Fujifilm Finepix X100 – 1/340 second, f/8, ISO 200

Do You Have a Favorite Landscape Photography Destination?

How I Shot And Edited It – Nepal Zoomable Panorama [READY]

Street Photography: Weekly Photography Challenge

Mastering Panning – Photographing Moving Subjects

Matthew Baum
Untitled, New York, 2011
From the Eighteen series
Website - MatthewBaum.com

Matthew Baum is an artist and teacher based in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Brown University in 1995 with a degree in American History and later studied architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Matthew earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2007. As a graduate student, he was a co-founder and director of the VisuaLife photo education program, working with underprivileged high school students in New York City. He currently teaches photography at the School of Visual Arts and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

If you thought that the physics behind light painting involves photon accumulation, advanced sensor technology and high end buffer management, you have it all wrong.

The truth of the thing, as Destin explains, is that light painting is done by cute girls throwing beads at boxes. OK, it does not, but Destin and daughter (and Wes Whaley) do a terrific job and explaining all this stuff in a fun and super easy to understand way. (Plus you get to see some of the most unique pregnancy photoshoots ever). Hit the jump to see the full video.

read more

Having lost his Nikon 10.5mm lens cap, photographer Stu Carlson used the bottom end of a Dr. pepper bottle to cap his lens.

"The lens cap disappeared and I hate to have my lens unprotected.  So I cut off the end of a Dr. Pepper bottle to use till I could order the right lens cap for it.  Quite by accident I had picked a perfect fit for this lens and since a replacement cap is not cheap and this is and it works and fits so well, I have not bothered to order the replacement cap.

While the bottle seems to provide some nice protection, I doubt that the 10.5mm tastes as good as the original content of the bottle.

read more

Focus on street photographer Eric Kim ~ In your face with a smile!

Mitchell Hartman
YukaT, , 2011
From the Fragmented Vision series
Website - MStudiosNY.com

Mitchell Hartman is a freelance photo-illustrator and retoucher. He received his BFA in commercial illustration from the School of Visual Arts and his work employs a combination of photo collage and digital technique to present a view of the world that mimics the eye's tendency to "see" things in fragments. He lives and works in New York City.

Sony Alpha SLT-A65 Review

How To Shoot 360 Degree Panoramas While On The Road – With Audrey Scott And Daniel Noll Of Uncornered Market

Andrew Meredith
Vardo, Norway, , 2011
Website - MeredithPhoto.com

Andrew Meredith graduated from Falmouth College of Arts and has, for the past decade, been shooting commercial, editorial and personal projects. In 2008 his personal work was awarded as a category winner in the Creative Review Photography Annual and following up in 2009 receiving the Best In Book award for his Slaughtermen series, depicting the brutal and gory world of the abattoir worker. In the same year Andrew was awarded category winner for his Model Village series. His first solo exhibition, Excursions, images of south american wanderings, was shown in London in 2010 at Riverside Studios and then during the Photomonth festival at Truman Brewery Gallery. In 2011 Andrew was commissioned by Icon magazine to document the Steilneset Witch Memorial by Peter Zumthor in the most northerly town in mainland Eurpoe, Vardo, Norway, deep into the arctic circle. His work has been published worldwide. He lives and works in London.
 

Wood worker Brian Grabski and photographer Josh Van Patter collaborated both photographic know-how and superb craftsmanship to create this beautiful piece of work. They then used it to shoot Fade around Lake Powell.

read more

A few days ago Jaron Schneider posted an interesting piece over at F stoppers projecting a pretty poor future for the American lighting industry. It's a very interesting read and I encourage you to head over and check it out.

I am not going to repeat the entire post here, but his main point is that the industry has cut costs by moving manufacturing over to China. After moving manufacturing, the industry then moved the engineering overseas. In the end of this process, China no longer needs American brands to produce good lighting gear, and American lighting companies have found  themselves fighting their own creations. Jaron ends the post with the sad prediction that “there is no way out of this cycle of depression for most US companies."

Speaking as a small manufacturer , I think that while the points that Jaron raises are valid, they are only a small part of a bigger picture that’s not completely without hope. Here are some of the more encouraging points that come to mind.

read more

Chris Sanders – Photographer Spotlight

Silhouette Photography Technique

Rachel Hulin
Hall Flight, Providence, Rhode Island, 2011
From the The Flying Series series
Website - RachelHulin.com

Rachel Hulin is a writer and photographer. Her work has been shown at Jen Bekman Gallery, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Wallspace Gallery, and The New York Photo Festival. She has written about photography for Photo District News, Emerging Photographer Magazine, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Faster Times. She is editor and co-founder of The Photography Post.

