Effective January 1, 2008, passengers on planes will no longer be able to carry loose rechargeable lithium batteries (the kind that are commonly used in digital cameras, camcorders, and laptops) in their checked baggage. However, you can have them in your carry-on bags, as long as they’re in their original packaging or in a simple resealable plastic bag. And you’re limited to a total of only two spare rechargeable lithium batteries in your carry-on bags. It seems that under certain circumstances, these batteries can explode and catch fire. Hmmm. Makes me wonder what exactly are those circumstances? So if you’re traveling, plan ahead. And just to be safe, don’t carry lithium batteries in your pants pockets. Ouch.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Happy New Year to All
I hope the holidays have been kind to you all out there, no matter what flavor of holiday you observe, and I hope the new year is productive and profitable to all. Also, I hope that peace is given a chance in all troubled parts of the world. Take care.
Milestones for Canon
There are a few important milestones for Canon happening right now. 1) They’re celebrating their 70th Anniversary as a company. 2) They’re celebrating their 20th Anniversary of making EOS SLR cameras. 3) They’ve just produced their 30 Millionth EOS camera. Congratulations to Canon.
Canon made the switch from manual focus cameras to autofocus cameras in 1987 with the introduction of the EOS 650 camera. They had established a large loyal following through the 60s and 70s with pro-oriented cameras like the F1 and amateur-oriented cameras like the very popular AE-1. At one time, it seemed like everyone was using an AE-1. Then in 1987, they made the tough choice to change lens-mounts and come up with a totally new AF line of cameras and lenses. Even at that time, they were seeing the eventual change from film cameras to digital cameras, and with the new lens-mount system it would be easier to make that transition. After making the change, Canon has been more popular than ever, trading the #1 spot with Nikon back and forth ever since.
I bought my first Canon SLR in 1989, when I picked up a brand new EOS-1, their professional level camera. I loved the camera and the Canon lenses. Previously, I had been using first Nikon and then Olympus cameras, but decided to make the shift to autofocus, since that was where the industry was going. I never regretted that decision. Over the years I’ve continued to use Canon cameras, switching to digital bodies when they became available—first the D30 in 2000, then a 10D, a Rebel XTi, and soon a 40D. It’s been a fun trip and I plan to continue using these fine cameras. Thanks, Canon.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
A New Book is Out
The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest, a book by Lawrence Kreisman and Glenn Mason (a friend of mine for many years), has been published by Timber Press and is available in time for the holidays. If you know someone interested in the Arts and Crafts movement, you won't find a better book. Congratulations to all involved. And of course, you can find this book at Amazon.com or order it through your local bookstore.The photo above shows a display of the book at Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon. It also shows a couple of paintings I photographed for this book. I made around 75 images for the project, ranging from pottery to paintings.
So What’s So Great About Digital?
When talking about digital photography, it’s only fair to give credit where credit is due. Digital cameras and digital photography are better at some things than film technology ever was, so here are a few of the things it’s especially good at.
Instant Feedback – Of course, instant Image Review is a great feature. Checking your composition as you shoot is wonderful. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that this works best with subjects that aren’t so time sensitive, like landscapes, architecture, still lifes, studio, and portraiture. For time sensitive situations, like sports and photojournalism, looking at every image you shoot before shooting again might get in your way of getting the shot. The Histogram is also part of the instant feedback. For older photogs, this is like having an instant densitometer reading on every image as you take them. You know right away how good the exposure is for each image and how easy it will be to make a print from it. Both of these aspects allow for accelerated learning as you photograph. Take a picture, analyze it, make corrections, take it again, and repeat as necessary. It really condenses and speeds up the photographic learning curve.
Speed of working – With low cost memory cards and high capacity shooting, it’s not unusual for digital photographers to shoot nearly 10 times more than they would have shot with film. In the past, a photographer might shoot in their lifetime maybe 10,000 to 20,000 images. Many photographers today will shoot that much in a year. And the truth is that the more you do anything, whether it’s sports, music, or any kind of performance, the better you get. Speeding up your output will speed up your progress. Combine this with the first advantage, Instant Feedback, and this will result in younger photographers learning and improving faster than ever.
