July 2008 Archives

Brian P. Lawler

Also go to Brian P. Lawler.

Jim

Photo Murals Make You Think Big. Really Big. by Brian P. Lawler

Another issue with large-format graphics like this is the dimensions of the rooms in which they'll appear -- you want them to be exact.

I worked with a contractor to measure the spaces twice.

These graphics cost several thousand dollars each, and making one the wrong size would be a costly mistake.

Brian P. Lawler

Sara Frances

Rehabilitate Old Photos by Sara Frances

A bride brought me her 18-year-old photographic horror story.

Angry and distraught over poor-quality wedding pictures, she fumed bitterly through close to two decades and several children before deciding to invest in recreating her dream nuptials into a contemporary wedding storybook.

Sara Frances

Claire Wilson

Ten Newborn Photography Tips by Claire Wilson

I thought it might be useful to pass on a few things I've learned from photographing these tiny ones.

Claire Wilson

Joe Reifer

Also go to PATH.

Jim

Going deeper may require more abstract excursions by Joe Reifer

Outside the morass of online photography talk there must somewhere lie something more pure and true.

Joe Reifer

Finding the Heart of Your Work by Craig Tanner

In this episode, inspired by a great blog post from Joe Reifer, Craig takes up Joe's challenge to the photograph community to engage the discussion about creating more meaningful and powerful work.

RadiantVista.com

What is the purpose of the drive? by Joe Reifer

I listened to Craig Tanner's podcast on Finding the Heart of Your Work.

I'm impressed that Craig saw the original article as a challenge, and was able to see this dark time of questioning as a smaller phase in a larger creative process.

Joe Reifer

Adobe

Also go to Jon Canfield.

As well as Photoshop Elements Tutorials.

Jim

Adobe's Photoshop Elements 6; A Very Capable Image Editor at an Affordable Price by Jon Canfield

Adobe's Photoshop application is the standard for many digital photographers.

Heck, it's even a verb now, as in "that looks Photoshopped."

But, at $500 and up, depending on the packaging, Photoshop CS3 is overkill for many users.

Recognizing that the majority of photographers don't want to be spending their time learning a complex program, Adobe has offered Photoshop Elements, a reduced but very capable editing program for a much more reasonable price (about $90).

Jon Canfield

Jack Neubart

Also go to Insects.

Jim

Locations; Big City Butterflies; Photographing at the American Museum of Natural History's Conservatory by Jack Neubart

Every year, New York City's American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) comes to life with a teeming array of mesmerizing and vibrantly colorful butterflies (and some moths) from around the world.

The Butterfly Conservatory houses numerous specimens reflecting the rich diversity of insects known collectively as Lepidoptera.

In fact, this collection even includes the world's largest moth species, the Atlas moth.

Jack Neubart

Kevin Moloney

Also go to Kevin Moloney.

Jim

On Assignment; The Photography of Kevin Moloney by Rosalind Smith

Moloney believes there are three kinds of photographers in photojournalism and documentary, the first being "the readers' photographer," someone whose primary goal is to inform and please the reader, straight and clear.

The second group is "the editor's photographer" who uses the latest techniques and stays with the certain look that is popular in magazines at the time.

"That," he says, "makes good business sense because we need to sell our images."

"The third," he says, "is the photographer's photographer, one who makes complex and intriguing images like a lot of the Magnum photographers do today or like those of Cartier-Bresson and Joseph Kudelka.

These may baffle the average person, though."

"Good photographers try to be all three," Moloney says.

Rosalind Smith

A. T. Willett

Also go to A. T. Willett and Jeff Smith.

As well as Lightning.

Jim

Lightning Strikes; The Photography of Tom Willett and Jeff Smith by Lorraine A. DarConte

Separately, they each developed a passion for photographing the powerful lightning displays that typically accompany the storms.

And so it was no surprise that they eventually began working together

Lorraine A. DarConte

Noah Kalina

Also go to Noah Kalina.

Jim

Noah Kalina - Labs at Night

So it is in these images that we find scenes of "potential energy" culled from a collective pursuit to understand the world.

The scientists have gone home, but the ideas remain, manifested in experiments, moving autonomously in the darkness toward a revelation.

Seed Magazine

Columbia Journalism Review

Flickring, Out What will become of photojournalism in an age of bytes and amateurs? by Alissa Quart

They've been struggling with downsizing, the rise of the amateur, the ubiquity of camera phones, sound-bite-ization, failing magazines (so fewer commissions), and a lack of money in general for the big photo essays that have long been the love of the metaphoric children of Walker Evans.

