Apparently, there was some interwebs chatter regarding Shepard Fairey and his status as a sellout following his recent DJ appearance and muraling in Dallas. I don’t think I contributed to this chatter, as I don’t think my website gets much traffic,* but I would like to correct a few of my own errors, just to be sure that I’m being consistent and giving credit where it is due.

In my post about his visit, I suggested that Mr. Fairey didn’t actually participate in any of the wheatpasting. I am happy to report that Shep did, indeed, do some of the work himself, if the images here, here, and here, and an interview he gave to Peter Simek of D Magazine are to be believed (and I believe they are). Additionally, the murals they … Read More »

Desaturated. Orange Light Leaks. A Sort-Of Interesting Border.

If I start up another one of these, I’ll be turning the light leaks off and shooting with B/W and that neat border in mind… But that’s a big if.

Take the 99 cents you were going to spend on this camera and go bury it in the neighbor’s yard, or give it to the next person that asks you if you have anything to spare, or stick it in the pocket of those pants that change always falls out of and go ride roller coasters until it all falls out of your pocket and is lost forever.

All of these are better uses of your hard-earned change, and I think Synthetic should be ashamed of their efforts on the 99 cent unlimited cameras, all of which are uninspired and appear rushed attempts to appease … Read More »

Well…

I find Gregory GR8 pretty meh.

Fat White Border. Faded Orange Color Overlay To Make It Look Old.

Good brightness and clarity overall, but not so much that I didn’t wish I still had my 99 cents… And I definitely won’t bother loading up another one of these…

The slider takes a bit of the orange cast off, but doesn’t do much beyond that.

I wish I had something more to say, but I think the random shots speak for themselves.

Read More »

Warning! Poor craftsmanship ahead.

After seeing this video about using household lighting in cinematic work, I decided it was time to build a soft box (or something like it).

So I went down to the local hardware shop, and picked up two things.

a 3″ long 1/4 threaded carriage bolt ($0.29)
two 1/4 nuts ($0.10 each)
the cheapest box of white holiday lights I could find ($3.49)

I had a box I was planning to use (one that my printer came in, and that’s been sitting in the back of the closet since September 2009), but when I pulled into the parking lot, I saw this sitting by the dumpster:

Nice! Some lucky meat eater got some steaks or something. Good for them; bad for the environment; good for me (and I’ll be the one to recycle it when … Read More »

Ok. The Light is perfect, there’s a Photographer, and a Subject worthy of capture. All of these things are, I believe, necessary to the creation of a photograph, but there are two other things that we need to have at hand to make the photograph a reality: a lens and a camera.

The lens and the camera serve a vital function: the lens gathers light and projects it; the camera (through a variety of more or less technically sophisticated means) captures the light and converts it to an image.

Both the lens and the camera can vary widely, from the most rudimentary pinhole design (a piece of heavy aluminum with a tiny hole poked … Read More »

Ok. First, there is Light, and, second, a human to capture that light (by accident or with purpose).

But light, in a void, is meaningless, and, indeed, it takes Two to Tango.

So we need something to take a picture of, a fleeting moment or static to capture, to fix in a more permanent form than is allowed by our biology. This something can be fascinating or banal, static or moving, candid or posed, abstract or realistic, or pretty much anything else. It could be human, animal, vegetable, mineral, or something else entirely, but it must be something. Indeed, there can be no photographs taken of nothing.

True, I’ve taken photographs of nothing, such as this craptacular piece:

Granted, I shot this … Read More »

So we have light. But light, while necessary, is insufficient: other elements go into making a photograph.

Regardless of the importance and primacy of light, a human being with some amount of technical skill and an idea or desire to capture a scene is equally necessary, and other equipment, while necessary, can vary widely in technical sophistication, from the most rudimentary pinhole design to the newest digital body, without having much of an impact on the final result as do light and the photographer.

The photographer decides what objects to photograph and when to photograph them. Such decisions can be carefully considered (as in the case of, say, a fancy HDR image by Trey Ratcliff) or largely spontaneous (as in snapshots of a birthday party or somesuch), but they are decided … Read More »

In the beginning was (and is) The Light.

This is true of all photography, without question and indeed of all human sight. I could probably stop right here, but let’s not be hasty.

So. Of the five photographic elements, light is—along with the Photographer—of primary importance.

But why is this so?

Well, in the case of film and digital photography, the recording device (the film or the sensor) picks up the light that an object reflects, bounces, or emits, gathered and focused through a lens of some sort: no light, no photo.

When we make a photograph of a landscape, say, we’re not really taking a picture of the trees, but of the light bouncing off of and filtering through the trees. And when I make a photo of Olive, the sensor collects photons that bounce off of her black fur and translates them … Read More »