Archive for September, 2014

I know that we have since moved on from Photograms, but as I was traversing the internet, I found some interesting photograms on Abelardo Morell’s website. In some of his photograms, he uses water and liquids like ink to create very interesting compositions. I for one had never thought of putting droplets of liquid directly onto the surface of the photographic paper, which has proven to create  a very appealing image. Looking at Morell’s photograms makes me want to experiment more with composing interesting photograms using different objects and angles of light.

So this is a bit out of the realm of the basics of black and white film photography, but I thought I’d share with everyone this cool new technology.
These cameras use light-field photography and it captures light in a way that you can change the focus of the photograph after the fact. I thought this might be interesting to some after talking about depth of field in photography. Good news is you can buy the 1st gen. Lytro camera for $200-250. The bad news, the Lytro Illum is running at $1,600 currently. It’s definitely something to keep your eye on as they perfect this technology and the better cameras come down in price.
You can check out more about the cameras here or check out photos made with those cameras here.

The discussion we had in class today about the camera controls was very beneficial to me. Although I took a photography class in high school, I was never taught the science behind the camera, or even exactly what the aperture and shutter speed did or how they work together, until now. Learning the science behind the camera has really fascinated me and has helped build my understanding. For example, in class today when we were discussing how the aperture controls the depth of field, it actually really clicked with me when Nil was explaining the physics concept of “unorganized” light. This really gave me an understanding of how the aperture works to create a shallow depth of field with a blurry background and/or foreground (using f/1.8 for example), or an image that is sharp all over (using f/22 for example).

However, it’s a little tricky for me to remember the f-stops and that the smallest opening has the biggest number (f/22), and the biggest opening has the smallest number (f/1.8), but this is when I am glad to know the physics behind it, instead of just trying to memorize which is which.

It’s so interesting how much science plays into all of the art disciplines, especially photography. I think knowing the science behind how the camera works is essential for capturing great images. Now that I have a basic understanding of the camera controls, I am so excited to put my knowledge into practice for our first project!

We had a great discussion today in class on the different aspects of the camera. I find it amazing how each setting truly effects your picture in a powerful way. One aspect I have a little less understanding on is what the “F-Stop” digits stand for. This Article, from “idigitalphoto.com” does a great job on explaining “what” these numbers stand for and “why” in a little more depth! Check it out:

Camera Aperture

Gilad Benari is a photographer from Israel who enjoys taking pictures of reflections. His work is stunning and creative, you can find the link to his blog here!

http://gilad.deviantart.com

George Eastman was the pioneer for the use of photographic film. He started manufacturing paper film in 1885 and named his first camera the “Kodak” which was for sale initially in 1888.  The camera was preloaded for 100 exposures and then sent back to the factory to be processed and reloaded.  Now days this would seem crazy to wait so long and have to do all that work to get a picture, but back then this was an incredible discovery of how to save real life images on paper forever.

Below is a picture of the Kodak No. 2 Brownie box camera.  It is so fascinating to see how cameras have evolved over time and learn from the pioneers of photography.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_camera

While doing a bit of research on photograms, I stumbled across some of Man Ray’s work, a 20th century artist. Man Ray’s involvement with photograms, which he later called “rayographs,” was apparently the result of a mistake Man Ray made while developing some photo paper. Although Man Ray did not create the concept of the photogram, it seems that he did bring them more popularity.

These two photograms (“rayographs”) are some of Man Ray’s work. I love the contrast of light and dark and the mysterious, beautiful quality these images have.

Image from http://theliteratelens.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/manray_two1.jpg

From photographer Abelardo Morell—same author of A Book of Books—a gallery of hauntingly beautiful pictures excerpted from his new book, Camera Obscura, where we discover how much of the world can fit through a pinhole.