Quality and Ease of Color Imaging – I first started with color photography when Ektacolor paper was fiber-based and most of the processors required you to work in total darkness with not even a safe light. Yuck. It was exciting for everybody when color papers became resin-coated and lightproof processing tubes became available. But regular color prints faded quickly and most of the time had a veiled quality to the colors. Digital cameras are made for color and image manipulation programs make high quality color images a snap. Inkjet printers produce richer truer colors and with pigment inks you get prints that can last 200 years. You now have complete image control, better looking images, and longer lasting prints. What more could you ask for?
Image Manipulation – In digital, any image becomes plastic. You can bend them, reshape them, alter colors, add colors, increase the sharpness, increase the fuzziness, turn a color image into black-and-white, remove objects, add objects, or any one of an infinite variety of options. And all of this can be done with hardly any sign of tampering. While it sometimes casts doubt on the truth of an image (such as: is that real?), this is a huge advantage for artists trying to capture their own unique vision.
Combining Images – In the beginning, people had to physically cut out images and glue them together to make one composition. Now we can cut and paste in the computer, adding and altering and moving any number of images to make a single image. It’s relatively easy and almost undetectable. With this advantage, photography becomes closer to painting or collage, giving the artist complete control of the composition.
Ease of Combining with Other Media – This is a generally unexplored area for digital photography. We now have the capability to add words, illustrations, and/or audio to any image. It’s possible to add video as well. While this changes the concept of still photography, it also opens the door to new creativity and new opportunities for photographers, adding depth and context to any project.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
CAEA Conference Report
Well, it's Tuesday and we're back from the California Arts Education Association Annual Conference. Kathy and I each taught two workshops and together we did the opening address/lecture for the first ever Digital Strand segment for the Association. For the lecture, I wrote it out and delivered it, and Kathy designed and produced the PowerPoint presentation that went with it. The lecture examined the contributions of John Szarkowski and how his idea of photographs functioning as "Mirrors" or "Windows" continues to have relevance with digital photography.
Here's some of the more pithy quotes I included in the lecture.
Photography: “. . . is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” – John Szarkowski, 1978
“Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.” – Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)
Eugene Atget - A French photographer who took on the project of documenting the entire city of Paris. He worked with, even then, antiquated equipment and produced images of timeless beauty.
William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld, and Stephen Shore - Very influential color photographers who started working and exhibiting in color in the 1970s. Their impact can still be seen in today's young photographers.
August Sander (1876 – 1964) - He photographed the German people as a large scale, long term national portrait. He was one of the first to make environmental portraits, showing people as they were in daily life.
Irving Penn – He is a fashion, product, & portrait photographer for Vogue magazine. He was successfully able to blend commercial and fine art.
William Henry Jackson (1843 – 1942) - One of the first photographers of the American West. He could make up to 17 wet plate negatives a day. He was the first to photograph in Yellowstone and his images helped to make it a national park.
Carleton E. Watkins (1829 – 1916) - One of the first photographers to visit and photograph Yosemite in California. One of the first photographers to make a living selling prints of scenics and landscapes.
Russell A. Kirsch & Associates - This is one of the first digital images. He worked for the National Bureau of Standards and invented a machine that could scan an image and convert it into a 1-bit image.
Henry Peach Robinson – Early English Pictorialist photographer (1830 - 1901). One of the first to make combination prints. “Fading Away” used 5 different negatives, 1858.
Jerry Uelsmann – He is the master of combination printing and originator of the concepts of Post Visualization. Produces black and white prints that seamlessly combines up to 8 separate negatives.
Jeremy Dawson – This was an image from his series “Men in Suits.” While it mimics traditional street photography, it is actually a subtle and clever composite.
Daniel Lee – Manipulated images from series based on the Chinese Zodiac. Included images were Year of the Ox and Year of the Cock.
