August 2008 Archives

Composite of Abraham Lincoln from John Calhoun Original

Also go to Photography Changes What We Are Willing to Believe by Hany Farid.

Jim

Digital detectives discern Photoshop fakery by Chris Gaylord

Farid can now run possible forgeries through a gamut of tests, even checking the light reflections in people's eyes to triangulate the location of the flash camera that took the picture.

If the analysis of subjects in a photo shows that the camera had to be in multiple places at once, the shot's a fake.

Chris Gaylord

Photosynth

Photosynth

Imagine being able to share the places and things you love using the cinematic quality of a movie, the control of a video game, and the mind-blowing detail of the real world.

With nothing more than a bunch of photos, Photosynth creates an amazing new experience.

Photosynth

Steve Portigal

Also go to Increase Powers of Observation.

Jim

Ever Notice? by Steve Portigal & Dan Soltzberg

This process of noticing once and then noticing again is how you start finding patterns and uncovering themes.

Steve Portigal

Unknown

Also go to Copyright.

Jim

Orphan Works Fallout? History may lend a clue. by Dan Heller

Wonder what the fallout will be if the Orphan Works Act passes?

History may lend a clue.

Dan Heller

Erik Frick

Dear Adobe

No, this site is not run by Adobe.

It started from a conversation between Adam and myself complaining about Photoshop.

Both of us being web design nerds, we figured 'Why not create a forum for people to vent?

Who knows, maybe Adobe will listen.'

Erik Frick

Collection of Thomas Weynants

Also go to History of Photography.

Jim

Early Visual Media Archeology

This website is an online Media_Museum explaining intriguing and mostly forgotten Early Vintage Visual Media and their history.

Thomas Weynants

Josef Koudelka

40 years on: the exile comes home to Prague by Sean O'Hagan

In 1969, a year after Russian tanks rolled into Prague, Josef Koudelka visited London with a Czech theatre group.

One Sunday morning he was walking out of his hotel near the Aldwych Theatre when he saw some members of the theatre group perusing a copy of the Sunday Times magazine.

As he passed, he saw to his surprise that they were looking at his own extraordinary photographs of that Russian invasion and the spontaneous street protests it provoked.

Sean O'Hagan

Leys, Ghys and Alvarez

Seeing In Four Dimensions by Julie Rehme

Mathematicians, freed in their imaginations from physical constraints, can conjure up descriptions of objects in many more dimensions than that.

Points in a plane can be described with pairs of numbers, and points in space can be described with triples.

Why not quadruples, or quintuples, or more?

Julie Rehme

What Is YOUR Best Photography Tip, Secret, Trick, Lesson, Technique, or Hack?

Crank it up to 11.

LWO

LWO - Magic Nature

A nod to nature in the heart of the summer, and to the garden nicely bloomed of my parents.

As soon as the flowers open out with magical colors, the party is launched.

The butterflies twirl around and call the tune, the insects settle to the banquet.

The time remains suspended to this fascinating beauty revealed by a sun shining light or a more filtered.

Nature is really magical and enchanted, the charm and the illusion are everywhere.

LWO

Ian Plant

Also go to Mountain Trail Photo, for more of Ian Plant's work.

Jim

Finding Entropy by Ian Plant

Here are a few ways to add a healthy dose of chaos to your photography:

Ian Plant

Edgar Allen Poe by W.S. Hartshorn, 1848

Also go to Daguerreotypes.

Jim

Make a Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype may not be the precise beginning of photography, but the technique, announced in Paris on Aug. 19, 1839, helped kick-start photography as an art form, setting it on the road to becoming the popular, widespread medium it is today.

Wired.com

Michael Steele

Michael Steele - At Beijing Olympics, Photographers Shine by Tom Goldman

Moments after Olympic events end, another feat of Olympic proportions begins.

An army of Olympic photographers and editors swing into action.

Tom Goldman

Robert Frank

There are many other articles about Robert Frank in this issue of photo-eye.

Also go to Robert Frank.

Jim

Robert Frank - 50th Anniversary of The Americans by Richard Gordon

Robert Frank's The Americans is vital to the here and now—as vital to the present moment as it was fifty years ago upon first publication.

This is all you need to know.

The rest, as they say, is commentary.

Around the time I turned 40 in 1985, I began to read classics I had not gotten around to, was never assigned, or could not penetrate as a reader with no agenda.

Books become classics not because teachers assign them.

