P&P Weekly: #10

Here’s what’s been happening in The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll:

• Michael over at eyes on the road has been continuing to post some shots from his trip to Easter Island. He has also posted some shots of the ornaments on his new Christmas tree.
• Jon at San Miguel Photo of the Day posts images of life in Mexico. My favorites this week are "Trail Riding" and "Foggy Mornings"
• Andy of Visual Realia has a number of interesting shots this week, my favorites are "Burning Sky," "Road to the Chapel" and "Always Together Forever Apart." Also, click here to check out one of Andy's shots that was recently featured on The Radiant Vista's Daily Critique.
• I've been posting more than usual lately, including an old project of mine, photos from a recent shoot at a nearby lake, a local drive-in, and a few sites I've been enjoying (1, 2, 3).

Want to be added to The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll? Click here to find out how! Update your blogs often! I will only include links to posts added since the last P&P Weekly.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice a discrepancy, please email me.

Midway

Midway Drive-in - Minetto, NY

Last Night's Sunset

(above) Three Rivers Point - Outside of Phoenix, NY
(below) Lake Neatahwanta - Fulton, NY

Happy Thanksgiving!

Scholarship for Whites Only

I was reading a number of articles on CNN.com this afternoon and this one caught my attention. An extended article on this topic can be found here.

College Republicans at Boston University, my alma mater, have recently established a scholarship for whites only in the same vain as other scholarships that are designated for other racial/ethnic and heritage groups. According to the articles the scholarship is intended to "trigger a discussion on what we believe to be a morally wrong practice of basing decisions in our schools and our jobs on racial preferences rather than merit."

I'm a bit on the fence about this one. I understand and agree with the basic premise of affirmative action and the effort to move towards equality on all levels. At the same time, though, I think we need to ultimately make admissions and employment decisions based on qualifications alone.

It then begs the question, all things being equal, if you have two candidates for a position who are equally qualified in every way and the only apparent difference is race, who do you hire? It doesn't always sit well with me that the individual who is a minority is then automatically given the advantage. I'm not saying I think the white candidate deserves to get the position instead but I don't necessarily think the minority candidate should get it simply based on his/her race. At that point, they need to develop another stage in the interview process to help figure out which is best for the position, regardless of which one is ultimately hired.

The whole point is that no two people are exactly the same. Leaving race out of the equation, no two candidates for a position would ever have the exact same skill set, interpersonal dynamics, work ethic, or creative drive. So if you get down to two and can't decide, you may need to revisit your selection criteria.

I applaud universities, companies, and other organizations that work towards inclusivity of all aspects of life, not only race. I know my life has been enriched by being surrounded by those who are different from myself in virtually every way.

But we're not there yet. We have a long way to go before we have a truly equal society. So while I wait for that day, I have to default to the side that is working towards that goal.

Panorama

I was looking at Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom Killer Tips site to see what his "Inspirational Day" link would be and today it's a gallery spotlight of photographer Guy Edwardes who specializes in nature and landscape photography. I was particularly interested in his panoramic gallery, which is just phenomenal (though it's all pretty amazing).

As I was looking through the site, I was reminded of the panoramas of National Geographic photographer Bruce Dale. When I was preparing for my return home from Alaska last May, I picked up a special edition of National Geographic that was filled with digital photography tips by a number of their photographers out in the field. Inside was a tutorial on shooting great panos by Bruce Dale. Also included was a pull-out poster with a full size pano on one side and smaller versions of a dozen or so others on the reverse.

They're so crisp (or as Scott Kelby would say, "Technically Accurate Cibachrome Kelvin Shutter Hyperfocal At Refracted Polarization" or tantus saeta equina) and the colors are so vibrant and alive that you are just drawn into the scene.

Definitely take a look.

Escheresque

I've always been a big fan of M.C. Escher ever since I first encountered his work back in Union Elementary School's REACH program when I was in 4th or 5th grade.

I created this image last year as an idea for a Photoshop competition - that I ended up not entering - and surprised myself that I was able to do it at all.

With the upcoming Photoshop User Awards I was reminded of this piece and thought I'd pull it out to share with you as a little bit of Escheresque whimsy.

Slow Work Day

Create your own here.

Polaroid Manipulations

Polaroid SX-70 film takes some minutes to dry or become solid. By manipulating the polaroid photo with a sharp stick it is possible to achieve a strange painterly look. There is no photoshop or computer manipulations in these photographs.

Rob Gardiner of NYCLondon, one of the black and white photoblogs I recently found, has a gallery based entirely on this technique, yielding some really cool effects. Being a fan of Impressionist painting (particularly Monet) I really like what Rob has done here. My favorites are:

Home sweet home
London Underground
and London Bus

But they're all really fascinating.

