Tilt Shift Photography

I just came across these amazing, yet highly tedious, 'tilt-shift' images.

Enjoy; (you can find the link to the full story here.)

Henri Cartier Bresson - "The Impassioned Eye"

I recently watched a great documentary on H. Bresson- I'd recommend it if you find you have some spare time as winter break approaches! You can find the IMBD summary of it here, and an NY Times review here.

"In this small but stately film, completed a year before Cartier-Bresson's death at 95 in August 2004, he slowly leafs through volumes of his black-and-white photographs, shows some of his later drawings and muses on his art...In all his photographs, Cartier-Bresson says, 'geometry is the foundation.'"

Ryan McGinley's New Work

Hey Everybody! Ryan McGinley has a new show going on in London called, "Wandering Comma." He put up some pictures from this series on his website. Check them out!

Here is the link to the gallery: http://www.alisonjacquesgallery.com/

Here is the link to McGinley's site: http://ryanmcginley.com/

Color photos from 1920's Egypt

Retronaut.co: 1920's Egypt in Color

photos from Gervais Courtellmont and W. Robert Moore for National Geographic

These insanely cool photos are Autochromes, which was a very early method of color photgraphy. The process is quite complicated but also really interesting (as is the way with many historical processes). It involves grains of potato starch which act as filters.

These photos seem remarkably well-preserved (although we don't know what kind of digital restoration has been applied to them for the web), which seems possible because Autochromes are notoriously difficult to reproduce. Even so, this kind of quality is really impressive from a relatively primitive technology.

It's also interesting to consider how much but also how little has changed since the photos were taken.

Also, Retronaut, the blog where I found these images, is insanely cool and you should check it out. They publish sweet vintage photos and things.

Love,

Caleb Savage

Lee Price

This artist is incredible.

Check out the website please!

Some of them I can't even believe are paintings and not photographs!

Hell's Kitchen Flea Market

Hello!

I recently went to a flea market in Hell's Kitchen, on West 39th between 9th and 10th ave. It is 9-5 every Saturday and Sunday, all year long (unless it's raining or snowing). They have a lot of camera supplies: brownie cameras, polaroids, lenses, flashes, pretty much anything you could think of! Here is their website, check it out sometime!

"Beauty Captured by Google Street View"

Also, JUST found this online.

I'm usually not a huge fan of images like this, but they're interesting.

Check them all out here!

also, doesn't it remind you of Doug Rickard?

Here's his work if you've forgotten.

Barbara Crane

I had this page bookmarked for awhile and thought I'd share it.

Click here to see more!

New York Times "Lens"

For those of you who do not know, the New York Times has a section on its site entitled, "Lens," which is dedicated to photography, video and visual journalism. Enjoy!

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/

Created Equal by Mark Laita

Here's a good article on Mark Laita's new book Created Equal. He juxtaposes to completely different people and then then sets them side by side. I think its really creative, and well done.

Hey guys,

I watched this really good performance type documentary the other day that is worth checking out. Its called The Cruise by Bennett Miller. I suppose its not really photography related, but it centers around this one guy and his internal experience of New York City. Being new to the city, I found it really interesting so I figured I'd recommend it to you all. The main and only character, Speed Levitch, is incredibly engaging to listen to. Its pretty funny at times, and there are also a few scenes about the twin towers that I thought were a nice little valentine to 9/11. Check it out if you get a chance!

PhotoBooth: The New Yorker

Photo Booth, The New Yorker's photography blog provides great summary of recent art shows and coverage of recent political events including slideshows and links to guide you to more information.

Click here to check it out!

Google Commemorates Louis Daguerre

Click here for a Washington Post article on Google's latest doodle.

