Archive for July, 2009

the wife of the voyager

Usually I’m not too into digital compilation photos, but I liked this one. It tells a story and even though it’s clearly a comp, and usually I find that distracting, I thought it was done well. It’s by =Stephano83 from deviantart.

nick meek

Check out photographer Nick Meek’s website, he’s got some really cool photos up there. I especially liked this weird and creepy animal series:

the dead photos

Found this cool series of photos by photographer Tom Philips, called The Dead Photos.

Check out some of my faves:

olga korzhinskaya

I found this cool flickr set by photographer Olga Korzhinskaya called “underwater“. You don’t see a lot of film these days, but when you do, you remember how great it is.

Check out some of my favourites:

diorama illusions

This tutorial is currently circulating, so I thought I’d post a link to it since it’s pretty fun and I’ve been seeing a lot of it lately so I’m sure people want to know how to achieve the same effect. The tutorial is called “Using Photoshop and Your Brain to Create Diorama Illusions” but I’ve also seen it called things like the toy model effect. Basically what you’re doing is taking a normal photo of a scene and creating depth of field in photoshop to create the visual illusion that it’s a lot smaller than it is.

Sounds a bit confusing, but here’s a before an after picture to give you an idea of what I mean:

You can see how the blurriness, or depth of field tricks you into believing that the planes look like small toys, instead of being actual size.

The tutorial is written really well and has great instructions, you’re going to be able to pull it off even if you’re not familiar with all the techniques. Give it it a try, it’s a fun effect and you’ll probably learn a few things about photoshop in the process. Actually, the rest of the website Psdtuts+ is pretty great too, so take a look around and check out some of the other tutorials.

take more photos

I wanted to let you know about one of my favourite photoblogs, Take More Photos. First of all, why couldn’t I have thought of that url first? Second of all, I love the design. And lastly, the photos are amazing and organized in sets, which I always prefer.

Check out some randoms from the Algonquin series:

erica joy

There’s something intimate and interesting to me about self portraits, knowing that most likely it was just the photographer and their camera alone. I came across this flickr set by photographer Erica Joy. All are pictures of herself. Most of them are really great, but check out some of my favourites:

mute

Mute is one of my favourite photoblogs, and really inspiring because the guy behind it, Miles, is not a pro photographer, nor does he consider himself an artist trying to build a portfolio. He’s just a hobbyist who’s really, really good. And I love that because photography just for the sake of fun is one of my favourite things.

He doesn’t post daily, but posts quite often, and his photos are great, I’m always impressed when I go back and see what he’s done this month.

Check out some random photos from his blog, and be sure to add Mute to the list of photo blogs you read:

magnum photos

You can’t really talk about photojournalism without mentioning Magnum Photos. Its a collective of photographers, or photographic cooperative, owned and operated by the members themselves. Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the co-founders defines it as “a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually.” It was first founded in 1947, but it now has offices in New York, Paris, London and Tokyo.

It’s probably safe to say that there hasn’t been a significant world event that was not photographed by a Magnum photographer. Their work is completely amazing (and that’s even an understatement) and photojournalists all over strive to match the quality of photos they produce.

I had a difficult time deciding which photos to post that would best represent what Magnum really has contributed to photojournalism, but I decided that probably wasn’t really possible in a short post. Instead I’ll just post some of my favourites from Susan Meiselas, a member of Magnum, who I’ve always been inspired by. The following are from a book called Carnival Strippers, which was first published in 1976. Try and disregard the watermarks, it was difficult to find photos that didn’t have them:

the big picture

The Big Picture is a section on the Boston Globe website that tells the news through large photographs. Simple concept, but it hasn’t really been done before on a newspaper website. Often photos on other news sites are so small, or watermarked, I find myself wanting to see more. It’s also a great way to showcase how talented and skilled photojournalists can be, and how photojournalist photography really is an art. Here are some recent samples from The Big Picture, but since it’s a news site, go back frequently and check out the new content: