Back in the 1970s the photographic art world was experiencing a transformation of sorts. The rise of the celebrity photographer, especially in America set a precedent in the contemporary art market. Photographer’s work started selling for serious money. Mike Mandel, then a student of the San Francisco Art Institute noticed the change and put his mind to creating a body of work that would first satirise but later memorialise the celebrity photographer of the day.
In what would turn out to be an audacious undertaking, Mandel would spend the next Summer travelling the length and breadth of the United States on what he called a Continue reading →
If you’ve ever struggled with shooting group portraits where your clients have different head sizes then this helpful video is for you! Taken from ‘Problem Portraits’ by Joy Henry F.N.Z.P.P.A. this short snippet from a pre-photoshop era shows you exactly how to create that perfect posed portrait with a only little repositioning and we think it is fun Friday fantastic:
And as you’re looking at this video you’re probably thinking, “Wow, Judy’s head did look big before they moved her!” and Continue reading →
Another day, another wedding photographer having to grapple with the scourge of phone-toting guests filming, snapping and Instagramming everything they’d been hired to do. However Thomas Stewart of Australia has found himself in this situation too many times and as the photograph he took below demonstrates quite clearly, enough is enough.
That’s the groom having to peer around the the guests with phones to see his bride to be walking down the aisle.
Thomas spent some time yesterday writing a heartfelt rant on his social media page urging guests to leave their phones and cameras Continue reading →
The Queens official photographic portrait by Mary McCartney has just been released to celebrate her status as the longest reigning monarch in British history (achieved 9 September 2015).
Copyright: Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
The candid style of her enjoying a moments pause in her daily work routine is unusual compared to the more obviously regal images previously commissioned by the Queen from photographers like Continue reading →
We caught up with Anton Orlov this morning who kindly agreed to guest post here on PhoGoTraphy and share his latest work:
The day has come my friends! After months of being nothing more than a dream and concept, weeks of experimenting and building, and days of testing and working out the kinks today at San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts I will be unveiling what I believe to be the first completely transparent and entirely functional camera. I call it CLERA, short for Clear Camera, and without further ado here it is pictured against the clear San Diego skies. It is the first camera where you can actually SEE the image projected onto the piece of photographic material during the exposure!
#CLERA by Anton Orlov
I came up with this idea while working in my dark box and developing tintypes. Those of you familiar with my work know that for the past few years the medium of wet plate collodion has consumed my photographic endeavours almost entirely.
One look around Emily Scaife’s website is all it takes to see that this photographer is full of great ideas. Scaife uses photography, film making and illustration in her work and she has an extraordinary skill in turning the seemingly mundane into a visual delight, creating optical illusions by isolating her subject matter through either a macro lens, microscope or scanner and tricking us into thinking we’re looking at something entirely different. My favourite of these series are the ‘Cosmic Crispies‘. Scaife has given them the byline ‘Meteorological breakfast’ and they certainly make a wonderful feast for the eyes:
By photographing them in black and white against a pitch black background she makes them snap, crackle and pop in our brains as little asteroids (we’ve seen this type of imagery coming back from NASA – they’re not cheating and using Rice Crispies too are they?!). They are fascinating to look at and compare, who’d have thought each Crispie would be so different?
Did you know that adding filters to your photos can result in more views and comments? Well the clever bods at Yahoo Labs have just released a very interesting study on ‘Why We Filter Our Photos and How It Impacts Engagement’ and having crunched a whole lot of numbers they found that “filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on by consumers of photographs.”
“We analyzed how filters affect a photo’s engagement (consumers’ perspective) using a corpus of 7.6 million Flickr photos. We find two groups of serious and casual photographers among filter users. The serious see filters as correction tools and prefer milder effects. Casual photographers, by contrast, use filters to significantly transform their photos with bolder effects. We also find that filtered photos are 21% more likely to be viewed and 45% more likely to be commented on by consumers of photographs.”
Wow! When the sheer volume of smartphone images shared online is so massive (apparently Instagram averages 60 million images uploaded a day, and the iPhone is Flickr‘s most popular camera), will a little filtering really help you get noticed amongst all those pictures?
A lack of views can leave you feeling deflated.
There are other elements to take into account of course. The number of followers you have and having an image with a lot of views already automatically puts you high up in the social networking charts and makes sure even more people see your images. Plus, a high level of social interactivity online will also result in more views and more comments on your own work but still, that’s quite some quantitative analysis they’ve done there!
The study found two distinct groups amongst the filter-using photographers on Flickr – the serious hobbyist and the casual photographer – and according to their study the serious photographer uses a more delicate touch, preferring to use correction tools and less obvious filters while the casual photographers like a big, bold, image changing effect on their pictures. Continue reading →
When Kim Kardashian released her new photography book ‘Kim Kardashian West: Selfish’ last week it was ironic that any image taking was banned, including anyone wanting to take a selfie of themselves, at her book signing at Barnes & Noble, NY. ‘Selfish’ is a selection of some of the many selfies taken by Kardashian during the last few years and it seemed a little unfair that her fans were blocked from doing the very thing she was selling.
TV Personality Kim Kardashian with security guard Pascal Duvier signs copies cf ‘Selfish’ at Barnes & Noble, 5th Avenue on May 5, 2015 in New York City. (Getty Images).
Damnation is a documentary by Ben Knight and Travis Rummel that explores the way the building of dams across the United States has altered landscapes. In this short excerpt from the film they talk to Katie Lee, Hollywood starlet turned activist who ‘walked naked through Glen Canyon’.
ABOVE: X-Citing by Martin D. Koehler which appears in the film.
Placed throughout the interview are a series of incredible photographs taken inside the canyon featuring an evocative Lee, which has now been flooded by the lake created when the dam was installed. Despite the passive photographs, Lee now in her 90s quite candidly tells the interviewer about Floyd Dominy who organised the canyon’s destruction “No I’ve never met him, I’d have cut his balls off if I’d have met him”. Continue reading →
No doubt you’ve already seen friends sharing screenshots of the Microsoft powered website how-old.net on your Facebook newsfeed. Within hours of its release it had gone viral, which is mildly unusual as it’s not a new idea by any means. Despite it being absolutely appalling at guessing people’s age it’s been a hit.
But did you read the fine print? Tucked away several paragraphs down in the Terms of Use is this long sentence. Continue reading →
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