The year end brings some selections of pictures of the year. The selected images are very much geared towards the impact in the news than the artistic merit of the picture, but certainly there is some interesting photography there.1.- Reuters pictures of the year 2007
Getting the shot: with brief -to the point- commentaries by Gary Hershorn, Americas photo editor.
2007 has been the first full year for Exposure Compensation.
For me this blog has become a mechanism to connect with you and share my passion for the art and craft of photography. You, as the reader, provide the real meaning and value of this blog and for that I convey my sincere appreciation.
I have multiple ideas for 2008, and I hope to find time to explore broader areas of photography and so to expand the reach and scope of Exposure Compensation.
I owe few words to express my gratitude to the many of you who also share your thinking writing your own personal blogs and make this such a wonderful community. Specially, I like to mention Jörg Colberg, the editor of Conscientious. As one of the pioneer bloggers on contemporary photography, reading his blog inspired me to start Exposure Compensation. Thanks indeed Jörg for leading this field and for your generosity to share.
As we approach the end of the year, it is always a good time to reflect about what moves our life forward, in a positive way. Rather than keeping the same habits, it is sometimes good to reflect and find a process to get unstuck of things that limit our life or creative process. The path we take is less important that the depth of our footprints. What at the ends matters the most is to do what we believe we should do and live our life according to our core values. Our beliefs define "our" framework for well-being, for happiness and for fulfillment: our passion for life.
In 1950s the NPR (National Public Radio) in the United States created a radio program, "This I Believe", to point to the common grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization. Each day, millions of Americans turned on their radios to hear compelling essays from inspirational thinkers of that time as well as regular people, who condensed into few minutes the guiding principles by which they lived. Based on that program "This I Believe" is back, as an international project to listen to the beliefs of people. This project is a good source of inspiration to reflect on our believes and make sure they are in synchrony with our actions. A good exercise to start 2008.
Happy new year to all.
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. - Niccolo Machiavelli
I have not used this service... but it is an interesting idea I thought I would pass around ... this could be a useful way to assemble a personal database of images that are found in the net to keep for later evaluation and reference.
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vi.sualize.us is a social bookmarking website for visual contents — vi.sualize.us (read visualize us) allows you to remember your favorite images around the web, and share them with everyone.
Sometimes, you are looking through pictures and one of them catches your eye. You know you want to save it so you can look at it again in the future, but it's not that easy: downloading to your hard disk is as useless as bookmarking the website in the usual way.
This is where vi.sualize.us changes the rules. Within two clicks, you can save the image reference in your account, and easily look at it whenever you want to, just as your new favorite picture deserves. All without thinking about what computer you stored it in: always online, always available.
Marsh's title for this most recent series of Dresden, The Inhabitants, references American writer & photographer Wright Morris’s classic 1946 publication of the same name. Much like Morris, Marsh focused not on people directly, but their artifacts, on objects bearing their imprint. Empty places, remaining since the end of the Cold War, underscore the cultural and economic impact brought about by the collapse of Communism and resulting exodus of workers to the West during the early 1990s. Now gone and given over to silence, these vacant dwellings and their former inhabitants remain the forgotten ones.
Interesting work by Brica Wilcox. I find intriguing when the photographers become their own subject in the story and the purpose of message they want to share. Brica Wilcox surely does a nice job from the aesthetic point of view, but I am not sure if I feel the message she tries to convey. This is the series "private life".
