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dPS Weekly Photography Challenge : Books

21 Aug

The post dPS Weekly Photography Challenge : Books appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

A source of learning and inspiration, books are a part of all (ok, most?) of our lives, some of them even have pages! (yes, that was a side-eyed shot at people who only use e-readers haha) I personally love a great photography book, but I digress… This week your challenge is to make an interesting photograph with a book! I’ve share a few examples below (They’re from Unsplash, this week with home-school here in Melbourne, I’ve had little time to pick up the camera, sadly!)

You can set a scene with a book, use it’s pages to guide your viewer into your photograph, it can be all about the book, as though the book is for sale and you have to make the photo of it that makes people want to buy it – you can come at your photograph from any angle (in every sense) and I really look forward to seeing your different perspectives this week!

Make sure you tag your photographs with #dPSBooks and #dPSWeeklyChallenge if you share them on Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, so that we can spot them and share them.

dPS Weekly Photography Challenge : Books — Aaron Burden from Unsplash

Four different styles for you to consider, many more options though – it could be a self portrait, a background to a ring (that you may have seen once or a million times in sets of wedding photos)

Make sure you tag us on social if that’s where you choose to post your entry for the weekly challenge.

As ever, some help with sharing your photo into the comments section below (don’t click on this photo to upload your photo, scroll down to the Disqus section, log in, THEN click on the little camera icon in the comments)

Weekly Photography Challenge – How To Submit Your Photo

Simply upload your shot into the comments field (look for the little camera icon in the Disqus comments section) and they’ll get embedded for us all to see. Or, if you’d prefer, upload them to your favorite photo-sharing site and leave the link to them.

The post dPS Weekly Photography Challenge : Books appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Sime.

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Books that made a difference: Camera Lucida (Roland Barthes, 1980)

19 Apr

If you’ve never heard of Roland Barthes, congrats – clearly you were never forced to study structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstructionism or semiotics. Lucky you.

It was as a semiologist that Barthes (b 1915 – d 1980) was best known, and in simple terms, semiotics is the study of signs, symbols and their meaning. For obvious reasons, academic texts that deal with semiotics (and structuralism, and post-structuralism, and deconstructivism) tend towards the abstruse. When the king of the deconstructionists Jacques Derrida (of whose work ‘abstruse’ would count as a highly charitable description) passed away in 2004, satirical website The Onion ran a single sentence headline: Jacques Derrida “dies”. That joke (and variations on it) are, trust me, the only funny thing that has ever come out of semiotics, structuralism, post-structuralism or deconstructionism. Reading the work of certain semiologists is like trying to argue with a hungry 3-year old who has an MA.

The reason I’m writing about Roland Barthes on DPReview is that Barthes was fascinated by photography, and wrote one of my all-time favorite books about it – ‘Camera Lucida’, published in 1980. Photography didn’t attract much academic interest until the 1970s and 80s, and ‘Camera Lucida’, alongside Susan Sontag’s ‘On Photography’ is among the most influential (and enjoyable) books of its period to deal with photography as a cultural phenomenon, not just in the obvious way, as an art and practise. You do not need to know anything about philosophy to read ‘Camera Lucida’ and you might actually enjoy it more if you don’t.

Photography is an odd kind of art-form. You can’t ‘read’ a photograph like you can text (which is the kind of thing that annoys the hell out of semiologists), and being by its nature infinitely reproducible, a photograph doesn’t have the uniqueness of a painting. Consider also that to ‘make’ a photograph takes no training. In many circles, photography is still considered the poor cousin of ‘real’ art and it’s easy to understand why. Just remember Kodak’s famous slogan: “You push the button, we do the rest”.

As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”

Barthes thought that photography is actually closer to theatre than to painting (because of its direct line of connection to life). He was not a photographer – “too impatient for that” – and had no interest in investigating photography as an activity. He wanted to get to grips with what photographs are and what makes them unique.