"Back to the Future"

Buenos Aries photographer, Irina Werning has blown me away with an ongoing project that consists of reproducing old portraits. Click her link below to view the images--there are tons! And not one of them is worth overlooking:

http://www.irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/

"I love old photos. I admit being a nosey photographer.
As soon as I step into someone else’s house, I start sniffing for them.
Most of us are fascinated by their retro look but to me, it’s imagining how people would feel and look like if they were to reenact them today...
A few months ago, I decided to actually do this.
So, with my camera, I started inviting people to go back to their future."

Her images come from those who volunteer to share their vintage portraits and then reenact them for her to "re-capture". Her work consists of many types of different people, as she travels all over the world and looks for her subjects in that given country.

Everything is precise--to the poses, the location, the clothing, the scratches on the print, the lighting, to even the minute characteristics such as other objects in the frame of the original portrait are replicated.

I found this to be so enjoyable and fascinating!

visual news

visualnews.com is probably my favorite website and in the hopes that you guys will also fall in love with their amazing illustrations of both fun, hilarious, and poignant news (basically news in a visual format, hence the name) I thought I'd start you off with some of my favorite archived "articles:"

Instagram Filters: Their Real Life Formulas

Songs To Live Life By

The Recurring Themes of Hollywood Blockbusters

An amazing poster for any aspiring architect or architect lover

Build a Hasselblad Camera

(I also use a really well designed app on my mac called Pulp to organize all the RSS feeds that I try to read. It keeps things really organized and will archive all of your favorite articles. I highly recommend it!)

Events; things to do, seen and noted

Harun Farocki Images of War (From a Distance): MOMA 

Very interesting exhibit showing computer simulations of actual firefights recreated on computers and relived by veterans as part of their "after action" analysis on what went wrong.  Incredibly moving at times as the veterans watch their friends die in virtual reality and relive the experience

Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery (shot using the pan and stitch feature of my Fuji x 100)

This a real once in a lifetime experience, everyone should run, not walk to see one of the greatest masterpieces by one of the world's great sculptors.

Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, an abandoned pre-world war II airfield now reborn as a national park, lots of stuff to do.  This is a hangar where a bunch or volunteer mechanics rebuild and restore old military aircraft.  There's also a sports center with 5 or 6 ice skating rinks, basketball courts, rock climbing, flight simulators etc.  Lots of cool abandoned army barrack and aircraft hangars.   I do a lot of car shoots here because I can rent a hangar for $ 150 bucks a day and on weekdays the Park Rangers don't mind if we run the cars on the airstrips at 100mph.  It's a great day trip

 

Face in the floor at Sikkema Jenkins gallery, it's a miracle!

Spotted: Double Rainbow?

sometimes ya gotta love fim

I know I teach digital, but I think most people suspect that I "swing both ways"  (how many more double entendre can I come up with?)

For all you luddites who like to your movies emulsified I give you the lowest tech video camera ever, the Lomokino, load it up with some color transparency film, turn the crank and make movies.  Get the film processed then put it in the hand-cranked personal viewer to watch your next Sundance entry.

http://gizmodo.com/5855969/lomokino-is-lomographys-dinky-35mm-video-camera

http://vimeo.com/31363383

lewis carroll

hello all. so for those of you who know me, you know that I like photographing children. and alice in wonderland. so what could be better than lewis carroll photographing children? answer: nothing.

I present to you the photography of the legendary writer/possible pedophile, and you can decide for yourself if he was creepy or artistic. I choose to believe he was artistic.

(the last two photos are of alice liddell, on whom alice in wonderland was based. she's also in the second photo, on the right)

So I really enjoy manipulating photographs and a friend of mine (Ciara) told me to check out this very famous photographer :http://www.uelsmann.net/ . Ofcourse, I quickly recognized an image of a house with roots coming out of the bottom.Jerry Uelsmann does some of the most wonderful images through manipulations but solely in the dark room. His talent is marvelous and his imagination is inspiring!