What Photography Gear Do You Intend to Buy In 2012?

Download and Test Lightroom 4 for Free

A while back we posted a guide that shows how to build a TTL cord extender using Cat 5e Ethernet cables and plugs.

YouTube member Matthewrichey made a short video describing the process which is worth checking out.

If you are more proficient with a credit card than a cable RJ45 plug crimper you can get a pretty long (10m) TTL cord for about $36 at your friendly online book store.

If any of you folks out there had a try, I would love to hear how long you got your cable before commands to the strobe stopped working.

Lastly, if you wondered why you would need a long TTL cord, check out Syl Areana's super smart way of using a Canon TTL master strobe inside a softbox to control other Canon strobes OR David Hobby's Strobe on a Rope self-assist way of off camera flashing.

[How to make a adjustable flash sync cord with cat5 cable via cheesycam]

read more

It is not often that I see a picture and get my eye wet with nostalgia. However this one from David Sittig hit a soft spot for me (click here for lightbox view). Having a Kiev 88, a Seagull 4A and a Minolta SRT 101 in the same shot should be good enough on any given day, but David made the extra step of making it a TTV (Through The Viewfinder) photograph featuring the Minolta and Seagull in the Kiev's viewfinder.(Final image, just in case you care for this kind of thing, was taken with a D90)

I asked David to share the process of taking this image with DIYP readers and much to my delight he said yes:

read more

5 Ways for Photographers to use an iPad to Jumpstart their Business

Malwine Rafalski
Untitled, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, 2009
From the Holon series
Website - MalwineRafalski.com

Malwine Rafalski is a documentary photographer based in Cologne, Germany. Malwine studied photography and media at FH Bielefeld and graduated 2009 with her series Holon. In this Project, she photographs forest-dwelling communities that have rejected today’s mechanized society for a utopian vision of communion with the natural world. 2009, she won the "Creative Graduate Prize" in the category "Static Art". Her work has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and publications.

Elizabeth Giorgi of Being Geek Chic (God, I love this name) shares a great little tutorial that shows you how to make a fashionable camera wrist strap. The kind that is kinda like lanyard that keep cameras from finding their way to the cement pavement.

The stitching job is really easy and if you ever wanted to get into sewing (come'on I know you do) this is a great starters project, that will ease you in to the world of doubles, zig-zags and overlocks. (And you win a wonderful strap in the process). Hit the jump for a full movie tutorial.

read more

Poser: Achieve Perfect Portrait Expression

A note from editor Andy Adams

Hello All,

2012 is off to a great start and I wanted to touch base with some website updates as we round the corner into February. Thanks so much to those of you who have emailed with kind words about the site, your support means so much and it reminds me how connected our community really is. Our Winter Pictures 2012 feature wrapped last week: you can learn more about this year's artists by clicking the “Photo Details” link in their slideshow caption. Feel free to comment on their photos — I’m sharing your feedback with the photographers and many of them are responding to our readers from inside their posts.

If you haven’t already seen them, take a peek at this month’s interviews: we’re featuring conversations with Kelli Connell, Richard Barnes and Darin Mickey. And there are some smart videos profiling photographers Sarah Sudhoff and John Coffer as well as original motion pictures by Simon Biswas, Brian Lesteberg, Susan Worsham and Rafal Milach in the Motion section. I’d love for more people learn about these image-makers, so please share the posts with students and colleagues who would enjoy them.

In other news: We launched our first solo exhibition in the Flak Photo Galleries: a selection of tintype portraits from photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley. In support of her gallery, we’re teaming up with Light Work to give away ten signed copies of her Contact Sheet issue this week. It’s a lovely piece of work, so I hope you’ll make time to enter the drawing — Submission deadline is Thursday, February 2.

I’m also excited to introduce a new feature we’ve been developing: the small slideshow gallery you’re seeing up top. We’re planning to present the photography discussed in Flak Photo’s Features, Books and News sections with this new approach. Big thanks are in order to the Flak Photo Beta group members who tested our demo and helped us iron out the wrinkles this week. The way we look at photography online is changing rapidly, and it’s important to us that you’re able to enjoy Flak Photo when and where you want it, so we’ve built the slideshow with mobile and tablets in mind. In addition to navigating the old-fashioned way with your mouse, you can swipe the pictures on your touchscreen. Give it a try next time you’re away from your desk; we think you’ll like it.