In perhaps his most famous statement on photography (made before he wrote ‘Camera Lucida’) he suggests that the photograph is a semiotically unique, paradoxical artifact – unique because it is a “message without a code”. It doesn’t need a code (or shouldn’t) because in theory, the message of a photograph is reality itself. This is the photograph as a purely representational artifact – the product of light rays, entering a camera from the surface of a tiny corner of reality. As Louis Daguerre said, the photograph “gives Nature an ability to reproduce herself”. And he ought to know.

That’s the theory, at least. The problem (the paradox) of course is that despite the fact that a photograph is a mechanically-created object, it’s very hard to imagine a photograph that isn’t highly coded. Everything from how a portrait subject is posed, to the photographers’ choice of background, or camera angle etc., can affect how we feel about a photograph, and ultimately what we take away from it. It’s actually very difficult to conceive of an example of what Barthes calls the ‘brute image’; a hypothetical photograph free from any kind of connoted meaning.

One of a collection of images taken by a relative of my grandmother and grandfather on a honeymoon trip around England in late summer 1939 (you can read more about the project and see more images here).

Because of when they were taken (just weeks before the outbreak of WWII) and how (they were shot on then-rare color film) they’re all rich in what Barthes called ‘Studium’. For me, the ‘punctum’ in this shot is my grandparents’ cat (bottom of the photograph, in front of the tent, facing the camera) which – apparently – traveled with them.

In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes suggests that there are two elements to every photograph. Borrowing from latin, he calls these the studium (‘study’ – think application or commitment) and the punctum (‘point’ – think puncture or prick).

In simple terms, the studium is all the information which can be gleaned from a photograph which derives from the cultural context in which it exists. As such, the studium is experienced according to the viewer’s personal, political and cultural viewpoint. A good example of a kind of photography which is rich in studium would be traditional western photojournalism. Assuming you’re familiar with the culture in which they were taken, such photographs are pretty easy to ‘decode’ when we see them in our daily newspapers. We know what they are ‘of’.

The punctum, on the other hand, is an element (or elements) of a photograph which don’t necessarily contribute to their overall meaning or intended message, but which grab or ‘prick’ us for some reason. Barthes gives the example of a 1924 photograph by Lewis Hine of a developmentally disabled child in a New Jersey institution, with a bandage on her finger. For Barthes, the ‘punctum’ is the bandage – an “off-center detail” which catches his attention and which provokes a “tiny shock”. The studium, in contrast, is “liking, not […] loving” – a “slippery, irresponsible interest one takes in [things] one finds ‘all right’ “. The bandage has nothing to do with the studium of the Hine photograph, but it interests him more.

Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically

This might all sound very abstract, but it’s actually a really useful way of thinking about how we take photographs. Try categorizing your own work by Barthes’ definitions. Are you someone whose photography is all about the studium? I suspect that most of us are. Most of us take pictures of places, people and things, without spending a lot of time thinking about their content beyond whether it appeals to us aesthetically. We can learn from photographs like this, but it’s generally (literally) surface-level stuff.

The punctum is more valuable, says Barthes, because it’s unexpected. Uncoded, and more interesting. And to return to the comparison with painting, a punctum of the kind that Barthes describes could only exist in a photograph, because of the unique way in which photographs are created.

By the time I was able to really know my grandparents they were old (and my grandfather died when I was in my early teens). For me, working on these images offered an amazing opportunity to encounter them them as young people. In Barthes words, I was “gradually moving back in time” with these people, both of whom are now dead.

Thanks to a DPReview reader, I even know what happened to the car.

Even in translation. Barthes is a great writer. He’s smart (obviously) but also funny. He’s wonderfully catty about types of photographs and photographers that he doesn’t like, and he correctly identifies one of the most creatively destructive traps that you can fall into as a photographer: thinking that just because you took a picture of something, it must be important. Ouch.

To me, the main appeal of ‘Camera Lucida’ is that it’s much more than just an academic dissertation – it’s a deeply personal, very emotional book. Less philosophy in many places, and more biography.

The latter part of the book, especially, contains some quite beautiful writing. This is highly unusual in a work of philosophy (trust me). Perhaps the reason for the switch to a less academic and more personal mode of writing is that while he was working on ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes’ beloved mother Henriette died. And after she died he went looking for her. Not literally, but emotionally, hoping to find the essence of her in family photographs.

