Flickring Away

It's 1:04am. I'm on flickr. Boyghost has left like three really cool and helpful comments on some of my pics and I am both honored and embarrassed to be honored. I'm also deliriously tired. But I can't seem to turn in just yet. The thing is he notices stuff in my pictures that I don't even notice, like the identical water towers in the picture above that I took earlier today. That's why I need his feedback! Because of stuff like that. And at the same time I worry occasionally that I might be getting to influenced, or even developing a censor when I shoot. I don't think it's a real concern yet though. I still love looking at other people's stuff. I have to look at other people's stuff. My pictures are no different than my writing. Sometimes I'm just to close to them and I get crazy and need to step back or I get bored or stuck. But when I see the amazing stuff people do on Flickr I'm reanimated! I just get so inspired.

I was at ICP on Friday after work. They had a fashion photography exhibit and Fridays are pay what you wish day for museums in NYC. I wasn't really into it though. The pictures were way too high concept, bursting with color and harsh digital effects. I liked some of the older stuff but mostly I liked the black and white stuff in the ICP collections room, pictures from what seemed like the 20s and 30s. After about an hour I wandered out and into the gift shop. I walked over to photo essays and reached for a Richard Avedon book but decided to go for an interesting looking book just one spine to the right. It had no title and was covered in this wierd plastic lace pattern. It was called "Jesus and the Cherries" by Jessica Backhaus. They were a collection of very plain very quietly profound color photographs of families, their homes and neighborhoods in Germany. She has an amazing eyes for the natural composition and beauty of everyday things. Her color detail is amazing, really makes you rethink the whole idea of photography and what makes an interesting photograph.

Stoned at it's best

"turn off your mind, relax and float downstream...It is not dying."

Examples

In digital photography last week, we finally got to look at slide projections of everyone's work. It was for the most part really great, I mean profoundly so. It might be an odd bunch of people but that's the great thing about photography I think. A picture may reflect something more interesting about a person than you would expect. Unfortunately I can't show you any because most people didn't know how to navigate flickr and our assignment was to post to a flickr group created by our teacher so that we could all comment on each others work. Instead, most people brought their pics on flash drives so we looked them that way. Some really fantastic stuff. Below are three of mine that Marget selected but she she showed them in a series of shots by professional photographers! She presented them of examples of good composition, color, focus and sophistication even though the one with the steps is slightly overexposed. Heeeey!!

Our assignment for last week was to take ten pictures in our neighborhood and I picked a really nice clear Saturday last week. I feel a bit of pressure now though. The next assignment is twenty or so pics of the inside of our homes and apartments. Wish me luck!

Two cameras in two days

I had a lovely weekend. On Valentines Day I went took Fran to the Farmers Market at Union Square and then to that cool Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street where I went for the first time with Amanda. Then we went out to Crosby Street and took about 200 pictures with my camera. Later on that evening we went to restaurant we frequent called 111 on 111 and Bdway to see a friend play the upright bass in his jazz band and dine in a very chill atmosphere, free of the usual VDAY mania.
Somewhere between Sunday and Monday I purchased a Holga camera on Amazon and then managed the wining bid for a collapsible vintage SX70 Polaroid Land Camera on ebay. They were both relatively affordable although obviously the film for cameras no longer in circulation are very expensive since the film is no longer manufactured. 120 film is like 10 dollars a role! SX70 I'm still shopping around for on ebay. Why go to all the trouble you ask! Well, first remember that I am a person who loves stationary so much that I collect a ton of it even though I hardly write anyone! I have a stash of stationary at work that I acquired from a surplus give away on the tenth floor last week! So this kind of insanity is not beyond me. The other reason is that Holga Cameras are capable of taking pictures like this and Polaroid SX70 takes pic like this.

I'm crazy about the interesting flaws in accidental photography or photography that isn't all polished and beautiful and controlled so I want to experiment with that as well as all the numerous dial modes on my SLR which produce any number of effects both subtle and extreme. Yesterday we did white balance exercises in my digital photography class. A bit confusing to say the least.

My Funny Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!

Oh Baby I like it RAW NEF (well sometimes)

I admit I'm getting ahead of myself. It's a problem I've had ever since I was a girl. My African Drumming teacher told my parents that I was too overconfident. I still think he was just irritated because I was a fast learner.

I took about 70 pictures after my digital photography class today. That's normal for me. My class is on Bowery, a great place for night photography. When I leave the YMCA where they hold the classes it's like 9:30 and I'm so giddy I wander around shooting like a freak and I swear that until I hit Astor place I don't even know where I am. I use some tall building in the distance as a landmark to let me know I'm walking towards Broadway. Other than that, I have run into a pole or something before I look around for cross streets.

I discovered I could shoot in black and white just messing around with mode settings in my camera. I was convinced I couldn't when I forst got the camera and was pretty sad about it since I could take b&w with my point and shoot. I AM LIVING!!!!! THE WORLD THROUGH b&W on an SLR???
You don't even know!!!


NEF RAW
This is a setting Marget Long told us about in class. She shoots on a large (really large) format Canon and she mostly shoots raw which is most easily explained as an unprocessed pure image. She likes to do very close editing and control all aspects of her picture, something which digital photography will adjust in every way when shooting in automatic. Digital cameras do everything for you. Shooting in Raw does away with all that and it's interesting to see the difference in photos you take in RAW and the ones with all the automatic compensation of light and color levels you never think about until you see a picture that is completely naked.

RAW

Processed


I have to start keeping a shooting diary so I can actually understand what the hell I'm doing.

Fan Mail

I finally broke down and wrote Boyghost and email about the technique he used to achieve the intensity of his black and white pictures. He wrote me back today!

Here is the email I sent:

"I'm a great admirer of your pictures and I I noticed that you have a lot of black and white shots taken with a Nikon SLR. The one thing I really miss about shooting with my Nikon D60 is not being able to shoot in Black in white because as far as I can tell I am unable to set color options on it the way I was with able to my Nikon Coolpix which also had a Sepia and Cyanotype setting. Are the black and white shots you take in color to begin with or is there a black and white setting on your camera or do you just transfer it to black and white in post production? Your BW shots are so good I can't imagine that they were once color."


And here is his reply. He's nice! : )

"First of all, thanks very much for your very kind message.
I truly do appreciate getting feedback like this, and it
keeps me going out and taking the shots I do.

On to your question, I actually shoot all my shots in
color. The secret is to shoot in the Vivd+ or More Vivid
mode on the Nikon DSLRs and then convert to black and white
later. This way, you'll get lots of nice contrast in your
shots that translate very well into dark and moody black
and white photos. I personally use href="http://www.gimp.org">The GIMP to do most of my
b&w conversions, usually by using a script that emulates
the natural tones of some of the better black and white
films. You could also just use the channel mixer and the
curves/level tools to really up the contrast and tones of
your shots...

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
bg"