15
Nov 11

Guernica in 3D

An extremely well done animated interpretation of Picasso’s Guernica.

I believe Picasso himself would have approved of this work.

His desire to show three-dimensions on two-dimensional media is dramatically achieved in this work.  I’ve always loved Guernica, and have now seen what I believe Picasso wanted to accomplish. I have a whole new appreciation for Guernica.


11
Nov 11

Four Color Crown

A stunning photo of a liquid splash. The photographer, Jim Kramer, very modestly describes his setup and method for this photo:

One of the easier shots to accomplish. You can do these without any special timing equipment. This particular shot is using heavy cream (lightly colored blue) being dropped onto a piece of black glass. In order to get the crown, a ‘primer’ drop is necessary in the landing zone. I added drops of food coloring to the outer edges of the primer drop, this adds the color.

Via:  Flickr


11
Nov 11

A Very Pricey Photograph


This photo, Rhein II, just became the world’s most expensive photograph, fetching a whopping $4.3 million.

This is Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II, an 81- x 140-inch print of the famous German river. It went on sale at Christie’s on Tuesday, smashing the previous record of $3.9 million for Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #96 sold in May. Funny enough, Untitled #96 had itself displaced Gursky’s earlier work, 99 Cent II Diptychon which sold for $3.35 million in 2006. Good to see that at least the high-end photography art market is weathering these economically turbulent times.


09
Nov 11

Robert Frank: Born This Day in 1924

Robert Frank – Photographer

Robert Frank, Photographer
November 9, 1924 – Still Shooting

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.” – Robert Frank

Robert Frank is an 87 year old iconic American Photographer. Frank was born in Zurich. He is an important figure in American photography and his most notable work is the 1958 photographic book titled The Americans.

Frank was born in 1924 which allowed him to capture post war images which earned him modern-day comparisons to Tocqueville as his images were fresh and skeptical perspective of American society. He would later use film and video, and experimented with that medium.

Frank attitude to his fame is indifferent, fittingly, as his works chronically not celebrities but the marginal American on the street. It was his skepticism with secular religion of wholesomeness and cheer that gave him a unique visual.

A quote from photographer Elliott Erwitt about Robert Frank and his black and white photography:

Quality doesn’t mean deep blacks and whatever tonal range. That’s not quality, that’s a kind of quality. The pictures of Robert Frank might strike someone as being sloppy – the tone range isn’t right and things like that – but they’re far superior to the pictures of Ansel Adams with regard to quality, because the quality of Ansel Adams, if I may say so, is essentially the quality of a postcard. But the quality of Robert Frank is a quality that has something to do with what he’s doing, what his mind is. It’s not balancing out the sky to the sand and so forth. It’s got to do with intention.

The Americans showed a different America than the wholesome, nonconfrontational photo essays offered in some popular magazines. Frank’s subjects weren’t necessarily living the American dream of the 1950s: They were factory workers in Detroit, transvestites in New York, black passengers on a segregated trolley in New Orleans. Frank didn’t even get much support from the art world, he recalls.

“The Museum of Modern Art wouldn’t even sell the book,” Frank says. “But the younger people caught on.”

“Robert Frank…he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.” – Jack Kerouac, Beat Generation poet and novelist

“I’d never seen anything like it, Robert Frank came out here and he just showed that you could see the USA until you spit blood.” – Ed Ruscha, photographer

Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey

Trolley – New Orleans

Woman In A Car – Butte, Montana

Rodeo – New York City

Funeral – Dt Helena, South Carolina

I Am A Man Protest – February, 1968 – Memphis, Tennessee

Charleston, South Carolina

Shoe Shine


06
Nov 11

Abandoned: Tree & Shed – BW

A photo from today’s photo shoot. See more in my “Abandoned and Forgotten” set on Flickr.


30
Oct 11

Cinemagraphs = Very Cool

Cinemagraphs: What it looks like when a photo moves

Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg: The Kettle Can Wait

It’s somewhere between a photo and a video, a piece of artwork that seeks to perfectly capture a fleeting moment in time.

New York City-based photographer Jamie Beck and Web designer Kevin Burg “hand-stitch” together her photos and his Web design to make animated gifs they now call “cinemagraphs.”

Continue reading →


30
Oct 11

Abandoned and Forgotten

Abandoned: Sitting Room WindowAbandoned: WindowAbandoned: DownstairsAbandoned: Sitting RoomAbandoned: DoorwayAbandoned - Project Flickr: Eerie
Stairs - Project Flickr: Eerie

Abandoned and Forgotten, a set on Flickr.

Several photos of the abandoned house I visited a couple days ago. What an eerie place; very foreboding. I need to go back with my tripod!


29
Oct 11

Vivian Maier: Unknown Photographer

Vivian Maier was a street photographer from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. But nobody saw her amazing work until recently.

Her works are some of the most stunning street photos I’ve ever seen. They were recently discovered in a Chicago auction; the auction house acquired her belongings from her storage locker that was sold off due to delinquent payments. In the collection, there were over 100,000 negatives, thousands of prints, and an untold number of undeveloped film rolls.

Unfortunately she passed away before the buyer tracked her down. Her life is obscure, but her photography is anything but. I’m thrilled that the buyer, John Maloof, has chosen to curate and share her works.

Good street photography is a difficult art… but great street photography takes an innate talent that few of us have. Many of us strive to catch those wonderful moments, but fall short of the mark. Vivian Maier possessed the magic and the talent to harness it.

A huge part of the difficulty is simply aiming a camera at someone. For one thing, it raises suspicion. Also, there is a hesitance to invade someone’s privacy. After those are overcome, snapping the shutter at the right moment is the magic.

Vivian had the ability to see the art in her subject matter. Her photographs are beautiful examples of otherwise mundane life. They implore one to look into and absorb the scene, so as to become a part of it.


Continue reading →


29
Oct 11

iPad Memory Card Readers

One of the pet peeves about the iPad is the absence of a memory card slot.

Why Apple chose to not include one is puzzling, but becoming more apparent as we learn about Steve Jobs’ extreme obsessive propensity to keep things clean and simple.

Well, a company called PhotoJoJo is offering an answer to our (well, “your”… I don’t own an iPad) memory card slot envy.

Priced at $30 for the CF Card version and $15 for the SD Card reader, they are an inexpensive way to load your photos to your iPad on-the-go.


29
Oct 11

iPhone Blog Entry

Nothing important. I’ve just never used this iPhone app to produce a blog entry before.
Seems to work pretty well for an on-the-fly post. Maybe I’ll start using it more often.
Adding a photo of my chair collection. I’ll be using them for photo props.

20111029-102506.jpg