Look, no one is born a lighting genius. We all make mistakes. And we are all gonna make mistakes in the future.
And just to make you feel a little better about it, today I am gonna tell you about my stupidest moment as a lighting photographer.
So far.
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Strobist
As a photographer, you work hard for your money, so you don’t want to shell out cash for photography courses that are sub-par or a rip-off. We totally understand where you’re coming from because photographers frequently work as freelancers, which means that every penny you spend counts. So we’ve assembled some of the better photography courses for you…just in case Continue Reading
The post Photography Courses: Which Ones Rock and Which Ones Don’t appeared first on Photodoto.
[ By Steve in Art & Drawing & Digital & Street Art & Graffiti. ]
These 9 famous international public landmarks, artworks and tourist attractions attract vandalism and graffiti that’s usually (but not always) unwanted.
(images via: Ultimate Classic Rock/Mark Bowman and Arayatours)
One of the founding member’s of rock music’s “27 club“, Jim Morrison of The Doors was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris after his untimely death due to a drug overdose on July 3rd, 1971.
(images via: David Estrada, Paris On Demand and Jim Morrison: The Lizard King)
The gravesite, though unmarked until 1973, rapidly became a place of pilgrimage for Morrison’s fans who left flowers, letters and mementos on the grave. They also left an abundance of graffiti – at first on Morrison’s grave but spreading to adjoining graves, trees and cemetery infrastructure due to the sheer volume of visitors over the years.
(image via: TrekEarth/Kevin KL)
One of the iconic symbols of Jim Morrison’s gravesite was a plaster bust of Morrison sculpted by Croatian artist Mladen Mikulin. In 1981 the bust, along with a new gravestone engraved with Morrison’s name, was added to the grave to mark the 10th anniversary of Morrison’s death. As with any other solid infrastructure at or near the actual grave, the the bust was extensively decorated (some prefer the term “defaced”) in colorful graffiti until 1988, when it was stolen. Kudos to Kevin KL of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada who snapped, processed and posted the remarkable image above showing Jim Morrison’s grave as it was in 1987.
(images via: Seattle Wedding Photographers | Red Box Pictures, Huffington Post/Matt Ambrey and KOMO News)
Seattle’s Gum Wall rose from the humblest of beginnings: theater patrons annoyed by having to wait in long lineups began sticking their worn-out chewing gum on the nearest wall. What began as simple, messy vandalism evolved into a bonafide artwork, especially after 1999 when theater attendants gave up scraping away the gum. It’s one of the few art exhibits where vandalism is, if not exactly encouraged, required to maintain the piece’s status.
(image via: photosbyjerry)
Located in Post Alley under the Park Place Market, the Seattle Gum Wall continues to grow as the theater remains popular enough to cause long lineups outside. As for the gum-chewing patrons, they can hardly complain about the sickly sweet aroma of gum cooking away in the summer sun, though they might want to hold their breath while they wait: Trip Advisor ranks the Gum Wall as the second-germiest tourist attraction on Earth, just after Ireland’s Blarney Stone. A tip of the hat to Flickr user photosbyjerry for the vertigo-inducing image above.
(images via: Sacred Sites, Above Top Secret and Smithsonian)
The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the world’s oldest monuments, and as such is also one of the most mutilated by vandalism and marred by graffiti. Legend has it the Sphinx’s notably missing nose was shot off by a French cannon during Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt but this is not the case; sketches made decades before clearly show the noseless aspect of the ancient statue.
(image via: Travel.hat.net)
The actual act of vandalism occurred in AD 1378 when Muhammad Sa’im al-Dahr, an iconoclastic Sufi Muslim, chiseled off the nose after noticing that area farmers worshiped the monument in hopes of reaping a good harvest. For his troubles, al-Dahr was lynched by the angry locals.
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We give a lot of attention to light mods around here: big ones, little ones, hard ones, soft ones, umbrellas, soft boxes, grids and the like. But sometimes the best light mod is no light mod at all — especially indoors, with neutral walls.
In that environment, often the smart choice is just to stick your bare speedlights on stands and go.
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Strobist
[ By Steph in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]
From the sidewalk, this Paris building looks just like those around it, complete with doors, windows and balconies. but take a look at Google Maps, as Paul of the blog Paris by Cellphone did, and you’ll notice something strange: there’s nothing behind that facade. Like many others all over the world, this ordinary-looking building is just a shell to disguise unsightly infrastructure.
