May 2009 Archives

bergdesign

Mac only

Jim

SuperCal - Visual Display Calibrator

SuperCal is a visual display calibrator capable of measuring and correcting most conventional displays, including LCDs, CRTs and projectors.

SuperCal doesn't require any hardware measurement devices - only your eyeballs - yet it can be much more accurate, based on how well you pay attention to what you're doing.

bergdesign

John Sypal

John Sypal - tokyo camera style

People who shoot film simply do because they choose to, and the Photo Culture of Tokyo is full of film camera users.

When I meet them out on the streets I ask to photograph their camera, and usually post it here the same day.

John Sypal

Rolf Oeser

Polaroid Lovers Try to Revive Its Instant Film by Carter Dougherty

But to them, that is exactly the point.

They want to recast an outdated production process in an abandoned Polaroid factory for an age that has fallen for digital pictures because they think people still have room in their hearts for retro photography that eschews airbrushing or Photoshop.

Carter Dougherty

Discovery Channel

Also go to High-speed Photography.

Jim

With High-Speed Camera, Glimpsing Worlds Too Fast for the Eye by Brian Stelter

To the naked eye, it resembles nothing so much as a slight tremor along the water's edge.

But seen through the prism of a high-speed camera, it looks like the super-slow-motion death of a basketball's bouncing.

Brian Stelter

Andrew Ilachinski

Lionel Dobie's Artistic Admonition by Andrew Ilachinski

"Why do photography?"

Or, more generally, "Why do art?"

This seemingly "obvious" question is anything but obvious; it is also infinitely far from "simple."

Indeed, I would hope that most artists never consciously ask it (of themselves); and never use words alone if forced to answer it by others.

Andrew Ilachinski

John Wood

Also go to John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning and John Wood: Quiet Protest.

Jim

John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning - A Photographer Who Refused to Think Like a Photographer by Karen Rosenberg

This was unfair, because other artists were allowed to incorporate bits of photographs into their paintings, drawings and prints, or work from photographic sources.

Yet any attempt by a photographer to dabble in older art forms was suspect. It smacked of deference or, worse, manipulation.

Karen Rosenberg

Gemma Amor

How photography student's grandad became a life-like mannequin by Max Orbach

She then printed the images and plastered them on to a mannequin, which she dressed in her grandad's clothes to create a life-like replica.

Max Orbach

En Foco

En Foco

There's a fellowship, too: New Works Fellowship Award #13 .

Also go to my new tip, How to Judge a Photography Contest.

Jim

Portfolio Review Sessions

Whether you're ready for Chelsea galleries, or just looking for feedback and advice, we have reviewers to suit all needs - you just have to be serious about your craft (call if you have questions). In between sessions, you'll be able to relax in the photographer's creative lounge and share your work with peers.

People/Places/Things: an International Photography Competition Celebrating En Foco's 35th Anniversary

Our aim is to identify and promote talented emerging and mid-career artists working today, creating cross-cultural dialogue, and providing artists with exposure and access to those that may be able to envision opportunities beyond the scope of this competition.

All photo-based works are eligible.

En Foco

Leslie Alsheimer

Advanced Black and White Conversion Techniques by Leslie Alsheimer & Bryan O'Neil Hughes

ACQUINE

ACQUINE (Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine)

ACQUINE (Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine) is a machine-learning based online system of computer-based prediction of aesthetic quality for color natural photographic pictures.

We believe that this is an important step in computer science research because it shows that computers can learn about and exhibit "emotional responses" to visual stimilus like humans do.

It has been developed at Penn State since about 2005.

ACQUINE

Holly Dillemuth

Subtle Forms and Features by Dennis Dunleavy

How many times have we looked at our images and said to ourselves that is not what I saw, that is not what I felt?

Dennis Dunleavy

friendsofthehighline

New York Voices: Joel Sternfeld

A profile of photographer Joel Sternfeld, whose series "Walking the High Line" captured the High Line elevated rail structure in four seasons.

friendsofthehighline

NYPD

Also go to Topics: Legal.

Jim

nyc camera bag essential by Jeremy Bales

Now there's an easy way to educate NYC Police on your rights.

Thanks to a buddy of mine who was illegally arrested in Greenpoint for taking pictures of an accident scene, a new Operations Order has been issued that succinctly spells out the rights of photographers in public places.

It's one page, so you can (and should) print it out and carry it with your camera when in NYC.

