Head on over to the Photo-Eye website and read my review of Jake Mendel’s book Short Track.
Short Track Review
Category Archives: Website
Updating My Website
I am in the process of making my website mobile browser compliant. To do this I am using the Portfolio WordPress theme by Dalton Rooney. I have tweaked it some and will continue to for the rest of the week.
Checking out my old site on my wife’s iPhone made me realize the I needed to do something. I was about to use indexhibit after seeing the results David Bram was able to achieve. Shortly there after I came across Rooney’s theme and decided to go with that. I have WordPress here and on my teaching blog. I need to bring Frame Lines into the WordPress fold, just not this week.
If you are not reading this blog in an RSS reader, which you probably should, you can see that I have tweaked this place again. I went back to K2 because I wanted this to look like a blog.
Burk Uzzle and ICP Lectures
I found this link to some audio and video lectures at the ICP in New York over on We Can’t Paint.
There are lots to look at and listen to. So far the Burk Uzzle and Taryn Simon lectures are great.
Speaking of Burk Uzzle, this is one of my favorite quotes of his:
“In the moment, in the place when the ordinary reveals itself to be epic, it is my favorite time to be alive, to have my camera and to see.”
I remember the time in college when I came across his book Landscapes at the Art and Architecture Library at Kansas University it was like opening my eyes to a new world. Memories of that small book carried me through visually for a long time.
He is most known for photograph of a couple from Woodstock and a shag van from Bike Week in Daytona. This image is what has stuck in my craw for so long.
Burk Uzzle, Danbury, CT.
TED Talks: David Griffin
There are a number of good videos of different TED talks on their website. David Griffin’s ideas of photography are clear and deft, you would expect that from the director of photography at National Geographic.
Looks a bit different around these parts
As seen in Fraction Magazine
I am honored and humbled to be a part of the new group show “Fathers and Sons” curated by Aline Smithson at Fraction Magazine. I have been photographing my children since they were born. Doing this I was able to see the joy and personal value of photography, something that had been missing in my life. Doing it also motivated me to go to graduate school. When I came to Texas, what had been my personal work took on a new focus. I was unsure it of because it is my family and had a seeming lack of gravitas. Well, I am not totally sure on how I feel about putting images of my family out there, but the project does have gravitas. I see that now.
When I made the decision to go to graduate school I was emailing any photographer who had an MFA whose work was remotely similar to mine. I cam across the work of Todd Deutsch, who suggested I look at the work of Brian Ulrich. I also found Dennis Chamberlin. All three of these men were kind enough to answer my questions about what graduate school I might fit in at. It is humbling that four years later I am included with both Todd and Dennis.
I do not know all of the photographers represented. I have been following the work of Timothy Archibald and Byron Wolfe for some time. But the others in the show amaze me. I need to step my game up. I need to be more intentional my camera, not just lazy with my mobile phone.
Like everything in photography, I think I am the only one photographing his kids in a serious manner. The internet reveals the truth, I am not. Places like Fraction Magazine really open my eyes to all of the amazing work out there. Thanks Aline for including Alex and I in this.
Driftless: Stories from Iowa
Danny Wilcox Frazier updates his book “Driftless: Photographs from Iowa” with a documentary that is now playing on Mediastorm.This is one of the best sorts of presentations I have seen. Taking the time to make it the right way helped. Words are escaping me right now. Watch it is really all that I can say.
Arm Yourself With Knowledge
I am not one to toot my own horn, but, sidelines was written up in the NT Daily today.
wakes
Gilles Peress ventures down to Wall St. to describe the chaos. It is featured on Magnum Photos’ new site, InSight America.
Peress was one of the first photographers whose work I was drawn to and I tried to consume as much of it as I could. His photographic language makes sense to me visually, even though I do not always understand what exactly it is he is saying.
I think this essay is good. But does it live up to the idea I have of Gilles Peress in my head? No. The repetition of similar images adds to the package. I wish that I could manipulate a wide-angle lens like he does. I think the biggest distraction of the piece is the video. I want to see just still images. Also, having Peress cover something that is not foreign land conflict based is interesting, but is that why I am attracted to it? I am not sure. Some of the pictures really stand out.
This interview helped me understand Peress more.
blurb book contest
I skimmed the nearly 1,800 entries to the Photography Book Now contest Blurb is sponsoring. These are just the ones online. I do not know how many hard copy entries that were submitted. This contest has been mentioned in other blogs out there. My initial response is that the photograph is far from dead. Digital is keeping it alive with the advent of book publishers like Blurb. Thank goodness.
There are a lot of people taking pictures out there. Some good, most OK, and more than a few people are taking pictures of naked women.
I did not look at all of the entries. I am guessing that a third of the entries are really worthwhile and of that about 100 are the best. Here are some that caught my eye. By that I mean: I had heard of the photographer before, the cover was interesting, the title was interesting, there was no image on the cover or I just thought, let’s take a look.
I know that if I entered mine would not be in the worthwhile category, so please stick with me. I do not think that just portfolio books were the spirit of the competition.
After a while I could guess at the pictures. There were some covers that proved to be the best picture in the first 15 pages. (Blurb lets you browse the first 15 pages.) There is a lot of Alex Soth inspired landscape work being done. A lot of three-quarter length portraits. There is nothing wrong with that, but I could tell what I would see from the cover image.
If I had to choose one, from all of what I saw, I would easily say Olivier Pin-Fat. No question his work was the most unique, in my opinion, from what what I saw. He is pushing photography to its limits more than most of the people who entered the contest. I could just say go look at his book and you will see the best one, but I am probably wrong about that since I did not look at every book and did not see the hard copies.
Having witnessed a few contests being judged, I would say getting down to 100 will be more about editing out the obvious for one reason or another. From the top third. I will take time. Probably getting down to 10 or 20 will be more difficult. It will take a consensus. Picking a winner from 10 or 20 will be the real work, but, if they are all doing it together in one place, my guess is that as a group, they will have a an idea of what they want and don’t want.
I did not enter this contest. I really felt like I do not have enough right now to put together to make a book. I hope the contest will continue. In time, I hope I have enough pictures to make a book.
I bookmarked about 30 titles I liked. These four round out my top five in random order: Lisa Wiltse, Aaron Hobson, Tim Clayton and John Lehr.
Feel free to see what others have to say about the contest. They include: Cara Phillips, Andrew Hetherington and Jorg Colberg.
There are other books that are worth buying. I do not know how it is priced, but some are expensive. I tend to be populist and would want a smaller and cheaper book out there so people would buy it. Then again, I do march to the beat of a different drummer. I should not forget to mention Paho Mann’s book.