Like print journalists, photographers are scrambling not only to make sense of the new world, but to survive in it intact.

Alissa Quart

Chang W. Lee

In Thousands of Images, a Photographer Builds a History in Harlem by Niko Koppel

Alix Dejean lives a long subway ride from Harlem.

But being a resident of Brooklyn has not prevented Mr. Dejean from becoming a fixture on the streets of Harlem, where people regularly call out to him by his nickname, "Alley Cat."

Niko Koppel

Ernst Star & Steve Zeitlin

Home Movie: An American Folk Art by Ernst Star & Steve Zeitlin

In 1974, as part of the Family Fbolklore Program of the Festival of American Folklife, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., put out a call for families to bring in their home movies and have portions of them copied for a documentary film.

More than 100 families responded to the call, bringing in 16 mm and 8mm home movies, as well as photo albums.

The result was the documentary, Home Movie: An American Folk Art by Ernst Star, then a student in the film department at Temple University, and Steve Zeitlin, a student in the Department of Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania.

folkstreams.net

Stephen Salmieri

Cadillac - Photographs by Stephen Salmieri

Perhaps no other car has so symbolized or embodied the notion of "The American Dream" as Cadillac.

From 1972 to 1984, Stephen Salmieri traveled the United States, from New York to Beverly Hills, photographing Cadillacs.

In over eighty pictures, he captured the evolution of an American automotive icon.

Joseph Bellows Gallery

Mr. Motts (Tom Kirsch)

Also go to Landscape.

Jim

Opacity - Urban Ruins

This site is dedicated to documenting various abandoned places through both text and photographs; recording their transformations through time before they are demolished.

The abundance of abandoned asylums and psychiatric hospitals in the New England area create the bulk of the locations here; these beautiful state funded structures are vast and complex, giving insight to both the humanity and mistreatment towards the mentally ill over the past two centuries.

Mr. Motts (Tom Kirsch)

Martin Joergensen

Why your images are worthless by Martin Joergensen

Trying to make money from your photography is a very long shot.

The market is so saturated with quality pictures with extremely high availability and extremely low prices that getting a foothold is close to impossible.

Martin Joergensen

George Eastman House Collection

George Eastman House's photostream

George Eastman House, an independent nonprofit museum, is an educational institution that tells the story of photography and motion pictures—media that have changed and continue to change our perception of the world.

George Eastman House

Ming Tshing

Print Like Ansel Adams by Ming Tshing

As the digital march continues onward, there's one thing that will never change: the pure aesthetic quality of elegant black-and-white imagery.

My position at Nash Editions has exposed me to a wide variety of photographic art, and with that variety comes a plethora of problems.

Much of my Photoshop skills are a direct result of problem solving.

Every day I work with photographers, optimizing their images, helping them to realize their vision on paper.

Rather than covering a comprehensive overview of my black-and-white workflow here, I'll focus on some of the more unique techniques I use to improve black-and-white images.

Ming Tshing

Paul Butzi

The Silver Standard, reprise by Paul Butzi

And there's just no comparison.

The digital prints win on expressiveness, they win on tonal range, they win on rendering of subtle tonal stuff.

They win on overall appearance, they win on every metric you might apply.

They're so much better than the gelatin silver prints (and than the inkjet prints I was making just a few years ago) that I think that in some way, all this adds up and they're different in kind, not just in quality.

Paul Butzi

Daryl Benson

Also go to Daryl Benson.

Jim

Making Summer Color by Daryl Benson

In the summer, hot on the heels of a season that positively bursts with varied hues, the color that most comes to mind is green.

The landscape becomes a green carpet, and finding dramatic color combinations can be a daunting task.

Sure, there still are flowers and blooms to work with, but compared to the explosion of spring colors, summer photography can be tough.

To make summer color really pop, you can turn to some special equipment and technology.

Daryl Benson

Onne Van Der Wal

PDN's The Great Outdoors 2008

Getty

Everyone Will Be Lonely Eight Months From Now by Seth Stevenson

I was startled to realize that stock photo and video purveyors actually create material in anticipation of demand.

Seth Stevenson

Michael Agger

I Look Stupid by Michael Agger

In other words, this analysis confirms the elegant Montaigne observation that it quotes: "[Beauty] holds the first place in human relations; it presents itself before the rest, seduces and prepossesses our judgment with great authority and wondrous impression."