Kathryn Hunter – American. Image: Escape. Digital composite from B&W infrared film images.
Tom Chambers. Image: They Comfort 2003.
Mary Frey. Image: In Her Bedroom 1997.
Joyce Neimanas – She is a digital collage artist producing evocative and colorful images.
Larry McNeil – Native American artist whose works incorporates elements of traditional imagery and text.
Loretta Lux – She is mostly known for posed studio portraits of children. They wear the photographers’ old childhood clothes and she puts in backgrounds from images she makes while traveling. She also does subtle and not so subtle manipulations to alter their features, shapes, and geometry.
Fritz Liedtke – Works in Film and digital, frequently mixing the two. The images I included were from a series on adolescence.
Maggie Taylor – She is a digital artist that uses scanners for most of her work. Finished images can contain as many as 150 separate images and layers.
Olivia Parker – She started out as a painter, but switched to photography. In the beginning she used large format and is a master printer, but has since switched to digital cameras and inkjet printers.
Hermon Joyner – From my series called "Figures," which is an oblique look at how humans view themselves through artwork as idealized forms.
Nathan Baker – He shot this series (2006) with a 4x5, scanned them and combined them (up to 36 separate images) in Photoshop. This series is a look at people at work.
Stewart Harvey – A series of upbeat and poignant Post Katrina New Orleans portraits that focuses on the people and life that is still left in the city. It combines the environmental portraits with Harvey's impressions and anecdotes of his encounters in New Orleans. A successful mix of images and words.
Dan Burkholder – This is a series of images of Post Katrina New Orleans that focuses on the damage, but explores the unlikely beauty of that devastation. He takes several images, varying the exposure, and then combines them in the computer. Burkholder has a book coming next year (March 2008) on this series entitled, "The Color of Loss: An Intimate Portrait of New Orleans After Katrina."
Hermon Joyner - Black and white Japanese Gardens images. It eventually became the project and book, Visual/Haiku, which paired the images with haiku poetry.
Mark Klett - He started the Rephotographic Survey project in the 1970s, which picked old photographs from the early survey photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan and tried to reproduce those views exactly - matching angle of view, perspective, framing and lighting. It's an exporation of geologic time versus human time. Working on this project since the 70s, the Rephotographic Survey has found its culmination in digital media, incorporating still images, audio interviews, video clips, and interactive features. This project is available as a book/DVD combination, titled, "Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West."
Hermon
Here's some of the more pithy quotes I included in the lecture.
Photography: “. . . is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” – John Szarkowski, 1978
“Every man’s work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him.” – Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)
“You use a glass mirror to see your face: you use works of art to see your soul.” – George Bernard Shaw, Back to Methuselah, 1921
“Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It’s the aim of art to give it some.” – Jean Anouilh, The Rehearsal (1950)
“The Arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, are very close to the center of a nation's purpose - and are a test of the quality of a nation's civilization.” – John F. Kennedy
“…knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the use of camera and pen alike.” – László Moholy-Nagy, 1936
Many people at the lecture were interested in the photographers included in the "slide show," so here is the list of them.Eugene Atget - A French photographer who took on the project of documenting the entire city of Paris. He worked with, even then, antiquated equipment and produced images of timeless beauty.
William Eggleston, Joel Meyerowitz, Joel Sternfeld, and Stephen Shore - Very influential color photographers who started working and exhibiting in color in the 1970s. Their impact can still be seen in today's young photographers.
August Sander (1876 – 1964) - He photographed the German people as a large scale, long term national portrait. He was one of the first to make environmental portraits, showing people as they were in daily life.
Irving Penn – He is a fashion, product, & portrait photographer for Vogue magazine. He was successfully able to blend commercial and fine art.
William Henry Jackson (1843 – 1942) - One of the first photographers of the American West. He could make up to 17 wet plate negatives a day. He was the first to photograph in Yellowstone and his images helped to make it a national park.