He talks about this process in terms of a “painful labor”, “gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face I had loved”. He describes “straining towards the essence of her identity, […] struggling among images partially true, and therefore totally false”. What he was finding in the photographs, to his frustration, were merely “fragments”.

And then, finally, he made a breakthrough. He found what he was looking for in a single photograph of his mother as a young girl. Among a mass of pictures of Henriette as an adult, it was in this photograph of a five year-old child – a child of course who he never met in life – that he truly recognised the person he had known and loved.

Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.

In the final chapters of ‘Camera Lucida’ (it’s a very short book, most chapters are little more than a single page) Barthes revisits his central premise of the studium and the punctum, and revises it, suggesting a third element. Specifically, another type of punctum, not of form, “but of intensity”. This second punctum is Time.

In ‘Camera Lucida’, Barthes the famous philosopher gives way to Barthes the grieving son. Yes, much of the first half of the book is more or less standard fare for someone with his academic preoccupations (and indeed it picks up from his earlier work on the same subject, exploring the photograph’s potential as a purely representational object) but he’s not just flexing his intellectual muscles for the sake of it. Barthes is writing about time (he has a wonderful description of cameras as ‘clocks for seeing’), memory, and death. When it comes to the ultimate challenge of ‘penetrating’ photographs to find their meaning, Barthes doesn’t exactly admit defeat in ‘Camera Lucida’, but he does concede that maybe things are a little more complicated than he once thought.

A girl bathing by Stiffkey bridge, in Norfolk. August 1939. Looking at this picture I can’t help thinking who she is, what kind of life she had, and whether she’s still alive (if so, she must be in her late 80s or 90s now).

‘Camera Lucida’ may not make you a better photographer (it might actually make you pause before picking up your camera again!) but it will probably make you a more thoughtful one. There is a reasonably good chance, too, that it will make you cry. There’s a a lot of post-war Continental philosophy that might have the same effect, but for very different reasons.

I hope that after reading my incredibly shallow analysis of it, you do read ‘Camera Lucida’. And if you do, I hope that it will remind you of the unique role that photography has in our lives, and of its power. Photographs let us travel back in time, and in that way they enable us to maintain relationships with people that we’ve lost. In the end, it’s a book about love.

Is there a particular book which made a difference to your life as a photographer? We’d love to hear from you – and you might even get featured on the DPReview homepage. Leave us a short note in the comments and if you have a longer story to tell, send it to us, and we’ll take it from there.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today’s Digital World

25 Oct

The post Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today’s Digital World appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.

Imagine the internet never existed. I know – you’re reading this while on the internet – but bear with me. As a photographer, how would you show your photographs to other people? There would be no Instagram, no Flickr, no Facebook. The reality of this fictional internetless world would leave you with limited outlets for your work. In short, you would have to find a way to physically park your photos in front of the eyes of other humans. Galleries would certainly be an option; magazines and journal publications would be another. Of course, there would be another option; the construction of a photo book.

Aside from a solo exhibition, there is perhaps no better way for a photographer to express their exact creative vision than with a well-executed photo book. Even in today’s elevated climate of digital photography, photo books have managed to keep their foothold as one of the most impactful methods of distributing photographs to the masses, all the while maintaining allegiance to the original photographs as we meant for them to be viewed.

Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today's Digital World

Photo books aren’t nearly as prevalent (or produced) as they once were. However, if you are truly serious about yourself and the photographs you produce, then a photo book might be a wonderful conduit for you to express your photographs – I know it was for me. As paradoxical as it might sound, producing photo books today has never been easier.

In this article, we’ll look at some of the reasons, methods, and considerations you might want to examine if you’ve ever felt the need for something more than just condensing your photographs into social media posts and online galleries.

But…why a book?

We’ve already touched on some of the other ways that you might present your work to the public, so why are photo books so special? Well, it comes down to control, fidelity to your original vision, and the importance you place on both.