Michael Agger

Jeff Wignall

How to Create Depth in Landscape Photography by Jeff Wignall

One of the toughest visual concepts to communicate in a landscape photograph is depth: the sensation that you're looking at distance when, in fact, all you're really looking at is a flat sheet of paper.

Jeff Wignall

Ed Kashi

Also go to Documenting The Paradox Of Oil, Poverty In Nigeria and Ed Kashi and the Importance of Advocacy Journalism.

Jim

Ed Kashi - Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta

Photojournalist Ed Kashi, the book's co-author, spent years documenting the country's oil industry.

He tells Liane Hansen that Nigeria has reaped more than $600 billion of oil wealth in the past half-century.

But for the people in the region, he says, oil has brought dire poverty and a lack of development and fostered government corruption.

NPR

Patrick Tsai

Patrick Tsai - The Death of My Little Dead Dick by Selena Hoy

When it comes down to it, I want to show why China is a great place, but portray in a way in which you need an entirely new frame of mind to appreciate it than in the ordinary sense.

For example, I've seen sky scrapers on fire near my house; a man standing on a freeway overpass wanting to jump on my way to an interview at Starbucks; a dead body in a famous tourist lake on my first day in a city; and people paying money to see tigers eat live chickens and cows.

It sounds a little dark the way I am describing it now.

Patrick Tsai

Micah Walter

Also go to Efex.

Jim

Watch Out, Silver Efex is Addictive! by Micah Walter

It's Saturday afternoon and I am having a blast experimenting with the new edit plugin from Nik Software called Silver Efex Pro.

Micah Walter

The Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago Photography Collection

Spanning the history of the medium from its beginning in 1839 to the present, the Art Institute's photography collection contains works of many of the medium's celebrated practitioners.

The collection originated in 1949, when Georgia O'Keeffe donated the Alfred Stieglitz Collection.

The acquisition of the Julien Levy Collection, a gift of more than 200 photographs by Edward Weston, and purchases of the work of Paul Strand, Eugéne Atget, and André Kertész have made the department's collection of modern masters one of the strongest in the world.

The Art Institute of Chicago

Gilbert & George

Milwaukee Art Museum - Gilbert & George

For almost four decades Gilbert & George have been making some of the most remarkable and influential art of our times.

The pictures are at the core of their practice and contain powerful messages that speak of the moment of their creation with rarely matched acuity.

This becomes even more pronounced with the benefit of hindsight, as the furor subsides and the pictures reveal depths of emotion: tenderness, violence, shame, pleasure, and fear.

The striking originality of their images is another great achievement: pictures by Gilbert & George bear little resemblance to anything from the modern world but pictures by Gilbert & George.

The artists are instantly recognizable, always formal but open and generous.

Often described as the quintessential London artists, Gilbert & George take their subject matter from their immediate environment, the liminal border between the City (the financial and commercial district of London) and the East End.

The fusions and tensions of the area, between local and global, privilege and exclusion, migrant populations and cultural traditions, are at the heart of their art.

Gilbert & George represent the condition, or contradiction, of the metropolis: it is precisely these local textures that give their work such an international quality.

Vicente Todoli

Becky Wolfe

Also go to Becky Wolfe.

Jim

If a 5-ton elephant is charging you, it's not the best time to stop and take a photo! by Becky Wolfe

There are many ways in which Africa can be explored and for my particular journey, I chose an open-air, overland truck.

I was roughing it.

The driver of the truck was also our guide, we slept in tents, and we followed a basic outline starting us in Zimbabwe, into Zambia, up through the friendly country of Malawi, the safari lands of Tanzania and Kenya and into Ethiopia.

Becky Wolfe

David Lee

Also go to Stereo Photography.

Jim

The Golden Age of Stereo Photography by David Lee

Many people think that stereo photography (also known as 3D) is something their grandmother looked at and that it is not a viable medium today.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Today is the golden age of stereo photography.

David Lee

Steve Paxton

Also go to Night Photography.

Jim

Shooting Stunning Nighttime Landscapes by Steve Paxton

Many photographers assume that once the sun goes down, so do the opportunities to take spectacular landscape images.

Some of my favorite photographs were taken under extremely low light or nearly pitch-black conditions.

In fact, I have found that the darker it is the better results I usually get in my images.

Steve Paxton

George Stocking

Also go to George Stocking.

Jim

Mad Dogs and Photographers by George Stocking

In 1931, songwriter Noel Coward wrote that only Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out into the mid-day sun.

