Today we had Marco Franchina a longtime photographer as a guest introduced to us by Cyndi. Bio extracted from his full bio on his website ...see below “Marco Franchina was born in Pisa, Italy and came to the states at the age of 3. In 1982 at the age of 21, Marco moved to Milan, Italy to begin his career as a fashion photographer. He was fortunate to study under legendary fashion photographers of the day including Peter Gravelle who he work for as first assistant. In 1983 Marco branched out on his own, photographing for prestigious Italian magazines.. Franchina then moved to New York City to shoot for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. Where he was commissioned to photograph Oliver Stone, River Phoenix, Winona Ryder, Gretchen Mol, Edward James Olmos and many others.. In 1995 Franchina moved from NYC to Los Angeles to pursue his love for film working behind the camera on a number of music videos, commercials and his own personal fine art photographic projects.” His presentation to f8 today was two of his personal projects. The first below is "Curbside" in large part shot with his iPhone. This project felt like a portrait studio in his car The second project Marco showed was entitled "After Hours" shot with a Leica Q Check out his website
www. marcofranchina.com
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This weekend we had two f8 meetings...on friday we met at the Norton Simon and on saturday we had our regular f8 meeting at the senior center. At the Norton Simon, Howard arranged a talk by the curator, Gloria Wiliiams Sander, of the abstract photography exhibit...Beyond the World We Know. Narrative below from Norton Simon The spring-tight line between reality and the photograph has been stretched relentlessly, but it has not been broken. These abstractions of nature have not left the world of appearances; for to do so is to break the camera’s strongest point—its authenticity. –Minor White, 1950 Photographer Minor White’s quote acknowledges a fundamental quandary faced by photographers in the 20th century. On the one hand, their medium was esteemed precisely for its ability to record what the eye saw. On the other hand, photographers, like painters and sculptors, sought new approaches and rationales to advance their picture making. Abstraction as a nonrepresentational, visual language played a significant role in bending the conventional expectations of a medium unquestionably suited to describe people, places and objects. Beyond the World We Know presents the work of 16 artists who embraced a new goal for their practice: to loosen the grip of realism and demonstrate photography’s ability to suggest something other than itself, to serve as a conduit for visual metaphor and personal expression. This mission to emphasize photography’s subjectivity began early in the 20th century, coincident with the rise of abstraction and nonobjective art in other media. In 1951, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) presented Abstraction in Photography, an exhibition that invited the public to evaluate these strange bedfellows. Six of the artists represented in the Norton Simon exhibition were included in that groundbreaking exhibition: Barbara Morgan, Frederick Sommer, Arthur Siegel, Aaron Siskind and Brett and Edward Weston. Almost a decade later, in 1960, MoMA revisited the topic of abstract practices in The Sense of Abstraction, introducing the photographs of Walter Chappell and Edmund Teske, whose work also figures in the Museum’s installation. Abstraction’s presence in the photographs featured in Beyond the World We Know is one of degrees. In some cases, it results from procedures with new equipment, such as enlargers, or darkroom manipulations involving duotone and solarization. Chance is a strong element in the resulting prints. Sommer produced small oil paintings on cellophane paper, which he then placed between sheets of glass. By means of an enlarger, he printed the images onto sensitized paper. His camera-less photographs are known as cliché-verres. Teske employed the Sabbatier technique—a process of chemical toning and solarization, in which the print is exposed to bright light during its development, introducing painterly elements and unusual spatial juxtapositions. In their integration of the visible world and abstraction, the gelatin silver prints on display in Beyond the World We Know demonstrate that the simplest subjects can be evocative works of art when composition, texture, tone and light are handled by artists of great imagination and virtuosity. On saturday we had a guest, Jared Ivy, from Sigma camera / lenses discussing the Foveon sensor The narrative below is from Rod Williams
Our meeting this Saturday was headlined by Rod's guest, Jared Ivy, the Retail and Support Manager for Sigma Corporation of America. Jared was tasked with giving us the history and current application of Sigma's Foveon chip.. The chip was developed by Dr. Carver Mead, Professor of Engineering at Cal Tech. Interestingly, two of our F8 members were in Cal Tech's Beckman auditorium when Dr. Mead presented the Foveon chip to the world in 1999 (Jim Staub and Everard Williams,Sr). The chip was named Foveon after the depression in the retinal fovea where vision is most acute. It was predicted that the chip.would revolutionize photography. The Foveon sensor is modeled after film in that it has three layers of pixels just as color film emulsion has three light sensitive layers. Each layer detects red, green, or blue color. The Bayer type array sensors found in typical digital cameras has one layer of sensitive photosites. Filters over each photosite determines which primary color it receives. This requires interpretive algorithms to construct a complete image. With the Foveon sensor, this interpolative process is not required. The first camera to use the Foveon chip was the Sigma SD9 released in 2002. Several subsequent Sigma cameras have used the chip, or improved versions, but no other camera manufacturer has picked up or licenses the technology. It was a good technical session. Photography, if practiced with high seriousness, is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere... John Szarkowski (1973) Today I thought I would show two iconic pictures of the Rose Parade and Rose Bowl of the B2 fly over...each from a different perspective The images we saw images by three f8'ers ....Rene, Howard and Steve Rene showed his images shot in a railroad yard then processed using his skills as a graphic designer Steve showed some images from his travels in Japan Howard showed several snapshots from the Rose Parade right out side his door on Orange Grove We spent the last portion of the meeting beginning our discussion of abstract photography in preparation for our visit to the Norton Simon on the 17th
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