I started making pictures in high school--an awkward time for everyone. One night I happened to see this grainy black and white band flyer posted on a building and I found myself absolutely mesmerized by it's intensity. It was so simple--a flyer posted on the main drag in downtown Tucson--but it captured a feeling that gave me clarity and an excited, hopeful feeling. By coincidence and rather serendipitously, shortly thereafter I signed up for a photo class at the local community center that happened to be taught by the same person that made that photograph. It was also around that time that I started an internship at the Center for Creative Photography and it was there that my true education began. I poured through the photographs in their enormous archive and started to really take in the breadth of photography and its history. I was completely sucked in and between looking at pictures and making them it became an everyday part of life for me. I made a lot of self-portraits in the beginning. It seemed logical to experiment in private while I was figuring out my point of view. I have and continue to experiment with other genres of photography, but I think self-portraits will always be an area where my own stories and thoughts have their strongest voice. As a rule I pick concepts that are specific to my personal experience. The "Private Life" series is concerned with ideas of self-assessment, beauty, vanity and the relationship of a mother and daughter, but that is in no way the mission statement for all of my work. The recent return to self-portraiture is related to my specific experience in dealing with my mother's death. In general I am drawn to a certain type of imagery, a very visceral point of view, but my work isn't necessarily governed by those things. I simply set limitations on the way I set out to explore a subject and end by seeing what is left and use that to reassess and refine my approach. With my newest project, "Imaginary Lines," part of my process was to make photographs of uninhabited, adjoining backyards, exploring what they offered as pure spaces in relation to one another. They became very graphic, but I also saw the environments they presented as backdrops or sets to a stage that I wanted to familiarize myself with. - Brica Wilcox
During a long period of 8 years, photographer Justin Guariglia (National Geographic Traveler, PDN's best under 30 in the year 2000), was able to build trust from one of the most reserved Budist communities, the monks at the Shaolin Temple in China. Usually, tourists don't see the real monks, they only see students at the Temple dressed up to look like monks. This was the first time ever that the monks let a photographer to get a graphic documentation of their art that spans a large variety of kung-fu forms.
See the work, Shaolin Temple of Zen at the dedicated mini-site.
Typically when people think about kung-fu they think about fighting, but reality is something much deeper; it is something very spiritual, it is about enlightenment. It is about fusing the mind the body and the soul together as one, that;s what kung-fu is really about.- Justin Guariglia
The work was published few months ago by Aperture foundation in a book entitled "Shaolin Temple of Zen" and also is accompanied with a 99 images exhibition and videos that are traveling around the world until February 2012. Over at Popular Photography I found an interview with the recently appointed book publisher at Aperture, Lesley A. Martin, where she speaks about the editing work on this book.
This work reminded me of a book a read few months ago, American Shaolin, by Matthew Polly, describing his journey as the first USA American fellow who joined the Shaolin Temple to learn and practice kung-fu. I enjoyed the book, and I think mathew is a contributor of "Shaolin, Temple of Zen".
In these images, Justin Guariglia has captured one of the last oases of pure, unaffected Chinese culture. This sumptuous book is a must for anyone whose imagination is captivated by the search for the edge of human boundaries in a distant land. Justin Guariglia's photographs reveal an extraordinary culture dedicated to the pursuit of discipline and excellence - where mind and body are stretched to the extreme."-Edward Burtynsky
Interesting work by young photographer Beth Herzhaft. Although she does commercial work, I find more interesting her personal series, in particular "area photography". You can see some images of this series at her website (in the art section) or at TOPIC magazine [you will need to sign for free account user name to access it].
For the last two years I have been working on a series that I call "area photography". The subject matter I gravitate toward is unspectacular, and the images are a mischievous reaction to "epic" photography. I work in found situations and with objects already present in the scene.
One point I make in the choice of my subject matter and the way it is presented is that incompleteness is the condition of everyday life. Others may see fit to "de-ordinarize" their imagery, engineer it to produce a surreal or unfamiliar effect. I reject this convention.-Beth Herzhaft
The Whale Hunt ... take a look if you are not sensitive to whale hunting ... the website is quite an experience by itself, the images beautiful and the story, ... you decide; I found it quite amazing.
Artist Jonathan Harris created, The Whale Hunt. In this documentary work, Harris joins a family of Inupiat Eskimos on their annual whale hunt:
I documented the entire experience [in] 3,214 photographs, beginning with the taxi ride to Newark airport, and ending with the butchering of the second whale, seven days later. The photographs were taken at five-minute intervals, even while sleeping (using a chronometer), establishing a constant "photographic heartbeat." In moments of high adrenaline, this photographic heartbeat would quicken (to a maximum rate of 37 pictures in five minutes while the first whale was being cut up), mimicking the changing pace of my own heartbeat.
I like a lot the work of photographer Brad Moore. Less is more in photography, and the elimination of unnecessary elements in the frame is a skill that Brad Moore perfects in his work to create very compelling images. Brad has self-published this series using the online on-demand publishing service from Blurb, in case you have interest.
These photographs were shot in modest, well-worn, suburban cities in central and inland Southern California. Built in the '50s and '60s, these cities provided a new home and future to a post-war population. While Southern California’s coastal cities flourish, cities in these inland counties struggle. Future prosperity and civic health seem to come primarily from growing ethnic populations, which are reviving and recreating these cities for their communities.