Revisiting the scene of the crime

On a recent visit to Frank's barbershop on Thompson, below 3rd Street, my son, Keiji posed for a picture with a picture. Sal is holding a photo of Keiji's first haircut, which he's had on display in the shop for the past sixteen years. We'll give him a copy of this update and hope for another opportunity in 2027, when I'll be 80. Life is short... art is long!
Tom

Claes Källarsson

Claes Källarsson is a Sweedish photographer and designer. He takes gorgeous landscape shots. Some of his best work comes from a road trip he took across America about two years ago- there is some really incredible stuff in his Flickr and Tumblr galleries. I really love the American landscape-- some of my favorite photographers are Stephen Shore and David Graham-- and these are really gorgeous examples that show how wonderful and strange the USA is.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zerogrizzly/

http://ckck.tumblr.com/

Spooky, Scary...

Bombest photo series ever.

There's a haunted house in Canada that photographs people's overly frightened faces while walking through the crazy scary haunted house. Check out the series here.

PS- In the first photo, the guy in the green looks so much like Jim Carrey.

Nirrimi Hakanson

Check out some work from one of my favorite photographers, Nirrimi Hakanson

nirrimiphotography.carbonmade.com
weliveyoung.blogspot.com

Young photographer extraordinaire Alex Stoddard

Hey y'all! Allow me to introduce you to the absolutely amazing Alex Stoddard, he's only seventeen years old, but showcases some serious talent. His self-portraits have really been he's gain-to-fame on Flickr, they're really illusionary and delicate. Lovely light tones and colors create an overall dream-like effect and transform his settings from ordinary to whimsical. Below are some of my favorites, along with a link to his Flickr.



Alex Stoddard's Flickr.

Daniel Berehulak

Daniel Berehulak is an amazing photojournalist that works for Getty Images. His work has won numerous awards, such as the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism 2011, as well as the World Press Photo 2011 award and even a Pulitzer Prize for his photographs of the floods that hit Pakistan.

http://awards.gettyimages.com/awards.cfm?display=photographer&photographerID=17&isource=corporate_website_awards

Claudia Hart at Bitforms Gallery, Chelsea

Photographer and multimedia artist Claudia Hart has an upcoming exhibition, When a Rose is Not a Rose, at the Bitforms gallery in Chelsea.

This exhibition is part of her The Real and the Fake project, where Hart juxtaposes obviously virtual images with photographs. While visually the distinction between the virtual and the photograph is obvious, the interpretation of what represents "real" or "fake" is not so obvious. A segment of her exhibition places detailed and intricate photographs of industrialized foods against computer generated apples, in an attempt to question ourselves as to what real or fake truly represents.

In this particular segment of her The Real and Fake project, Hart reflects on Gertrude Stein's line "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose" from her poem Sacred Emily and contemplates the denial of death in her exhibition. A very interesting exhibit to browse for those of us that are interested in photography as a tool in multimedia.

The exhibition opens on on October 25th and will be shown until December 3rd.

The Bitforms gallery is located on 529 West 20th St.

Source: http://www.bitforms.com/upcoming-exhibitions.html#id=152&num=1

Vivian Maier - Street Photography

As some of us in Analog just finished our street photography assignment, I thought it would be interesting to share the work of Vivian Maier. Maier was a nanny who took photographs in her spare time, however her work was never discovered until recently a massive chest containing thousands of her negatives was auctioned off. John Maloof now owns these photographs and has produced a book and showcased her work in several exhibitions. Maier's work has now received massive critical acclaim. Her photographs depict riveting and unique moments making her work inspiring in her approach to street photography.

