November 2008 Archives

Caroline Allison

Emerging Photographers Auction Presented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York

Daniel Cooney Fine Art is proud to announce our first Emerging Photographers Auction with iGavel.

The auction is a curated group of 25 images by very promising emerging talent.

This is a special opportunity to introduce young artists to collectors at all levels as all reserves are set at $200.

This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to meet many more young artists and to energize both my gallery and my online auctions.

I hope you will discover a new favorite and find something you can't live without.

Your support will provide motivation and opportunities for these young artists to continue making their work and having their voices heard.

Daniel Cooney

Eugene Richards

Also go to Richards.

Jim

Eugene Richards: A Procession of Them - The Plight of the Mentally Disabled

Few human beings are subject to as much misunderstanding, cruelty, and neglect as the world's mentally disabled.

Those who have been classified mentally ill or mentally retarded are too often abandoned or hidden away in psychiatric institutions, which are grossly overcrowded and unsanitary, and which offer little or nothing in the way of medical care or training.

The mentally retarded are housed with the mentally ill, children with adults, those who are suffering physical illnesses with those who are not. Abuses such as beatings and rapes go unreported or unchecked.

In some countries the homeless, the elderly who lack families, epileptics, and petty criminals are also placed into asylums, because they have nowhere else to go.

401 Projects

Carl Warner

Foodscapes: amazing food art by Carl Warner

Carl Warner is a London-based photographer who makes foodscapes: landscapes made of food.

In the picture above, a pea pod boat sails away from a land made of bread and potatoes, over a sea of salmon

Telegraph

Louis Stettner

Via gmtPlus9 (-15)

Louis Stettner

Annie Leibovitz

Via APAD

Annie Leibovitz - The View from Behind the Lens by Renee Montagne

My work is criticized sometimes for being too on the surface, but I sometimes find the surface interesting.

To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them, or you get the soul or whatever, I don't think this is possible all the time...

Can you imagine getting the soul every single day?

Annie Leibovitz

Scott Audette

Scott Audette - Reuters remote system for covering Space Shuttle launches described in video by Rob Galbraith

Photographer Scott Audette has published a fascinating video describing in detail the remote triggering and transmitting system assembled to cover launches of NASA's Space Shuttle for Reuters.

The video, called Live from Launch Pad 39A, runs 10.5 minutes and shows Audette and colleagues on site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, preparing to photograph the liftoff of Space Shuttle Endeavour earlier this month.

Rob Galbraith

Myoung Ho Lee

Myoung Ho Lee - Forest for the Trees by Mike Smith

Instead of painting on canvas, I install a canvas behind real objects.

Myoung Ho Lee

Black Star

Via Dennis Dunleavy's The Big Picture

Free!

Also go to Ethics.

Jim

A Black Star eBook — Photojournalism, Technology and Ethics: What's Right and Wrong Today?

What implications do today's technological upheaval, rapidly changing media landscape, and other changes have for the future of photojournalism as a credible source of visual information?

What actions can photographers, editors and publishers take to ensure photojournalism's authority with audiences, now and in the years ahead?

Black Star

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Timothy Greenfield-Sanders & Elvis Mitchell - The Black List Project

The idea was to interview, film and photograph prominent African Americans of various professions, disciplines and backgrounds.

These stories and insights on the struggles, triumphs and joys of black life in this country would work toward re-defining "blacklist" for a new century in the process.

Brooklyn Museum

Todd Selby

My Home, My Self: Photography as Art Project by Steven Kurutz

TODD SELBY, a photographer based in New York, is becoming a kind of Horst of the hip set: an environmental portraitist of Williamsburg and Silver Lake society.

Steven Kurutz

Michael Francis Blake

Michael Francis Blake Photographs, 1912-1934

The collection consists of the contents of a photographic album entitled "Portraits of Members," containing 117 photographs of men, women, and children, both singly and in groups.

The album might have been used by clients in the studio to select the backdrop and props they wanted in their photographs.

The majority of the subjects appear to be African-American.

The photographs represent the work of Michael Francis Blake from the 1910s to his death in 1934.

Duke University Libraries

HuffingtonPost.com

Bill Kristol, Pete Hamill Fight Over Images Of War Dead At IFC Media Panel (VIDEO) by Danny Shea

The afternoon's most memorable moment came when Kristol and Hamill went head-to-head over images of dead soldiers in Iraq.

In a heated exchange, Hamill argued that there is "no sense of what reality is on the ground by editing out corpses," while an incensed Kristol said that was "nonsense" and that Americans are smart enough to know what goes on in war without seeing "brains in the road."

Danny Shea

Peter Terzian

Also go to Parr.