A book becomes a classic when it speaks to readers or viewers, across time, across politics—when it is the rare enduring expression of a unique consciousness so rooted in its own time and place that time is transcended: a voice from the past that speaks to a reader in the present.

The Americans is such a book, no less so than Moby Dick or Madame Bovary.

Richard Gordon

Yale University Press

Also go to Yale University Press.

Jim

Facial Frontier by Robert Fulford

Consider the way a human face speaks with silent eloquence.

In the view of Raymond Tallis, an eminent British doctor and a talented writer, the face of a man or woman constitutes "the most sign-packed surface in the universe."

Nothing else we see carries more meaning.

Every face displays a pattern of dense emotional responses in the present and an archive of its owner's experience in the past.

And each one is both unique and mysterious

Robert Fulford

Aaron "Alphonse" Swinehart

Also go to Flip Books.

Jim

Handmade Flipbooks by Aaron "Alphonse" Swinehart

I can't quite remember how I got the idea, but I thought it would be fun to create some flipbooks based off of video I had shot.

The challenge was to be able to effeciently process the frames from a 3-5 second clip, have them printed by a photography shop, and assemble them as easily as possible.

Aaron "Alphonse" Swinehart

Stuart Goldenberg

Your Photos, Off the Shelf at Last by David Pogue

You'd be forgiven, then, for raising an eyebrow at the offer made by a California company called ScanMyPhotos.com.

It says it will professionally scan 1,000 photos for you, the same day it receives them, and put them on a DVD for $50.

David Pogue

Martin Abadi

Kategorie: Fotograf at Zeno.org

Slate.com

Paparazzi in the Woods by Etienne Benson

Next time you go for a hike, keep an eye out for the hidden cameras.

The first sign that you're under surveillance might be a plastic or metal case, about the size of a hefty hardcover book, strapped to a tree and painted to blend into the bark.

If you're listening carefully, you might even hear the click of the shutter or the whirr of the film advancing.

Etienne Benson

Amy Stein

Amy Stein - Domesticated

Rick Sammon

Also go to Macro (Close-up) Photography.

Also go to Rick Sammon.

Jim

Adventures in Close-Up Photography by Rick Sammon

Close-up photography allows us to capture a unique view of our world, especially when that world is printed larger than life. Capturing small subjects requires careful attention to the technical aspects of photography: focus, lighting, sharpness, depth of field, exposure, and composition.

Rick Sammon

Hans Eijkelboom

Also go to Hans Eijkelboom Lecture 03.

Jim

Hans Eijkelboom: Paris - New York - Shanghai by Rosecrans Baldwin

Dutch artist Hans Eijkelboom's book and exhibit, Paris—New York—Shanghai picks out the miniscule ways people in three big cities all resemble one another, then pulls them together in tapestries of logos and patterns, looks and costumes.

Gone are the days of aesthetic differences, the book suggests; we are now all one nation, under Louis Vuitton.

Rosecrans Baldwin

Dan Eckstein

Also go to his website and blog.

Jim

Dan Eckstein - Picture China

Picture China is a photographic journey through contemporary China.

From the teeming metropolises of the east coast to the rural villages of the interior to the lofty Tibetan plateau, New York City based photographer Dan Eckstein traveled 10,000km over the course of eight weeks to document this rapidly changing country.

The result is a unique portrait of life in modern China and the issues that its people face.

Dan Eckstein

Bill Hatcher

Also go to Bill Hatcher.

Jim

What Moves You by Bill Hatcher

It's our unique individual photo style created and guided by our personality that produces the more creative photos we make.

Bill Hatcher

Rob Sheppard

Also go to Rob Sheppard.

Jim

Seeing Photographs by Rob Sheppard

Digital cameras can help you take better landscape photographs.

If I had said that even just a few years ago, OP would have received lots of letters.

People would have challenged that statement, defending film, and basically telling me I was crazy.

I may be crazy at times, but not because of this idea.

Rob Sheppard

Bob Krist

Also go to Bob Krist.

Jim

In Praise of Pea Soup by Bob Krist

Any landscape photographer who prays and waits for conditions that lower contrast, decrease saturation, obscure sharpness and ruin resolution might be considered to be a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, a real madman.

Yet, when that condition is fog, there's a definite method to that madness.

Bob Krist

Daniel J. Cox

Also go to Daniel J. Cox.

Jim

Dust & Snow: Shooting in Extreme Conditions - Daniel J. Cox

Working as a traveling natural-history journalist, I often move from one extreme to the next.

I've been asked more than once, how does your body adapt?

Equally as important is how I prepare my photography equipment for such incredibly extreme climate changes.