The building, at 154 Rue La Layette, is hiding a giant ventilation chimney for the metro. The chimney is about as large as one of the real buildings that surround it. In another location in Marais, artist Julien Berthier constructed a false door to go on the side of one of these buildings that wasn’t quite as well-disguised.
The facade meets local architectural codes and bears an address plate reading ‘J.B. & S.B. Specalistes.’ Wonder how many people have knocked on it over the years, waiting for someone to answer?
BLDGBLOG discovered another such facade, in Brooklyn. The windows of this particular house are blacked out, making it a bit curious. What are those people trying to hide? Upon closer examination, answer is revealed: it’s a ventilator for the subway. Once, it was a real brownstone, built in 1847, but it was gutted in 1908 when subway service was started in Brooklyn. See more photos of the facade at BLDGBLOG.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle explains, “the exit disguised as a brownstone leads to a grimy-lit set of metal stairs that ascend past utility boxes and ventilation shafts into a windowless room with a door. If you opened the door, you would find yourself on a stoop, which is just part of the façade.”
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Have you ever opened up a photography magazine, saw a photo you liked and spotted the little blurb which reveals the camera settings? The conclusion you might be tempted to make is that the aperture, focal length, shutter speed, ISO and flash settings you see there somehow “made” that photo. And worse, you might try to remember those settings as Continue Reading
The post Why Your Camera Settings Don’t Matter appeared first on Photodoto.
[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
Like some kind of strange spatial magician, Kyung Woo Han turns conventional furniture, fixtures, doors and windows into otherworldly scenes that call into question just how familiar we really are with such everyday objects.
Consider White Window, a deformed frame that pulls in from the edges, but when viewed through a fish-eye surveillance camera (also part of the installation) is corrected to look like the only straight-lined design in the space.
In Green House, a room is half-filled with faux water while suspended shapes of partial furniture float at eye level, appearing to be reflected at the point where surface meets air.
Other projects like Found House and Checkered Floor take normal objects, textures and materials out of context and distort them, making simple black-and-white patterns and portals between inside and outside seem strange aand surreal.
Buildings split down the middle, sprout slides, bend over in strange ways and send stairs into the sky in these fantasy architectural designs by Victor Enrich.
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These 101 dizzy spirals may make you smile or they may induce vertigo, but here are the most impressive, most dizzying, spiraling staircases in the world.
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[ By WebUrbanist in Art & Installation & Sound. ]
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I posted about filmmaker Ben Shapiro's documentary, Brief Encounters, when it was first released. I have finally gotten a chance to see it and wanted to make sure as many of you as possible did, too.
For those of you not familiar with photographer Gregory Crewdson's work, he meticulously creates his photographs on an epic scale. For instance, that photo above is completely staged—and lit. As in, they lit the whole freakin' street scene.
Below, the film's trailer, an extended clip, and how to catch this worthwhile documentary in its cross-country, limited-release tour. Read more »
Strobist
Regina Spektor performs her song “Don’t Leave Me (Ne Me Quitte Pas)” in an exclusive recording session live at Electric Lady Studios in New York, NY for The Live Room on The Warner Sound. Executive Producer Phil Botti Director Michael Thelin Director of Photography Mikko Timonen Mixed by Brett Eliason Editor Steven Pierce Recording Engineer Phil Joly Captured live at Electric Lady Studios New York, NY Order Regina’s album, What We Saw From The Cheap Seats: smarturl.it reginaspektor.com http twitter.com youtube.com The Live Room with Regina Spektor was captured exclusively with Nikon D4 HD-SLRs camera and NIKKOR lenses. The Live Room is an exclusive Warner Sound original series that captures today’s most innovative artists performing live recording sessions in the most iconic recording studios across America. Subscribe to The Warner Sound: goo.gl The Warner Sound on the Web: youtube.com thewarnersound.com http twitter.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5
Editorial: Why Some People Hate Comments (And Why We Don’t)
Matt Honan of Wired.com thinks the time has come to banish comments sections from the Internet. Writing in Wired.com’s Gadget Lab blog, Honan describes the ‘collective delusion’ among online publishers that comments are a necessary component of web content and characterizes active comments moderation as ‘a messy, frustrating and typically thankless affair that involves more time than most people have’. In this short editorial, editor Barnaby Britton explains why we do allow comments, despite the downsides.
News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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