Jim

Learning To Take Photographs the Martin Parr Way by Peter Terzian

With an impish smile, he glides behind our chairs, leaning over our shoulders to neatly frame pale yellow eggs, fat sausages, grilled tomatoes, and racks of thin, evenly toasted slices of bread.

The 12 photographers gathered in the dining room of the Northbank Hote—eight men, four women; some professionals, some enthusiasts—study him eagerly.

We are on the Isle of Wight, a roughly diamond-shaped piece of land in the English Channel, for an educational weekend with Britain's pre-eminent documentary photographer.

Occasionally Parr discusses technique and technology with individual members of the group, but mostly we learn by watching him.

The lesson is simple: Photograph what you love.

Peter Terzian

LIFE

LIFE photo archive hosted by Google

Fang Qianhua

World Press Photos 2008

Some striking photos and a worthy winner to this year's World Press Photo competition, but where's the joy asks Guardian head of photography Roger Tooth

Guardian

Marco di Lauro

Marco di Lauro: Between Duty and Downtime

I have been back to Afghanistan several times in the last couple of years, mainly embedded with the British Army.

The last time I was there was this past summer for an unusually long embed with the Parachute Regiment during the hardest and hottest months of the year - June, July and August - when the temperature in the desert of Helmand and Kandahar Province reached 55°C.

Marco di Lauro

David Seymour

Via APAD

Wear Good Shoes: Advice to young photographers by Alec Soth

Give it all you got for at least 5 years and then decide if you got what it takes.

Too many great talents give up at the very beginning; the great black hole looming after the comfortable academy or university years is the number one killer of future talent.

Carl de Keyzer

Zoe Strauss

Also go to her exhibit at Silverstein.

Jim

Zoe Strauss - Photographs for Underneath a Freeway

Hear her talk about her Philadelphia street practice, about her time harassing the Factoria Mall Santa, about what gets on her last gay nerve, and about her mixed feelings on Diane Arbus in this installment of In/Visible.

Stranger

Mark Baker

Agony and Ecstasy: The Art World Explained by Barry Schwabsky

In recent decades the philosophy of art has been much preoccupied with the enigma of why a given object does or doesn't count as a work of art.

Since the challenge of Duchamp's Fountain and other readymades, according to the Belgian writer Thierry de Duve, the form of aesthetic judgment has undergone a shift: from "this is beautiful" to, simply, "this is art."

For the philosopher, art status is like a light switch, either on or off.

But the everyday art world is nothing like that, which is why the sociologist Howard Becker complains that the philosopher's art world "does not have much meat on its bones."

Barry Schwabsky

New York Times

Also go to Which Resolution?.

Jim

Pixels Are Like Cupcakes. Let Me Explain. by Russ Juskalian

IT happens to all of us: the moment when one finds out that more megapixels and better photographs aren't always the same thing.

To be disabused of the Megapixel Myth — this decade's analog of the Megahertz Myth — can lead to an existential buyer's crisis in miniature.

Russ Juskalian

NASA

Top NASA Photos of All Time

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which began its operations on October 1, 1958, we offer this list of the 50 most memorable images from NASA's history.

NASA

Tom Mason

Tom Mason - The Fabric of Brooklyn

"The Fabric of Brooklyn" series presents a vivid and accurate portrayal of the peopling of Brooklyn at a specific point in history.

With elaborate digitally composited images, the project compresses time in informationally rich ways, and paints a portrait of neighborhoods through the minutiae of their fine details.

Tom Mason

ICP

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

One rainy night eight years ago, in Watertown, Massachusetts, a man was taking his dog for a walk.

On the curb, in front of a neighbor's house, he spotted a pile of trash: old mattresses, cardboard boxes, a few broken lamps.

Amidst the garbage he caught sight of a battered suitcase. He bent down, turned the case on its side and popped the clasps.

Adam Harrison Levy

Wisconsin Historical Society

Also go to Conservation & Restoration.

Jim

Saving Shattered Images

In a quiet project on the Society's fourth floor, photo archivists are resurrecting long-lost pictures of Wisconsin life.

For roughly a century, most serious photographers took pictures not with flexible film but with glass plates.

Wisconsin Historical Society

Adobe

Also go to Photoshop Elements Menu.

Jim

Photoshop Elements 7 for Windows by Sue Chastain

Photoshop Elements is an excellent program, and I highly recommend it, but the new features in version 7 are not all that exciting if you already have version 6, and the over-aggressive push for Plus membership may turn off new users.

Sue Chastain

Alvaro Guzmán

Also go to Clone Stamp Tool.