Siem Reap

On a different note, I just finished reading this article from CNN.com on the rise of tourism in Siem Reap, Cambodia. During my trip around the world when I studied abroad with Semester at Sea, I took a side trip during our time in Vietnam to visit the temples of Angkor Wat.

Aside from the shear beauty of the place and the utter amazement I felt visiting such a truly foreign and ancient icon of a once-great empire, it was one of the hardest experiences of my life.

We landed at the Siem Reap airport to go through customs and had to pass through armed guards - something I certainly wasn't used to - before heading to our fancy hotel (honestly, I've stayed in worse hotels here in the US). The difficult part came from the knowledge I had of the country and its history, not from any sort of culture shock.

Part of our program on SAS was a class called CORE, which everyone took, that focused on the many different aspects of the next country on our itinerary. We studied geography, politics, economics, religion, history, culture and current events. So I was somewhat aware of what had happened under the rule of the Khmer Rouge, adding a certain weight to the excursion.

The ports leading up to this point were fairly modern (Kobe, Japan; Shanghai, PRC; Hong Kong; Saigon, Vietnam). Where Saigon was a somewhat dirty, run-down, and chaotic city than our previous stops, it was still fairly modern. But Siem Reap proved itself to be rural and more typical of SE Asian towns.

While the temples were even more amazing than I had imagined (I first learned about them in an old issue of National Geographic) I wasn't prepared for the poverty that I faced. There were people with missing limbs because of the stray landmines left over from the war, children trying with great effort to sell trinkets and postcards and books - knowing that they couldn't go home if they didn't make even $10 dollars that day - and, even more heartbreaking, the 7-8 year olds carrying infant brothers and sisters in their arms, trying to negotiate with you (even through the windows of the bus) to take the little ones with you knowing that you could provide a better life than they would find there.

I had seen the homeless and people begging for money before when I lived in Boston or traveled to NYC with school trips but I wasn't ready for that. I'm ashamed of it but I got to the point where I just had to turn away and do my best to ignore what was going on around me. Even now, 4 years later it's hard to put into words. The best way I can put it is to say that it was one of the hardest experiences I've ever had, but it was an experience I needed to have in order to have a fuller picture of the reality of the world.

Back to the article...

While tourism to the temples of Angkor should prove to be a huge benefit to the Cambodian economy, there is the fear that too much traffic will cause more pollution, over-crowding, and even weaken or destroy the temples themselves. At the same time, the people who are bearing the brunt of the boom are also gaining employment.

I must admit that I was one of those that climbed the temple steps for a couple of good pictures, including this one at sunset as described towards the end of the article.

To be honest, I'm not sure where I was headed with this. I guess I just struggle with the balance of the benefits of tourism for a country like Cambodia and its side-effects. Maybe this is just a stage on the road to Cambodia's overall development. Maybe this is a commercialization of a culture that will produce more poverty, inequality, and pollution than the perceived good. I really don't know. I just thought I'd throw it out there as something to think about.

"A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania"

I was, once again, browsing around through some photoblogs this morning and came across "A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania" by Kathleen Connally.

These shots are just amazing. The colors are so rich, great depth of field and composition. Kathleen's site started out in January of 2003 as a project to capture daily life in and around her hometown in Bucks County where she's captured some beautiful moments that are distinctly Pennsylvania.

It's sites like these that make me want to be a better photographer.

Definitely worth a look!

If I Were a South Park Character...

Create your own here.

Boardwalk

Once again: Liberty State Park, NJ

P&P Weekly: #9

Here’s what’s been happening in The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll:

• Michael over at eyes on the road is posting shots of the moai on Easter Island and posted a reference to an article about iPod docks on planes.
• Jon at San Miguel Photo of the Day posts images of life in Mexico. My favorite this week is "Stuck in the mud"
• Andy of Visual Realia is into a series of musical instruments and I particularly enjoy his shots of sheet music, especially "Molto Espressivo"
• I've been posting about an animation project I was working on, a video of a bird mimicing the sounds of a camera, and a couple of B&W photography sites I've found.

Want to be added to The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll? Click here to find out how! Update your blogs often! I will only include links to posts added since the last P&P Weekly.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice a discrepancy, please email me.

Vacation 2007?

Every year around Thanksgiving I make my decision about the following year's vacation destination. After Semester at Sea and graduating from college I promised myself that I would take at least a week each year to travel to a place I've never been, as my finances allow. I've been successful the past two years with a trip to London and Northern Ireland in 2005 and a trip across Alaska this past May.

