February 2009 Archives

George Barr

Changing an Image to Make It Better by George Barr

A long time ago, I wrote about the characteristics that really great images tend to have in common, the idea being that knowing what works, you could make images using those characteristics.

George Barr

Zack Arias

Transform :: A short film for ScottKelby.com by Zack Arias

I was recently asked to do a guest blog post on Scott Kelby's site.

I had free reign to talk about anything I wanted to talk about.

I took it as an opportunity to get off my arse and make something that was new and fresh for me.

Zack Arias

Ctein

Great Expectations by Ctein

Grazing the technical papers on the DxO website, I've been struck by how radically standards of acceptability have changed in the past decade.

The level of image quality serious amateurs and professionals feel a camera should deliver is incredibly higher now than it was at the turn of the century.

Exposure range is one good example.

People consider 10 stops inadequate (although that's 1-2 stops better than the very best transparency film ever gave you).

Ctein

Mark Ruwedel

Mark Ruwedel - Along the Western Rails by Rosecrans Baldwin

The big open landscapes of the American and Canadian West suit Mark Ruwedel's large-format camera.

From his travels over 12 years along the sites of 19th and 20th-century railway lines, Ruwedel creates topographical studies, archival files, but he also captures the luminescence of countryside that's been passed through.

These are ghost pictures, where the land seems better off for being left behind.

Rosecrans Baldwin

Steve Caplin

Avoiding White Outlines in Photoshop by Steve Caplin

The trouble is that when objects are saved as cutout images, with no background, the act of turning a clipping path into a selection will, because of the anti-aliasing process involved, include a thin white border from outside the object within the selection.

Steve Caplin

Ben Long

Also go to Smooth Skin.

Jim

Smooth Operator: Make More Flattering Portraits by Ben Long

If you watch old movies, you've probably seen the moment where the camera cuts to a close-up of a famous leading lady, and everything on-screen gets a little soft and dreamy.

This is because many of those leading ladies insisted on being shot in the most flattering manner possible, so cinematographers filmed through gauze or other diffusing material to smooth skin texture.

Ben Long

Shape Collage

Also go to Tips: Make a Collage and PSE: Make a Collage

Jim

Shape Collage - Free Automatic Photo Collage Maker

Michael Tischler

Traversing the Catskills by Michael Tischler

The Catskills are a hidden gem that offers a combination of geographic, seasonal and lighting diversity.

Michael Tischler

Mikael Jansson

Strike a Pose by Mia Fineman

Fashion photography is a strange beast.

Part art and part commerce, it seduces the eye and intimidates the soul with an aura of unattainable fabulousness.

It puts a premium on startling innovation but cannibalizes the latest art, movies, and cultural trends with gleeful abandon.

It's a genre built around fantasy, illusion, and extreme artifice that nevertheless hungers after some kind of authenticity.

Mia Fineman

Andrzej Maciejewski

Andrzej Maciejewski

I was born on August 21st, 1959 in Poland.

I got into photography when I was in high school.

Together with my friends I founded a school photography club and I found myself spending most of my time there instead of attending the lessons, which worried my mother very much.

Andrzej Maciejewski

Frank Stella

Lunar Refractions: Repetition and Remains [Part II] by Alta L. Price

Before we move on to Seurat, I'd like to close this chapter with a phrase of William Rubin's that helps clarify why this mode of working was so central to Stella's innovative paintings in the fifties, and proliferated from the sixties (i.e. pop art) forward: "To some extent, the metamorphosis of a central idea in a single painting would be recaptured by its embodiment in a group of pictures constituting a series."

How large or small, how limitless or reductive such groups can become remains to be seen....

Alta L. Price

NYCSalt

NYCSalt

Hi.

I have started a non-profit photography/visual communication program in NYC teaching kids in Washington Heights photography.

I need help teaching once a week.

I also need help in building the program.

I am looking for people to partner with me.

If you are interested in giving back and want to know more about this program, please contact me!

Alicia Hansen

Andrew Ilachinski

Unconscious Influence and the Creative Process by Andrew Ilachinski

But the point of this blog entry is not Morris' Beethoven bio per se, but rather a brief muse on an interesting observation he makes on pages 72-73.

Andrew Ilachinski

Scurlock Studio

PHOTOGRAPHY: Washington's black community, through an affirming lens by Deborah K. Dietsch

For nearly a century, black Washingtonians celebrated weddings, graduations and family milestones with photographs taken by the Scurlock Studio.