Some of you have suggested that it should be easier to find photos or artists in The Collection. We agree and are planning to improve how you search and browse the archives. To begin with, we’ve proofed the 1,500+ images in the collection — with significant help from members of the online photography community. Sincere thanks are in order to Cécile Poulain, Samuel Glazebrook, Adam Neese, Willson Cummer, Connor McNicholas and Laura Chenault for graciously volunteering to help us with the process — See their handiwork at FlakPhoto.com/Collection.

Finally, I wanted to invite all of you to join us in the Flak Photo Beta group. We’re using Facebook to share behind-the-scenes website updates and also to listen to ideas about how we can improve upon the work  we've done so far. There are more updates coming later this year and your feedback will help us make this experience even better. You can find us at Facebook.com/Groups/FlakPhotoBeta.

I hope the New Year has been a creative one for all of you – As always, I’d love to hear about what you’ve been working on. You can contact me at any time via email, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook.

Best,

Andy Adams
Editor • Producer • Publisher
FlakPhoto.com

How I Stumbled Across an Amazing Way to Slow Down My Shooting Process

Panasonic DMC-GF3 Review

Take More Photos – Keep Less

Video by Lost & Found Films

"We look at working in documentaries almost like a passport that allows us to see how different people live, across cultural, class, socioeconomic and racial lines. And what better way to sum up that idea than explore people's spaces: their home, their place of work, their hangout spot — to really examine, both visually and emotionally, the places that people LIVE. So we decided to make that the focus of our series, This Must Be The Place." — Ben Wu

Filmmakers Ben Wu and David Usui's This Must Be the Place is a series of short films that explores the idea of home; what makes them, how they represent us, and why we need them. Their most recent installment, Coffer is a meditative portrayal of tintype photographer John Coffer's rural home and workspace in upstate New York. Living off the grid, in a cabin he built by hand more than two decades years ago, the artists explains the philosophy behind his way of life, and his thoughts on the nature of home, while the camera drifts through his space, capturing glimpses of him at work and at rest.

The Rule of Thirds: Weekly Photography Challenge

A “Happy Snap” Lightroom Workflow

Samantha Contis
Shed With Tree (Silo), Spruce Creek, Pennsylvania, 2007
Website - SamanthaContis.com

Samantha Contis received her MFA from Yale University in 2008 and BFA in Photography and Art History from New York University in 2004. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Smack Mellon (NYC), Newspace Center for Photography (Portland) and Workspace (Los Angeles). Her photographs have been published in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Capricious, Nomenus Quarterly and T. She is a recipient of the Tierney Fellowship and is currently at work on her first book. Contis lives and works in New York City.

For about three years I used a Nikon Coolpix and enjoyed taking photos of snowflakes in the winter. I struggled with the autofocus, so I figured I would invest in a digital camera with manual focus and macro. After much time and web surfing, I found the Canon SX130IS which has very good reviews, manual focus, and a reasonable price.

read more

Memory cards have their speed rating systems. For example, class 6 is the recommended base class for 1080p HD video coming from DSLRs. Those classes however, don't tell you what is the burst rate on individual shots. Mostly because each image has a different MB size to it depending on many factors.

Jaroslav over at Crazy Lab found an interesting way of measuring the burst rate and comparing different factors that affect the camera to card writing speed. TO make the test constant he covered the lens of his Canon T3i and took pictures of darkness. By recording the shutter sound (or music as some call it) and displaying the waveform in Audacity Jaroslav was able to compare burst-rates of different ISOs, capturing modes and cards.

read more

Does That Little Flip Up Diffuser Actually Help?

A collaboration with Light Work

Hello All,

I'm thrilled to kick off the 2012 Flak Photo Galleries program with an online exhibition by photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley. The community response has been amazing and nearly 3,000 people have viewed her images since the gallery went live last weekend. Thanks so much to those of you who have shared the post with students and colleagues!

View Keliy's [hyphen] Americans exhibition in the Flak Photo Galleries »

A key part of my mission is to promote independent photo publications, so I'm excited to team up with Light Work, a nonprofit organization that supports artists working in photography, to give away signed copies of Keliy's issue of Contact Sheet to ten Flak Photo fans. Keliy's book, which was published in conjunction with her solo exhibition at Light Work last fall, showcases her beautiful tintype portraits and an essay by Light Work Executive Director Jeffrey Hoone.

