Anatomy and Art

Oh, this is so lovely!  Daniel Peter has created a great little visual representation of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO for photography beginners.  It’s represented simply enough that it can be printed on little business cards and kept handy for reference.

And he’s made it free for the download at Fotoblog Hamburg.

This is great.  It illustrates the narrowing and widening of depth of field as the aperture is widened and narrowed, along with the F stops associated with that widening and narrowing.  It illustrates the blurred motion that comes from a slow shutter speed, along with examples of those numbers as well.  And it also highlights the increased graininess from using higher ISO film, or digitally a higher ISO setting.

These are your big three settings within a camera.  Externally (assuming you’re using an SLR camera) you have what type of lens you use, and of course, what’s in front of that lens.  But these are the choices that you make about how your camera takes in light.  First you have to get enough light to make an image.  And in a low light setting, you can do that by opening the aperture to allow more light to come through while it is open.  You can also slow down your shutter speed to allow more light to come in by giving it more exposure time.  Or you can shoot with a higher ISO which means using a more light sensitive film or setting.  Back in the film days, the graininess that came with higher ISOs was due to there being larger bits of the light sensitive silver halide crystals to soak up more of the light for the exposure it was given.  I found this SEM image of them online, though there wasn’t a photographer listed to credit.  But traditional film contained these little guys, and the film that had big pieces of them soaked up more light, and also appeared to be more grainy.  But the film with smaller pieces, would require more light for a well exposed image, but would then appear more crisp.

I’m a little behind the curve of how the digital translation of those crystals works.  But the same principles apply today in digital photography.

Well, I did it!  I finally bought a new DSLR camera to replace the Canon 20D taken by the burglars in February.  I know that I wrote about the shopping process a bit in my last post.  Well, I wound up going with the Pentax K3.  It’s amazing.  Not only has camera technology come a long way in the twelve or so years that I’d had my old camera, but Pentax has apparently been making some of the hardiest cameras around for a long time now.  It sounds like I can take this thing out into a rainstorm, dust storm, let it knock about a bit, and it’ll just keep working.

I once again have three lenses.  Somehow I always wind up with three.  In my film days with my old Pentax K1000, I had a wide angle lens, a standard lens, and a telephoto lens.  With my Canon20D I had a standard /zoom, a telephoto, and a macro lens.  Well this time I definitely wanted another macro lens.  Then instead of going standard/ zoom I went more telephoto light, which serves a similar niche with more zoom than my old standard /zoom but not as much as my old telephoto.  I think it’ll be fun to have that go between there though.  And then lastly, I picked up a fisheye as my specialty lens, and I love it!

To show off these lovely lenses, I’ll have to utilize the help of my lovely assistant, Rocky the Dog…

First we have the macro lens, and man do I love these things.  Getting closer to your subject you get a narrower and narrower depth of field, which means you have to get the focus right, but when you do, the attention goes right there.

Next that basic lens that is standard enough at 55, but telephoto enough at 200 too.

And lastly, we have the fisheye.  And can I just say… so… much… fun…

I think that this new camera and I are gong to get along very well.  And to anyone out there camera shopping, let me give you a nudge towards Pentax.  They always made a good solid film camera, and I didn’t know it until recently, but they really have kept innovating into the digital world.  The K3 is a brilliant camera.  But I even considered their lower end K-50 as well.  This brand is well worth a look if you’re in the market.

It’s been about five months now, since I last owned my SLR still cameras.  It was about the end of February when my house was burglarized and both my Pentax K1000 and Canon 20D were stolen right in the camera bags I kept them in with all accompanying lenses and general accessories (filters, extra batteries for the digital camera, extra film for the film camera).  And it’s been weird.  I’m so used to having them.  I didn’t use the Pentax often anymore, but I learned on that camera and I’ve always appreciated knowing that I could when worthy situations or ideas arise.  And the Canon, well that’s the camera that finally sold me on the capability of digital photography.  At first I was very careful with it.  Then I started taking that camera all over, even to Burning Man.  I’ve worked and played with that camera.  But most of all, it’s just been there so long.  Part of why I haven’t replaced it yet is that the way USAA’s home insurance works is that the longer you’ve had a thing, the less they actually give you for it until you’ve replaced it.  So having a house full of goods to try and replace, and a whole lot of hassle with faxing receipts and endless phone tag after every purchase to get the rest of my reimbursement, it made financial sense to do things in a certain order, so as not to be out so much all at once.  My cameras are by far the most expensive thing taken from my house.  Well, technically my burglars came back and stole my car about a month later, but if we’re specifying *inside* the house, then it was the cameras.  I did get that car back, for the record.

Anyway, here I am, roughly five months later, about ready to finally replace my digital camera and lenses.  I’m probably going to go Canon again, though having a clean wipe on past equipment like this does make one think about the potential for starting fresh in another line entirely.  Sony is apparently getting into the camera game and pulling some professional photographers over to that side.  Nikon has always been a strong contender, and I believe that they are still the only company to make flat lenses, which could be helpful for shooting paintings or if I ever got a set up to shoot slides with a microscope.  But the main contender just now is the Canon 70D.  It seems the most similar to what I had, with some nice boosts to performance.  Then again, with as often as I find myself shooting in low light, I might do well to pick up something with a full frame sensor.  If I’m sticking with Canon, that would probably be the 6D which is more expensive, but certainly more affordable than Nikon’s D4.

