“We all look at photoshopdisasters.com,” New York-based still life photographer Nicholas Eveleigh told me during a recent interview. He was referring over reliance on postproduction to try to correct the uncorrectable. “One can make some REALLY nice images without Photoshop,” said Eveleigh, who tries to get it right in-camera.
I said, “Yes” when Eveleigh mentioned Photoshop Disasters, as if EVERYONE knows about it. And according to the site, 30,000 photographers head there each day, indicating that, um, just about everyone on the planet is in the know. But, um, I wasn’t. Continue reading “Photoshop Disasters is Fun and Educational”
“Among a group of revolutionaries whose work rose to prominence in the late 1960s and ’70s and transformed the nature of documentary photography — a group that includes friends and colleagues of Mr. Lyon’s like Mary Ellen Mark and Larry Clark — the idea of conscience has been imbedded more deeply in Mr. Lyon’s photographs than in those of all but a few of his contemporaries.”
This is from “Stubbornly Practicing His Principle of Photography,” a wonderful article by Randy Kennedy published in The New York Times on April 24. It’s a great read for anyone interested in documentary photography, photojournalism, consciousness photography or the name Kennedy seems to favor for Danny Lyon’s work: New Journalism. As Kennedy explains: Continue reading “Who Is the Great Danny Lyon?”
Speaking of retouching, have you visited Retouched.net? It’s a great resource for learning about retouching — arguably the final frontier for most digital photographers — as well as many aspects of digital photography in general.
Retouched.net features article, columns, and video tutorials. The site also features lots of ads, links and clutter that can make it a bit overwhelming. But if you get past the overwhelm, you’ll find gobs of timely and helpful content about postproduction.
Particularly nice is that Retouched.net features artist profiles, whose insights help us think about retouching more as an art and less a set of Photoshop techniques.
We all know how much celebrity, fashion and beauty images are retouched. But then, do we really? Head to Digital Retouch for a number of “before” and “after” examples of brilliant, high-end retouching. You might be surprised at how far retouching can go – and still retain a acceptably natural look.
The site is meant as a sales platform and not for education. But you will likely find it educational to check out the four sections named “Beauty/Hair,” “Correction,” “Shaping,” and “Manipulation.” Each image includes a peel-back feature that reveals the “before” image, and comparing what has been done (what is possible) can be enlightening, if not inspiring. Continue reading “Before and After Retouching Insights”
Photographers love Flash-driven websites, editors do not. This is what Scott Mc Kiernan, photojournalist and head of ZUMA Press agency, recently told me. His comment was geared to photojournalists and the editors in the realm of editorial photography, but Mc Kiernan’s point is an interesting one for all photographers to be aware of.
Mc Kiernan made it clear that he has nothing against Flash, and actually loves the beauty of this visually delivery method. However, he said, the downside of Flash is that if there is the slightest incompatibility issue, editors cannot see images, and they are much more likely to move on before upgrading their Flash or working out compatibility issues. Continue reading “The Perils of Flash Web Sites?”
When considering the possibility of inclement weather—from the humid Amazon to the freezing Antarctic—Wolfgang Kaehler told me that the best preparation is simply for photographers to know their gear really well, from personal experience.
I was interviewing Kaehler for a piece on travel photography, which he has been doing for decades, to every continent and more than 200 countries. (WOW!) He says he simply knows what his equipment can and cannot take, and so he heads to the plane with confidence. Continue reading “Is Your Equipment Tough Enough?”
Head to commercial photographer Chase Jarvis’s 4/9/09 blog entry to get a REAL birds eye view – that is, a film recorded by a micro camera strapped to a high-flying, fast-diving raptor. Jarvis’s post highlights the work of José Luis Ortiz.
One thing I really appreciate about Chase is that he is always upbeat, curious and pumped up by other artists, even as he takes on his own projects at a frantic rate. As he says, he himself has been working with POV photography for years in many interesting ways. But he admits that José Luis Ortiz has taken the art to a whole new level: WAY up in the air.
The obvious reason to head to the “People’s Choice” voting section of PDN’s “Faces Photo Contest” is to, um, vote. However, when I went to do so myself, I quickly realized that the process is very educational. The thumbnails are tiny and numerous, so I found myself thinking about what makes a portrait truly stand out — pop off a crowed page, whether or not it is stunning in its own right. Continue reading “Vote & Learn: Portraits That Pop”
Always sorting the best from the rest, digital photography guru Jay Kinghorn raves about the JOBO PhotoGPS in his latest “Professional Digital Workflow” newsletter. And it’s easy to see why. Imagine a tiny, sleek item locked into your hot shoe that gathers amazing amounts of GPS metadata related to each of your captures – boom!, no thought — including altitude. Beyond cool.
Kinghorn ran into the Jobo PhotoGPS at the Photo Marketing Show and reports in his newsletter:
“This [JOBO PhotoGPS] device can be a huge time-saver when embedding location information into your photos. This makes searching your image library more productive. In past issues, I featured compelling multimedia projects linking photographs to Continue reading “The Rockn’ Jobo PhotoGPS Recorder”
Today the BBC posted a wonderful audio slideshow called “The art of camouflage.” Check it out! You will see a spectacular series of nature images tied together with a very specific theme complete with concise, engaging education narration.
As the introductory text says, “Appearance, it seems, is key to survival in the animal kingdom – with some species able to blend in perfectly with their surroundings, while others behave quite the contrary. Take a look with Professor Innes Cuthill from the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol.”
“We all look at photoshopdisasters.com,” New York-based still life photographer Nicholas Eveleigh told me during a recent interview. He was referring over reliance on postproduction to try to correct the uncorrectable. “One can make some REALLY nice images without Photoshop,” said Eveleigh, who tries to get it right in-camera.
