Entries Categorized as 'Uncategorized'
April 22, 2008
Please note my new e-mail account: miguel@exposurecompensation.com
The gmail account I used for this blog has been deactivated without reason or warning by Google. If you have been trying to contact me in the last 1-2 weeks, my apologies if you did not get a response from me. If you can, please send the e-mail again. To know more about what happened, please read below.
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Yes, it is possible to make lots of money giving away products for free. Indeed, we have become accustomed to the fact that many of the services we use MUST be free, and e-mail services are a genuine example of that. But with free lunches, we can get in trouble ...
In 2007 about 180 billion of e-mails were set every day, or about 2 million every second. Of these about 70% were spam e-mails, and genuine e-mails were sent but just 20-25% of the world population. Doing the math, one can easily understand that companies like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, with their extremely popular FREE e-mails services, will experience lots of abuse by spammers, hackers and unreasonable users. Their reaction: fight it, hard. Understandable. The problem is that in any fight there are colateral casualties, and I have become one of them.
Few days ago, I found that my gmail account [exposurecompensation@gmail.com] has been deactivated. No questions asked, no reasons explained. Indeed, zero has been the information that Google provided, and null has been the response to my multiple e-mails asking about the situation. Searching the web, I found out some posts from Google technicians explaining that in attempts to fight a new network of spamers they had to deactivate a large number of e-mail accounts and they expected many regular e-mails would be affected as collateral damage. Mine was one of them.
This is quite annoying and I have to send my apologies if any of you tried to contact me, and my excuses if I have difficult to follow up some previous e-mails because I lost many of them.
From now on, I don't use free e-mail services any longer. I will pay for them. At least I will have the chance to get customer service if anything goes bad. Getting the e-mail deactivated without warning does not make it in my book. The perils of having free e-mail ... with Google.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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April 15, 2008
© Adress Latif, Reuters.
From the Reuters blog, the story of Pulitzer Price Winner image by Adress Latif, the photo of Japanese video journalist Kenji Nagai being shot in Myanmar during the protests in September last year. These are the stories that remind us the difficult circumstances that are faced by reporters around the work while documenting revolts and wars.
I had already locked on my 135mm lens and set my camera shutter speed to 1000, aperture to F/7.1 and ISO at 800. With the camera on manual, I wanted to stop any movement while offering as much depth-of-field as possible. Two minutes later, the shooting started. My eye caught a person flying backwards through the air. Instinctively, I started photographing, capturing four frames of the man on his back. The entry point of the bullet is clear in the first frame, with a soldier in flip flops standing over the man and pointing a rifle. In the second frame, the man is reaching over to try and film. More shots rang out. I flinched before getting off two more frames - one of the man pointing the camera at the soldier, and one of his face contorted in pain. Beyond him, the crowd scattered before the advancing soldier. The whole incident, which went on to reverberate around the world, was over in two seconds.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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April 3, 2008
©Rowan Mark McGann
The prestigious cultural magazine, Smithonian, just announced selected images from its 5th annual photo contest for amateur photographers. There are some interesting images there.
Technical quality, clarity and composition are all important in a photograph, but so too is a flair for the unexpected and the ability to capture the right moment. For the past four years, Smithsonian editors have judged a total of 58,500 photographs from more than 90 countries around the globe and therefore, have a keen sense of what makes a photograph memorable.
Today Smithsonian Magazine announced the 50 finalists for its fifth annual photo contest. The grand prize winner and the five category winners will be featured online and in a print issue of Smithsonian Magazine this summer.[link]
© Carrie Grisham
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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March 21, 2008
Today a wonderful quote from the late John Szarkowski
“One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others [...] The talented practitioner of the new discipline would perform with a special grace, sense of timing, narrative sweep, and wit, thus endowing the act not merely with intelligence, but with that quality of formal rigor that identifies a work of art, so that we would be uncertain, when remembering the adventure of the tour, how much our pleasure and sense of enlargement had come from the things pointed to and how much from a pattern created by the pointer.”- John Szarkowski
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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March 19, 2008
If you have some time, go and take a look to this multimedia from Reuters: 5 years covering the Iraq war. Don't miss the "profile" section, with three photographers speaking about their experience covering the Iraq war, the most deadly war for journalists, by a large margin.
While looking at these images, and listening to the photographers, I can't avoid but to feel disgusted about what human beings can do and how much they can hate. While thousands of people die from extreme poverty and preventable causes everyday in the world, some keep thinking that we need to push this number higher and expend immense amounts of money to kill each other in the name of _______! (fill-in with any damn excuse you like: god, freedom, justice, revenge, rights, liberation, religion, terrorism, self-defense, etc).
Our shame, indeed.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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March 10, 2008
Long Time, no see? [Oxygo Gym]
This is as much time commercial advertisement assumes the reader will spend looking at the ad before moving to the next page ... unless the image and the accompanying statement grabs their curiosity from the gut. Only then, perhaps, the viewer will recall the ad 15 minutes after seeing it. If the commercial intends to reach even further -of course it does!- then it has to access the reader's emotions - humor, surprise, sadness, etc. Perhaps then, with luck, the ad will be recalled a day after. Quite a challenge to achieve in this times of saturated visual inputs and and fast pace living.
The response to the challenge: creative work stretched to the limit. If you like to explore, Ads of the World is a site that will keep you entertained for a while. Quite a bit of imaginative work there, not only photo-advertisement but video-ads and general visual approaches to advertisement.
I wish the photography in the commercial world would not be so hyper-retouched sometimes, it doesn't need to be to be original and have impact [as these examples demonstrate] ... I guess it is the trend this day and age.