Learn more about Contact Sheet #163 »

Getting in on the drawing is easy: To enter, browse Keliy's Flak Photo Profile and post a link to one of your favorite tintypes in the comments at the bottom of this post. Ten fans will be randomly selected from the submissions to receive a complimentary copy of the catalog. Call for entries closes Thursday, February 2 at 11:59 PM CDT.

Browse Keliy Anderson-Staley's Flak Photo Profile »

I'd love for more people to hear about this giveaway: If you use social media to talk about photography or are connected to an online photo community, please share this post using the buttons in the upper right corner of the page. Good Luck!

Best,

Andy Adams
Editor • Producer • Publisher
FlakPhoto.com

PS: Light Work is giving away signed copies of the book too! Visit their Facebook page for details »

A collaboration with Light Work

Hello All,

I'm thrilled to kick off the 2012 Flak Photo Galleries program with an online exhibition by photographer Keliy Anderson-Staley. The community response has been amazing and nearly 3,000 people have viewed her images since the gallery went live last weekend. Thanks so much to those of you who have shared the post with students and colleagues!

View Keliy's [hyphen] Americans exhibition in the Flak Photo Galleries »

A key part of my mission is to promote independent photo publications, so I'm excited to team up with Light Work, a nonprofit organization that supports artists working in photography, to give away copies of Keliy's issue of Contact Sheet to ten Flak Photo fans. Keliy's book, which was published in conjunction with her solo exhibition at Light Work last fall, showcases her beautiful tintype portraits and an essay by Light Work Executive Director Jeffrey Hoone.

Learn more about Contact Sheet #163 »

Getting in on the drawing is easy: To enter, browse Keliy's Flak Photo Profile and post a link to one of your favorite tintypes in the comments at the bottom of this post. Ten fans will be randomly selected from the submissions to receive a complimentary copy of the catalog. Call for entries closes Thursday, February 2 at 11:59 PM CDT.

Browse Keliy Anderson-Staley's Flak Photo Profile »

I'd love for more people to hear about this giveaway: If you use social media to talk about photography or are connected to an online photo community, please share this post using the buttons in the upper right corner of the page. Good Luck!

Best,

Andy Adams
Editor • Producer • Publisher
FlakPhoto.com

PS: Light Work is giving away signed copies of the book too! Visit their Facebook page for details »

Wendy Given
I Am That Merry Wanderer of the Night, Caldera/Blue Lake, Sisters, Oregon, 2010
From the How to Explain Magic to a Dead Rabbit series
Website - WendyGiven.com

Wendy Given was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1971. Given received her Master’s of Fine Arts from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California and her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Atlanta College of Art in Atlanta, GA (now the Savannah College of Art and Design). Her work in photography, video and sculpture has been exhibited in Germany, The Netherlands and nationally. Given's work in photography will be included in the 10th Northwest Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Washington in January 2012 as well as an upcoming solo exhibition at Nationale in Portland, Oregon in February. Given is a Portland, Oregon based visual artist where her work is produced with her husband, two dogs and cat.

I've seen some crazy setups for high speed photography utilizing all sorts of weird parts. There is even a system that will turn the lights off for you, if you so please. But, this is the first time I am seeing such a huge overkill in term of components used to gain some control over the circuit.

read more

Do you have a Photoblog? [POLL]

Sony NEX-7 Review

Give Your Viewers Some Place To Go

Martin Brink
Untitled, Helsingborg, Sweden, 2011
Website - MartinBrink.se

3 Minutes with Photographer Sean McCormack

A Guide to Post Processing Your Images: Photo Nuts and Post

Rebecca Manson
Manhattan Bridge, , 2009
Website - RebeccaManson.com

Our buddy Destin from Smarter Every Day is about to have a new baby, but seconds before rushing to the hospital, he shares a neat slo-mo (or high-speed, depending on your take) video of a Canon 60D shutter going through the a full exposure cycle.

You can see the four stages of the exposure:

• The mirror flips
• The first curtain goes down to expose the sensor
• Second curtain covers the sensor to end the exposure
• And finally the mirror jumps back up

Now, here is a question for extra credit, can you calculate the exposure time?

If you are like me and like this kind of random science, you can register to Smarter Every Day Youtube channel here.

