Archive for the ‘Exhibitions and Contests’ Category
Beyond HDR: Deschaumes’s ‘Extreme Landscapes’
First, there was dodging and burning. Then, there was Ansel Adams. Then came HDR. And now we have Extreme Landscape Photography and Alexandre Deschaumes. Not only that, but Deschaumes does it the natural way and the hard way, setting out for remote and inaccessible places and bringing back photographs that take on the quality of moody paintings and even dreams.
Deschaumes has two sets of online portfolios, one on SmugMug and the other on 500px. As you will find, a few of the images are like both, moody paintings and dreams.
Check out Opalescent Dream for a very different kind of mood (than the image linked to above); these photographs would have made ideal backdrops for a few scenes of the LOTR movies. This gallery has to be seen for some of the most delicate hues and textures in landscape photography.
Here is a radically different ‘evocation’ of the same subject matter, brilliantly composed. In that same gallery is this spellbinding image of a mountaintop lake which truly defines ‘Extreme Landscape Photography’.
What we find all too easy to do with rivers and stars must be a little complicated where clouds are concerned, i.e. long exposures. Look at these ribbony tendrils Deschaumes has produced while the same technique also yields a more dramatic, minimalist and stark image.
Without any doubt this photographer is a master technician who has his own secrets and creates his own magic, including – of course – via post-processing techniques. At the same time he is an artist in the true sense of the word. That much-bandied word, ‘Vision’, is something that Deschaumes clearly has in spades. Even if you or I made it out to the same godforsaken place, would we have been able to produce this image? Or this one? That’s ‘Vision’.
As strange as it sounds, a few of Deschaumes mountain photographs resemble some of Rembrandt’s portraits with respect to lighting. Here is chiaroscuro effect, montane style. You can see more examples of mountain photos a la Rembrandt, so to speak, on this page.
What has been summarized here is but a drop in the ‘Photobucket’ of a single photographer who has been shooting for only ten years!
The ‘Dark’ of Crime and the ‘Light’ of Glamour: Gordon Parks
Farm Security Administration photo by Gordon Parks of Mrs. Ella Watson with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter. Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Where photography intersects race relations, Gordon Parks is a name that stands out, especially in America. Two days back Duke University remembered this multi-talented man with a lecture and slideshow. Parks, among other things, was also one of LIFE magazine’s premier photographers.
His oeuvre is varied, so much so that The Gordon Parks Foundation website has divided his work into eight categories. Though most of his photographs are (rightfully) celebrated, Parks is primarily known for documenting the Civil Rights Movement and the issues of race that sparked and surrounded it. What’s more, he artistically documented the reality of the day – check out this photo of a black woman and child in animated conversation under a sign (of sorts) in the segregated Deep South.
While this photo of Malcolm X documents the age, this one is a gem of composition, framing, cropping, and capturing of a moment.
Parks also documented the lives of the poor – here’s a touching photograph of a Parisian busker. Parks’s photographs of the impoverished do get a little harrowing, as may be seen in this photo of a malnourished little ghetto-dwelling Carioca.
Do you want to comprehend the bleakness of incarceration? Click here to see an expository and painterly image. Parks’s other images in the Crime category are progressively darker, featuring drugs, addicts, and prisons but here’s one expressive masterpiece that would adorn any exhibition.
If Parks’s searing images of Poverty and Crime are too much for you, veer off to the Fashion or Portraits-Children categories. It’s hard to believe that the same photographer who specialized in the seamy and sorrowful side of life also shot this restrained and classy image of the high life – beautifully posed, lit, and arranged. As for this one, it is high glamour portraiture at its finest – from the man who shot drug addicts!
Parks was even a time traveller: shooting in 1948, he somehow achieved an image that screams ‘Art Deco’ from the Roaring Twenties!
Though some lovely images are linked to above, would you believe that some of Parks’s finest are not included – click on Workers to view first-rate documentary ‘street shooting’. All credit to Duke University for commemorating the life of this wonderful photographer.
The Photographers’ Gallery — All Things to All Photographers?
If you, as a photographer, are looking for a one-stop shop to learn, workshop, compete, exhibit, buy – whatever – look no further than The Photographers’ Gallery. According to their website, this is “largest public gallery in London dedicated to photography.”
The Gallery is not only a website, it occupies capacious premises in London near the Oxford Circus tube station.
The Gallery’s interest areas and topics span the gamut. Consider their lecture The Lens and the Gun which explores “the historical, mechanical and metaphorical relationship between photography and guns.” So now you’re thinking, “Ah, so this is one of dem high-brow, chi-chi ‘art institute’ thingies.” Not so fast – would a precious lah-de-dah institute offer a five-week iPhone Photography Course?! Now ain’t that democratic and down-to-earth? And also up-to-date: this course includes lessons on ” social platforms and sharing forums, both online and offline, where mobile photography is being showcased and discussed.”