They knew the pictures taken by Addison Scurlock and his sons, Robert and George, would be well composed, beautifully lit and worth treasuring for generations.

Deborah K. Dietsch

biotele

Magenta Ain't A Colour by Liz Elliott

A beam of white light is made up of all the colours in the spectrum.

The range extends from red through to violet, with orange, yellow, green and blue in between.

But there is one colour that is notable by its absence.

Liz Elliott

Jack Kerouac

Frank's 'Americans,' Still Revelatory After 50 Years by John McAlley

His images perfectly capture the new America: a flag-draped memorial to Honest Abe; celebrity-worshippers at a glitzy premiere; Windy City operators huddled in political deal-making; the empty chairs and desks where bank-loan officers and aspiring homeowners once sat; couples clutching in hope and love and uncertainty on public lawns.

John McAlley

Jerome Bonnet

2008 World Press Photo of the Year

Michael Bosanko

Also go to Painting with Light.

Jim

Michael Bosanko's light graffiti

Thirty-nine-year-old photographic artist Michael Bosanko has made these pictures, which have not been Photoshopped, using coloured torches at night in the same way that an artist uses a paintbrush.

His digital camera stays on a long exposure, ranging from 10 seconds to one hour to create the images against the backdrop of Cardiff, Newport and the Brecon Beacons in south Wales

Guardian

Yves Klein

The Cosmonaut of the Erotic Future by Aaron Schuster

What happens to levitation, one of the great imaginative figures of art and literature, in the transition from a religious culture to the disenchanted universe of modern science?

What becomes of ecstasy, rapture, ascension, transcendence, grace when these give way to "space oddity": man enclosed in a tin can floating far above the world?

Is the cosmonaut a prophet of the erotic future, avatar of man's stellar renaissance, as Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke once imagined?

Or is he like Nietzsche's madman, proclaiming as Gagarin himself was rumored to have said: "I don't see any God up here"?

Aaron Schuster

Margery Krevsky

Margery Krevsky - Sirens of Chrome by Rosecrans Baldwin

Bikini models and trade shows may seem to go hand-in-hand, but in the auto-show world, models have evolved from sticker roles to spokespeople and can be just as informed about the vehicles as the auto-industry executives.

Margery Krevsky's new book, Sirens of Chrome, traces the story of auto models from short shorts to business attire, and is filled with terrific photography from the industry's history.

Rosecrans Baldwin

Vincent Bousserez

Vincent Bousserez - Through the Lens: Plastic Life by Viet Anh Nguyen

See the world through the eyes of miniature people.

The "PLASTIC PEOPLE" Flickr set by Vincent Bousserez shows us some beautiful scenes from another point of view, where the world seems as ordinary as our very own but in a smaller scale!

Viet Anh Nguyen

American Consumer Institute

Printer Costs - ConsumerCalculator.org

The price of printers can be deceptive because some cheaper printers can use a lot more expensive ink than some more expensive printers.

But there are a lot of variables in play--the cost of printing a page with a particular printer, how many pages of black and white (which use the least ink) you print every week, how many pages of color text you print per week (Which uses more ink), and how many photos you print per week (which uses the most ink).

But if you can estimate your usage you can use the calculator below to determine which printer will be more likely to be most cost-efficient.

American Consumer Institute

smarthistory

smarthistory

This site is being developed by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker as a dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the static traditional Western art history textbook.

smarthistory

Sipa Press

Shooting star: David LaChapelle's search for redemption by Syma Tariq

From celebrity photographer to anti-capitalist artist, LaChapelle's Paris retrospective illustrates his 20-year career in eye-popping colour, says Syma Tariq

Guardian

Ken Rockwell

Also go to Composition.

Jim

Composition by Ken Rockwell

Composition is the pleasant arrangement of elements within a frame.

Ken Rockwell

Richard Bernabe

Seeing What's Not There by Richard Bernabe

One of the first phrases lamented by a beginning photographer is, "My pictures don't look anything like what I saw."

The following course of action is either purchasing a newer, more expensive camera or actually learning a few of the differences in how the digital camera or film "sees" and interprets the world compared to the human visual system.

Richard Bernabe

Arnab Banerjee

The Act of Composition by Arnab Banerjee

A lot has already being written about the "art of composition" - the rules and the guidelines; the critical must-dos and absolute no-nos.

But how does one apply those great advices and holy grails of composition in the field?

One can argue that no seasoned or professional photographers are actually thinking of those rules and guidelines when they are making their images.