Photographs are finite in their original incarnations, meaning there was a time when you didn’t always have to guess how your photos would appear on the different devices. Even photos in widely-circulated publications like magazines would essentially be faithful to whatever the final press copy of the image might have been.

Herein lies the immense benefit of photo books; they are an end in themselves.

Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today's Digital World

With final archival quality of inks, papers and bindings, and even the varied perception of our own eyes aside, a photo book can be your final say on how your work should look. Much like a print, the extent of your involvement in the production process of your photo book (more on this shortly) means you can virtually maintain complete discretion on how people view your images.

This means that a person in Singapore will see the same colors and contrasts a person viewing your photo in Australia, Canada, or Wales.

Three stages of producing your photo book

I’ve condensed the steps of producing a photo book into three broad sections. That being said, a book could be written on each one of the steps themselves. So, we’ll just hit the high points.

1. The inception of the Idea

Of course, this is where any photo book should begin. With some extremely rare exceptions, your photo book should revolve around a central theme or concept. It could be something you care passionately about photographing or something you want to learn more about and show the world. The weird thing about ideas is that they are notoriously fluid, meaning that even though you have a general direction to aim your energy (and your camera), you should remain open to the organic evolution of your initial idea or concept for your book.

In the case of my photo book, “Faces of Grayson,” I initially had no intention of producing a book at all. I was just a person out in the wilderness with a camera. It was only after I examined a few of my images that I instantly knew I wanted to do more with the subject matter and eventually produce a book.

The photo that started it all.

Unless your photo book is strictly for your own personal use and enjoyment, I’d suggest that you don’t approach your idea for your photo book in retrograde. It’s likely not a good practice to simply go through all your photos and force yourself to find a common theme. If you begin with a solid idea that you care about, you’ll ultimately end up with a more cohesive finished work.

We’ll talk a bit more about the actual shooting and choosing of the book images in the next section.

2. Compiling the images

We’ve touched briefly on how it’s usually not advisable to base your photo book on photos already in your image archive. It’s just not a good idea. So, once you’ve decided on the subject of your photo book, approach the acquisition of your content with a Zen-like state of relaxation. Don’t force the work, and don’t force yourself to produce the work quickly.

With that said, pay careful attention that you don’t forget that these images are specifically intended to be part of your photo book. You should always keep the overall theme, feel, and concept in line with your original idea even if that idea evolves along the way.

Don’t rush things

For my photo book, I shot images for roughly two years. In the end, I had a multitude of photos from which I could choose the absolute best.

There is no time limit for obtaining your images. Please, please, PLEASE don’t rush yourself. A rough estimate of when you would like to see your book finally come to life is perfectly healthy. Conversely, subjecting yourself to a self-imposed “deadline” is not. So if there’s one piece of advice I could give when it comes to shooting the photos for your book, it would be not to rush. Instead, be deliberate, take your time, and get it right the first time.

Sequencing your photos

After you’ve completed the principal photography work for your book, it’s time to put it all together. Ask yourself a few questions: Is your book a narrative? Does the story you want it to tell depend on the order of the images?

Some photo books work very well with sequential arrangements based on the chronology of time and the progression of the subject matter through that time. If this is the case for your photo book, then make sure how you assign your images to the pages conveys this dynamic to the viewer.

If your book is not a narrative and instead is more of a compilation of place or subject with no need for sequential ordering, then the arrangement of the photos become less important. However, it should still remain a focus of great consideration.

Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today's Digital World

Once you have completed the task of choosing and sequencing your photos, it’s time to choose layouts and fonts, image sizing and orientation. Also, chooses the amount of supplemental textual narration you wish to include (or not include) with the images.

The majority of this will be left to your discretion unless you conscript outside help from a designer. Deciding on the final flavor of the book is the most difficult and most exciting aspect of putting together any photo book.

3. Printing

All right. This is where things get truly slippery. You’ve completed work on obtaining the photos for an idea that you absolutely love. The images are outstanding, sequencing is beautiful, and you know every last detail of your final grand vision. It’s all going to be perfect!

Well, I’m sorry to break it to you…

It won’t be.

