Day Off From Shoes
This is a shot of Cindy’s son who, in a split second after slamming the car door shut, kicked off his shoes and headed for the water. Cindy says, “We hadn’t really planned on going to the beach that day but my son and I were bored and looking for something to do. I pulled some things together and grabbed my camera (of course!) and we drove to Malibu. His anticipation was building as soon as he saw Zuma Beach. Like any good son, he left me to carry everything. I didn’t care, though, as soon as I saw his excitement while he sprinted towards the water. I dropped everything and was lucky enough to capture this shot. It is my favorite shot of any I’ve taken. ”
Day Off From Shoes reminds us of the carefree days of summer – of kicking off your shoes and letting the sand go through your toes. It reminds us of how good it is be a kid again, especially during summer. Next time you’re at the beach, kick off your shoes and sprint towards the water. Run as fast as you can, laugh and scream, and truly be a kid again!
About Cindy Morrow
Morrow is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and holds a degree in Film and Animation. Shortly after graduating she fell into storyboarding. Now she primarily works for Nickelodeon and The Cartoon Network on popular shows such as Power Puff Girls, Dexter’s Laboratory, and Chowder.
Morrow’s career as a storyboard artist has shaped her photography. She says, “I spend my days composing images in a TV by telling stories in a little box. Photography is a natural progression for me and very easy to compose a story into a single image.”
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One of my clients forwarded me this article from the Boston Globe. It is amazing that a photographer in the early 1900’s would have the foresight to put this together since in 1910 Color Photography didn’t even exist!
“This extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun.”
Kodak recently discovered a piece of film footage that was one of the earliest tests of color motion picture film. It was made 13 years prior to the first color film being produced and is a great window into the past.
Here’s a quote from Kodak with more info on the clip:
“In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.
George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system. First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives. The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.
Early cameras were hand cranked, or hand wound, to feed the film through. This could result in slight variations in speed. Second, there could be uneven densities in the film itself because of its age. These two physical characteristics combine to produce the “flicker” that you see. There are digital enhancements that can be made to address this but we thought it better to keep it in its original form.”
Preservation was completed by the museum’s Motion Picture Department, a project of Sabrina Negri, a student in Eastman House’s L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and a recipient of the Haghefilm Foundation Fellowship.
A short while back Rick Norsigian walked into a Southern California Garage sale and bargained the owner from $75 to $45 for some old photographic plates. Whether he new it or not (still up for debate) his $45 investment turned out to easily be worth $200 Million as they were all original Ansel Adams Plates. It took over 10 years to get them authenticated and it looked like it paid off…except that he is now being sued by the Ansel Adams Trust. Just to give you an idea of what the plates are worth, one Ansel Adams print just sold for $722,500 at auction. This is a new record for 20th century photography. Hmmmm. maybe I need a new career as a picker.
I found this great little story over on Apartment Therapy about a couple who lives above an Art Gallery that they run. The article likens them to Herb and Dorothy Vogel. If you are unfamiliar with Herb and Dorothy you should check them out. Herb worked in a post office and Dorothy was a librarian. Together over 40 years they amassed a collection of 4,700 pieces of art from some of the most famous artists in the world…before they were famous! They had paintings strung from the roofs, stuffed under the bed and packed in boxes. They donated the enitre collection to the National Gallery of Art but it could only accept 1000 of the pieces as it had no room for a collection of this size…which fit into the Vogels tiny NYC apartment. They gave the rest away to other musueums and then started filling their tiny apartment again.
Herb and Dorothy a film by Megumi Sasaki was just released to critical acclaim but it almost didn’t happen. Here is what the artist had to say about the film:
“They didn’t articulate why they like this particular artwork, why did they collect a certain artist,” Sasaki says. “The only thing they said was, ‘It’s beautiful. I like it.’ How can I make a film about art collectors who don’t talk about art?”
Sasaki had resigned herself to making a 20-minute short film until an interview with Italian artist Lucio Pozzi convinced her that part of the beauty of the Vogels is that they aren’t so academic about what they like. They act on intuition.
That intuition made them one of the largest and most astute collectors in the New York art scene. Collecting the likes of Christo, Schnabel, Koons, Lichtenstein and hundreds of other world class artists. Those who watched said Herb would just walk up to something and point like a hound. He just new what he liked…and what he liked turned out to be some of the most renowned contemporary art in the world.
These days, editing seems like a long lost art for most people other than professionals. Editing is the art of choosing your best pictures and then taking those to the next level. For most of my career I edited out, tossing what I didn’t want and keeping the rest. About two years ago a friend of mine forced me to try editing in. It was near impossible at first but after a few jobs it became second nature. Having tried both I could never go back.
Here is the basic premise: let’s say you have 6 similar images in front of you. If you edit out, you may pull out 3 but still have 3 left. In reality, only one is a hero shot. Now, if you edit in, you will pick 1 shot out of the 6 and it is the clear winner. It seems like a small shift in perception but it has a HUGE impact on your workflow. You will edit about 70% faster and have a tighter edit when you are done. This will help you tell the story of the event with less images. You will learn more from looking over a tighter edit and you will do more with the resulting images. In this manner, you can end the analysis paralysis that plagues you and choose good solid images and do things with them.
