Beta testing Photoshop CS5
March 29, 2010
In a word? transformative.
Channels and Profiles
March 21, 2010
Hyacinth in 2 channels
Two days–on and off–of thrashing around in photoshop trying to figure out how to save this image as a jpg (after deleting all channels except cyan and black). I’ve tried split-toning and selective color to “duplicate” color–with no success. The hue on the fingers is challenging to match outside of cmyk profile.
The image isn’t stellar, but I like it. And I want to use it.
Work on the portfolio? I’m realizing how unorganized my digital filing system is. Tracking down images is time consuming, with more time currently spent organizing…blech!
Eudora Welty…
March 16, 2010
said of the snapshot, ” a good [one] stops the moment from running away.”
So, I’m here worrying the thing that deems one photograph a snapshot and the other photograph a bit of art.
Does knowledge/training reduce one’s ability to produce snapshots thereby separating our perception of an image by nothing more than an understanding or notion of what art is?
what the snapshot isn’t?
I still point and shoot. But don’t I look just a bit longer through the viewfinder at the form and direction of things touching, however slightly, the subject of my gaze?
Eudora, doesn’t a good composition also stop the moment from running away?
The Playground
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Implications
March 6, 2010
I hate the photograph today. I hate the photographic image, bound as it is to today by the flat dimension of something past; something that is no more; something that lingers, constantly reinserting itself as a visual reminder of precisely what is lost to/in/by time. Christ our existence is tragic! And that tragedy, in this moment, is wrenching. And heavy. I wonder the weight of a photograph, the heaviness I can barely feel in the palm of my hand?
A visual presence
Do I burden the photograph with emotion?
Or is it that emotion is burdened by the additional weight of the image?
Indeed, the implications of the photograph are exhaustive.
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The Portrait
February 27, 2010
“When you sit for an hour and a half in front of somebody, he or she shows about twenty faces. And so it’s this crazy chase of, which face? Which one is the one?”
~Francesco Clemente
Unmanipulated image
Manipulated
Manipulated
Reflecting on Clemente’s quote, I was compelled to consider the portrait which, by definition, is “a likeness of a person…that is created by a painter or photographer” (freedictionary.com). And here is the problem, description involves language, and language meaning, and meaning semantics–and, you get my meaning, right? Words create problems. Take “likeness” for example.
Is the portrait above a “likeness” of Alix because I “created” it? Or, is it a likeness because a photograph can only project one irreducible split-second of the millions & billions of split-seconds that Alix is? Or is it a likeness, a semblance, because a photograph is not and can never be more than a two dimensional understanding of the thing itself?
I suppose it all comes back to the inescapability of meaning and the limitations that, linguistically, meaning places on interpretation.
Yet the image, the portrait of Alix, well, it has a mood. An emotion. I feel something when I look at the image. Something in between the meaning of sadness and tragic. Something like resignation. Something like…
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Effect
February 25, 2010
Recently, artistic discussions have revolved around styles, effects, preference, and art movements. As I review recent images, before and after editing, the lingering effects of discussion become evident in my work. Crisp lines are replaced by broader strokes of saturated color. Dreamscapes emerge as artistic movements collide within my conscience. What guides my hand, intention or bias created by inquiry?
Gnat Creek
Gnat Creek (post edit)
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what am i doing?
February 14, 2010
organizing.culling.editing.undoing.deleting.
resizing.adjusting.layering.reediting.deleting.
researching.shooting.uploading.editing.deleting.
Trying to organize via similarity–aesthetic, or otherwise–several hundred, almost but not quite too many, photographs.
I am looking for some sort of cohesion. In a word?
Challenging.
Meanwhile, I am fumbling around with the Orton effect.
Cover to cover:
Portrait Photography by Mark Cleghorn
(increased my understanding of basic studio lighting)
Cover to page flipping for specific content:
skin by Lee Varis
(portrait retouching techniques)
before
after
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Intersections Between Language and Photography 