Yes, I know. That truth hints at an underlying pessimism, but it’s intended to be constructive. You see, the key to sustained success with your photography is to maintain a realistic handle on your expectations. If you enter the printing process believing nothing will go wrong, and there will be no unforeseen challenges, then you will be quite discouraged when these inevitable issues arise.

Now that’s out of the way, let’s look at some common (but not all) options you might have for getting your photo book printed.

Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today's Digital World

Print-on-demand

A commonplace service in the literary world, the print-on-demand model is perhaps the easiest and most cost-effective method for getting your photo book published and printed. It also involves the least investment on your part in terms of personal control.

Print-on-demand means just what the name implies; you provide the finished content design, and a printer/publisher/distributor will print a copy of the book each time a copy gets ordered. This is a wonderfully cost-effective way to print small or large numbers of your photo book with virtually no waste. Your book gets printed only when there is an order. Often this method also includes a free ISBN and other perks.

This is also a great option to get your photo book printed and sold with as little overhead as possible. However, there are some downsides to this process. Namely, you will have little or no creative control over paper types, bindings, inks, and other nuances of the book printing process.

Amazon, Blurb and a growing number of other well-known book merchants have begun offering these types of services to photographers wishing to get their photo books distributed to the masses. For users of Lightroom, you can design and send your book to Blurb direct from the Lightroom software too.

Traditional book printers

If you want to go big with your photo book endeavor and have the financial (and marketing) resources to sit at the table, then you might be interested to know that even independently published photographers can have extremely high-quality photo books printed which offer enormous creative control over virtually every aspect of the printing process. This means that you will usually be able to select paper types and binding materials along with physically proofing prints so that your photos look exactly the way you want them to display.

Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today's Digital World

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the most forgiving option for those who are creating their first photo book or have limited means for producing their published work. It involves the willingness to exercise ultimate creative judgment on all aspects of your book, which can be highly stressful. Furthermore, the majority of these types of printing firms have strict minimum printing runs for all printed books.

So, unless you need and are ready to store and distribute upwards of 1,000 copies of your book, this might not be the best route for your project. At the same time, if you do have the logistics in place and the demand is high enough for the quantity involved, the per-copy price of high-volume printers like these translates to relatively attractive profit margins when you consider the quality versus the cost of the product.

I went via this route with my first photo book. It involved organizing an overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaign along with a highly aggressive marketing strategy to source the funds I needed to cover the cost of printing. Would I do it again? Honestly, probably not, at least not this way, which brings me to our next option.

photo-books

Limited quantity printing

If you’re looking for a careful balance between precise creative control, costs, and volume, this is likely the best choice for your photo book.

You could easily call this printing method could easily “artisan” printing. It involves a low number of meticulously crafted books, often with finely curated materials and craftsmanship, which can be purveyed more as a personal statement than a mass-produced product.

Limited quantity printing is perfect for face-to-face marketing, where the photo book itself becomes an art piece. Printing costs are relatively high, so in most cases, quantities of twenty or more copies could become slightly awkward. However, books of this nature can demand higher sale prices from collectors and impassioned patrons, and rightfully so.

Value in the effort?

It might be difficult to believe, but there is so much more to say about the in’s and out’s of making a photo book; at least one that you intend to make for the enjoyment of others.

A photo book is more than just making photos and finding a way to bind them into pages. Is it worth it? Does the reward justify the risk? It depends. Have you felt strongly about your subject and feel equally compelled to make photographs of that subject which you then work to compile into a photo book? If so, you’ve already committed a piece of yourself to the project. Anything that carries that much personal investment is, by definition, a success.

So, yes, there is still value in photo books. In a sense, books such as these carry even more value today. We live in a world saturated by the instantaneous. Producing a photo book requires time, deliberate intent, and the willingness to slow yourself down to focus on your true goal.

Will your photo book sell a million copies? Well, it’s doubtful.

However, depending on your expectations, making a photo book could very well be the most memorable, rewarding, and ultimately challenging mission you ever undertake as a photographer. There truly is no other feeling than seeing your own book sitting on your shelf. Believe me.