I'd like to make the case that the expression should be updated, because today, the only of God's creatures that venture out into the heat of the day are mad dogs and photographers.

George Stocking

Witold Riedel

Witold Riedel - The Bear in Repose by Rosecrans Baldwin

We discussed that perhaps in this batch the bear is on more of a quest—for himself, for what is real. But perhaps that's saying too much.

Much better to leave it up to you, the reader and viewer, to see what the bear says to you.

Rosecrans Baldwin

Andrew Davidhazy

Via Kottke.

Jim

An Informal Catalogue of Slit-Scan Video Artworks and Research by Golan Levin

Slitscan imaging techniques are used to create static images of time-based phenomena.

In traditional film photography, slit scan images are created by exposing film as it slides past a slit-shaped aperture. In the digital realm, thin slices are extracted from a sequence of video frames, and concatenated into a new image.

Golan Levin

Phototrap

Via Rob Galbraith.

Jim

The Night Shift - Photographing Owls and Bats by Tom Vezo

Capture the Incredible Using the Photo Trap and High Speed Flash. by Joe McDonald

Zoo and Aquarium Visitor

Top 10 Tips for a Great Zoo Photography Experience

Zoos are one of the best places to photograph wildlife.

They have the largest concentration of wildlife per acre anywhere.

The animals are not spooked by humans; they have limited range and usually are set in scenic surroundings.

On the downside there are a lot of humans present and the range of shots is limited.

Zoo and Aquarium Visitor

Bill Armstrong

Extreme Blur - The Unseen Work of Bill Armstrong

Armstrong arbitrarily spun the lens of his camera out of focus, and he found that he liked the way it looked.

ZooZoom

Steven Meisel & Guy Bourdin

Via Ursula Liang.

Jim

Steven Meisel & Guy Bourdin - Mystery

This montage has mashed the dramatic images of Meisel with the cinematic photographs of the late, great Guy Bourdin, and the result is a kind of dialogue between two important voices in fashion photography.

Ursula Liang

Carleton Watkins

About Carleton Watkins by Bruce Hathaway

He was arguably the most artistic American landscape photographer in the 19th century.

In 1862, Oliver Wendell Holmes, the pre-eminent photography critic of the day, praised Watkins and wrote that he had achieved "a perfection of art which compares with the finest European work."

Bruce Hathaway

Meera Sethi

Photographing the Science Museum by Meera Sethi

Today I can't imagine a more perfect afternoon than one spent in the dim confines of a natural history museum.

I'm rather happy in a planetarium, too.

Oh, or any building whose contents sing a paean to terrifying pharmaceutical products from another age.

There's nothing more intoxicating, now, than the thrill I feel when I pick up the visitor's map from the front counter.

Meera Sethi

Alex Wild

Also go to Alex Wild and Insects.

Jim

Feeling Antsy: Alex Wild, Ant Photographer

I started getting emails from photo editors who found me through Google and wanted to license my images, a complete surprise, so I scrambled to figure out how to conduct business.

Alex Wild

NPR

Race Gentry - A Vintage Photography Flash Lamp In Action

In the 1890s, "people were new to flash photography, and when [Riis] set it off, I'm sure he had people watching him," Gentry tells Robert Siegel.

"I kind of feel the same way as he did.

In this century, I'm using the flash and I get somewhat of a crowd, too."

NPR

W. Eugene Smith

Also go to W. Eugene Smith.

Jim

W. Eugene Smith: Art, Not News by R.C. Baker

et here, divorced from the context of Life magazine photo essays, the individual frames reveal Smith to be not just an emphatic photojournalist but a wholly brilliant artist.

R.C. Baker

Man Ray

Also go to Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940.

Jim

The Met's Century of Photography by Leslie Camhi

Such is photography's ambivalent legacy.

Leslie Camhi

Barbara Probst

Split Second by Nicole Pasulka

When experienced from many different perspectives, is the instant when a photograph is taken still just a single moment?

Barbara Probst's diptych and triptych photos, taken at the same time from different cameras and points of view, offer multiple versions of a split second.

Probst subverts the authority of the lone photograph, but rather than presenting a more comprehensive picture of an event, location, or moment, her work reminds us that even photos are interpretations.

Nicole Pasulka

American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History: Picturing the Museum

The Museum's Research Library now manages the historical photographs and is following in the tradition of the lantern slide lending library and school study collections to make the Museum's history and visual resources widely available for the people, for science, and for education.

AMNR