“Earlier this year, I was invited by JIB TV in Tokyo and Olympus, Japan to help document the recovery taking place after the terrible earthquake and tsunami that hit the northeast part of the country in March 2011. I agreed to do it even though I knew it would be a traumatic experience.
Brute horsepower, large diesel engines pulling thousands of tons of freight, heavy plumes of exhaust pouring from their stacks, sand being put down on the rails for traction, and the rumble of steel wheels passing by—all are part of the American railroad scene. For both the novice and advanced photographer, the challenge of capturing the drama of moving trains and finding suitable locations is all part of the excitement.
I live near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn and have been photographing the canal and the neighborhood for over two decades, but it was only in the fall of 2009 that my photographs had the prospect of becoming a historical record, due to the imminent prospect of development and a long-term cleanup. Either way, the area was going to change dramatically. The photographs I produced have won awards, been featured in exhibitions, and 17 of the images have been acquired by the Brooklyn Historical Society for their permanent collection.
After almost 40 years of making platinum prints, chemical fumes had harmed Tom Millea’s lungs to a point where he could no longer go into the darkroom. He says, “Closing my studio was traumatic in the extreme.” He didn’t believe that anyone else was capable of printing his work as he envisioned it. He liked computers but had no desire to try to make digital prints look like his platinum prints. “One technique could not replace the other,” he says. He selected prints from his inventory to sell in gallery shows and considered himself retired.
But by 2004, when the color palette of digital inks had changed, Millea thought his prints were beautiful, and comparable with his darkroom images. He began making digital color photographs full-time using an Epson 2200 printer. Over the next five years, he says, “By myself, step by step, I learned to use the computer to make images I felt were uniquely my own.” He eventually put together a complete digital studio with Apple computers and two Epson printers, the 4800 and the 9800. He could then make his own prints up to 40x60”.
I don't know if I have found my photographic "vision" yet, but I have definitely found my obsession. For me, it began five years ago when I bought my first sophisticated 35mm SLR film camera. Before then my photographic experience had been limited to the typical point-and-shoot family snapshots, but with this new camera something "clicked" (other than...
Photo Arts group members live in the Palm Springs, Redlands, and Joshua Tree areas of California, and we are very informal with no officers or rules at monthly meetings. We exchange critiques and chat about photography in many of its myriad forms. We also eat well.
Some members are experts in Photoshop and related programs, some are infrared fans, a few favor black and white, and...
I’ve shamelessly borrowed the title of E.B. White’s classic 1949 essay, and I’ve done it because my first views of Lindsay Silverman’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos of New York made me think of White, wandering the city, constantly re-examining its continuing spectacle in the hope that he could put it on paper.
I started out my photographic career in 1980 and studied with some of the most prominent photographers of our time. I learned to previsualize my images and was rewarded with perfectly "zoned" black and white negatives. However, I was never satisfied with my black and white prints. I always wanted more and felt something was missing. I began translating the negative...
As someone who prefers a minimal style, I want to control, beyond the usual photographic variables, the level of detail and the sense of depth in an image. For this I have embraced the use of diffusion while enlarging. The use of diffusion during film exposure to soften a scene, or when used in a portrait to reduce skin texture and flaws, is long established. Nature can be just as...
I have always been fascinated by how differently other photographers portray the same subjects that I photograph. Indeed, my office shelves are crammed with books and magazines with such images. Many of these pictures have influenced how I think about the visual world and how various photographic tools can be used. I am particularly attracted to pictures that convey something...
I probably take more pictures of people working than any other subject. Since I am a commercial photographer this makes a lot of sense. I love taking shots of people actually working; they provide wonderful opportunities to see people involved in something they take seriously. You can often get shots where people really aren’t paying attention to you, just doing what they do. Work shots...
The scenery rolls by quickly, too quickly really, to take in the fullness of any one moment. One scene quickly becomes part of the one just rushing by, which too quickly becomes part of another. Vast stretches of farmland push against distant mountain ranges, workers labor freshly plowed and watered fields, burros pull plows, squat villages flash by, then in quick succession...
The fact that Lizz Rosenbaum invariably carries a camera is not surprising. She was raised in a family where photography hit the trifecta: business, pleasure, and passion.
But what's with the mirror?
Well, the mirror makes it possible for Lizz's photography to be entirely self-sufficient. With a setting or...
Two-time American poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Stanley Kunitz collaborated with noted Boston photographer Marnie Crawford Samuelson to translate a man's life and his garden into a profound and touching union.
"Something was obsessing me to want to photograph Stanley Kunitz in that garden on Cape Cod," Crawford Samuelson says, "a chance...