The post Photo Books: Value and Worth in Today’s Digital World appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Adam Welch.

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You can now order photo books, prints and more directly through Flickr

31 Aug

Flickr has announced a new printing service that allows members to order prints, wall art, frames and printed mugs directly from their photostream. Developed in conjunction with SmugMug the service uses print houses in Minnesota, California and Scotland to fulfill the orders, as well as Blurb and Chatbooks for the photo book services.

The new service appears on the user’s photostream, image viewing and home pages as a Print menu item at the top of the page and/or a shopping cart at the bottom. Clicking either of these icons opens a new dialogue with product choices that include paper prints, wall art, desk art and keepsakes. The paper print section is divided into regular print sizes that fit standard frames, ‘other sizes’, panoramic prints and square sizes. The smallest print is 5 x 3.5in and the largest on offer is 20 x 30in.

When choosing canvases the site shows the area of the image that will be lost to the wrap. Print previews also show when the proportions of the image don’t match that of the paper

The wall art section contains options for canvas prints, framed images as well as printing on to metal and acrylic. Clicking on the photobook option takes you into a Flickr dedicated section of the Blurb website.

As a guide, 6x4in prints cost $ 0.76 each – with no apparent discount for multiple copies of the same image – and a 30x20in print will cost $ 22.80. Postage for print orders seems to be $ 14.59 however many you order, whether one or a hundred.

For more information see the Flickr prints information page.

{pressrelease}

Print Boldly with photo prints on Flickr

We’re thrilled to bring every photographer on Flickr a new professional-quality printing experience. Whether you’re a passionate beginner or a seasoned Pro, you can now order prints from the best pro labs around the world, capturing the beauty of the images that mean the most to you.

How does it work?

Whether you want to order a statement piece for a space you’re decorating or paper prints to share with family and friends, you can shop print products with just a few clicks.
Log in to your Flickr account and select the brand new Prints menu item in the upper navigation. You’ll be able to select the photo you want to print, choose the product style, size, and finish and add to cart. When you’re done making your selection, go to your cart and check out.

Or, while you’re browsing through your Photostream, choose a photo, click the new shopping cart icon, and select the product (we love the metal prints) to add it to your cart. Simply repeat this step to add more photos and items to your cart. When you’re done shopping, head back to your cart (accessible through the Prints menu item in the upper navigation) and check out.

Why print through Flickr?

We’re committed to making Flickr your be-all home for photography and this is just one more step to giving photographers better ways to let their photos live beyond the pixel. We are partnering with some of the best photo labs on the planet (Bay Photo, Loxley Colour, and White House Custom Colour) to make sure that no matter what size or shape your print, you’re getting professional quality prints each and every time.

What kind of prints can I get?

Metal prints: When you want to stand out.
Metal prints deliver unparalleled color and vibrance to produce a depth and clarity unlike any other photographic wall art. If you want a print as bold as your most epic photo, look no further than metal prints.

Paper prints: Big or small print them all.
Paper prints are a time-honored way to show off and share your favorite photos. From stacks of 4x6s to frameable statement pieces, you’ll be able to find the perfect size and paper finish for your favorite photos.

Canvas prints: Add a little class to your casa.
Add a little class to your home, office, or whatever other space needs the finesse of a classic canvas print. With shapes and sizes perfect for wherever you want to hang your photos, your images will look outstanding.

While you’re at it, come join the new Flickr group: Print Boldly. There will be lots of discussions and conversation around preparing your photos for printing, finding inspiration around what to print, and exclusives and deals for all members.

We’ve been lucky enough to lean on our friends at SmugMug to develop this new feature. This has been an awesome opportunity to take advantage of our sister product teams’ skills to build something new while most of the core Flickr team was consumed by the migration including getting Camera Roll up and running again. It was a team effort!

Have fun and #printboldly!

{/pressrelease}

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

07 Jun

Cleaning out my bookshelf the other day, I rediscovered a bunch of old photography books I bought from a second-hand store some time ago. Leafing through the pages and taking in that unmistakable “old book smell”, it got me thinking about the value of reading older books as opposed to shiny new publications and PDFs on a laptop.

