August 2009 Archives

A Dangerous New Marketing Paradigm... Blogs, Magazines, Fashion Designers, Agencies and Fools by Mark Stout

I suppose I should have felt flattered that I was the photographer he paid and the rest would soon be out of business.

I didn't.

These photographers were complete fools (yes, I have already admitted it, I was once guilty of somewhat similar mistakes).

Not only were they subsidizing the marketing of another business by working free, they were taking paid work from me and and all photographers, and they were contributing heavily to the demise of the print magazines that DO pay for our work by eliminating the designer's need to pay for advertising.

Mark Stout

Stephen Mayes - Inventing Twenty-First Century Photojournalism by Conor Risch

The most telling comment I've heard in recent months is that journalism in the twenty-first century is yet to be invented, and that what we're all struggling to do is to maintain an old model in a new system, and it's incompatible in many ways.

Stephen Mayes

Michael Kubeisy

Photoshopped images: the good, the bad and the ugly by Jeannine Stein

I think one of my main objectives . . . is to erase distractions.

When you look at an image, sometimes people can't focus on what they're supposed to focus on because there's something going on in the background."

Amy Dresser

L. Weingarten

L. Weingarten - A Series of Questions

Many documentary photographic projects that deal with trans issues exploit the genders of their subjects, pointing to an "otherness" or inappropriately exoticizing their bodies.

"A Series of Questions" seeks instead to make visible the transphobia and gender-baiting that can become part of everyday interactions and lives, forming a fuller picture of the various lived experiences.

L. Weingarten

Wired.com Photo Department

10 Photography Pet Peeves We'd Throw Down a Black Hole

Here are our top photography pet peeves that we would like to throw into the abyss.

Wired.com Photo Department

David Gonzalez

David Gonzalez - The Faces in the South Bronx Rubble

Of all the stories told by these images, there is one that runs through all of them — my own.

They chronicle how I made peace with the past as I figured out the future.

In the Bad Old Days of 1979, I was an exile in the land of my birth, ashamed of my neighborhood and myself.

When my father died the next year, one of his friends quietly asked me at the wake, "How's medical school?" — stunning me with the realization that Papi never had the heart to admit I had forsaken medicine for photography.

David Gonzalez

Dave Martin

Via APAD

10 years of MSNBC's The Week in Pictures

As "The Week in Pictures" begins its second decade of publication, we take a look back at the best images published in The Week in Pictures and the Year in Pictures since the slideshow began October 1998.

MSNBC

Eadweard Muybridge

Also go to 100 Photographs That Changed the World.

Jim

Why Pictures Speak Louder than Words by Adrienne Carlson

There's something about a photograph, one that makes a statement or just takes your breath away with its sheer beauty, something that makes me wish I was the artist who was responsible for this masterpiece.

Adrienne Carlson

Ciar

9 Things To Do When You're Feeling Stale by Chase Jarvis

Here's 9 things I've done over the course of my 10+ year career that have helped me overcome those times when uninspired or stale work invades . . .

Chase Jarvis

Jesus Presley

Jet lag: Cameras with a short shutter delay by Lori Grunin

What's really interesting (and frustrating) is that with the barrage of snapshot cameras that ship every year and how vocal consumers are about how slow point-and-shoot models are, very few models are available that meet these pretty basic performance criteria.

Lori Grunin

Charles A. Zimmerman

Why I've Gone Back to Making Prints of Family Photos by Harrison McClary

I've begun to have prints made from my favorite images again, so that when I am gone my children will see these images and remember a time when things were different.

When they were kids, and their parents weren't so old and wrinkly.

Harrison McClary

Tewfic El-Sawy

Tewfic El-Sawy What is it Like to be a...Travel Photographer by Carolina Hidalgo

I was at a workshop in Morocco with a lot of other photographers that were also, for a lack of a better word, amateurs.

And through conversations I decided that I would try my luck at arranging photo trips simply because I love travel and photography and I'm good at organizing things.

So that was the concept and I sort of put together a trip.

My first tour was three countries in one trip, which is madness, but I did it because of lack of expertise.

And I invited the photographers that I met at that workshop.

Tewfic El-Sawy

Peter Tellone

How to Shoot and Post-Process Professional HDR Photos in One Day by Peter Tellone

But if we were to make an image that exposed for every area "just right" we could expand the dynamic range of our camera to make it comparable to what our eyes can see and beyond.

That is what High Dynamic Range Photography is all about.

Peter Tellone

Colin Nissan

IT'S WEIRD TO THINK THAT ONE DAY I'LL PHOTOSHOP YOU OUT OF THESE VERY VACATION PHOTOS. by Colin Nissan

But one thing I've learned through my years of dating is that just because I'll want to erase you from my memory, I don't have to erase all these great travel experiences.