Congrats Destin for your new baby!

read more

Fujifilm Finepix X100 – 15 seconds, f/8, ISO 200

The Ultimate, Expandable Expedition Camera Backpack: f-stop Satori [REVIEW]

How Post-Processing Helped Me Become a Better Photographer

Tema Stauffer
Tree, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 2003
From the American Stills series
Website - TemaStauffer.com

Tema Stauffer is a photographer and writer based in Brooklyn and a curator for Culturehall. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1995 and received a MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1998. Her work has been exhibited at Jen Bekman Gallery and Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery in New York, as well as galleries and institutions nationally and internationally. She currently teaches at the School of the International Center of Photography and Ramapo College, and co-taught a photography workshop at Toxico Cultura in Mexico City. She also writes a blog about photography, PalmAire, and contributes to the Mana Art Center’s Log. In 2010, she was awarded an AOL 25 for 25 Grant for innovation in the arts.

One of the downsides of using a small strobe is that you don't get the nice modeling light like the big studio guns.

That means that you have to pre-visualize your light. If you are new to strobes this may not be trivial even on a bare strobe, but throw some modifiers in (e.g. a softbox or an umbrella) and it get even harder. This is why a modeling light is can be your best friend as you make your first steps into the modifiers world. In this tutorial I will explain how you can add a modeling light to a strobe using a DIY Double Flash Bracket, but any double flash bracket will do.

read more

How to Crop to Fixed Ratio in Photoshop

11 Ways to get Free Marketing for Your Photography

Sigma 4.5mm F2.8 EX DC HSM Circular Fisheye [REVIEW]

Photographs by Keliy Anderson-Staley, Essay by Geoffrey Batchen

Editor's Note: Flak Photo is proud to feature this gallery in support of Keliy Anderson Staley's current exhibition and solo issue of Contact Sheet, a book of the photographer's tintype portraits published by Light Work in 2011. For more information about this publication and to order a copy for your personal collection, visit LightWork.org.

They loom out of the darkness, as if hovering uncertainly between past and present, offering themselves for our scrutiny with an intensity that borders on the confrontational. Part of it is the look these people give us, staring at the camera for as long as sixty seconds and more, resulting in a kind of clenching of the eyes (as a sitter, you become aware of the sheer physicality of looking under these conditions, of the need to fight your eyes’ desire to wander). Part of it is the texture of their skin, turned into rugged planetary surfaces by the tintype’s peculiar response to color and high resolution of detail. And part of it is the differential focus with which the subjects are depicted—sharp in some places and strangely liquid in others—as if their bodies are floating in a primordial wet world with just the faces breaking the surface. For all these reasons, Keliy Anderson-Staley’s tintype portraits are best described as other worldly, rather than antiquarian.

The tintype, an American invention, was introduced in 1855 and continued to be widely used until the 1930s, making it one of the most enduring of photographic processes. The selection reproduced here is part of a collection of hundreds of contemporary examples taken by Anderson-Staley. Among their other attributes, these portraits — each designated only by a first name and the year of exposure — offer us a survey of race, gender, and age that considerably expands the primarily Caucasian version of American society recorded in nineteenth-century tintypes.

As a collodion negative developed on a small sheet of lacquered metal, a tintype has the appearance of a positive print but no possibility of being reproduced in multiple manifestations. Each tintype is, in other words, a unique object. As a mirror image, tintypes also show an inverted version of their subject (what appears to be a right hand is in fact the left, and so on). To make her tintypes, Anderson-Staley uses hand-poured chemistry that she mixes herself according to nineteenth-century recipes, period brass lenses, and wooden view cameras to expose positive images directly onto blackened metal (usually aluminum) and glass plates. Exposure times are long by today’s standards, and many of her sitters have made use of a hidden metal posing stand, its cold extensions holding the head steady as the seconds tick interminably by, counted off by the photographer.

These technical details matter. They help explain how these photographs come to look the way they do (why, for example, nobody smiles). Walter Benjamin evokes this look rather well in his 1931 essay “Little History of Photography,” when he writes, “The first reproduced human beings entered the viewing space of photography with integrity—or rather, without inscription…The human countenance had a silence about it in which the gaze rested….The procedure itself caused the subjects to live their way into, rather than out of, the moment; during the long duration of the exposure, they grew into the picture.”¹

Perhaps that is what is most striking about these pictures: The people portrayed still appear to be growing into them, still seem in the process of becoming themselves. In this way, Anderson-Staley’s work transcends the undoubted curiosity value of her chosen medium. Before they are tintypes, these pictures are portraits, portraits of contemporary Americans (perhaps, even, when seen collectively, a portrait of contemporary America). As such, they raise the whole question of photographic portraiture, of what exactly can be deduced about an otherwise unknown person from a mere picture of his or her face.