Jeremy Bales

William Castleman

William Castleman - Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party

The time-lapse sequence was taken with the simplest equipment that I brought to the star party.

I put the Canon EOS-5D (AA screen modified to record hydrogen alpha at 656 nm) with an EF 15mm f/2.8 lens on a weighted tripod.

Exposures were 20 seconds at f/2.8 ISO 1600 followed by 40 second interval. Exposures were controlled by an interval timer shutter release (Canon TC80N3).

Power was provided by a Hutech EOS203 12v power adapter run off a 12v deep cycle battery.

Large jpg files shot in custom white balance were batch processed in Photoshop (levels, curves, contrast, Noise Ninja noise reduction, resize) and assembled in Quicktime Pro. Editing/assembly was with Sony Vegas Movie Studio 9.

William Castleman

Lynsey Addario

Lens - NYT's Photojournalism Blog

Lens is the photojournalism blog of The New York Times, presenting the finest and most interesting visual and multimedia reporting — photographs, videos and slide shows.

A showcase for Times photographers, it also seeks to highlight the best work of other newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies; in print, in books, in galleries, in museums and on the Web.

And it will draw on The Times's own pictorial archive, numbering in the millions of images and going back to the early 20th century.

NYT

Lewis Carroll

Where Have All the Muses Gone? by Lee Siegel

According to a recently opened exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, "The Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion," the muse lives on as the fashion model who inspires masses of women to dress in ways that capture the spirit of the age.

With all due respect to the Met's curators -- and to the alluring fashion photographs that now grace the museum's walls -- such a definition of the muse would have made traditional muses run for the sacred hills.

Lee Siegel

Li Ward

Expert Tips on Photographing Your Pets by Rik Fairlie

I contacted Ms. Ward and asked her if she would share some tips that everyday photographers could use to snap better shots of their pets.

She was happy to answer some questions.

So get the pets pumped for a weekend of photo sessions.

Here goes!

Rik Fairlie

Light Art Performance Photography

Light Art Performance Photography

Richard Avedon

Starting With Fashion, Ending With Art by Roberta Smith

As with these painters Avedon's work represents an important turning point and a new kind of self-consciousness of his medium.

He makes us aware of its process on different levels, while also questioning its values and deflating its pretensions.

His images have a new tautness; you see them as energy-producing wholes in which every detail and bit of surface is articulated.

Like Abstract Expressionist painting, they show us an art form learning from and then moving beyond European conventions.

Roberta Smith

Laurie Simmons

A Million Little Pictures: The Pictures Generation Revisited by Barry Schwabsky

"It is important to remember how unassuming and even mystifying they seemed in the beginning," Eklund rightly cautions, and this show succeeds almost too well in putting Sherman's stills back into the context from which they emerged--just a few more gray and grainy photos in an exhibition full of them, each as indifferent as the next to the traditional criteria of clarity of form and dramatic tonal range as guarantees of photographic art.

Yet Sherman's, if you look again, have a power the others lack, because she is neither offering a critique of the image nor simply indulging her fascination with it.

Smithson ventured into the postindustrial landscape and discovered that its ontology was that of an image; Sherman broached the terrain of personal identity and discovered something similar.

In doing so, she seems to be showing us something about ourselves, not just about images as a category separate from ourselves.

Hers really are "images that understand us."

Barry Schwabsky

Timothy Archibald

Also go to Timothy Archibald.

Jim

Multimedia Muse

MultimediaMuse is a daily round-up of the best in online multimedia, all presented on a single broadsheet.

Every weekday we scan hundreds of media web sites, searching for photo essays, audio slideshows, or multimedia projects that deserve attention.

Multimedia Muse

Mark Menjivar

Mark Menjivar - Picture Show: You Are What You Eat

Jill Time Lapse

Also go to Wet-plate Collodion.

Jim

19th Century Mobile Photography

Check out this amazing time-lapse video that shows a photographer setting up a wet-plate collodian, large-format photo shoot.

The wet-plate process was state of the art in the latter part of the 19th century.

Today a select group of fine-art shooters like Jill Enfield still use and enjoy it.

The process certainly is a far cry from the immediacy of digital cameras!

DigitalPhotoPro

Kurt Weston

Also go to Blind Photographers.

Jim

Sight Unseen: Photographs by Blind Photographers

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Mechanical Icon by Marshall Poe

A "Book" of Video Essays on Historic Photographs

Marshall Poe

Marc Ullom

Photographers Speak

Dean Brierly interviews the men and women who are shaping the parameters of photography — from old school to new generation, traditional to cutting edge.