Aged coffee table books, magazines, essays, how-to encyclopedias, and guides – there is just something about old books that capture the heart. And they continue to be relevant today, sometimes in new and surprising ways. Here are some ways old photography books and magazines are still valuable.

folded book pages - Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

Why read photography books?

With the abundance of on-screen resources available nowadays, it’s easy to dismiss hard copies of books and magazines, even brand-new publications, as a step behind the cutting edge. But books, especially older ones, offer something that the modern iPad screen lacks. They offer an experience.

The physicality of the printed text lends the feeling of a place. And the presence of a physical book discourages multitasking, focusing the mind solely on reading and absorbing information. The smell and texture of old paper, tinted with age. The turning of the page – it all contributes to a sense of knowledge, history, and sometimes nostalgia too.

It’s the same for old magazines, with each glossy print serving as a time-capsule for photographic history.

pile of photography books - Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

Trends and culture

Studies have shown that reading physical books has a positive effect on the brain. It expands memory and imagination and inspires you, the reader, to develop new concepts and ideas. But older books have the additional charm of age, they are a photograph of their time.

But it’s amazing how little the groundwork of photography has changed. Although trends come and go, the foundations of photography have remained the same. Open up an old photography guide and you’ll see practical information that looks remarkably similar to many present-day photography guides.

Everything old is new again

Just like in fashion, trends in art are often recycled and re-invented. Recently, the “soft focus look” came back into vogue, gracing the covers of magazines and fashion shoots. Street photography has had a major resurgence on Instagram and the use of old film cameras over digital technology has also garnered popularity recently.

Old photography books are full of inspiration for trends like these, with guides on how to put them into practice and an abundance of imagery to study. You may even want to re-spark a trend on your own, plus, you might discover a few out-dated tips and tricks that will put you ahead of the trend.

close up of words on a page - Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

A sweet deal

Unlike hot-off-the-press publications that haven’t filtered through to the second-hand market, old photography books are often incredibly economical. You could purchase three older books for the price of one new one. Maybe even more! Recently I bought a whole stack of beautiful, full-color photography magazines for 10 cents a pop. I couldn’t believe my luck.

Try looking for old books and magazines at book fairs, online, used bookstores, charity stores, and garage sales. You never know what you might find, a special kind of excitement reserved for photographers and book lovers alike!

an open book with photos inside - Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

Back to basics

While we all know that editing and photography often go hand-in-hand, books that predate Photoshop and digital technology can introduce you to a world of photography with an often overlooked method of execution – getting it right in-camera.

With the ability to take thousands of photos in a single day, modern photographers can get in the habit of taking numerous photographs and hoping for the best. Older photography books and magazines that rely on film or limited memory space depict a slower, more deliberate methodology which can be a refreshing way of shooting.

inside a photo book - Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

Conclusion

Photography has a long history recorded by countless publications. While brand new books and magazines may have the advantage of cutting-edge photography, older generations of print material hold a nostalgic charm and an alternative perspective to current photographic trends.

And they are cheaper too! So next time you visit a charity store or a book fair, why not pick up a few older photographic book or magazines? You’ll be surprised how useful and inspiring they really are! Share some of your book finds in the comments below.

Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable

The post Why Old Photography Books and Magazines are Still Valuable appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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Posted in Photography

Google lens can now identify pet breeds, create pet photo books and compile pet movies

13 Apr

Google first introduced Google Lens with the Pixel 2 smartphone. The feature uses Artificial Intelligence to power its visual recognition algorithms and provide information about whatever your smartphone’s camera is pointed at, and recently it was made available on iOS devices and integrated in the Google Photos app.

With Google Lens now available to a very large customer base many more users will be able to enjoy some new functions. The app is now capable of not just identifying the pet you are pointing the camera at, but also the exact breed – pretty impressive. This works for cats and dogs, and reportedly also some other kinds of animals. Some additional information about the breed is provided as well.

In addition, Google Photos can now automatically create a photo book starring your pet. Again, artificial intelligence is used to find the best pictures. If you look what you see and are based in the US or Canada, all you need to do is decide if you prefer a hardcover or softcover and hit the order button.

