“Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location.” Joe McNally Joe Loudermilk... "24 in 28" Today's f8 session was open and Joe Loudermilk brought images from his recent China business trip where he was inspecting manufacturing facilities. In the course of inspecting one plant he managed to shoot 24 pictures in 28 minutes...hence the title of his presentation... "24 in 28". Below is a gallery of 8 images from his series Charles Edwards had previously send an email link to an innovative small house design by a company called "Ten Fold Construction"...you can search for their videos of unique building strategies. They have many videos on YouTube. We then discussed very briefly the issue of "limited editions" the photographers yet unanswered problem; should you or should you not. Charles pointed out that limited editions frequently benefit those people down the chain from the photographers themselves...dealers and collectors. Very complex discussion we will address again in another meeting. Is there such a thing as a limited edition with electronic publishing? Bill noted a movie "Kodachrome" (2017) with Ed Harris about the final developing of the last four rolls of the film. My recollection was that Steve McCurry had those rolls but the movie is not about him...but he does have a cameo. The movie is on Netflix. Finally, a reminder...Bill's Opening Reception at Girdner next week...5/5 from 6-9pm Photographic Images & Abstracts from the series “Art of the City Wall” (2011-2017) As a Visual Hunter Bill has traveled to 13 countries searching city walls for transformational photographic art that has been largely unseen. The focus of this exhibit will be on two cities, Berlin and New York with just a small fraction of the entire series photography. In addition, for the first time, Bill is showing two new abstract photography projects shot in the same cities entitled “5 Abstracts / 5 Pointz, Long Island City” (2014) and “Art School Abstract Gates, East Berlin”(2015) The last discovery in this exhibit will be the photographic print itself since all images are displayed unframed. Today, photographs appear to be centered in the ether of the internet. We have largely lost the experience of touching the print itself. For snapshots this is the new reality but for the Art of Photography, the physical print and its foreverness is the end product. We experience galleries and museums with photographs behind glass …our own reflection clouding our view as we step in close. Is it just preservation. or do barriers of glass isolate us from the real art with its tactile elements of paper and ink…the essence of the Art of Photography. The prints in this exhibit have a particular artistic intent. Nothing is done by chance… not the image composition, the paper choice or printing technique. Look at them up close, touch them and explore the nuances of my photographic art. Bill also showed several abstract prints...a small coming attraction to the show next week...one of which is below
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“A snapshot steals life that it cannot return. A long exposure creates a form that never existed.” Dieter Appelt Long Exposure Photography...a discussion led by Mark Myers "a passing of time" First...a definition of long exposure Long-exposure photographyinvolves using a long-duration shutter speed to sharply capture the stationary elements of images while blurring, smearing, or obscuring the moving elements. Long-exposure photography captures one element that conventional photography does not: an extended period of time. The paths of bright moving objects become clearly visible. Clouds form broad bands, head and tail lights of cars draw bright streaks, stars leave trails in the sky, and water waves appear smoothened. Only bright objects will leave visible trails, whereas dark objects usually disappear. Boats in long exposures will disappear during daytime, but will draw bright trails from their lights at night. Whereas there is no fixed definition of what constitutes "long", the intent is to create a photo that Whereas there is no fixed definition of what constitutes "long", the intent is to create a photo that somehow shows the effect of passing time, be it smoother waters or light trails. A 30-minute photo of a static object and surrounding cannot be distinguished from a short exposure, hence, the inclusion of motion is the main factor to add intrigue to long exposure photos. When a scene includes both stationary and moving subjects (for example, a fixed street and moving cars or a camera within a car showing a fixed dashboard and moving scenery), a slow shutter speed can cause interesting effects, such as light trails. Mark Myers shared his recent interest and adventures with long exposure photography. Long-exposure photography captures one element that conventional photography does not: an extended period of time. The intent is to create a photo that somehow shows the effect of passing time, be it smoother waters, blurred clouds or light trails. Technical requirements and solutions were briefly reviewed. Mark shared pearls learned from Julia Anna Gospodarou’s 2018 San Francisco (en)Visionography workshop and some images he created from that trip. Ongoing projects for Mark include processing the images from San Francisco, some pin hole photography and exploration of Zone Plate photography. For those from this morning who are interested in exploring Zone Plate photography in more detail…. http://www.instructables.com/id/PHOTOGRAPHY%3A-Creating-Perfect-Pinholes-and-Zonepla/ https://skinkpinhole.com/wp/ http://www.zeroimage.com/ Finally, Mark showed a brief PBS video on Christopher Burkett Oregon photographer Christopher Burkett is best known for producing large-format film prints of American landscapes, some of the highest resolution color photographs ever created without computer technology. But he only has a limited supply of the materials, which have been discontinued, making his current work a race against the clock ( from PBS website) worth the search on PBS A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words...and Vice Versa A panel discussing the intersection of words and images “When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.” (Ansel Adams) Summary of Lit Fest Seminar below "We learn about words and pictures as children when our parents read our first books to us. From there pictures and words become more and more disconnected and uninterpretable. Today, in our electronic world we are flooded with images without narrative or context. Are images overwhelming words? The old paradigm is literacy of words; the new paradigm is the literacy of