Speaking of training your eye to see more and to see better, listen to Art Wolfe and find out how he finds the frames that he photographs. Having a background in art history certainly gives him a leg up, but with keen awareness, better visual vocabulary, and willingness to experiment at the risk of failing may reveal wonderful photographs before … [Read more...]
Formulas For Success
I have been a subscriber to LensWork for quite some time, and was honored to have my work published in it a few years back. It has maintained a very high quality in both content and in its production, especially the print edition. I wrote about LensWork and its publisher Brooks Jensen in an earlier post to celebrate their 100th issue and mentioned … [Read more...]
Six Dollars and 50 cents, not $6.5 million
As you can tell from my previous post, the article by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian really ticked me off. Then I started thinking about all the paint-by-number "paintings" and how they were not art, and by extension, no painting would be art. Makes sense, no? If this line of "thinking" is good for photography, written in a world-class publication, … [Read more...]
Adams’ Foreword
I picked up one of my oldest photography books, Camera And Lens by Ansel Adams. It was a birthday gift to me from John and Ruth Rhodes, my in-laws, in 1971. I was an avid student of the Zone System, eventually added all his books to my collection and enjoyed reading his teachings, and became quite proficient in applying the system to my … [Read more...]
Chickens on the Runway
Hard To Call These Chickens Chickens are the but of many jokes, but I dare you to stare down one of these chickens! These photographs are by Ernest Goh, and I stumbled on his work from a short write-up in the American Photo magazine. When I visited his site I found an impressive and inspiring collection of photographs of different animals, from … [Read more...]
Dorothea Lange
We watched an excellent documentary on an excellent documentary photographer, Dorothea Lange. I have found out that one can watch the entire episode online, in case you did not get a chance to watch or record it on WGBH on August 29, 2014. The embedded copy below is from the American Masters site. She was a physically limping but professionally … [Read more...]
NECCC 2014, MNEC, Sam Abell
(Click the image for full letter) I have just returned from the 69th NECCC 2014 Annual Photography Conference held at U Mass Amherst. It was highly enjoyable for various reasons, but the most meaningful part of the conference for me started a while back. Towards the end of April 2014, I received a letter in an official NECCC envelope sent by Ray … [Read more...]
LIFE
For many years, nay decades LIFE was photography and photography was about life. The documentary below, America In Pictures: The Story of LIFE Magazine by British photographer, film maker Rankin traces the roots of LIFE with interviews, sample photographs, and anecdotes told by the people of LIFE. Well worth the time to look at a slice of … [Read more...]
Gregory Heisler Speaks
About a couple of months ago I bought the Kindle version of Gregory Heisler's book "50 Portraits: Stories and Techniques from a Photographer's Photographer". It is a well-written book with stories about 50 of the notable portraits the master photographer has shot, it is well worth getting a copy. It does not deal with "tips and tricks" of the … [Read more...]