(Maier lived in New York for some time so her work is really a great source of inspiration for all of us.)

http://www.vivianmaier.com/

Beyond 9/11: Portraits of Resilience

I wanted to share what I brought to the Aperture "What Matters Now" exhibition we participated in a few weeks ago. For this year's anniversary of 9/11, Marco Grob shot a series of videos and photographs for Time magazine focusing on 40 people, varying from General David Petraeus to the 9/11 first responders, and interviewed them about their experiences on the day of 9/11 and the decade following the disaster. This is my favorite piece I've seen to date focusing on the subject of 9/11. I never would have thought that an online exhibition of sorts would be able to be effective, but everything about the way this website and series is set up works perfectly. You are given the option to read the interview or watch a video of it, and every interview is accompanied with a portrait. I recommend watching as many videos as you can and reading about the project itself, it is worth the time. There is also the option to share your story, photographs, or videos relating to 9/11 which will become part of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

http://www.time.com/time/beyond911/

George W. Gardner

I know that a lot of us in analog are about to begin our documentary projects. I have always loved the genre of documentary because you're photographing to preserve something, but you can twist the stylistic elements of your images any way you'd like so that they do the subject matter justice. I have always admired George Gardner's photographs of America for this reason--they're so distinct. Much like Robert Frank's series on Americans, Gardner stays true to setting and subject matter, while still incorporating his own characteristics. I encourage everyone to check out his work, because I feel that with his documentary photographs, he's achieved what I believe to be the most important element for this genre: a feeling of intimacy between subject and viewer.

America, 1960-1985

Basic Lighting

This week in my section we covered some of the basic principles of lighting, both with continuous source (hot lights), and flash (specifically dedicated flash units for digital cameras).

Lighting is a subject that is pretty near and dear to me to me so I thought I'd share a few more resources that I have found helpful to photographers new to using artificial light.

One of the best free resources is David Hobby's website, STROBIST. David was a photojournalist for the Baltimore Sun and was often confronted with situations that required sophisticated lighting, but he worked alone and couldn't carry big studio equipment. He devised a method of using small inexpensive strobes and started publishing his tutorials on his blog.  Strobist has 250,000 followers at this point.

I'm also going to upload a few chapters from my books to my website that students will be able to download (these will also be available on the blackboard site for my section).  Because my publishers will get mad if I leave them up for too long they will only be available for a week or two.  Go to the "Written Word" section of my site, the "Light is Color" and "Lighting" have useful tips for using small flash or hot light effectively

If you are shooting with a Nikon camera I'll also recommend Joe McNally's book entitled "Hot Shoe Diaries: Big Light from Small Flashes"  It's very Nikon specific and you will have to wade through Joe's deathless prose (he does tend to ramble), but there is a lot of useful information there

Vancouver Riot

I was in Vancouver this summer, but left the day before the riots broke out after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. This shot is pretty amazing, especially in light of the recent protesting/rioting down on Wall Street. It's insane how when so much chaos is going on, a photographer only has moments to capture that perfect image.

Here is the article on the incident and the photograph itself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/17/vancouver-kiss-couple-riot-police#

For those of you who don't have time to read the whole thing, this is what the photographer said about it:

The photographer was being buffeted by rioters and riot police when he spotted the couple. "I was about 20 or 30 yards away," he said. "There were these two people on the ground in this empty street. Initially I thought one of them was hurt." He took a few shots and then the moment was lost.

"It was complete chaos. Rioters set two cars on fire and then I saw looters break the window at a neighbouring department store," he said.

"At that point the riot police charged right towards us. After I stopped running I noticed in the space behind the line of police that two people were lying in the street with the riot police and a raging fire just beyond them.

"I knew I had captured a moment when I snapped the still forms against the backdrop of such chaos but it wasn't until later when I returned to the rink to file my photos that my editor pointed out that the two people were not hurt, but kissing," Lam said before the real story behind the photo came out.

Mark Citret

I recently visited Santa Fe, NM this summer and walked into the Verve Gallery of Photography. Mark Citret (b. 1949) was showing his black and white photography and I was completely enthralled. [I'm seriously partial to lines, shapes and forms in photography,] and so there's my opinion. However, I really encourage you to check some of this work out on his website. In the mid to late 1980s he produced a large body of work with the working title of “Unnatural Wonders”, which is his personal survey of architecture in the national parks. He spent four years, 1990 to 1993, photographing “Coastside Plant”, a massive construction site in the southwest corner of San Francisco. But, my personal favorite is his gallery of "Artifacts." Very abstract stuff.

