Digital Innovations

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Joe Farace  |  Dec 30, 2011  |  First Published: Nov 01, 2011  |  0 comments
Richard Avedon once said, “I think all art is about control—the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.” That’s what a dedicated studio, no matter what size it may be or where it may be located, provides a photographer. It is a safe haven from the real world where, like the Outer Limits voice says, you can control the lighting, the background, and the subject. When working in this kind of environment, I control everything from the subject’s pose to their clothing and makeup and the resulting photographs tend to be as much a portrait of me as they are of my subjects. What often emerges from all that control is a style. Photographic style is not something I’m conscious about when shooting but the truth is that over time we all develop a signature way of shooting. The danger is, of course, that we keep shooting that same way or different versions of the same shot for the rest of our lives, so any style you develop must grow and change as you learn. To get you started, here are a few tools that will help enhance or define your style.
Joe Farace  |  Nov 29, 2011  |  First Published: Oct 01, 2011  |  0 comments
One of the most interesting promotional items created for my long out-of-print book The Photographer’s Digital Studio was a cartoon drawn by the brilliant artist John Grimes (www.grimescartoons.com) which showed trays of developer, stop, fix, and wash with floppy disks being dipped in and out of each one. The caption: “A common mistake in digital photography.” Years ago I labored many hours in a wet darkroom to produce a composite image showing what an historic statue would look like when moved to a different location. Digital imaging software would have let me do a better job in less than an hour and I wouldn’t have had to spend time working in the dark with smelly chemicals. Part of the reason some people even ask “why digital?” is that many believe that digital imaging is somehow different than traditional photography. That’s not really true. I think there is no more difference between the two methodologies than you would find when comparing photographers working with large format view cameras to those grabbing snapshots with point-and-shoot cameras. It’s just that the tools are different and this month I’ll introduce you to some new image-processing tools.
Joe Farace  |  Oct 21, 2011  |  First Published: Sep 01, 2011  |  0 comments
Dick Stolley, who many consider Time-Life’s best managing editor, once told People magazine photographers that a successful image elicited a “Gasp Factor” from the viewer. Stolley believed that if the image stopped the reader, forced them to take a second look, read the headline, and perhaps the rest of the story, the photograph passed his test. Often the best photographs—those “Gasp Factor” ones—are made under less than ideal lighting conditions. These images are made on stormy days, at the crack of dawn, sunset, or in the dark of night when getting the proper exposure can be a distinct challenge. It is those precious fleeting minutes when the quality of light provides photographers with images that separate photographs from snapshots.
Joe Farace  |  Oct 05, 2011  |  First Published: Aug 01, 2011  |  0 comments
You don’t always need a lens to make photographs. When I was a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, our instructor Jack Wilgus had all his students make their own pinhole cameras and shoot images with them. I took the easy way out and used a Quaker Oats box and used photographic paper cut into a circle to fit the box as my capture media. My homemade camera produced round, negative images that I kidded myself into believing echoed the style of early photographs but now, as with many things photographic and not, I know better. Yet one thing remains: you don’t need a lens to make photographs. Sure, many new SLRs, such as the Olympus E-30 that I tested (April, 2009, issue of Shutterbug), have a “pinhole” filter but the camera itself uses a lens and internal software to create the look of the real thing. But shooting film in a real pinhole camera brings back that very “ah-ha” that Ernst Haas was talking about.
Joe Farace  |  Aug 24, 2011  |  First Published: Jul 01, 2011  |  0 comments
As a student at the Maryland Institute College of Art, I attended a class on color and my very first assignment was landscape photography. I wasn’t then or am I now a serious landscape photographer, but as a serious student I developed a set of personal guiding principles on the “what” and “how” of photographing landscapes that I still follow today. These four principles are not cast in concrete and are presented here only as guidelines for your own explorations in landscape photography.
Joe Farace  |  Jul 13, 2011  |  First Published: Jun 01, 2011  |  0 comments
As I write this, the temperature outside my office window is -11˚. It’s at times like this when my thoughts go to my favorite (warm) place to kick back and relax. Acapulco is different from other Mexican resorts because it’s a city with a wonderful history first and a resort second, and then there’s that old Hollywood connection. You can see some of my Acapulco photos in the self-published book Acapulco, Paradise of the Americas (www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/196617) with text by my friend Don Bain. For examples of my travel photography, you can preview the first 15 pages and see why I love Acapulco so much. If you would like a copy, I’ve removed all markups from the softbound edition so Shutterbug readers and their friends can purchase it for just the cost of production and shipping.
Joe Farace  |  Jun 22, 2011  |  First Published: May 01, 2011  |  0 comments
This month I’ll celebrate one of those “milestone” birthdays that everyone talks about and here in the Pixel Palace things are definitely looking up. Digital MD’s (www.digitalmd.net) Kevin Elliott repaired all of the Windows-related problems on the Boot Camp partition on my iMac and by the time you read this I’ll have installed Windows 7. Then I’ll be ready to test all of those $29 just-as-good-as-Photoshop Windows-only products that I’ve passed on as of late. There’s no news from Yahoo! about getting my Flickr account fixed but I don’t expect any and I am just too lazy to create a new account and upload all those photos—again. You can see what’s there at www.flickr.com/photos/joefarace or better yet visit my SmugMug page (http://farace.smugmug.com/) to see how my photo-a-day project is progressing and lots more.
Joe Farace  |  Apr 01, 2011  |  0 comments

