Visit to ModernBook Gallery

We visited Modernbook Gallery in Palo Alto today. What made the biggest impression on you and why? Did you see any specific artist's work that inspired you to try something new? What was it?

If you want to meet some of these photographers, you can attend their Holiday Open House, on Friday, Dec 18, 7-10pm.

Interesting Photo Links

Photos by a blind photographer - Would you still photograph if you lost your sight? What would be your subject and how would you do it?

World's largest mobile pinhole camera using a truck - It reminds me of John Chiara's work in SF see the video (amazing stuff)

Top 10 photography blogs - I enjoy seeing great photos and reading about photography. So many blogs... so little time.

Tips for Wedding Photography

This week i read about tips for wedding photography. This guy listed 21 tips to capture those perfect moments, and some of them were actually quite useful. For instance, he talked about the importance of nominating a family member as director for the family photos because they can get quite chaotic, and how its important to try and snap a picture of whatever goes wrong that day (at least one thing does every wedding) because those little moments are what truly create memories. Some of the tips were pretty intuitive (like get a good perspective), but others were specific and unique. There are also some pretty good wedding shots of happy couples if anyone wants to take a look :)

http://digital-photography-school.com/wedding-photography-21-tips-for-for-amateur-wedding-photographers

Indonesian "Morality Police"

This is an article about the "morality police" in Indonesia. There, these police go around the town and make sure that everyone is following Sharia law, an Islamic code that strictly limits the actions that people can make in public. The photos in the article are of the police preparing and enforcing the laws that they have there. Most of the images seem like they aren't staged, and some even use blur or long exposure times in order to make them more dramatic.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/photography/la-hp-indonesia-moraility-police-pictures,0,1533064.htmlstory

Split Photography

I started last week trying to figure out how to create images called "Split Images" or "Over Under" shots (there is an explanation here). At first, after reviewing this site, I decided that these images are photoshoped (look at the image that is 6th from the bottom) due to the difficulty of having a even exposure over the entire image. There are apparently filters that help correct for this, and special techniques that most photographers use. So for this weeks weekly reading I found this website which is a walkthrough of how to shoot these images. He tells us that we have to use a wide angle lens, with a large depth of field to account for the index of refraction between water and air. He tells us that normal cameras just cant focus, including his own, so he made a special filter that allows for both the exposure and focus to be fixed. I look forward to trying this for myself.

DJ AM Set

I thought that these DJ & club photos were really cool. They are by a fabulous photographer, Erik Voake!

Also, here is Erik's website that has some awesome pics in a ton of genres and categories. His black and white work is really amazing. I would highly recommend just watching his slide show for a couple of seconds.

Hello World!

It's a blog raising... the start of something great... hopefully. Let's see how it goes.

The goal is simply to start a discussion blog for our Advanced Photo Class. My hope is that students will contribute their ideas, writings, critiques, and photo work in progress.

Pete