This time around I had a lot of very different ideas in mind from Antarctica to Tibet to Australia and New Zealand to touring the castles of southern Germany. While I haven't made any definite plans yet - I usually book my tickets early in the new year - I'm looking at spending 4 days traveling across Switzerland set in between a couple of days in Paris (though I haven't settled on Paris for those days) during the first week of July.

I'm always open to suggestions and ideas particularly from those who have traveled there. I'm also open to other destinations instead of Paris for a couple of days at the front and end of the Switzerland portion of the trip. (My email address is at the top of my sidebar.)

Black and Whites

I was looking around for some photographic inspiration and found these two photoblogs that I'm definitely adding to my list of sites to watch.

NYCLondon.com
A Black and White Photoblog

If you like black and white, you'll love these.

Bird Imitates Camera

Check out this short video of a lyre bird that imitates the "sounds of the forest" in its mating calls.

(via State of the Art)

A Little Project for the Weekend

This coming weekend we are once again providing sound and video support for a large gathering of youth in Rochesster, NY. Usually we have a fairly generic background to put up or we're left using the client-supplied PowerPoint that leaves something to be desired, for my taste. So this year I put together an animation to which we will add some other "Welcome" copy to later.

Unfortunately, the animation is too large to post but I thought I'd share the initial design idea that I put together in Photoshop using some of the awesome brushes created by Jason Gaylor over at Designfruit. In particular I used his "Worn Photoshop Brushes for High Resolution [Part I]." I rarely get to work in this style, unless I'm doing something for youth, so I always have a lot of fun playing around with the different looks I can get with these amazing worn brushes. Check out the other cool brushes he has too.

P&P Weekly: #8

Here’s what’s been happening in The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll:

• Michael over at eyes on the road is posting shots of his recent trip to Chile and he's starting to post his Easter Island shots.
• Jon at San Miguel Photo of the Day posts images of life in Mexico. My favorites this week are "The two women in my life" and I really like the color in "Pastura"
• Andy of Visual Realia is into a series of musical instruments and I really like "Waves of Sound" and his quote in "Fine Tuning" - Andy always has really interesting quotes to accompany the photos he posts, they offer an additional lens with which to view his images.
• I've been posting about a new Lightroom podcast, some other shots from Liberty State Park, and an idea for a new project that I would like to try if someone's interested.

Want to be added to The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll? Click here to find out how! Update your blogs often! I will only include links to posts added since the last P&P Weekly.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice a discrepancy, please email me.

Summer Romances

They're shooting stars, a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, fleeting glimpse of eternity, and in a flash they're gone.

In Honor of Verteran's Day

The Oxford Project

I am always interested when people take a different look at life. Whether it's literally looking at things from a different angle or piecing together divergent elements in order to say something about who we are as human beings.

I hate to keep borrowing links I found over at The Online Photographer but as I was over there today I thought that this was an interesting concept, he always seems to find fascinating stuff. The Oxford Project started back in 1984 when photographer Peter Feldstein setup his camera on Augusta Street in Oxford, Iowa (pop. 673). 21 years later Peter returned to Oxford with writer Stephen G. Bloom to capture its residents once again. They documented how many of the original 670 subjects had changed during the intervening years, both physically and by allowing them to tell their stories.

When I was reading about this endeavor I was reminded, somehow, of a post I wrote in June about The One Hundred Images Project. If you are unfamiliar - or don't want to go back to read my other post - two photographers from different parts of the country (they both used to be in Chicago until one moved to NYC) take shots of the world around them each week over the course of a year, totally independent of each other, and then post them side by side to offer a unique perspective.

Ever since I first came across this site I felt like it would be a cool project to try. Not only would it be a good excuse to shoot more often than I have been, it would offer a new way of looking at the world - which is what it's all about anyway.

Now that I have more of a readership than I did back in June, I'd like to extend the invitation once again to anyone who might be interested in taking part in something like this with me. I'm not sure what we'd call it (I'm open to suggestions) but it would only require committing to shoot something once a week, processing the image and sending the file to me. And I'll take care of managing it. We wouldn't consult with each other on theme or subject matter but, as the other project does, I think it'd be interesting if we both tried to shoot on the same day during the same time period to add another dimension to the project.

If you're interested, please email me (jason at jasondmoore dot com) and we'll work from there. If there's more than one person interested, I think it could only add to it, so please let me know.

More NYC Shots

Here are a few more shots from when I was down at Liberty State Park, NJ at the end of September. As usual, click on the image to see it full size.

New: Lightroom Killer Tips

Matt Kloskowski, NAPP educator and "Photoshop Guy," has recently released a new podcast and companion website that focuses on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (currently in public beta which you can download for free here) is Adobe's newest tool for the digital darkroom which offers photographers powerful, yet elegant control over their photos from start to finish. I've only just started really playing around with it even though the Window's beta came out months ago and I just love it.