“Human mechanisms are made by human hands, Robin. None of them is infallible.”—Adam West as Batman

What’s in your utility belt? This month, I’ll introduce you to some useful Mac OS and Windows imaging software that will enhance productivity, increase your creativity, and often costs just a few bucks. To add some spice I’ve included a few useful hardware accessories that will make life in...

Joe Farace  |  Mar 01, 2011  |  5 comments

“Computers = Ticket to Hell.”—from an old Alien Skin Software T-shirt

I’ve always been an ambidextrous computer user, having a Windows system on my left and a Mac OS computer on my right. That Windows computer handles Internet surfing for Web Profiles and e-mail. It’s also where I test the $29 “just as good as Photoshop but Windows-only” imaging...

Barry Tanenbaum  |  Feb 01, 2011  |  0 comments

Here’s the thing: the dogs aren’t fighting; they’re playing.

When they run, jump, growl, and tussle in canine versions of tag, wrestling, and catch me if you can, it often looks like fighting. It can make people uneasy.

Michael Crouser took these photographs, which have been selected from his book, Dog Run, over a two-year...

Joe Farace  |  Feb 01, 2011  |  0 comments

“…everything looks better in black and white.”—Paul Simon, Concert in the Park

Proving that you can, in fact, change your tune, Paul Simon altered the lyrics of his 1973 hit song Kodachrome from the original “…everything looks worse in black and white.” When he performed the song at a concert in Central Park on August 15, 1991 everything looked...

Joe Farace  |  Jan 01, 2011  |  0 comments

“It’s just another New Year’s Eve. Let’s make it the best.”—Barry Manilow

OK, I admit it. I like Barry Manilow’s music. Heck, I even like Ray Stevens’s song “I Need Your Help, Barry Manilow” and am amazed you can’t buy it on iTunes. So what’s your New Year’s resolution? Quit smoking? (I did that 30 years ago.)...

Joe Farace  |  Dec 01, 2010  |  0 comments

“One of the nice things about Christmas is that you can make people forget the past with a present.”—Anonymous

It was a dark and stormy night…(continued from last month). Western Digital (www.wdc.com) asked me to return my recalcitrant network drive to them and, after taking a look, declared it DOA. Every cloud has a...

Joe Farace  |  Nov 01, 2010  |  0 comments

“All power corrupts, but we need the electricity”—Anonymous

It was a dark and stormy night… Mary and I were watching a DVD when the house was hit with a massive power surge. For a second I wondered about my computers but quickly forgot about them until turning them on a few days later. My Mac Pro and peripherals that are connected to a hefty APC (

Joe Farace  |  Oct 01, 2010  |  0 comments

“How many photographers does it take to change a light bulb? Fifty. One to change the bulb, and 49 to say, “I could have done that!”—Anonymous

I wanted to kick off this month’s column with an old trick that gets better every year: green screen photography. Lighting considerations are extremely critical when shooting against a green or blue background. Your...

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