Bruce Cockburn sings one of his classics, Pacing The Cage live
Archives For Thomas
Most of the big advancements in Fine Art Photography have not come from photographers but from artists using the camera (with the exception of Thomas Ruff). David Hockney used cameras constantly in his painting and did a large number of pure photographic works as his photographic composites and collages attest. His Poloroid Portraits, melding collage, Cubist multiple view points and time, are some of my favorites images in the history of photography.
If you want to study a dynamic style of documentary photographic composition this is the guy to to look at. Always inventive, with images possessing enormous energy, Lee Friedlander explores varied aspects of the American social landscape. You can see most of his work at the The Frankel Gallery web site.
Lee Friedlander, born in 1934, began photographing the American social landscape in 1948. With an ability to organize a vast amount of visual information in dynamic compositions, Friedlander has made humorous and poignant images among the chaos of city life, dense landscape and countless other subjects. Friedlander is also recognized for a group of self-portraits he began in the 1960s, reproduced in Self Portrait, an exploration that he turned to again in the late 1990s, and published in a monograph by Fraenkel Gallery in 2000. Friedlander’s work was included in the highly influential 1967 New Documents exhibition, curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art. Included among the many monographs designed and published by Friedlander himself are Sticks and Stones, Lee Friedlander: Photographs, Letters From the People, Apples and Olives, Cherry Blossom Time in Japan, Family, and At Work. Friedlander was the subject of a major traveling retrospective and catalog organized by the Museum of Modern Art in 2005. In 2010, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York exhibited the entirety of his body of work, America by Car.
Right now you are breaking a federal law if you use an unmanned aerial photography drone for any commercial purposes near people. Until the FAA allows it you can not fly a UAS except over unpopulated areas (where the kids / Dads fly model airplanes). Put a camera on it and things get even more tricky given restrictions Washington is weighing presently. So be careful with those business plans and where you put your money until the FAA figures this out and don’t forget your liability insurance does not cover illegal activity.
Here is a hint of what the folks at the FAA are thinking:
“… operations in civil airspace have different priorities. Civil performance standards are often more stringent, especially in the areas of reliability. Public expectation for a safe aviation environment drives our very high standards.”
“Currently, there are no means to obtain an authorization for commercial UAS operations in the NAS. However, manufacturers may apply for an experimental certificate for the purposes of R&D, market survey and crew training.”
Translation: You are going to pay a boat load of money to get an FAA approved UAS to fly over populated areas for commercial uses. Not only will you have to get FAA approval for the aircraft but for the guidance and control system as well. Not to mention the training. And guess what there are no FAA training areas set up at this point for you to be properly trained.
FAA site: http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/uas_faq/
Really excited about this new printing technology as it will fundamentally change how silver prints are made and more importantly what can be imagined in black and white photography.
http://www.digitalsilverimaging.com/ (I am currently testing these guys)
http://www.dalmatianlab.com/digital/true-bw-digital-fiber-prints-pricing/
http://www.elevatordigital.ca/printing.html
http://www.metroimaging.co.uk/home
Testing of Durst Processing of Illford Black and White Paper
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=77684.0
http://aardenburg-imaging.com/cgi-bin/mrk/_4534c2hvd19kb2NfbGlzdC80
(Select printing in the search field and type in Durst)