Will I want to forget hiking up that volcano the other day?

Of course not.

I'll just want to forget that you were hiking with me - and thanks to the magic of Photoshop, I can.

Colin Nissan

Will Govus

Will Govus - In the Summertime

Anthony Hibbert

Anthony Hibbert - Holidaying Horrors

The basic idea is that when giant monsters smash up buildings in movie's it's just that they're quite fond of them and don't know their own strength.

I like to call them build..."

Anthony Hibbert

Issei Suda

Via gmtPlus9 (-15)

Faces: Vintage and Contemporary Photographic Portraits

Faces investigates the fundamental tension in photography between point of view and composition.

In a formal portrait, for example, the subject is very aware of the photographer.

An informal or candid portrait, however, is often less about the individuals and more about the existential theme or experience being documented.

Many inspired questions guided the selection and juxtaposition of these images.

Does a photographer need to acknowledge and/or subvert a subject's projected expression to arrive at a "true" portrait of essence?

To what extent does a photographer manipulate a subject to express something that they themselves feel?

In both cases, how do we, the viewers, find our way into the composition?

If a portrait is not a depiction of "somebody", then to what extent is it a portrait of us all?

Charles A. Hartman Fine Art

Tim Daly

Also go to Toning B&W Photographs.

Jim

Creative Print Styles with Photoshop by Tim Daly

Historically, photographic print toning has used chemical toners like sepia and selenium to make prints with fairly limited colors ranging from brown to purple-reds.

With the digital process, however, there are many more color options available together with a near Zone System level of control.

For the fainthearted, this digital route is also reversible, so there's no danger of ruining your perfectly good image file.

Subtlety, if you want it, is there in bundles, with no need to produce intimidating Colorvir-like prints, unless hallucinogenic effects are your thing.

Digital coloring in CS4 means you can have infinite control over the toning process adding color across the whole image or dropping it in up to ten different tonal sectors.

Following is a number of different routes to image toning, starting with the easiest and ending with the more interesting Duotone techniques.

Tim Daly

Mark Tansey

An Aesthetic Crisis by Robin Laurence

Over the past few decades, postmodernism has been particularly well served by photography, video and other media-based art forms.

A stellar example is the creative practice of Jeff Wall, whose staged photographs are charged with cultural, social and political references.

In the late '70s Wall borrowed a significant advertising form - large-scale, backlit, photographic transparencies in aluminum frames - for his narrative pictures.

Robin Laurence

Eugene Richards

Via APAD

Also go to Eugene Richards.

Jim

Eugene Richards in amazing technicolor

An appreciation of Eugene Richards' work is tautological.

It's like saying "I like the Beatles."

M. Scott Brauer

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Also go to NYC Photography Exhibits.

Jim

A Chronicle of New York's Darks and Lights, Captured by Savvy Street Photographers by Ken Johnson

Last winter, when the art economy was looking especially dark, a group of Manhattan photography dealers got together and decided to put on a spirit-lifting show: "New York Photographs," a summertime tribute to the greatest city on earth.

Thirteen galleries agreed to mount exhibitions — some dedicated to individual artists, some to subjects like sex or music — of which six are currently up.

Together they offer a tantalizing series of glimpses, a dreamy tour of the town from the Statue of Liberty to the streets of Spanish Harlem and from the hurly-burly of Times Square to the furtive sexual encounters of the old West Side piers.

Ken Johnson

Marco Sousa

Also go to Photoshop Elements Preferences.

Jim

10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance by Marco Sousa

If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider.

Marco Sousa

Danny Lyon

Also go to Danny Lyon.

The End of the Age of Photography by Danny Lyon

Many years ago I was being driven along central park west in a NYC Taxi and talking with Robert Frank whom I sat beside.

When I spoke of using words with photography, texts, as part of what were then called "photography books," Robert said, "well, then that's the end of it."

The year was 1969, and it was "not the end of it."

As a young photographer, deep into a career of making picture books, with texts, I couldn't help but feel that Frank's comment smacked a bit of kicking out the ladder.

After all, the work of Frank that had stunned the world was a virtually wordless portrait of America, done with a Leica and a couple lenses.

Danny Lyon

Mary Ellen Mark

Also go to Mary Ellen Mark.

Mary Ellen Mark - 25 Years (1990) by Marianne Fulton

This is a story about a woman possessed - possessed of great talent, conviction, strength, and a certainty of her role.

She is a person obsessed with photography; it is at the center of her life, of who she is.

