speedy and harmless

Anamigo

eioua — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:38:24 +0000

I got an email from Dan of anamigo.com asking if I could post about his website. I think that he might be under the impression that this blog gets significantly more hits than it does, but he seemed really nice, and the website seems great for pet photography (and pet owners in general), so I don’t mind mentioning it for the very few people who read this blog. It is a social network created for pet ~~owners~~ guardians, or probably just people who like cute pictures of animals. They are hosting a pet photography contest with a $25 daily prize and a $125 weekly prize for the cutest pet. It’s probably worth checking out, especially if you have a pet.

Obscura: The Sensual Aspects of Photo Making

eioua — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 07:16:32 +0000

Tristan Bowersox, a student in Kansas, did me the great honor of asking to use some of my photographs in a visual communications class project he was working on. He emailed me a copy of the project, hopefully he won’t mind me posting it on here.

Obscura: The Sensual Aspects of Photo Making [PDF]

I guess it’s funny, but…

eioua — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:31:28 +0000

200,000 views funny? Thanks Reddit, Digg, and Collegehumor

The effect on my flickr stats page is dramatic.

on maintaining reality

eioua — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:47:15 +0000

I struggled with the idea of Photoshop for a long time. I disapproved of photo manipulation because the result didn’t seem as real as the original. The more I thought about it, though, the more I wondered when exactly the photograph stopped reflecting reality. When I mess with the white balance? That doesn’t seem logical, because I use the automatic white balance setting on my camera, because I know I can just change it later. So, it seems arbitrary to say that changing the white balance on the camera maintains the reality of the photograph, but changing the white balance in Adobe Camera Raw distorts the reality of the photo. The same thing applies to exposure, contrast/brightness, sharpness, saturation, &c.

Ok, so now I have a set of operations that I can perform in Photoshop without rendering the photograph “unreal.” But, if my camera somehow had a way of applying gradient maps, would that be allowable in Photoshop too? Or what about tinkering with the individual RGB curves? Or, what about inserting a person into the photograph who wasn’t in the scene, or adding a garage door onto a living room? Why should the abilities of the camera determine the “reality” of the photograph?

So, my new theory is that no photograph is “real.” A photograph can function in a lot of ways, but the closest that it can be to the “reality” of the scene being photographed is a mere imitation of that scene. So, why aim for imitation? Art is not mere mimesis. I’m not saying, by any means, that the photographs I take are “ART,” but that’s certainly what I’m striving for. So, if using Photoshop on a particular photograph makes it better ART, then I will use it.

That said, I’m still intuitively uncomfortable with the idea of doing anything in Photoshop besides messing with colors and luminosity and whatnot (e.g. inserting objects that weren’t in the scene that was photographed). I don’t have any good reason for this, and I am open to the possibilty of becoming comfortable with this at some point, but for right now, the idea makes me uneasy.

scope

eioua — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:20:00 +0000

So, I’m not exactly sure what the scope, or hell, even the purpose of this blog is. It’s attached to my photoblog, so I imagine this will deal with photography, at least partially, but I guess I’ll figure things out later. I’m not sure how often I’ll use this blog, but the photoblog ought to get a lot of use. So, keep an eye on that.