One thing that I’m noticing in all of these new camera models is that they’re all trying to offer wireless connectivity now and synching with your smart phone, which while I like the idea of a remote, I always kind of appreciated that my real cameras didn’t upload to Facebook at a whim’s notice.  Sometimes the idea is to do it right and go through your images later, tweaking where necessary and only publish what still feels right the next day.  I dunno.  It’s not like they make you use that stuff, but it does seem a little excessive, and potentially like killer of battery life, which I do care very much about.

Anyways, I’ll have to pick something soon.  I am feeling myself done with my time away from camera ownership, and I want back in to what really is one of my primary art forms.  And really, I’ve been overcompensating with my iPhone in the interim.  And on that note I leave you with just such an iPhone photo of my and my little dog, because I just keep taking these, and because I caught a cute one.  Actually the iPhone really does have an impressive camera for what it is.  And it’s been nice exploring that.  But give me back my lenses!

Ulric Collette’s genetic portraits series has been getting some attention on the internet lately, and I’m going to add to that by pointing out her work here as well.  I’m posting some thumbnails to give you an idea of what she’s been doing.

Please visit her website and take a closer look.  The genetic similarities across the faces are really neat.  I particularly appreciate some of the ones that feature different generations and emphasize how faces change with age.

http://genetic.ulriccollette.com/

I have been meaning to post this one for a while now, but the holidays got away with me. Sofia Wraber and Nanna Kereutzmann first put together a documentation of 101 men from ages 0-100 as a class project for the Danish School of Media and Journalism.  They then went on to create the same style of series with 101 women.

http://www.onehundredone.dk/about.html

The effect is that you get a really interesting portrayal of the aging process, from birth to old age.  At one point I read that the models used were all from the same family, but I haven’t been able to find that tonight, so I can’t be certain about that.  You don’t see any ethnic diversity though, so the emphasis remains on the aging process rather than individual differences.

I encourage you to check out both series in their entirety at the link provided above.

This started out as a post about references, but I guess I got sidetracked into talking about a particular project that a couple of roommates out in California have been up to lately.  So I’m just going to tell you about A Year Without Clothes instead.  Photographer Keith Allen Phillips, otherwise known as Lucky, and his roommate/amazing model, Sylva, otherwise known as Scar, have committed themselves to a year long photography project.  Every day, they put together a photo shoot.  Sometimes these shoots are more high concept, sometimes they are simply beautiful images.  In one image Sylva is clothed, in the other she is not.

Now, for someone looking for reference as to the human form, you couldn’t ask for a much better collection than this.  Especially for those who sculpt, there is great value in getting references that allow you to see both how clothing fits a body, and also what the body looks like beneath the clothes to make them fall or cling in the ways that they do.  There is also the added benefit of being able to follow a single model across so many different looks.  But I find that I can’t just speak about this project in terms of reference, because the body of work being created here is something fantastic on it’s own right.  And it just has so many things going on to appreciate.  For one, the fashion is fantastic.  You would think that a project called A Year Without Clothes wouldn’t have such a fashion presence, but fashionistas prepare to be impressed and inspired!  For another, the creativity behind the individual shoots is pretty fantastic.  Some of them are themed.  Some of them use props or costume pieces.  Some of them are commentary.  But really, the entire collection is a work of art unto itself built upon each day’s work within it.  There is something that feels very bold and very human about this repeated expression of this one person in clothes, and rocking those clothes I might add, and then simply without them, and rocking that too.  You wind up with this sense of fashion that transcends clothing.  I guess I appreciate it as art for the same reasons that I appreciate it as reference.  It tells that story of a person beneath their clothing.  And it celebrates that person beneath.  So often we see nudity in art as an expression of vulnerability, but more often than not we see Sylva at her boldest in the nude shot.  Something about that recurrence seems celebratory of the human form.  And especially when combined with the journal they are keeping as they do these shoots, the whole thing feels celebratory of the very state of being human.

The daily images and journal are posted at ayearwithoutclothes.com

I just liked this, and I wanted to post it here.

It comes from a series called What the Duck, posted here.
http://www.whattheduck.net/

I don’t often get very excited about pictures of flowers and butterflies, but Cecelia Webber has done something really cool here.

At first glance, her use of human figures isn’t even entirely apparent.  Sometimes you have to look closely.  Other times, she gives you a clue, like in this Summer Dandelion shot.

Her work as an artist includes this Petal series, impressionist and modernist paintings, experimental film and music video work, and an existentialist webcomic called I Don’t Get It Either.

You can read more about her here on her webpage.
http://ceceliawebber.com/about/

I just thought this image was neat and I had to share…

I’ve always had an appreciation for skulls.  From back when they were a sign of good horror movie, to today now that I study them.  The more you learn about the skull, the more elegant it’s design reveals itself to be.  Bones in general are like that I suppose, but the skull in particular is just beautiful.

Here are a few of my own images from one of the skulls I had at home for a while

more of these can be found at http://snapshotgenius.com/gallery/skull-A188