Photography defines her, because through her photography, she seeks to define what it means to be human.

Marianne Fulton

Joris van den Heuvel

Ring light overview by Joris van den Heuvel

There's something magical about ringlights.

The unnatural light cast, the halo shadows.

Yet the idea behind it is as clever as it is simple: looking through the light source.

Joris van den Heuvel

PC World

Recover From Digital Photo Disasters by Derrick Story

And if trouble does strike, there are ways to recover from it.

Derrick Story

Herman Leonard

Herman Leonard's Vision of Jazz by Claire O'Neill

He was young, photography was evolving and jazz was in its heyday.

Packed, smoky nightclubs became Leonard's regular haunts.

But he also had special access to jazz events and festivals.

Claire O'Neill

Brad Trent

Also go to Brad Trent.

Jim

Brad Trent - President Barack Obama for BusinessWeek

But in the end I was able to get Bo to assist me and Ronnie was coming to produce, run defense and feed me Klonopin to calm my nerves.

Steve Adler, the Editor in Chief and Washington Bureau Chief Jane Sasseen would be asking the questions and it was up to me to come up with not only a killer cover image, but additional portraits of the President to illustrate the story.

We had hopes to still get that second cover shot, but the main focus had to be to photograph the interview in such a way that we could walk away with exceptional cover art.

Brad Trent

Milton Rogovin

Also go to Milton Rogovin.

Milton Rogovin - Voices Silenced, Faces Preserved by Randy Kennedy

Over lunch recently with his daughter, Ellen Rogovin Hart, Mr. Rogovin opened his picture notebooks as if they were family albums, to take another visitor through an exceptional half-century record of struggle, suffering, determination and hope.

Randy Kennedy

Someone Once Told Me

Someone Once Told Me

Kyle Cassidy

Kyle Cassidy - Where I Write

Nina Berman

Nina Berman - Homeland

The title of the book comes from President George W. Bush, who introduced the word "homeland" shortly after September 11.

Previously unfamiliar in American speech, the word sounded both sinister and soothing, filled with ideological import of mysterious origin.

Was it British, or of Nazi Germany?

Or was the word drawn from fiction, a made-up world existing in a fairy tale?

Nina Berman

Roger Moffatt

The Golden Hour Calculator | Sunrise and Sunset information for photographers by Roger Moffatt

Sara Frances

Ultimate Light Box - Pro Flash Photography without the Pro Price Tag by Sara Frances

Some photographers who insist on working only with natural light aren't making a stylistic choice: They're afraid of flash.

As W. Eugene Smith said long ago, any kind of light is fair game.

As a photographer, you should be open to every light source possible to create meaning and define details and shapes.

Sara Frances

Steve Fitch

Steve Fitch - Down at the Drive-In

Photographer Steve Fitch was born in 1949, just in time to witness the drive-in glory days.

He writes in an essay in Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains that his family purchased their first television in 1959, the year that outdoor theater popularity began to wane.

As Fitch's generation grew up and moved on, outdoor theaters were either torn down to be replaced by big-box stores, or left for nature to take its course.

Christin Boggs

Maisie Crow

Also go to Girl on the Verge.

Jim

Maisie Crow - Love Me

Tobias Strand

Also go to Beecher's Handouts.

Jim

How System Cameras Work - aperture, shutter and iso value

With this camera simulator you can try different aperture and shutters and affect photography's light, depth and motion blur.

Try also to change the camera's light sensitivity by manipulating its ISO value.

A higher ISO value gives higher sensitivity to light, which allows faster shutter speeds.

Tobias Strand

Mark Boster

Also go to More from Your Zoom.

Jim

For many, seeing isn't believing

We seem to get queries whenever our photogs use long lens while shooting landscape.

It's a technique that time and again seems to jolt the readers into thinking there's something wrong with the photos.

Calvin Hom

Alec Soth

Alec Soth - Trolling for Strangers to Befriend by Hilarie M. Sheets

Alec Soth has created a photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers.

On his frequent road trips through America, he's drawn to loners and dreamers he spots from his car; sometimes he will do several pass-bys before striking up a conversation.

Often that will lead to a portrait session with his large-format 8-by-10 view camera.

Hilarie M. Sheets

Ali Almossawi

Also go to Street Photography and How to Photograph Strangers.

Jim

Street photography: sharing some experiences by Ali Almossawi

So even when going for shots where the subject is posing for you, take a few off-guard ones as well; they might end being your keepers.

Ali Almossawi

Susan Anderson

Susan Anderson - High Glitz

Dave Jordano

Dave Jordano - The Storefront Churches of Chicago by Nicole Pasulka