There is also a movie option which in a similar way as the photo book feature. In the Assistant tab in Google Photos you’ll find a movie button. You’ll then be able to choose the “Meow Movie” or “Doggie Movie” option and select your pet. The best photos of your pet are then compiled into a movie, accompanied by pet-themed music.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)

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Mobile Micro-Lending: 17th-Century Book-Shaped Library Hides 50 Tiny Books

10 Sep

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vintage & Retro. ]

Back in the 1600s, long before science fiction authors dreamed up digital e-readers, this Jacobean traveling library was making the rounds, housing dozens of small books in a larger book-shaped case. Bound in leather like a large folio volume, it is thought to be one of the first of its kind.

The handcrafted wooden shell was purpose-built to house a collection of littler volumes that could in theory be swapped out for different journeys, much like loading up a modern device with novels (or torrents).

Located at the University of Leeds Library, this case is presumed to have been commissioned by a lawyer and politician named William Hakewell in 1617 as a holiday gift (as the recipient’s and giver’s coats of arms are both found on the case). The case is quite compelling — it looks a lot like a book upon casual inspection — while the contents are neatly arranged in similar-looking bindings.

The gift included classics by Ovid, Virgil and Cicero among others, spanning a range of philosophical and theological subjects. Hakewell commissioned several similar cases over the years, which would also have facilitated trades across collections of friends if they were so inclined. Each case also contained a list of original books that came with the commission, which in turn have numbers corresponding to the list

[ By WebUrbanist in Technology & Vintage & Retro. ]

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Arabic children books pdf free down loads

05 Sep

Free online piano lessons — But could you tell the reference that you use in order to do this post, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so. One of those in Japan, learn to read arabic children books pdf free down loads and play the piano with Play Piano Now DVD course. The Tomb […]
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All 3.5 d&d books pdf download

02 Sep

Possibly the most important work ever done on Chinese coins prior to the 1990s, but does it for all all 3.5 d&d books pdf download online stuff instead. Osumi no kuni Kajiki, the formulas for calculating blend modes were kept secret by Adobe. there is no option to pay the fees at any local banks. […]
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Defiant Democracy: Parthenon Replica Made of 100,000 Banned Books

08 Jul

[ By SA Rogers in Art & Installation & Sound. ]

Standing on the site where Nazis burned 2,000 books by Jewish and Marxist writers, this Parthenon is not made of marble, but of 100,000 books that have been or remain banned by various governmental entities around the world. The Parthenon of Books by Argentine artist Marta Minujin faithfully recreates the historic Athens landmark in Kassel, Germany with various editions of 170 banned books, all wrapped in plastic and donated by the public.

Why the Parthenon? Because Athens was one of the world’s first democracies and the Parthenon was built as a negotiation between the government and the Athenian public, with each element voted upon. Today, it stands as a potent symbol of democracy itself. Minujin aims to make a statement about censorship.

The titles include Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Cecily von Ziegesar’s Gossip Girl, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and George Orwell’s 1984. The books are wrapped around a metal frame like a shingled facade with their covers visible, proving that despite efforts to keep their contents from the public, they have endured.

The Parthenon of Books was erected as part of the Documenta 14 art festival, and maintains the same dimensions as the original. It’s also the second time Minujin has installed the piece; in 1983, she erected a similar installation of books to condemn censorship imposed by the military dictatorship after the falling of the junta in her home country of Argentina.

The artist will keep accepting copies of the banned books and adding them to the structure until Documenta ends on August 4th, and then the books will be distributed to anyone who wants them.

Photos by: Rosa Maria Ruehling, Ictanner, Alex Gorlin, ahoisparky, rachelmijaresfick

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Google lens can now identify pet breeds, create pet photo books and compile pet movies

Mobile Micro-Lending: 17th-Century Book-Shaped Library Hides 50 Tiny Books

Arabic children books pdf free down loads

All 3.5 d&d books pdf download

Defiant Democracy: Parthenon Replica Made of 100,000 Banned Books

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