I miss when you guys talked about the photographers of the past and the art form and now it’s all just gear related. If you guys could get back to that even a little it’d be awesome!
16:20 Penn Jillette has stated something similar multiple times: "magic" tricks don't hinge on a single details. They're intricate and some of them are patented which means you can read how to do them. But when most people face the long description, they don't even bother to read it, let alone copy it. I understand some tricks take months to get right even for the people that invented them for themselves and their particular physiques and talents.
My favorite historical photographer was Philippe Halsman. He was a Life magazine photographer who created some of the most outlandish portraits long before Photoshop. His collaborations with Salvador Dali were simply amazing. He also created Jumpology. As a Life photographer he would do portraits of some of the most famous people in the world. Halsman would get them to jump and photograph them. He created a collection of these portraits and published a book called Jump. He analyzed their jumps. He reasoned that how people jumped gave insight into personalities. His portraits became so well known that his subjects would demand to be photographed jumping. He did everyone from Arthur Miller with Marylin Monroe, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Richard Nixon, Audrey Hepburn and many more. If you want a challenge good luck trying to duplicate Dali Atomicus taken in 1948.
I totally thought I discovered a creative way to photograph fireworks because I forgot my tripod. I intentionally moved my camera in all kinds of odd ways and shapes and got some really cool photos. HOWEVER, after doing some search I discovered ICM was already a thing. .. but I was being creative even though I was "stealing" someone else's ideas. I had no limitations on my camera movements since I wasn't actually copying anyone.
IMO these same principles would apply to AI generated art. We all take inspiration from something/somewhere. Whether we realize it or not. AI just has a bigger book of inspiration to pull from. yes give credit where credit it due, but sometimes you may be creating something you think is new, but could in fact been something you saw many moons ago. ❤ ✊
This video is excellent. Just yesterday my wife asked me to take a picture of a cake she had just baked and I remembered some food pictures I saw on Instagram last week. I copied the composition of them. She loved the photos.
I purchased ansel Adams books and learned a lot . What I did do was developed my films properly to ensure that I had a full range of tones. Therefore,make sure I developed for zone 5. This crossed over to my digital work to ensure that my exposure at capture would be the best. The photographer that I like is Weegee the photo journalist because his images tell stories.
I think copying something as exactly as possible can be a good exercise in understanding how the original was made. However, art can only emerge from this if there is not only a formal but also a substantive examination of the original. This means that you either question the content of the original with your own photo or make a statement about it. Against this background, the accuracy of the copy can prove to be of secondary importance or even counterproductive. I am a huge fan of Cindy Sherman. In her photo series "History Portraits", she explores the staged nature of portrait paintings from art history. She does not create exact copies of these paintings, but deliberately incorporates "mistakes" into her photographic restagings (e.g. she uses cheap second-hand clothes and curtains to disguise herself and take on the role of the person in the painting in her photos. Her masks are also clearly recognizable as such, so that the fake becomes obvious). At first glance, there is a clear resemblance to the original pictures, but on closer inspection of the photos, the mistakes are clearly noticeable and the viewer is confused. Why does Sherman restage the paintings as clearly recognizable fakes? The answer is simple. The paintings from art history to which Sherman's photographs refer are also "fakes" in their own way, i.e. stagings of a reality that we do not know. The people in these paintings, for example, were often depicted in an idealized, representative way because the clients wanted them to be for various reasons. By "falsely" imitating these painted stagings and thus caricaturing them, Sherman encourages the viewer to question the authenticity of the painted images themselves. This is the content of her examination of the paintings, which elevates Sherman's photographs to the status of art. In some cases, she also stages herself in male roles, which in turn raises new, gender-related questions. In another series called "Film Stills", Sherman deals with stereotypes in the cinematic staging of women. She does not copy specific film images, but rather alludes to well-known film genres and the clichéd roles that women play in them. And again, it is the thematic examination of the subject that makes Sherman an outstanding photographic artist.
For the last 2 months I just started saving ideas in Pinterest folders. Fashion magazines, Cool colours, Things in the sky, Famous album covers. Clones.
You could do a program about famous photographers , showing their style . A lot of us didn't have formal photography training so we don't know about many of these people , that could be entertaining 😊
Chelsea, your concept of bubble gum blown to cover your face has been recreated by another model/photographer and used in a bank brochure or ad in Singapore
One little spark, of inspiration Is at the heart, of all creation...oh wait this isn't Disney. Thanks for the podcast. Personally this would be a great exercise for me being more interested in the technical side of photography I could learn a lot about the art for sure. I will have to give it a go.
Before I got seriously into photography in my late 20s, I was a classical artist and SUPER competitive. Well, in junior high there was a couple of Asian kids who produced stunning comic book drawings, which myself and my 2 artist friends were jealous of because we drew comic books too. One day we wandered into the opposing art teacher's classroom after school and found them copying comic book drawings using a projector. We were soooo pissed that our reputation as real artists were made less so from these two fake artists. Our pride was also puffed up knowing that we were better artists than those two goobers. 😎
Did you get to see the doc by Penn &Teller about The girl with the pear earing. They think vemier used camera obscure. Also checking to see if you muted me
For someone wanting to learn about photographic lighting, the best book I've ever seen is "Light-- Science & Magic: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting", by Hunter, Biver, Fuqua, and Reid. It's not just a collection of lighting setups. It teaches the principles that make the setups work. I worked through the examples back when it first came out, and I learned so much. Bright field vs. dark field setups for glass and metal objects. Polarized vs. diffuse reflected light. The chapters about photographing glass and metal objects are a must-read. Those cool product shots of glass objects you see in catalogs become easy to understand. Not long ago, I was shooting a building that had some metal panels that were blowing out. I just couldn't get a decent exposure. Then I remembered the chapter on shooting metal objects, took a few steps to the side, out of the angle of reflection from the panels, and boom, they went from a zone 9 to about a zone 4. Picture saved.