That’s what The Photographers’ Gallery is (or tries to be):– All things to all photographers.
Besides the said lecture and course, you can find other events ranging from the tried-and-true to the offbeat.
As of now, it hosts two exhibitions, one of which definitely falls in the ‘offbeat’ category: Shoot! Existential Photography.
Apparently carnivals in the inter-War years used to have an attraction in which you tried to shoot a target with a gun; if you succeeded, a camera would shoot a photo of you and that would be your prize. (Shades of the Lens-Gun lecture!) Some photographers – including Man Ray – took inspiration from that fairground novelty to try to draw parallels between shooting with a camera and shooting with a gun. That’s what this exhibit is about.
The second exhibition is much more prosaic. It features photographs of the people of Liverpool – many days in the life of a city as reflected in its inhabitants. The photographer, Tom Wood, has taken a “documentary . . . approach” to his Merseyside subject matter. If he truly has, then Anfield and its denizens are surely well-sampled in his works.
YNWA.
Galleries: NatGeo, Kate Moss, and something Dali-esque
National Geographic Photo Camp (Photo credit: poptech)
NatGeo’s Best Photos of October 2012
Pity that the title and subject of this photo is so prominently printed otherwise you’d think it’s something photographed on Mars (or a still from some Sci-Fi movie) wouldn’t you?
It is one of NatGeo’s Best Photos of October 2012. The very next photo is of a silken-streamed waterfall over near-black cliffs. This is a standout fine art image.
This mini-gallery, published two days back, is worth a quick look; the photos run the gamut – from scenic to macro, from pets to photojournalism, there is a nice mix. Don’t miss these acrobats on a wall!
Vanity Fair’s Best Photos of Kate Moss
Kate Moss is an iconic name in Modeldom for reasons not relevant to photography . . . well, at least not directly. Her original ‘waif look’ is captured in the very first image of Vanity Fair’s Kate Moss gallery, also published a few days back.
They’ve published a contact sheet from what must have been a test shoot with the photographer, Corinne Day, whose photographs launched Moss’s career when she was a teenager.
That we’re talking about a slip of a girl comes across plainly in this candid and, frankly, it does raise some ethical issues associated with the modelling profession.
All those famous shots of Moss are in this one gallery, plus some personal rarities.
Dali-esque Best Photos of a Slit-Scan Camera
Jay Mark Johnson doesn’t need Photoshop – he and his camera are a funky new kind of Photoshop by themselves. He uses a slit-scan landscape camera to take panoramic landscapes with a twist. To quote Joe Berkowitz, Johnson’s Photography is something that “messes with space, time, your head.”
Johnson’s photographs can be called ‘abstract patterns of landscapes’. Or they may be an abstraction of a rhythmic gymnast whose ‘apparatus’ is not ball or ribbon but arms! Isn’t this ‘Dali-esque’ Photography?
Whatever niche Johnson’s quirky and unusual photographs may have in the discipline of Photography, they’re worth a look for both, the novelty and the art.
Barter, the Old Way, and Kodak, the Old Soldier
English: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Barter, the Old Way
“The old way of trading skills can still work,” a photographer has stated emphatically. Barter? For a photographer?
Yes – that is exactly what Shantanu Starrick seems bent on proving as an itinerant photographer who does not pay for his room and board – not in money, that is, for Starrick pays in kind: photographs and videos.
In Pixel Trade: Photography for Trade, Chris Gampat interviews Starrick, who concentrates on photographing-documenting persons as purveyors of different “trades,” i.e. persons functioning as professionals. In exchange for his photographs, he gets food, shelter, transport, . . . .
Starrick says, “The initial conversations with these people often bring up concerns of cost. It always ends with them realizing how much time I have spent thinking this through, and they quickly agree that this project will be worth the trade.” At the same time, he too is given the royal treatment – usually his hosts are “extremely generous” and he is “well fed.”(!)
Perchance one or two of our Australian readers have bumped into Starrick? After all, he has had a pronounced swing through the country having started off in Melbourne.
I bet the barter idea behind Pixel Trade is giving a lot of photographers some good ideas. I also bet it’s causing one fellow a lot of frustration: the taxman!
Kodak, the Old Soldier
Two months back, one of our posts was titled Kodak’s Suicide Run. The questions about Kodak’s viability have not subsided. “Can Kodak survive just with a successful restructuring/bankruptcy and without any major innovation/new products?” asks PhotoRumors but does not provide an optimistic prognosis.
Kodak has seen a two percent increase in its profitability but when you slash expenses like crazy, that’s not too hard. Kodak’s portfolio of products and services lacks coherence, the company does not have “any major innovation/new products,” and it appears to be a rudderless ship.
Kodak is a gradually-disappearing once-global brand.
Perhaps PhotoRumors could have offered the following prognosis:– Kodak is not going to commit suicide nor is it going to die, yet the writing is on the wall. Take it away General MacArthur: “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.”
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