Link: www.mcitret.com

Tim Hethrington's Diary

A really wonderful short minute film that feels like a war photographer's dream

Diary 2010

A Frightening Possibility

I returned to my dorm this evening to find a disturbing story waiting for me on the New York Times website. There is a possibility it seems, that Eastman Kodak may file for bankruptcy some time in the not too distant future. I don't think anyone believed Kodak's future to be a bright one but I didn't expect to hear things like this for some time to come.

New York Times: Lens

The New York Times runs an excellent photography blog entitled Lens, which covers amazing photographers and different slideshows showcasing the best photographs around the world every week. I just saw ran across this one taken by James Mollison on the many different places children sleep around the globe. It's pretty fantastic. Check it out.

Hi guys,

For the past hour or so, I've been in sort of an artistic moral dilemma with myself (if that makes sense). On my way home from work tonight, around 1am, I encountered my first male exhibitionist about 200ft away from my apartment building entrance. At first, I really didn't know what to think, or how to react. I just kept walking to my door, paused on the steps to look back at the van he was leaning against, and then continued on up to my apartment. Naturally, the first thing I did when I got to my room was to go and tweet what just happened. And then half way through the typing the tweet, I thought, well, if this is twitter worthy then it is most definitely photo worthy. Within an instant I was suddenly SO excited to get my camera and go back to the exhibitionist. I threw my camera on my shoulder, dragged my roommate out of her NyQuil comatose sleep, and armed myself with two cans of pepper spray that my grandmother just sent me in the mail. I was so ready. Unfortunately it was too late. In only 15 minutes after walking by him on my way home from work, he was gone. My roommate was pissed. I was devastated. I came back to my room and sunk into my futon in disappointment. But then I thought, "Why am I so upset? This is no normal reaction to what I just experienced. Would photographing this exhibitionist be exploiting his mental sickness? Even if its probably what every exhibitionist would love, would photographing them still be wrong? Does my interest in this situation make me equally as sick? Yes, probably. But, if you think about it, how is this any different from any other subculture or scene?"

So I stumbled upon this man a few years ago. His name is Mickey Smith and he's originally from an area of Britain called Cornwall. His work consists of surf photography but he really understands the movement and feel of the water. He gets right in the wave and puts himself at risk to get the serene and soft shot. Check out his work: http://www.clubofthewaves.com/surf-photographer/mickey-smith.php

Bill Cunningham New York

     It was one night during Welcome Week that, in the process of familiarizing myself with the area surrounding NYU, I stumbled upon a small movie theatre with the title "Bill Cunningham, New York" radiating from the overhead marquee. "Guys! Look!" I called to my friends. "I didn't know that movie was still playing!" They glanced up with a minimal amount of interest before continuing down the street. No one appreciated my excitement or expressed even remote desire to see the film...which is why I am sharing this with you fine people, true appreciators of photography.
    In case you don't know, Bill Cunningham is a fashion photographer for the New York Times. The eccentric octogenarian peddles around NYC on a bicycle, photographing the latest and greatest in street style. He processes his film at a local convenience store and is recognized by his simple blue windbreaker. He is charmingly low-key and very surreptitious in the capturing of his snapshots.
     Documentary filmmaker Richard Press decided to take a look at Cunningham's life, catching snippets of  his days and glimpsing into his past. When I heard about this film last April I asked my mom, who faithfully reads the New York Time Style section every Sunday, to accompany me to the Cable Car Cinema in Providence, RI to see the film. It was the most poignant and interesting film I had seen in a long time. It so beautifully captured the essence of this man. His dry humor had me belly-laughing in the theatre. There were moments of seriousness as well. Cunningham, who has been living in one of the artist's apartments above Carnegie Hall, was told by the new artistic director that he must leave so that the apartments can be converted to offices. This is more or less the central conflict in the film; Cunningham now faces the challenge of finding a place to accomodate his dozens of file cabinets filled with thousands of photographs and negatives.
     Although we are only given a glimpse of Cunningham's personal life (he is very careful about what he reveals; an obstacle Press handles delicately and effectively) I left the theatre with a longing to spend more time with this absolutely delightful man. Bill Cunningham is New York...the film seemed to drive at least that much home.