Carleton E. Watkins (1829 – 1916) - One of the first photographers to visit and photograph Yosemite in California. One of the first photographers to make a living selling prints of scenics and landscapes.
Russell A. Kirsch & Associates - This is one of the first digital images. He worked for the National Bureau of Standards and invented a machine that could scan an image and convert it into a 1-bit image.
Henry Peach Robinson – Early English Pictorialist photographer (1830 - 1901). One of the first to make combination prints. “Fading Away” used 5 different negatives, 1858.
Jerry Uelsmann – He is the master of combination printing and originator of the concepts of Post Visualization. Produces black and white prints that seamlessly combines up to 8 separate negatives.
Jeremy Dawson – This was an image from his series “Men in Suits.” While it mimics traditional street photography, it is actually a subtle and clever composite.
Daniel Lee – Manipulated images from series based on the Chinese Zodiac. Included images were Year of the Ox and Year of the Cock.
Kathryn Hunter – American. Image: Escape. Digital composite from B&W infrared film images.
Tom Chambers. Image: They Comfort 2003.
Mary Frey. Image: In Her Bedroom 1997.
Joyce Neimanas – She is a digital collage artist producing evocative and colorful images.
Larry McNeil – Native American artist whose works incorporates elements of traditional imagery and text.
Loretta Lux – She is mostly known for posed studio portraits of children. They wear the photographers’ old childhood clothes and she puts in backgrounds from images she makes while traveling. She also does subtle and not so subtle manipulations to alter their features, shapes, and geometry.
Fritz Liedtke – Works in Film and digital, frequently mixing the two. The images I included were from a series on adolescence.
Maggie Taylor – She is a digital artist that uses scanners for most of her work. Finished images can contain as many as 150 separate images and layers.
Olivia Parker – She started out as a painter, but switched to photography. In the beginning she used large format and is a master printer, but has since switched to digital cameras and inkjet printers.
Hermon Joyner – From my series called "Figures," which is an oblique look at how humans view themselves through artwork as idealized forms.
Nathan Baker – He shot this series (2006) with a 4x5, scanned them and combined them (up to 36 separate images) in Photoshop. This series is a look at people at work.
Stewart Harvey – A series of upbeat and poignant Post Katrina New Orleans portraits that focuses on the people and life that is still left in the city. It combines the environmental portraits with Harvey's impressions and anecdotes of his encounters in New Orleans. A successful mix of images and words.
Dan Burkholder – This is a series of images of Post Katrina New Orleans that focuses on the damage, but explores the unlikely beauty of that devastation. He takes several images, varying the exposure, and then combines them in the computer. Burkholder has a book coming next year (March 2008) on this series entitled, "The Color of Loss: An Intimate Portrait of New Orleans After Katrina."
Hermon Joyner - Black and white Japanese Gardens images. It eventually became the project and book, Visual/Haiku, which paired the images with haiku poetry.
Mark Klett - He started the Rephotographic Survey project in the 1970s, which picked old photographs from the early survey photographers like Timothy O'Sullivan and tried to reproduce those views exactly - matching angle of view, perspective, framing and lighting. It's an exporation of geologic time versus human time. Working on this project since the 70s, the Rephotographic Survey has found its culmination in digital media, incorporating still images, audio interviews, video clips, and interactive features. This project is available as a book/DVD combination, titled, "Third Views, Second Sights: A Rephotographic Survey of the American West."
Hermon
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Focus on Photography goes to California
Kathy and I are traveling to Pasadena, CA this week to attend the California Arts Education Association Conference, November 15 - 18. Kathy will be giving two beading workshops and I'll be doing two digital photo workshops, plus giving a lecture on the Art of Digital Photography for the opening of the digital strand of the conference. For those interested in the digital photo workshop, there is a .pdf of the handout I did for the workshop available online for download. Click on Tips and Tricks for Fast and Easy Digital Documentation.
I'll post again next week to let you know how it went.
I'll post again next week to let you know how it went.
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