The pictorial qualities of the tintype, its obvious artifices and self-conscious accentuation of surface appearance, make these questions unavoidable. They remind us of what we already know: that a photograph represents a truth-to-presence (it certifies that a person was once there before the camera, in some past moment in time and space), but not a truth-to-appearance. These tintypes do not look much like the people they represent; the process itself results in visible deformations of form and feature. And yet these same people seem so much more present than the subjects of other kinds of photographs, in part because the passing of time between then and now—a feature of all photographs—seems here to be flowing before our very eyes. In simultaneously drawing attention to both the medium’s pictorial deceptions and its temporal peculiarities, these pictures insist that our relationship to photography hinges, not on truth, but on desire—on our own desire to transcend time and space by means of the magic of the photograph; to, as it were, cheat death. In short, the work of Keliy Anderson-Staley is an open invitation to see much more than meets the eye.

1. Walter Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’ (1931), in Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin eds., The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 279-280.

Photographs by Keliy Anderson-Staley, Essay by Geoffrey Batchen

Editor's Note: Flak Photo is proud to feature this gallery in support of Keliy Anderson Staley's current exhibition and solo issue of Contact Sheet, a book of the photographer's tintype portraits published by Light Work in 2011. For more information about this publication and to order a copy for your personal collection, visit LightWork.org.

They loom out of the darkness, as if hovering uncertainly between past and present, offering themselves for our scrutiny with an intensity that borders on the confrontational. Part of it is the look these people give us, staring at the camera for as long as sixty seconds and more, resulting in a kind of clenching of the eyes (as a sitter, you become aware of the sheer physicality of looking under these conditions, of the need to fight your eyes’ desire to wander). Part of it is the texture of their skin, turned into rugged planetary surfaces by the tintype’s peculiar response to color and high resolution of detail. And part of it is the differential focus with which the subjects are depicted—sharp in some places and strangely liquid in others—as if their bodies are floating in a primordial wet world with just the faces breaking the surface. For all these reasons, Keliy Anderson-Staley’s tintype portraits are best described as other worldly, rather than antiquarian.

The tintype, an American invention, was introduced in 1855 and continued to be widely used until the 1930s, making it one of the most enduring of photographic processes. The selection reproduced here is part of a collection of hundreds of contemporary examples taken by Anderson-Staley. Among their other attributes, these portraits — each designated only by a first name and the year of exposure — offer us a survey of race, gender, and age that considerably expands the primarily Caucasian version of American society recorded in nineteenth-century tintypes.

As a collodion negative developed on a small sheet of lacquered metal, a tintype has the appearance of a positive print but no possibility of being reproduced in multiple manifestations. Each tintype is, in other words, a unique object. As a mirror image, tintypes also show an inverted version of their subject (what appears to be a right hand is in fact the left, and so on). To make her tintypes, Anderson-Staley uses hand-poured chemistry that she mixes herself according to nineteenth-century recipes, period brass lenses, and wooden view cameras to expose positive images directly onto blackened metal (usually aluminum) and glass plates. Exposure times are long by today’s standards, and many of her sitters have made use of a hidden metal posing stand, its cold extensions holding the head steady as the seconds tick interminably by, counted off by the photographer.

These technical details matter. They help explain how these photographs come to look the way they do (why, for example, nobody smiles). Walter Benjamin evokes this look rather well in his 1931 essay “Little History of Photography,” when he writes, “The first reproduced human beings entered the viewing space of photography with integrity—or rather, without inscription…The human countenance had a silence about it in which the gaze rested….The procedure itself caused the subjects to live their way into, rather than out of, the moment; during the long duration of the exposure, they grew into the picture.”¹

Perhaps that is what is most striking about these pictures: The people portrayed still appear to be growing into them, still seem in the process of becoming themselves. In this way, Anderson-Staley’s work transcends the undoubted curiosity value of her chosen medium. Before they are tintypes, these pictures are portraits, portraits of contemporary Americans (perhaps, even, when seen collectively, a portrait of contemporary America). As such, they raise the whole question of photographic portraiture, of what exactly can be deduced about an otherwise unknown person from a mere picture of his or her face.

