You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Photo Thing Friday’ category.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you may have read this post. In it I related my deep love of animals in general and dogs in particular. Don’t get me wrong, I love cats as well. And rabbits. And birds of all sorts, whales, otters, mongoose, horses, lions, tigers, bears (oh my!), giraffes, deer, monkeys, hippos, etc. All of those are well and good but come on now, there’s nothing like a great dog. Man’s best friend. The companion, the partner, the protector. There is something different about dogs that try as I might I can’t fully put my finger on. Perhaps this is why I can’t stand to see them sad.
As I said in that previous post I can handle seeing cats in a shelter. I believe I could handle, as much as it would be heartbreaking, seeing other animals in captive situations. Yeah yeah, I know, zoos are captive situations, but that’s not what I mean here. What I can’t stand seeing are dogs in a shelter. They weren’t hurt or in any danger when I saw them. On the contrary, the SPCA does a fantastic job considering how many animals come through there. But it was the look in their eyes. These are intelligent creatures who thrive when free. They can be trained, they can do so many things, they can spend a lifetime showing you unconditional love, yet there they were reduced to sitting in corners waiting for someone to come along and show them something different.
Well someone did. No one can help all dogs in need but Andrew Grant has done an amazing thing for the ones in his area. Pure chance gave him an opening to use his talents to show people the personality of dogs. Using the power of photography he helped move people and as a direct result of his efforts some amazing animals have found great homes. Come on, who could say no to a face like this?
That’s just one of the faces you’ll find in Grant’s book, Rover. 200+ pages of doggy awesome. With a portion of the sales going to shelter animals Rover is making an active difference in the lives of these awesome pets. Thank you Grant.
And a big thank you to all the great dogs I’ve known or been close to in my life. Duke (pronounced Dookie because of a Spanish accent oddly enough), Chispita, Osito, Bubba, Palomo, and Fabio. I love you all. <3
Imagine you’re a landscape photographer. Now imagine you want to take a shot of the moon with the earth rising over it. Or of a category 5 tornado without being hurt. Or, maybe, you’d love to get a shot of Mars. You can see the issues here right away. Nevermind that man has never BEEN to Mars, even things like shooting amazing natural events here on earth are risky at best. So what’s a person to do? Make it yourself.
Awesome, right? This image was created by Matthew Albanese in his own home. Natural disasters, alien landscapes, anything and everything is up for grabs when he decides to make an image. Crafting these landscapes from anything and everything makes them even more fantastic. The image above was made from tile grout and cotton and then illuminated with light bulbs. Channeling the creative juices of MacGyver himself, Matthew uses his imagination and his kitchen cupboard to create things others could only imagine and just as quickly deem impossible.
As I viewed this images all I could think of was a saying I picked up somewhere: fake it ’till you make it. It seems Matthew took it one step further. He made a fake so great it doesn’t even feel fake. Looks like he made it.
It was sitting right there on the shelf. Of course, this was before I knew that I even had an interest in photography or I probably would have paid more attention. Sitting there on the Barnes & Noble shelf was a very cool looking magazine called JPG. I thought it was a clever name and it had a cool cover (of a wrestler, if I remember right) but I didn’t even give it a second glance. Maybe something in my subconscious knew something that it didn’t want me to realize (that little bastard…) because I never forgot that moment or that magazine.
Flash forward to two weeks ago and the scene I just described for you bounced through my brain for some unknown reason. When it did I went looking for a website to put with the JPG name. I found it, and it’s more awesome than I could have guessed.
The images just flew at me. New styles, new perspective, new views from around the world. I loved so many of them but they are only half of the reason the site is cool. The rest of JPG’s greatness comes from these little words, “You could be published in JPG Magazine!” These people, in their great wisdom, recognized that while professional photographers gracing the covers of professional photography magazines is all well and good there is also an amazing number of people who are buying increasingly professional cameras. These people may have a truly moving image just tucked away somewhere that deserves to be published, and now they have their chance.
I don’t pretend to know with any level of certainty that this is the first magazine to do something like this but I love that it exists anyways. If it didn’t, I would have never seen this, this, orrrrr this. And come on, who doesn’t want to see stuff like that? 
Photographers, either through talent, training, or a combination of both, learn how to manipulate the world to capture the best possible images. There is an understanding of color, spacing, angle, and a dozen other conscious or unconscious decisions that go into the work of any photographer. When an image moves you it will often have something to do with the unique perspective that the shooter has brought to it, not just the subject. This is, of course, how people choose photographers in most situations: because of how that person sees the world.
But not all photographs have these ideas applied to them. Some (crime scene photos come to mind) are still photographs but there isn’t supposed to be anything more there. There isn’t supposed to be anything more then just a physical record of fact. So when I see photographs taken like that, with no thought but to capture what’s directly there, and possibly (or in this case definitely) not taken by the hand of any photographer at all, I can’t help but appreciate the power of the image and how amazing it is that although all those artistic choices are taken out these photographs can still grab me and make me think.
Haiti: Before and After the Quake.
For anyone who may be reading this yet hasn’t heard, a few days ago Haiti was hit with a massive earthquake. Homes, schools, businesses, even the National Palace, have been leveled. While an accurate count of how many people have died because of this event probably won’t be known for a long time, current estimates are standing at several hundred thousand. The pictures at the link above were taken by Google’s Geo-Eye1 satellite. A complicated machine has been able to provide us with a perspective on the devastation that no photographer in the world could have achieved. There is no fancy editing, no Photoshop magic here, nothing. Just the truth in the harshest possible way.