I grew up in North Orange County and attended school in inland Riverside County. After 25 years I returned, and was fascinated by their simultaneous decline and growth. I see these areas differently from places I have never been. Knowing what was, and now what is, influences my approach. I’ve avoided traditional, documentary-style photography; instead I have photographed select buildings and shrubbery in primarily static, symmetrical compositions, reflecting change, irony and evolution.- Brad Moore
A couple of months ago I found a book that got my attention. In the cover, Pablo Picasso with a dog. The author and photographer not less than the great David Douglas Duncan, the last of the selected group that changed photojournalism shooting for LIFE magazine, at the time the "mecca" of photography. I should not have been surprised because both masters shared a long lived friendship.
It began in February, 1956 — this bond between two artists. The American photographer was on his way home from Afghanistan. The Spanish painter was sitting in his bathtub at home in the south of France: Voilà! . . . the first Picasso photograph of tens of thousands taken during the next seventeen years when David Douglas Duncan often shared the simple meals, the constant work, the gaiety, the countless explosions of creativity. After other guests had gone, Duncan still remained in the studio — by now his second home. Thus was born a friendship unique in the lives of both men. Two minds, two hearts, each discovering a special communication with the other.
Picasso savors his fish down to the bone, 1957.
David Douglas Duncan was the photographer with the greatest access to Pablo Picasso, access driven by a close friendship. Why was I surprised to see this book? David Douglas Duncan had already published several books about Picasso [The Private World of Pablo Picasso (1958), Viva Picasso: A Centennial Celebration 1881-1981 (1980), Goodbye Picasso (1974)] that were the most intimate photographic record of the artist. But now, in 2006 a new book, entitled Picasso & Lump. Indeed some of the images were published in previous books ... but ...
Pablo Picasso teases his dachshund Lump with a cardboard rabbit he just cut out from a candy box.
... I opened the book and started to see the images and read the text, and I immediately realized this book was something special. David Douglas had created a master piece of storytelling, conveying the unique relationship of Picasso and his dog, Lump. Two masters, one dog, and an amazing book. So, if you are thinking about a book to gift this season, for anyone who loves photography, art and "dogs" this is a very fine choice. I cherish this book, it always makes me smile.
"Lump and Picasso meet for the first time. Mutual love."
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[from the cover] One spring morning in 1957, veteran photojournalist David Douglas Duncan paid a visit to his friend and frequent photographic subject Pablo Picasso, at the artist's home near Cannes. As copilot alongside Duncan in his Mercedes Gullwing 300 SL was the photographer's pet dachshund, Lump. Photographer and dog were close companions, but Duncan's nomadic lifestyle and his other dog — a giant, jealous Afghan hound who had tyrannized Lump — made their life in Rome difficult. When they arrived at Picasso's Villa La Californie that magical day, Lump decided that he had found paradise on earth, and that he would move in with Picasso, whether he was welcome or not.
This joyous, previously untold story of artist and his dog offers an uncommonly sensitive image of Picasso. Lump was immortalized in a Picasso portrait painted on a plate the day they met, but that was just the start. In an explosion of forty-five paintings inspired by Velázquez's masterpiece Las Meninas, Picasso replaced the impassive hound in the foreground with jaunty renderings of Lump. Now, as a gift from the artist to his hometown as a youth, all of those luminous canvases are the centerpiece exhibition in the Picasso Museum of Barcelona. Fourteen of the paintings are reproduced here in full color, juxtaposed with Duncan's dramatic and intimate black-and-white photographs of Picasso and Lump, bringing full circle the odyssey of a lucky dachshund who found his way from reluctant road warrior to furry, super-stretched icon of twentieth-century art.
This joyous, previously untold story of artist and his dog offers an uncommonly sensitive image of Picasso. Lump was immortalized in a Picasso portrait painted on a plate the day they met, but that was just the start. In an explosion of forty-five paintings inspired by Velázquez's masterpiece Las Meninas, Picasso replaced the impassive hound in the foreground with jaunty renderings of Lump. Now, as a gift from the artist to his hometown as a youth, all of those luminous canvases are the centerpiece exhibition in the Picasso Museum of Barcelona. Fourteen of the paintings are reproduced here in full color, juxtaposed with Duncan's dramatic and intimate black-and-white photographs of Picasso and Lump, bringing full circle the odyssey of a lucky dachshund who found his way from reluctant road warrior to furry, super-stretched icon of twentieth-century art.
December 31, 2007
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