The pictorial qualities of the tintype, its obvious artifices and self-conscious accentuation of surface appearance, make these questions unavoidable. They remind us of what we already know: that a photograph represents a truth-to-presence (it certifies that a person was once there before the camera, in some past moment in time and space), but not a truth-to-appearance. These tintypes do not look much like the people they represent; the process itself results in visible deformations of form and feature. And yet these same people seem so much more present than the subjects of other kinds of photographs, in part because the passing of time between then and now—a feature of all photographs—seems here to be flowing before our very eyes. In simultaneously drawing attention to both the medium’s pictorial deceptions and its temporal peculiarities, these pictures insist that our relationship to photography hinges, not on truth, but on desire—on our own desire to transcend time and space by means of the magic of the photograph; to, as it were, cheat death. In short, the work of Keliy Anderson-Staley is an open invitation to see much more than meets the eye.

1. Walter Benjamin, ‘Little History of Photography’ (1931), in Michael W. Jennings, Brigid Doherty, and Thomas Y. Levin eds., The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 279-280.

Patterns: Weekly Photography Challenge

How to Create Hand Drawn Frames in Photoshop

Tessa Bunney
Vuorilammen sauna and ice swimming hole, Jyväskylä, Finland, 2010
From the Järvenjää / Lakeice series
Website - TessaBunney.co.uk

Zen and the Art of Photography

Palmer Davis
Winter Trees, Larchmont, New York, 2009
From the American Stories series
Website - PalmerDavisPhotography.com

Palmer Davis creates photographs that explore the mysterious and the magical in the everyday. His pictures evoke a sense of place and time and tell a story. Whether the setting is natural or man-made, an expansive landscape or an intimate space, it is always a personal interpretation, viewed through a prism of memory, dream, myth and desire. His photographic eye has been developed over a thirty-year career as an award-winning advertising creative director at Young & Rubicam, Ally & Gargano, Darcy Masius Benton & Bowles and other Madison Avenue agencies. He studied photography and filmmaking at Hampshire College, California College of Arts and Crafts, N.Y.U. and The International Center of Photography, where he is now a member of the faculty. Davis lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

About two days ago I returned from PMA. Aside from the big camera announcements going on the main CES showrooms (the Nikon D4, the Canon G1 X and the Fujifilm X-Pro1) there were a lot of innovation and coolness going on the smaller booths and the PMA venue.

Actually, for me as a photographer/blogger/inventor some of the stuff that was displayed on the smaller booths was more interesting than (I said you could touch it not grab it) touching new camera models.

The really nice thing about it, is the most often than not, the inventor would stand in their booth in a way that allows direct interaction. The kind of stuff you can't get on emails. So you get to ask questions, make suggestions and get instant feedback. nice.

Here is a small round up of the stuff that I found cool on PMA/CES, some of it is new, some has been around for a while. Feel free to add more coolness if you've seen it.

read more

Will Lightroom 4 Be Worth The Upgrade Cost?

33 Inspirational Images that Feature Patterns and Repetition

Michael George
Hiking Hocking Hills, Ohio, 2011
From the Into the Trees series
Website - MichaelGeorgePhoto.com

Photographer and design student Hunter Frerich came up with this really cool DIY for building a small circular soft box. It kinda resembles one of the first projects on DIYP (which is the one that actually pushed me to start the site) but is waaaaay nicer and probably gives way better light. It kinda resembles the Honl Traveller8, but exchanges the high $$ for sewing skills.

read more

Year In Review: 6 More Ways to Top Your Best Photos

5 Top Tips for Working with Gimp

Max Sher
Untitled, Atyrau, Kazakhstan, 2011
From the Landscapes series
Website - MaxSher.com

Born in St. Petersburg, raised in Siberia and educated in Siberia and France, Max Sher took up photography in 2006. His work (personal and commissioned) has since appeared in Courrier International, Monocle, Esquire (Russia), le Monde, Libération, Ogoniok, Independent Magazine, Afisha, Bolshoi Gorod, Russian Reporter, Snob, GEO Traveler, Foto8, Private, Newsweek Japan, etc. and was exhibited in St.Petersburg, Vienna, Moscow, Bratislava, among others. Max was nominated for KLM Paul Huf Awards in 2008. He is currently based in Moscow.

GoDox Lighting Kit, Just the ticket! [Review]

289 “Best Photos of 2011″ Blog Posts