I know that my readership isn’t very high but in case anyone comes across this and wants to help in some way there are great campaigns being launched all over the world. Check out the links below if you’d like to help.
That’s right Dear Reader. So recently after starting this little experiment in regularity I have already missed a Thursday. It isn’t as if I wasn’t aware that Thursday came and went but, being Christmas eve, I was pretty busy. In fact, this whole week was really busy with all kinds of things. From photo shoots and editing to hanging out (in person!) with good friends I hadn’t seen in a while there just always seemed to be something to do. So, to make amends, I wanted to find a way to combine my geekiness and my photo-ness. Photoness. Photographyness. Whatever. So, with that in mind, I give you:
LOL KITTIES YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!
Can you has cheezburgers? I know I can. Combining cute animals, funny captions, people’s personal photographs, and terrible grammar/spelling, this wonderfully amazing website was born. It’s in no way serious but I love that it makes me laugh. It makes me appreciate a photograph not because it’s a beautiful and artistic item with not a single technical detail out of place but because of the emotion captured in it. Whether it’s the look on a cat’s face, or the body position, or just the twinkle of their eyes, there is never a lack of visual clues that push a certain emotion which then gets reinforced by the terrible (but funny) caption. I could try to explain the dorky wonder of these images all I want but the old idea that a picture is worth a thousand words has never been more true than in this case. So please, Dear Reader, click the link above and enjoy the kitty wonder.
Go. GO ON. ENJOY IT NOW!
And oh yes, Merry Christmas!
Dear Reader,
As the graduation date of one of my good friends approaches (it’s tomorrow, actually, WOOOO!!!) I can’t help but think of my own. We didn’t really know what to do that day as we bounced around in the back halls of Arco Arena. College being what it is, I didn’t know most of the faces I saw back there, but eventually I recognized one. And another. And another. And I started to smile. While the other groups gathered around had various things with them, from cell phones to flowers, there was my group with the only thing they really wanted on this day: cameras. Point and shoots, SLRs, even an old film camera one guy had strapped under his robe so he could whip out and take a crowd shot, that is just how we rolled. There were my fellow photography nerds crowded around and excited to finally be walking those last few steps and be done with schooling.
Fools, all of us, to ever believe we would be done with schooling.
There is ALWAYS more to learn and some of the best things I know how to do I figured out after I left the campus. Once it was just me and my camera I started to experiment more and more. Without the pressure of shooting for a specific class along with doing reading for Professor So and So and doing a paper for Professor What’s Her Face, who totally gave me an A btw, I was left to explore more of what I wanted. But when that wasn’t enough I went in search of better resources. A whole new kind of classroom.
Dear Reader, let Nikon show you the way.
It’s not the only resource out there. Hell, maybe it’s not the best either, I don’t know. What I do know is that I shoot Nikon and love it. Through their site (and their actual Nikon School if you want to throw down some dough) they regularly throw up tips, tricks, and techniques so anyone can become a better shooter. I don’t care if you threw down the cash for your own SLR or have nothing more than a cell phone camera, everyone can do something more with whatever you may have at hand.
So go forth, be bold and embark on a new learning experience. Grab a hold of the Canon you’ve had for years or the pretty pink Fuji you got for your birthday and head on over to the site. Don’t sorry, they won’t crash your computer if you’re not using a Nikon, it can be your little secret. Get some digital learning with your digital medium and we can get all digitally together. I’ll be there along with you, taking furious notes like a freshman all over again, because I’ve heard the cheering of the crowd and felt the graduation cap on my head already. I walked with my fellow students and was given the kudos for a job well done. Then the cap came off, the arena was emptied, and I walked out into the real world. And here, for me and for anyone else interested, the learning never stops.
What is that? Two posts in two days? That’s right!
Much (or exactly) like Nerdy Thing Thursday, Photo Thing Friday will highlight anything I find awesome. The only difference here is that I’m going to highlight people, movements, technology, or anything else I find newsworthy as long as it relates to photography. Easy enough yes?
Dear Reader, today I bring you the future of photographic technology. Or, one possible future, I’ve seen and read enough sci-fi to ever really believe that things are set in stone. I hadn’t heard about computational photography until a few days ago but now I’m really curious to see it evolve. Basically, what researchers are doing with camera technology is going to allow us to change almost EVERYTHING about a camera and an image right in our hands. Love changing lenses for different effects? Do you get a small thrill knowing that an image will look just so with a different filter? Well, what if you could change selectively change the lighting by changing the sensor on the fly? Maybe the processor? What if you could modify things on an almost Photoshop level by manipulating the camera in your hand? It’s like Legos all over again. We will be able to build a custom camera on the fly and have control of things we didn’t think were possible.
Interested?
Maybe I’m taking the basic concept, as I understand it, and am pulling and pushing it into something fantastic (to me) but not something that the researchers are thinking of right now. Well tough cookies. That’s what I do. Because, this is important, I’m a photographer. I’m the end-user. Whatever crazy mad scientist stuff they are doing will ultimately live or die because people like me buy or don’t buy. I wish I could understand what they’re doing on their level but I sure as hell don’t. The research into the DEEP end of light fields and optics and gnomes (for all I know) is beyond me. What I can do is pay attention and when these brilliant people see fit to toss a nugget of possibility my way I can enjoy it. And what tasty morsels they are.
Member!