Daniel J. Cox

Richard Harbus

Susan Meiselas - Well-Traveled Photographer, Recording and Then Returning by Caroline Brothers

She is also constantly questioning what photography can do as the technological and economic landscape that surrounds it radically shifts.

Caroline Brothers

David L. Ryan

David L. Ryan - Aloft

Ovation TV

Also go to Gregory Crewdson.

Jim

Ovation TV | Close Up: Gregory Crewdson

Peter Menzel

Also go to Peter Menzel.

Jim

Peter Menzel - What the World Eats, Part I

What's on family dinner tables in fifteen different homes around the globe?

Time

Markus Merz

Turning Rejection into Success by Dean

If turning photography into income has a downside, it's this: it doesn't always work.

You'll pitch for jobs you won't get, enter competitions you won't win and submit images to stock companies who will send them back encouraging you to try again.

Dean

Carlos Chavez

Carlos Chavez - North Hollywood, Lankershim Blvd.

The community was named in hopes of catching a whiff of the glamour conjured by Hollywood to the south.

And as with a life devoted to chasing stardom, the rhythms of this swatch of the San Fernando Valley are both prosaic and poetic.

A leopard-print upholstered chair is for sale on the sidewalk in front of Al's Discount Furniture, south of Magnolia, the street that is the namesake of the haunting movie about angst-ridden lives set here.

Yet this is also NoHo, the North Hollywood Arts District, as banners hanging from every light post proclaim.

Carla Hall

Q. Sakamaki

Q. Sakamaki - East Village, Before the Gentry by Colin Moynihan

Upon arriving in the city in 1986 he settled in the East Village, where he was alternately charmed and horrified by what he found.

Dilapidated and abandoned buildings lined the streets.

Entire blocks were filled with little more than rubble and bricks.

Heroin was sold in candy stores, and gunshots sounded in the night.

In the morning he sometimes spotted the bodies of people who had been killed or had died of overdoses

Colin Moynihan

Asako Narahashi

Asako Narahashi - Under the Waves by Bridget Fitzgerald

Using a waterproof camera and watching the tide instead of the viewfinder, Narahashi captures a vision of Japan—and of the world—that is at once calming, eerie, enchanting, and unsettling.

She is only occasionally swallowed by waves in the process.

Bridget Fitzgerald

Lina Scheynius

The Ones We Love

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.

The Ones We Love

Jack Radcliffe

Jack Radcliffe - Photographic memory

The significance of these pictures emerges in retrospect.

I realize, as I look at them, that I created a visual life story of Alison, capturing moments in her metamorphosis from infant to woman -- her relationships with friends, her rebellion and, underlying it all, her relationship with me, a constant throughout her life.

I wanted to photograph her in all her extremes, and to be part of these times in her life without judging or censoring.

Only in this way would I have a true portrait of Alison.

Jack Radcliffe

Nathan Golden

Vewd

Vewd is a documentary photography magazine continuing the tradition of storytelling through a visual medium.

Vewd

Stephen Shore

Also go to Shore.

Jim

Stephen Shore - A Cross-Country Road Trip Back In Time

Starting in New York City, he made a long loop around the nation, going through Michigan, North Dakota and Idaho, off to the West Coast, and then followed a southern route all the way back to New York.

NPR

Henry Iddon

Also go to Climbing Photography and Moon Photography.

Jim

Henry Iddon - Natural Magic and Moonlight by Paul Hill

The silence that is in the starry sky

The sleep that is among the lonely hills

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn - Kindred Cool: Portraits Inspired by the Jazz Friendship of Ellison, Bearden and Murray

Kindred Cool is a photography project that uses relationship between Ralph Ellison, Romare Bearden and Albert Murray as an inspiration for documenting other friendships forged and fostered through a shared appreciation for jazz.

Through photographic portraits, Kindred Cool serves as a visual documentary project showcasing the diversity of the jazz diaspora, that is, individuals who are inspired by American classical music: jazz.

The subjects of Kindred Cool are a motley crew of jazz educators, vocalists and instrumentalists, rappers, aficionados, journalists, publicists, dancers and painters.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Chris Weston

Exposure Techniques for Complex Lighting Scenarios by Chris Weston

Capturing detail in scenes of high contrast has always been the greatest technical challenge for photographers.

The problem occurs primarily when the DR of the scene being photographed extends beyond the DR of the photo sensor.

At other times, the requirement is simply to reduce the intensity of shadows, even when they fall within the workable range.

Chris Weston