     I wish I could remember the name of the theatre where I saw the movie title. I checked the website and it doesn't seem to be playing anywhere around here anymore. Thankfully, it is available on DVD. I would recommend it to all of you, especially the aspiring fashion photographers among us.

     If you happen to rent it, give me a call...I would love to enjoy Bill Cunningham's company again!
     And yours too, of course:)

DRIVE

Last night I decided to go and see Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, starring Ryan Gosling. I was a bit hesitant to see it because I expected it to be just another action/suspense movie with the hopes of attracting an audience by using other great actors such as Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), and Christina Hendricks. Well, let me just say that once the film ended, I was left speechless.

The reason why I wanted to share this film with you all on the blog is because of it's unique cinematography. As some of you might recall, Mark was demonstrating for us the difference in camera angles and what it does to our subject: You shoot from above and take away the assertiveness from your subject; you shoot from below and give power to your subject.
In Drive, the majority of the shots were done from below. Every character was treated with the same style of shot--from below with them looking up or away. Each was given his or her own unique power without any discrimination between "good guy" or "bad guy".



There is very little dialogue in the movie, at least compared to most other action and suspense films, but I felt that this helped me soak in the visuals and the emotions of the characters much better. My memory is not the strongest, but this film makes the exception; I can literally sit down and think about the whole entire movie through without missing a scene. This is because of the director's strong use of slow motion accompanied with panning and longer cuts. I was able to absorb every ray of light and every color, from the blood (which there was a lot of) to the wallpaper.


Being a photographer, I have always appreciated strong cinematography in films as it can be extremely inspiring for your own personal work. The rule is, is that almost every shot in a film should have the ability, if it were paused, to create a strong still photograph. So, I highly recommend seeing Drive for its visual effectiveness. (Plus, Ryan Gosling isn't that bad to look at either!)

Tricks with perspective

Not sure how many of you saw the New York Times article on education "What if the Secret to Success is Failure?

The words in photos look like they are printed no the photo itself. But they are actually installations on site by an old classmate of mine (and legendary Art Director) Stephen Doyle in collaboration with the photographer Stephen Wilkes (who has a show at Clampart right now)

Stephen sent me a link to his vimeo site with two short films that show the installation in progress

"In the Gym"  and  and "Cipher"  (which shows him building the image above).

I had many classes with Stephen where he was annoyingly brilliant.

Oxelo Skateboarders in India

I stumbled across this video a while back, but thought I should share it with everyone, because its really well done. The short film is about a group of French skateboarders who travel to India to film a skate video on the unique landscapes the location offers. The colors used in the film are perfect, and the cinematography is gorgeous. I can't even imagine what it would have been like to shoot photos on location. Enjoy

New Yorker

Weird how the internet works.  A while back someone asked me to submit a photo of mine to the New Yorker photo Blog and I forgot all about it until I got an email from someone who saw it.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth/2011/08/dogs.html

The Self Portrait

So as a photographer, I've never really been able to master the self portrait. I just stay away from it except for the random moment when I say "oh, let me try again." Though these times generally cause me to once again stay away from the self portrait.  One day I stumbled on a photographer named Miss Aniela who does a wide variety of self portraiture that is very exciting. Her work has landed them some top jobs despite being only our age.

Natalie Kucken

hi everyone! (this is sandy) my friend natalie kucken is an incredible photographer. she is only 17 years old but has cultivated a huge online following for her unique and dreamy photos. she has been doing a lot more fashion photography as of late, but here is an assortment of photos by her (and links to her work at the bottom)

for more of her photos, see her flickr, blog, or website