“If I saw something in my viewfinder that looked familiar to me, I would do something to shake it up.” – Garry Winogrand Today's f8 narrative was kindly supplied by Howard Landau
Today was an open session. Chris, Jim and Howard showed pictures from their trip this Spring to the Ancient Bristlecone Forest. It was interesting to see different takes on the same subject matter and to hear them explain their thinking. Rene showed us a new book of compositions, this one of pictures he took in New York City of the World Trade Center and the new One World Trade Center building juxtaposed together and abstracted.
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Terrorism in one country... is terrorism directed to everybody! Today we started our meeting by discussion the events in Paris and wondering about those who committed these useless acts of violence against innocent people. What does it accomplish? When we entered our normal discussion of photography John Holmes presented a great review of iPhone apps that he has reviewed and used. He pointed out that the first camera linked to a phone was created in 1999. The iPhone was introduced in 2007...and today is the primary tool for taking images John divided his review of photo apps into three classes
Image capture apps Image editing apps Image capturing and editing apps There are hundreds of these apps, and John reviewed about 20 or so listed below: (Note: some of the names may have spelling variants) CameraPlus ProCamera 645Pro Black SimplyB&W Provoke RNI FilterStorm VSCO Snapseed TouchRetouch ColorEffects TADAA SLR SKRWT SlowShutter Union SuperImpose Blend or InstantBlend or BlendPhotoEditor Fused TiltShiftGeneration DestressedFX Glitche PhotographersEphemeris He also noted several iPhone photography websites: Websites www.iphonephotographyschool.com www.mobilephotographyawards.com John also showed a few of his images edited on his personal iPhone apps ...one of which is below Nice job John...thanks for the review “You just have to live and life will give you pictures.” – Henri Cartier Bresson Today, after coffee at Jones, a few of us ventured to the west side and visited the new exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography. The trip was worth the effort...it was great. The exhibit is entitled "Life: A Journey Through Time" and is the photography of Frans Lanting. Below is a partial narrative from the exhibit: While the pictures were good, the highlight was the video narrative that you must see before tackling the pictures. Also in side rooms were two presentations; the first was a TED talk, the second was his photography accompanying a symphony orchestra playing music by Philip Glass. Below are the links to the TED talks
The Story of life in photographs (2007) https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_lanting_s_lyrical_nature_photos?language=en Photos that give voice to the animal kingdom (2014) https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_lanting_photos_that_give_voice_to_the_animal_kingdom?language=en Also check out the pictures and commentary in the courtyard...worth the look..example below The exhibit will end sometime in March 2016....worth the trip “If you have something to say with a camera then show it ...otherwise it’s better to bake a cake.” – Jason Eskenazi Steve showed several pictures taken in his recent travels back east including this high contrast image of an old bridge in Boston Harbor. John Holmes showed several high contrast images taken with his iPhone. John wll follow up on these with his leading a whole session in several weeks on "iPhoneography" We discussed an article in the LA Times by Geoff Dyer "A Gursky's Eyeview from Nowhere" (10-18-15) that pointed out some lessor know factoids about his work. First, how Gursky created (or at least emphasized) a genre of photography that because of it's scale has essentially a "no point of view" aesthetic and at the same time drawing attention to "repetitive elements" in his scenes. His pictures are large, staged and stitched to accentuate his perspective. Second, because, in part, with his fiscal success, he has spawned a group of photographers emulating his work...a so called "school of Gursky." Lastly we discussed the picture above by Thomas Demand on display at the FotoMuseum in Antwerp and the article by Teju Cole in the NY Times "When a photograph is the last trace of a destroyed work..." (10-18-15). The picture above is not shot from nature but rather Demand created a 50 foot steel encased "diorama-like" nature scape" he populated entirely by hand...each and every leaf. He then lit and shot the scene...then destroyed the work so the only remaining visual is the photograph he produced. His point could be that photography is largely a memorial art form...selecting a moment in time to capture.
This led the author's move to art that has been destroyed by acts of war or natural disasters but has prviously been captured in photographs. He then notes the Institute for Digital Archeology that is trying to capture disappearing at and architecture lost in current conflicts eg Isis destruction of historical icons in the middle east. "In these all-seeing days, the traffic between memory and forgetting becomes untrackable." |
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