Dean Brierly

Joe McNally

Da Grip: Holding a Camera Steady by Joe McNally

"You must become the camera, grasshopper!

Seriously!"

Joe McNally

Camille Seaman

Camille Seaman On Shooting Storm Clouds by Holly Stuart Hughes

Fine-art photographer Camille Seaman shot the images in her latest project, "The Big Cloud," last summer on a storm-chasing tour from central Texas through North Dakota.

Holly Stuart Hughes

Randall Collura

Randall Collura - Fallsburg High School 1974-78

I carried a camera around and annoyed a lot of people in high school.

This is the final result.

I just digitized a large pile of old negatives - yes, I did remove most of the really bad ones.

Enjoy!

Randall Collura

cnet.com

How Will You Future-Proof Your Photos? by Rik Fairlie

If you're like me, you have thousands of digital photos stored on your computer, and backed up on a separate hard drive.

(You have that backup, right?)

That's good for today, but what about 10 years from now?

Rik Fairlie

Dorothea Lange

Ready, Aim—Dream! by Sarah Boxer

Has photography blinded us to the reality of the American West?

Slate.com

Louise Lawler

Q&A with Douglas Crimp: Responses to the Met's "Picture Generation" from the Group's First Proponent by Lee Rosenbaum

In his catalogue for the show, Douglas Eklund, the Met's associate curator for photography, mentions the works' "often daunting intellectual rigor," which may account for why this admirable project ultimately, for me, fell a bit flat.

In most cases (with notable exceptions), I appreciated the innovative, rule-breaking concepts that inform the "Pictures" pictures, without finding them moving, engaging or involving, let alone visually seductive.

Lee Rosenbaum

Floris van Breugel

The Twilight Hour - Photographing Star Trails and Static Stars by Floris van Breugel

One of the biggest disappointments of many star trails images I have seen (second to the lack of an interesting composition) is that the trails are simply not long enough.

The stars either need to be frozen, or they need to be long enough to compliment the composition, otherwise the sky just looks messy.

Floris van Breugel

Alain Briot

Exercising Your Creativity by Alain Briot

Creativity grows out of two things: curiosity & imagination.

Benny Goodman

Tom Mackie

Tom Mackie: A life in photography by Martin Barber

I would recommend buying a good tripod with a ball head.

The type of head is a personal choice, but I find that the ball head to be very quick and easy to use.

Tom Mackie

Ricjard Avedon

Also go to Richard Avedon.

Jim

Elizabeth Avedon - Book and Exhibition Designer by Rob Haggart

The work itself was phenomenally inspiring.

The most elegant, beautiful images anyone could ever wish to work with and I thought it was my job to just make them look as great as they are, to not get in their way with a lot of strange type faces or layout ideas.

It was my theory to keep everything simple so the work shined through, not my "design" showing off.

- Book and Exhibition Designer

John Harrington

Is The Amateur Really A Threat to the Pro? by John Harrington

Or, the student, who has a week or two to complete an assignment on, say, lighting a bowl of fruit.

Or, the hobbyist photographer, who stumbles upon a great image.

Are these photographers a threat to the photographer who works on assignment?

John Harrington

Marquette University

Also go to Carl Van Vechten.

Jim

Postcards from Manhattan: The Portrait Photography of Carl Van Vechten

From 1946-1956, the celebrated photographer Carl Van Vechten mailed thousands of portrait postcards to his friend, Karl Priebe, a Wisconsin artist whose personal papers reside in Marquette University's Department of Special Collections & Archives.

Marquette University

René Maltête

René Maltête

Ctein

Also go to Raw v. JPEG.

Jim

Fitting a Pint in a 12-Ounce Can

To begin with, you need to understand that we don't have any way of directly viewing an 11-13 stop exposure range in a photo.

A reflection print is good for at best 7-8 stops. A good monitor may add a couple of stops to that, under ideal working conditions.

(Ignore manufacturers' claims of 1000:1 brightness ranges; they come from lab measurements that have little to do with reality.)

Ctein

Drew Strickland

Also go to White Balance.

Jim

Busting the Top 7 White Balance, Color Balance and Grey Balance Myths by Drew Strickland

There are a lot of myths floating around about how to get good color with your camera, specifically about white balance (also referred to as Color Balance or Gray Balance).

Drew Strickland