All those just come as a natural second habit, just like we don't need to read the owner's manual every time we drive our cars.

Arnab Banerjee

Alan George

Expiration Notice

Thanks for visiting the First Edition of Expiration Notice, the online gallery for emerging photographers 35 and over.

We're very happy with the selection of photographers we're presenting today, some names you may already be familiar with, others maybe less so.

Styles and content range from hardcore reportage, to the everyday snapshot aesthetic of our surrounding everyday world.

Expiration Notice

Rik Fairlie

Also go to Cold Weather Photography.

Jim

5 Useful Tips for Winter Photography by Rik Fairlie

It's been mighty cold here in New York this week.

So for those of you who plan to snap outdoors this weekend, here are a few tips (and links) for photography in wintry conditions.

Rik Fairlie

DxO

Also go to Raw v. JPEG.

Jim

DxOMark

Objective measurements of RAW images are an essential basis for any analysis of digital cameras, but such measurements were neither possible nor available until now.

DxO Labs has developed a new scale for digital camera image quality performance, called DxOMark Sensor, to serve as an additional tool to help photographers rank and compare digital cameras.

This scale is based on three underlying metrics, Color Depth, Dynamic Range and Low-Light ISO, each one tied to a real-life photographic scenario: landscape, studio & portrait, and photojournalism & sport.

DxO

Richard Termine

Also go to Disfarmer.

Jim

Mike Disfarmer - An Eccentric Existence: Ice Cream, Beer and Art by Charles Isherwood

The reclusive life of an American eccentric is examined in scrupulous, sometimes strange detail in "Disfarmer," an exquisitely designed but conceptually thin new puppet-theater work from Dan Hurlin at St. Ann's Warehouse.

Charles Isherwood

Mr. Whiskets

William Eggleston Democratic Camera: Photographs and Video 1966-2006 by Mr. Whiskets

William Eggleston.

Heard of him?

I think you have so I won't waste your time with repeating his story but the thick catalog that accompanies his retrospective at the Whitney Museum is worth spending a bit of time over.

At 304 pages, William Eggleston Democratic Camera: Photographs and Video 1966-2006 is a substantial contribution to the discussion of this quirky artist much like Figments from the Real World was for Winogrand or Peter Galassi's exercise in the extreme was for Lee Friedlander.

Mr. Whiskets

Rob Amberg

The Rob Amberg - New Road: I-26 and the Footprints of Progress

Rob Amberg's photographs tell a story of change within a rural community.

This exhibit and his forthcoming book provide an intimate, long-term look at the social, cultural, and environmental impact of the construction of an interstate highway through rural Madison County, North Carolina.

Duke University Libraries

Fima_Psuchopadt

Fima_Psuchopadt overlayed photographs of Leningrad 65 years ago with current photographs of the same scene.

Also go to Rephotography.

Jim

65 лет назад была снята блокада Ленинграда (65 years ago, the blockade of Leningrad was lifted)

Google translation

Mark Brautigam

Mark Brautigam - It Happened in Wisconsin by Rosecrans Baldwin

Mark Brautigam's series "On Wisconsin" is lighthearted, loving, and frequently beautiful.

His vision relies on many years residing in Wisconsin and lots of love for the state; as he notes below, he couldn't just pick up and head to California and find the same shots.

Rosecrans Baldwin

Humphrey Spender

Humphrey Spender - Worktown

Between 1937 and 1938 Humphrey Spender took over 900 pictures of Bolton at the request of Tom Harrisson, one of the founders of the Mass-Observation project.

Bolton Museums, Art Gallery and Aquarium

Robert Frank

Also go to Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans.

Jim

Bob Edwards Weekend: Sarah Greenough, Robert Frank

Bob takes a tour of an exhibition titled "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans" with National Gallery of Art Curator of Photography Sarah Greenough.

It's been 50 years since Frank published his landmark photo essay in a book called The Americans (originally broadcast January 20, 2009).

Bob Edwards Weekend

Nick Carver

Shoot More, Process Less by Nick Carver

In this age of digital cameras, super-computers and image-editing software that requires a PhD to master, it's all too easy to spend hours under the soft glow of a computer screen endlessly fine-tuning your images.

I call it the "postproduction suction."

You spend two hours behind the camera and four hours behind the keyboard editing, correcting and tweaking your shots.

Nick Carver

Peter Scott Eide

Lake Superior: Edge Of Forever by Dave Willis

The natural environment of Lake Superior is so immense that the opportunities it provides photographers for exploration can't be understated.

Dave Willis