Archives For Photography

Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer

August 4, 2013 — Leave a comment

The future is here and apparently in San Francisco and Glasshole is now our newest official addition to the English language.

Gary Scteyngart is not a glasshole but a writer for the New Yorker and was awarded a pair of Google Glass’s. This is kind of like giving Woody Allen a pair and turning him loose on the city… but he is one of the first 100 people in NYC who own a pair. He gives a pretty good “normal guy” account of what it means to wear them all day and how it has affected his life in a pretty big way. Hint: You don’t want to give one to your kid and if you do after reading this you can be a proud member of the worse parent of the year club.

“Before I leave, Aray and I have a Google “hangout.” We essentially swap identities. I see what she sees through her Glass, which is me. She sees what I see through my Glass, which is her. We bring our faces closer, as if approaching a mirror, but the feeling is more akin to being trapped in an early Spike Jonze movie or thrust into an unholy Vulcan mind meld.”

via The New Yorker

In How To, Photography
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Books: James Welling Monograph

August 1, 2013 — Leave a comment

Long time influential artist and photographer James Welling finally gets the museum survey and book that documents his long amazing career.  Interview with him here.

James Welling: Monograph
February 02, 2013 – May 05, 2013

Cincinnati Art Museum
953 Eden Park Drive
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

“For over thirty-five years, James Welling has created beautiful and uncompromising photographs, and continues to be lauded by photographers, artists, and critics for his influence on the contemporary generation of art photographers. Operating in the hybrid ground between painting, sculpture, and traditional photography, Welling is first and foremost a photographic practitioner enthralled with the possibilities of the medium. James Welling: Monograph provides the most thorough presentation of the artist’s work to date, as well as offering an indispensable resource for those interested in this artist’s remarkable, foundational practice”.

via James Welling: Monograph – books – Aperture Foundation.

In Art, Books, Photography , ,
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David Hockney: Photographs and Polaroid Collages

July 25, 2013 — Leave a comment

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.

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Photography Masters Series: Lee Friedlander

July 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

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.

via The Frankel Gallery

 

 

In Documentary, Photography ,
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Should You Purchase An Unmanned Aerial Photography Drone?

July 22, 2013 — Leave a comment

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/

 

In Business, Equipment, How To, Photography, Uncategorized , ,
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