerists: "What makes a good portrait?

Jonas Karlsson

'The plug wasn't in. It began to sink' by Leo Benedictus

From the website: What's it like to photograph somebody famous? Or to be that famous person, posing for a photograph? Leo Benedictus picks three great portraits - and hears both sides of the story

Denis Finnin

Pro's Choice; Museum Photography: Diverse Tools For Diverse Needs; The Complex World Of Photography At New York's American Museum Of Natural History by Jack Neubart

From the website: "The Great Swamp was a treat," observed one of the photographers from the American Museum of Natural History's photo studio after returning from a trip to photograph this New Jersey marshland. "Nothing like slogging around in chest waders and dodging mosquitoes (unsuccessfully, I might add) for four hours in really nice smelling swamp water," he quipped. As part of a project to photograph aquatic vegetation for an upcoming exhibit, this intrepid photographer had to step outside the familiar studio environment, which happens on occasion. Some assignments have taken members of the photo studio to such exotic locations as Indonesia, Hawaii, and Africa to document scientists working and collecting samples for the museum.

istockphoto.com/mandygodbehear

Aging Gracefully in Photoshop by Chad Neuman

From the website: You may have used Photoshop to restore and color-correct old photos. But sometimes you want to age a new image so it looks retro or vintage. Try these three techniques for unique results. Although the directions are for CS3, many of the steps also apply to earlier versions of the software.

Luigi Bellanca

abrViewer.NET - Photoshop Brush Viewer by Luigi Bellanca

From the website: An utility for previewing and exporting as images one or multiple set of brushes generated with Adobe Photoshop (.abr files). It makes publishing your custom brush sets on the internet really easy.

Clint Farlinger

Cave Photography; Color, Gear, And Light Painting, Underground Style by Clint Farlinger

From the website: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe the occasional splash of a drop of water, but other than that, nothing. After a few moments, the park ranger states that anyone who has a question should raise their hand now. Everyone chuckles and the lights come back on to once again reveal the huge expanse that only hints at the size of Mammoth Cave. When no artificial light source is present, all caves look exactly the same. However, when the lights come on, each cave shows its uniqueness, which offers extraordinary opportunities for photography.

Jean Harlow by George Hurrell (1934)

Classic portraits from Vanity Fair

From the website: From DH Lawrence to Claude Monet, from Bette Davis to Jesse Owens - photographs of the leading cultural figures of the 20s and 30s, originally published in Vanity Fair, have now been brought together for a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. The result is a seductive series of images evoking a classic era

National Portrait Gallery UK

Lucian Read

Testimony to War: Art From the Battlegrounds of Iraq

From the website: School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents "Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq," an exhibition that brings together the creative output of five emerging and established artists, each of whom has a direct experience of the war in Iraq: Army Major Peter Buotte, Army Sergeant Aaron Hughes, embedded artist Steve Mumford, embedded photographer Lucian Read, and Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Roa. Curated by Francis Di Tommaso, director of the Visual Arts Museum, "Testimony to War" will include examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and video representative of the artists' distinctive bodies of work and of their uniquely personal vantage points of the war. Ranging from the subtly conceptual to the graphically raw, these works drive home the human costs of war as they bring us closer to the street-level reality of Iraq.

Graciela Iturbide

Graciela Iturbide - The Goat's Dance

From the website: This exhibition loosely surveys more than 30 years of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide's international career by highlighting major series produced in Mexico and the United States.

Graciela Iturbide - Eyes to Fly With

Tom Rankin

Tom Rankin - Near the Cross: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta

From the website: Tom Rankin began photographing the sacred landscapes and spiritual traditions of the Mississippi Delta in the late 1980s when he moved there to teach at Delta State University. He returns to Mississippi regularly to photograph some of the same churches and cemeteries as they evolve and change over time, reflecting the ongoing life of these holy spaces. Rankin expresses his deep connection and attraction to the Delta and its religious practices in his book Sacred Space.

Mother's Garden by Yeondoo Jung

Yeondoo Jung - Wonderland

From the website: Jung's new series of photos, "Wonderland" (2004), presents costumed adolescents posing in sets based as closely as possible on children's drawings. He collaborates with many people to bring to life the boundless imagination in the drawings. For four months, Jung oversaw art classes in four kindergartens in Seoul and collected 1,200 drawings by children between the ages of five and seven. After pouring through them, he carefully selected 17 drawings and interpreted their meanings. Then he recruited 60 high school students by passing out handbills at their schools in which he invited them to act out the scenarios in the children's drawings. In order to recreate faithfully drawing details such as dresses with uneven sleeves or buttons of different sizes, he convinced five fashion designers to custom make the clothing for the photo shoot. He also made props unlike any scale found in reality but similar to those in the drawings.

Above from "Dreams Come True" :Transgressing the Border Between Reality and Fantasy by Yukie Kamiya

Les Saucier

Making the Light Sing and Dance: Using High Tech Flashlights in Macro Photography (PDF)