This is not just a pro-technique, it is probably even more useful for consumers. You come home with a camera full of images and throw them on a hard drive. Maybe you share a few but you get overwhelmed by it all and they just sit there. If you take a few minutes to “edit in” you will reduce the number you are storing, only keep the best, and be more likely to actually print them. Remember life with film? You always had prints and ALWAYS put something up in your home to display, whether on the wall or in an album. Editing In will help you actually do something with your images again so you can truly enjoy your memories.
Below is a screen shot with similar RAW images and the one with the box around it is the winner of the bunch. The reason I picked it over the others should be obvious – it is sharp, it has the best facial expression, and the composition and lighting are great. Maybe I would pick one other that is serious but this is a happy, fun bride and this shot sums up a portrait of her in one shot. Why bother keeping the rest? Neither of us will ever use them.
This is also a cool feature of PurePhoto that may help you organize. You can use our split screen feature to split a CF card into multiple galleries. For example, you may have the Fourth of July parade, bath time, and some winter scenes you shot all on one card before you download. With our split screen feature, you can easily drag and drop those images into different galleries to keep them organized. Now they will be easier to “edit in.”
*On the left is the gallery with the 3 different events, on the right is the main library. You can add new sub galleries as you drag and drop the images from the left panel to the right panel. EASY!
this shoot has got to be one of my favorites to date! it is a rare and magical moment when a newborn smiles during a shoot, let alone three all at the same time! all the babies had just been fed and were happy to be next to their siblings. i have been trying to add a little bit of a fairytale feel into my shoots lately, so the homemade crowns were a simple and fun way to add that little extra something special. PORTRAIT TIP: for newborn photographers just starting out, it is best to keep the room super warm… think texas in the summertime warm! the more you can make your studio into an environment similar to the womb, the better. i always keep my space at about 85 degrees with a warming pad also underneath the blankets the babies are laying on to keep them extra cozy!
We just posted a free video as a little teaser for what is inside the premium content area at PurePhoto.com. This is a simple B&W conversion in Photoshop that requires no advanced knowledge, advanced techniques, or 3rd party plug-ins. It is a quick Desaturate and Contrast bump.
Piro Patton has been shooting for more than 2 decades. His work has taken him all over the United States and Europe shooting everything from street scenes to commercial work. He began taking photographs in 1990 at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was earning a degree in jazz performance playing the acoustic bass. Patton found himself increasingly in demand for photographic work. So, in 2002 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and set up a photographic studio, Piro Patton Pictures. Within a few months he was exhibiting at well-known galleries and has been a curator at the Bolinas Museum’s photography gallery since 2004. Patton regularly exhibits his work through out the bay Area and is held in private collections around the U.S.
To the casual observer he might seem to be wondering aimlessly through the city capturing moments at random but when you understand him and his art it is a vastly different story. His street work is bordering on genius, as is the method to his madness. Piro is an accomplished Acoustic Bass player and his work reflects the subtle nuances the way the notes of his bass might sound if they were pictures. His long history of Jazz mimicked in his artwork sets a fast paced shooting style but still displaying great thoughtfulness. What Piro seems to do, especially with Hole, is contrast subjects that may seem ordinary in their own right – like trees and a portal – but when put together make an amazing, thought-provoking image. One could say the same about music, especially Jazz. It’s the act of putting the notes together that makes beautiful music, not the playing of individual notes. His work is a wonderful piece to have in your collection, not just for it’s technical elegance but for the true meaning behind it. The dichotomy between man and nature is evident in most of his work. While thought provoking, it is very subtle. That’s what makes great art; the ability to deliver a message without having to beat you over the head with it.
Behind The Image: Hole (Piro In His Own Words) Piro describes “Hole as a great metaphor; that both nature and beast can be beautiful. Taking that picture was conscious; if you look at it the other way it doesn’t work. The other way the metaphor is different. Imagine a lonely tree on a highway with trash around it. It is man’s abuse of nature. I’m an optimist and just don’t see things that way. Like music I see everything working together to from a symphony. By themselves the parts of Hole might not make a great photo but the combination of the two is a beautiful marriage. My aim is for you to understand the photograph without talking or thinking too much about it. You get the metaphor even if you are just casually looking.”
He shoots exclusively with a Hassleblad 903swc, an architecture camera with no mirror. It is the perfect tool for this kind of patient work. The lack of mirror means that his camera never “goes dark.” He can wait for all the elements to come into play before he snaps the shutter. It is instantaneously preserved as intended.
Much of Piro’s selected work from the past few years is available in PurePhoto Collections and you can pick up some of his pieces at great prices in our Members Gallery His work is offered in all 3 of our Collections and should be a staple for any new collector.
View our Fine Art, Limited Edition, or Member Galleries to fill your life with more amazing art and make every room in your home or office a personal gallery of things you love. You’ll be glad you did!