Lending a helping hand to the elderly of Chicago. [Companions for Seniors]
Dental Implant and prosthesis. [Murilo Odontoligia]
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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March 8, 2008
"I think you want to learn about art because you had an experience of some sort - a totally non-redemptive but vaguely exciting experience, like brushing up against a girl with big boobs in the subway" - Dave Hickey.
[sorry for posting this sexist quote, no bad intent from my part - Miguel]
Perhaps the most famous art critic in the USA, Dave Hickey. Agree or disagree with him, at least one can surely say that he is opinionated -is there an art critic who is not? - and he is "[in]famous" for his strong arguments against the role of academics in art.
He was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. The MacArthur Fellows Program awards talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.
At the annual convection of Arts in America, Dave Hickey, gave an interesting speech at the Innovator Series of "Risk and Reward: Balancing Acts in Arts and Community" [You will need to scroll down at this link to find the the audio recording of the speech]. There you will listen some interesting commentaries about "education" and its role in the understanding and appreciation of art. More about him can be found at a recent interview with Dave Hickey published at Believer Magazine.
My advice is always to make a lot of art; to make a lot of art, then look at what you have made and then think about what you have done. If you think first, you will never do anything or you will do something boring. Art doesn’t exist until the artist has finished making it. The differences between one’s responses as a critic, teacher, dealer and curator are as follows: As a critic I presume the art is finished and on purpose. As a teacher, I presume the art needs work. So the same work that I might like as a critic, I might find wanting as a teacher, simply because my rule for looking at student art is: if you’re not sick don’t call that doctor. As a dealer you’re looking for quality, of course, but you’re also looking for evidence of the artist’s work habits and commitment to a long-term career. As a curator you’re looking for what fits.
Thirty-five thousand MFAs a semester, 90 percent of whom never make another work of art.
With the artists, I don’t teach, I coach. I can’t tell them how to make art. I tell them to make more art. I tell them to get up early and stay up late. I tell them not to quit. I tell them if somebody else is already making their work. My job is to be current with the discourse and not be an asshole. That’s all I wanted in a professor.- Dave Hickey.
If you are more interested about Dave's thinking and opinions on art, take look at the two books he published, "Air Guitar" and "Invisible Dragon".
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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March 1, 2008
This is for readers in the USA. Via 40 Watt I found the petition for a bipartisan bill (Support the Arts by Co-Sponsoring S. 548 or H.R.1524) that will simply allow artists to take a fair-market value deduction for works given to and retained by nonprofit institutions. It is important enough that I want to pass the message here as well, even with the caveat to be redundant.
The U.S. tax system accords unequal treatment to creators and collectors who donate tangible works (e.g., paintings or manuscripts) to museums, libraries, educational or other collecting institutions. A collector may take a tax deduction for the fair-market value of the work, but creators may deduct only their "basis" value—essentially the cost of materials such as paint and canvas.
All you have to do is to go here, sign with your info and the e-mail will be sent to the US Senators and House of Representative from your state.
Quite simple, it takes only 2 minutes to complete and we will all benefit.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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February 29, 2008
This article, "The terrible toll of art anxiety", published online at the International Herald Tribune [via arts journal] highlights the many fears people experience when considering to buy art.
The anxiety to buy things when people don't understand what they mean, what they represent or they don't comprehend their price ... even if they can afford them!
As long as prices for art [and fine art photography] are not understood, as long as art is not explained to the majority of the population, the art market will have enormous problems to sell to the core of the society.
It is quite amazing how many people with incomes that could easily afford to purchase genuine art, have empty walls or have walls covered with "commodity" posters and prints decorating their home. At the same time, these are the people that will spend hundreds [or thousands] for the next fashion item that will be trashed and replaced in few months. Most of the people I know, never buy art, even if they can afford it.
More sadly, many times the reason is not a lack of appreciation for art ... it is a lack of understanding of how much it is a fair price. It is easy to know how much one should pay for a car, for an appliance, for a book, for a TV. It is dam hard to know what is the fair price for an art piece. As long as to understand fine art prices requires to be a connoisseur, it will never reach the market potential that it could have. I wish I would have a solution. Do you?
Perhaps gallery owners and dealers will need to make the galleries "more inviting" and "less intimidating", and will have to start explaining the art and the factors that define prices. How is it possible that so many galleries have become a place where you can't really experience the emotional aspect of art ... often times so elitist, sometimes so sterile. It is time to start explaining art and prices with an open and inviting attitude so that the potential customer - us- doesn't get paralyzed due to lack of understanding.
[Don't miss the interesting comment from Jacob Pritchard, in the comments section. It explains quite well what I meant with the previous paragraph]
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Art paralysis: It is a widespread and often crippling malady, striking everyone from the new college grad in his or her first apartment to the super-rich banker, lasting anywhere from a few months to a lifetime.
How many are affected is not known, perhaps because the victims are often too embarrassed to come forth. Who wants to admit that "I've had these posters since college, I know that as one of the American Top 10 Orthodontists I should get some real art, but I don't know what that means"?
Or that "It's not that I'm trying to make a minimalist statement with these empty white walls, I just don't know what to buy"?
Or "I walk into those snooty galleries in Chelsea and feel like I just don't belong"? [source]
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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February 19, 2008
The appetite for contemporary art is so great that it seems buyers don't need to see the art work anymore. Just login into the internet, or get a sample JPEG by e-mail and get ready to open the wallet and pay many thousands before someone else gets your piece. Quite intriguing and very telling of the current trends.
See the article at the New York Times.
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It’s another sign of the acceleration of the contemporary art market: New works, even in the six-figure range, are selling by digital image alone. For the Friedman show, Gagosian set up a private section on its Web site, accessible only by a password sent via e-mail message to select collectors. More typically, gallery directors send off e-mail messages with JPEGs — a format for digitally storing and transmitting images — to potential clients.- from the New York Times by Jori Finkel.
Miguel Garcia-Guzman
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