images. Words are written images; images are visual words. Images have a visual vocabulary. Words are the voice of images…a way of communicating a narrative that may or may not belie the true context of the image. Is the narrative of images driven by point of view? How do we as writers (and photographers) help images communicate?" Today f8 hosted a panel previewing their seminar at Lit Fest next month. All three panelists first talked about their own involvement with words in their own photography...Brian and his book "Power of One", Debe with her embedded words in her photography and Bill with his prose poems associated with some of his work. The discussion and f8 comments were, as usual difficult to document...unless you were there. Below is some flavor of what we hit upon...knowing full well we were just touching issues more often than not. Debe talked about images projecting feelings first even before the narrative is written Billtalked about pictures you "can't turn away from" even if the narrative is not assigned eg Napalm Girl or Falling Man Brian talked his pictures being associated with a narrative giving social meaning to his subjects We all discussed ... John Berger's "Ways of Seeing" (1972) 'But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word (2008)...mentioned, not discussed words and images as truth and metaphor how words give voice to images photojournalism...and the issue of truth and visual bias strength of images with essays (photo essays) and social consciousness juxtaposition of words and pictures in childrens books and the disconnect in media the elephants in the room...internet and social media...disconnecting images and word advertising images ...as symbols without words...semiotics words bring to mind images and train our imagination what if the ancient cave drawings had narrative...or if the Bible was populated with photos of the time images and words together communicate the need for more collaboration with photographers and writers We did not have time to discuss... graphic novels poetry and images photographers as writers...writers as image makers the ways that technology distributes images without narrative new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art here in LA ...and many more issues on this topic The panel was grateful for the f8 input Below are some references and links
Photography & Literature (Exposures) Francois Brunet Reaktion Books Ltd / London / 2009 (available through Amazon Books) Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher, Sas Mays Cambridge Scholars Publishing / 2008 (available through Amazon Books) On Writing with Photography Karen Beckman, Lilane Weisberg (Editors) University of Minnesota Press / 2013 (available through Amazon Books) “Lit” / Aperture #217 / Winter 2014 Whole issue devoted to the narrative of photography (available through Amazon Books) Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography Multiple Contributers McNay Museum Publishers / 2016 (available through Amazon Books) Links of Interest Lucas Museum of Narrative Art http://lucasmuseum.org We were lucky to have Jim Staub talk about 3D photography and we all know his long time passion for the art. Jim showed some 2D/3D pictures and some of us actually donned glasses to view his 3D effcts. Below is the narrative by Jim and a 3D picture following... "Since most of us have the capability to see in binocular vision, Stereo Photography is a form of image making that plays to that innate ability to sense visual depth. There are numerous ways to achieve this end, one of those being Anaglyph. Simply an anaglyph is a process of taking two photographs with the only difference between the two being a parallel shift. The distance between your eyes is essentially creating this same parallax. The images are then overlapped. Both images are then assigned a color channel, most often Red and Cyan. If one now sees this image while wearing corresponding Red/Cyan glasses the element of depth is present in our neural receptors. It's a flat our trick to our visual perceptions, but, as Bill Wishner has wryly noted, isn't all photography?" We chatted about a biography of Robert Frank by R.J. Smith "American Witness." The biography is very readable with the cover photo by Allen Ginsberg. Frank was friends with the "beats." After "The Americans" Frank gave up still photography in favor of Indie movies. Frank is still alive. A documentary about Frank "Leaving Home Coming Home" is worth the watch. We spent a good share of the meeting reviewing a BBC website...showing the winning photos from the International Garden Photography competition 2018. We did not agree with all the choices but below is the link ...you can judge for yourself www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-42960835 Below is the winning picture but not necessarily the best Rene brought a piece he made from pictures he took at Rod Smith's studio several weeks ago...these pictures were of the Smith's Cadena Dolls Finally, Steve Lewis visited us today on his way to Japan to deliver a talk about his work in Detroit. We think Steve is the "spirit of Detroit"
Feminal Photography / Chris Strothers Debrah lead the meeting today bringing Chris Strothers...the narrative below is from Debrah "Debrah opened up the discussion with an introduction to 'Feminal Photographers’, with examples from known artists such as Julia Margaret Cameron, Eliza Skidmore, Imogen Cunningham, Margaret Bourke-White, Berenice Abbot. The definition of ‘feminal’: adjective of a work, event, moment, or figure) strongly influencing later developments."her seminal work on chaos theory" synonyms: Relating to or denoting organic feminine nature. “The time’s up movement is a feminal era in modern history influential, formative, groundbreaking, pioneering, original, innovative; major, important …"her report is a feminal work on the subject" Debrah then introduced Chris Strothers, a feminal photo-artist working in Altadena. Chris brought with her several large and small prints, and flip-book boxes that she creates using a digital base and then she crafts a tactile and archival aesthetic into each image that is lyrical, romantic and emotionally powerful. We were all impressed by her commitment to the craft, her unique and aesthetic approach and her voracious feminal sensibility." Bill has 5 pictures hanging at Jones....they will be up until May 1st Finally, Cyndi Bemel has an exhibit of her work now on display at the Bee's Knees (@STATS on Raymond)...her reception this past week was well attended by f8'ers...an example of her work and a picture of f8 at the reception is below
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