Matt explains:

On Monday’s you’ll find a new video teaching you some aspect of Lightroom. Wednesday’s are my “Inspirational” day – meaning I’m not quite sure what I’ll post but it’ll be some type of link to a killer portfolio, useful article, or photographer’s website. Then on Friday’s I’ll finish off the week with a written tip or some inside scoop on using Lightroom.

So take a look at the site, subscribe to the podcast, and learn more about how you can use this great program to make your photos even better.

P&P Weekly: #7

I am off on Monday so I thought I would do next week's P&P Weekly today.

Here’s what’s been happening in The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll:

• Michael over at eyes on the road is now back from Chile and will be posting some more of his shots in the coming days.
• Jon at San Miguel Photo of the Day posts images of life in Mexico. My favorites this week are "Resting through the mirror" and I love the colors in "Rancho La Luz Sunset"
• Andy of Visual Realia is starting a series of musical instruments, though I particularly enjoy his recent shot "The Real Miracle"
• I've been posting a lot this week so I won't take the time to list topics. Feel free to scroll down or to click on the links to recent posts in my sidebar.

Want to be added to The Photoshop & Photography Blogroll? Click here to find out how! Update your blogs often! I will only include links to posts added since the last P&P Weekly.

As always, if you have any suggestions or notice a discrepancy, please email me.

Moments in Time

(via The Online Photographer)

(This is more of a series of thoughts that have been bouncing around this afternoon than a single, coherent post.)

As I was making the rounds among the various blogs I read I came across a link to a narrated slideshow about the photography of Constantine Manos. In it, we are treated to a series of photographs taken over Manos' career as he turns his lens toward some of the diversity in American culture.

Personally, after viewing the slideshow I felt as though, on the whole, the majority of his work wasn't my style. And if I just went on the visuals alone I might take that as my only impression. However, as the show continues he elaborates on how his philosophy of photography has evolved and that shooting in a more documentary style helps him to understand the world around him and his unique perspective added to my own understanding of his work.

One of the interesting points that he raises is that the 80 shots of real-world subjects at an ISO of 1/250 span years, decades even, but when combined represent less than one second of time. And each of those moments, because they were not produced artificially in a studio, will never occur again.

Another point he discusses is the beauty of a great shot. Like poetry, every element plays a role in the composition and if even one element was removed it could alter the overall feeling of a piece. Manos says that because every word, every piece of punctuation is important in expressing the true meaning and emotion of a poem and that removing a comma could alter everything (a point I once discussed at length in a Bible study, actually). So too is the effect on a photo if you crop it a certain way or clone out an undesirable speck.

A friend of mine used to hate the fact that I would do some color correction with photos because it wasn't being true to the moment. Now, cameras haven't always been able to capture exactly what your eye sees and some manipulation after the fact is necessary to bring the image closer to the reality or to improve upon it. Granted, in some situations - documentary photography, photojournalism, etc. - there is a very fine line between what is and is not acceptable/ethical but photography as an art form isn't and shouldn't be restricted by the same rules.

Have You Registered Yet?

I know it's really early and the special advanced pricing doesn't expire until the beginning of March but I found that they recently opened registration for Photoshop World - Boston April 4-6, 2007. For a 3-day conference it is quite reasonably priced and it's even less if you are a NAPP member - if you're not, your registration includes a 1-year membership too! And it's well worth it.

I haven't been to the entire event before - partly because of the cost for flights, hotels, the event itself, etc. - but I went the last time it was in Boston for the day the expo floor was open to the public. Now that it's back in Boston - only a relaxing 5.5 hour drive away - I'm there!

I went to college in Boston so it will be really nice to be back in the city and I'll get a chance to catch up with a friend of mine from Semester at Sea, since she's letting me crash on her couch.

Another Waterfall

When I was out of town a couple of weeks ago we needed some pictures of water to supplement a worship service during the event. As I was looking through the shots on my laptop, I came across this one from a photography workshop I led during a youth retreat that I hadn't processed yet. I like how it turned out.

In a Rut?

Renowned wildlife photographer Moose Peterson offers some tips and insights on what to do if you find yourself lacking inspiration/motivation.

Keeping the creative juices a live is very important, especially now that winter is fast approaching. The normal subjects aren’t as obvious or plentiful. It’s the time to explore new techniques, revisit old ones and master and combine them so when spring rolls around, you’re ready to go.

Also, on a totally unrelated note, as I was watching The Unit last night there was a scene in a body shop where several soldiers were working to restore a vintage Jeep when one of them said, “You can have it good, you can have it cheap, you can have it Tuesday, pick two!” Sounds familiar.