Jim

Useful Applications for the Clone Stamp Tool by Alvaro Guzmán

Maybe the Clone Stamp Tool is one of the most known tools in Photoshop, but have you ever wondered: what else can I do with the cloning stamp than duplicating pixels and hiding objects?

These two short tutorials will show you some new uses for this wonderful tool.

Alvaro Guzmán

Google

Street With A View

On May 3rd 2008, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley invited the Google Inc. Street View team and residents of Pittsburgh's Northside to collaborate on a series of tableaux along Sampsonia Way.

Neighbors, and other participants from around the city, staged scenes ranging from a parade and a marathon, to a garage band practice, a seventeenth century sword fight, a heroic rescue and much more

Street With A View

Richard Renaldi

Also go to A Conversation with Richard Renaldi about 'Touching Strangers'.

Jim

Richard Renaldi - Touching Strangers

Charlie Sorrel

Make a Stealth Camera Bag by Charlie Sorrel

Other times, you just want to sling your camera into the most anonymous sack possible, get out into the street and start shooting.

But using an old canvas bag doesn't mean you shouldn't be protected.

Today, we'll see how cheap and easy it is to turn a military surplus shoulder bag into a stealthy, knockabout camera carrier.

Charlie Sorrel

William Eggleston

Also go to Eggleston.

Jim

William Eggleston - Old South Meets New, in Living Color by Holland Cotter

Thirty years ago photography was art if it was black and white.

Color pictures were tacky and cheap, the stuff of cigarette ads and snapshot albums.

So in 1976, when William Eggleston had a solo show of full-color snapshotlike photographs at the august Museum of Modern Art, critics squawked.

Holland Cotter

Margaret Bourke-White

New Compilation Captures 'Life' In Photographs

In its heyday, Life magazine gave America its first look at some of the most iconic images of the 20th century: A World War II sailor smooching with a nurse in the middle of Times Square.

A cleaning woman stiffly holding a mop and a broom in front of an American flag.

A beaming Harry S. Truman brandishing the Chicago Daily Tribune story of his "defeat" at the hands of Thomas Dewey.

NPR

Adobe

CS4: What's in it for Photographers? by Bryan O'Neil

I thought photographers might like to have a single, consolidated list of all the enhancements in Photoshop CS4 & Bridge CS4 that can help improve their productivity.

Photographer/author/fellow Photoshop PM Bryan O'Neil Hughes kindly stepped up with a guest blog entry, below.

John Nack

Alain Briot

Also go to Printing.

Jim

The Numbering Affair by Alain Briot

This essay stems from my ongoing reflection on the subject of limited edition prints.

"To limit or not to limit, that is the question," is how I start the essay.

How I end it is to be found by reading this essay.

Alain Briot

OutdoorPhotographer.com

Also go to Printing.

Jim

High-Tech B&W Printers

Black-and-white printing has never been more popular than it is today.

Programs like Aperture, Lightroom and Photoshop make it easy to convert color images into compelling black-and-white shots that would have made Ansel Adams proud.

The problem now is getting that vision onto paper.

OutdoorPhotographer.com

Daniel J. Cox

5 Top Tips For Autumn Wildlife by Daniel J. Cox

There's so much happening with fauna in the fall—bird migrations are in full swing, it's the autumn rutting period for big game and even small animals are preparing for the imminent cold of winter.

So we asked OP wildlife guru Daniel J. Cox to share some of his top tips for getting the most out of this dynamic time of year and composing more compelling wildlife images.

Daniel J. Cox

Darwin Wiggett

Building a Filter System for Digital Landscape Photography by Darwin Wiggett

I admit it - I am a filter junkie.

I rarely take a landscape photo without a filter attached to my lens!

For me, filters are not used for gimmicky effects but are used to overcome the main limitation of digital sensors, which is the lack of ability to record wide ranges of contrast.

My two most used filters are the polarizer and neutral density graduated filters (ND grads for short).

Both of these filters help reduce the range of contrast in photos so that the sensor can record all the tones in a scene.

Darwin Wiggett

Martin Parr

Also go to Parr.

Jim

Martin Parr: Pies, parties and pink drinks

PhotoFunia

PhotoFunia

Steve Winter

Also go to Steve Winter.

Jim

Steve Winter - Wildlife photographer of the year

Steve spent 10 months in remote Indian mountains using remote-controlled cameras to take pictures of snow leopards.

One freezing May morning, he found this snow leopard gazing back at him.

Guardian

Michael Williamson

Michael Williamson - The Innocents at Home

The road south out of Lewistown, Mont., features a view of the Big Snowy Mountains.

Montana, where just 0.4 percent of its 945,000 residents are black (6.4 percent are Native American), is one of the least racially diverse states in the country.

Michael Williamson