Photo&Cameras

Considered by American Photo magazine to be one of the ten most influential women photographers in the history of photography, Joyce Tenneson has had her work published in LIFE, Esquire, Newsweek, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of over 12 prior books, including the best seller “Wise Women,” and she is the recipient of numerous awards.

In A Life In Photography 1968 – 2008, Tenneson provides a retrospective of a career that spans four decades. Beginning with her first black-and-white studies in self-portraiture, through her transformations period, through her work with light, color and into the exploration of maturing women, as well as trying to look to what is ahead.

Joyce Tenneson – A Life In Photography 1968 – 2008 is divided into several sections which encompass these periods. While not everything is covered, it does seem to take into account each decade.

“Early Work” examines the early personal journey that is played out by someone who is trying to find themselves in photography. Her photographic career started while she was modeling, when someone gave her a camera. These are very autobiographical images that are a record of the first steps in a long career. They include the self portraits as well as the images of her son Alex. These cover the late ’60s and ’70s.

“Transformation” is based on the first Tenneson book to feature her color work. Published in 1993, it was timed to coincide with a traveling exhibition. These images present the full range of her personal color work since she began to work in color in the mid ’80s.

“Light Warriors” is a selection of images from her 2000 book that paints women as a mystic and timeless vision of the female psyche by using a bold departure into the colors of luminous dark browns and blacks. It is the universal quest for the spiritual warrior trying to find their own uniqueness.

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Everyone knows about the capabilities of Photoshop for graphic design, photography, and illustration, but did you know that it is also one of the most powerful tools for scientists and researchers as well? It is indispensable in the preparation of digital images of specimens for measurement; especially for separating relevant features from background detail.

The goal of Scientific Imaging With Photoshop: Methods, Measurement, and Output  is to be the authoritative guide to the use of Photoshop in scientific research, with a special emphasis on the ethical ramifications of the use of image-enhancement software to extract data from digital images. Scientific Imaging With Photoshop is 312 pages long divided into ten chapters spread over three parts.

Ethics and Background Information

Chapter 1, "Visual Data and Ethics," is concerned with what is done with the image after capture. When dealing with scientific images, many think that there should be no "enhancement" done to the image because they are to be used as visual proof of experimental evidence. What about when the captured image does not truly represent the actual specimen? This chapter examines the right and wrong ways to correctly represent visual data.

Chapter 2, "General Guidelines for All Images," continues the discussion of ethical dilemma by presenting what constitutes ethical guidelines for processing of scientific images. These guidelines are based on three main areas: acquisition, post processing, and conformance.

Chapter 3, "Guidelines for Specific Types of Images," concludes this section by discussing some content specific changes. These are changes based upon the intent of the image itself and many times address issues not clearly spelled out in author guidelines for the major scientific publications.

Input, Corrections, and Output

Chapter 4, "Getting the Best Input," focuses on specimen preparation and correct setup of the imaging device. The goal here is to get an accurate representation of the subject being imaged. Topics covered include illumination, noise reduction, and capture. Chapter 5, "Photoshop Setup and Standard Procedure," will show you how to get your Photoshop set up, calibrated, and ready to go. You will learn how to get the best out of your system.

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When seen in the light of the photography and art work of Susi Lawson, most everything else comes across as mundane and ordinary. Her work is fresh, invigorating, as well as instantly recognizable. Much in the way that you can tell a Norman Rockwell work of art as soon as you see it, you can recognize a Susi Lawson work of art as well.

There is something about it that jumps off the page and says, "Look at me!" My first experience was at a local bookstore where I was browsing the photography and art magazines and I saw this remarkable cover of .PSD magazine in which this little girl holding an old fashion brownie camera. She is surrounded by a bright blue sky and large puffy clouds and she has an incredible expression of utter delight on her face.

Since then, Susi Lawson has continued to win numerous awards for her work including the NAPP Grand Prize (Best of Show) 2007 Photoshop User Awards, and first place in the Portrait/Wedding category of the 2008 Photoshop User Awards. Now, releasing her third training video, The Fine Art Of Photoshop, she is once again sharing her techniques for creating these wonderful works of art.

The Fine Art Of Photoshop contains 16 videos covering 10 lessons that detail how to work with Photoshop. It covers techniques of working with brushes, painting portraits, how to use photos to begin your drawing and painting, as well as how to draw in Photoshop. It comes on two disks, one with the videos and one with the necessary images so you can follow along.

In Lesson 1, Getting to know Brushes, you will learn how changing the nature of the brush dynamics can change the look you create. You will see how to create textures, use scattering brushes, airbrushing, and even things like grass brushes. Lesson 2, Painting a Cowgirl takes a picture of Cassa Marie, the same girl from the .PSD front cover, and she shows you how to easily turn it into a painted style image. Using the brush techniques you learned earlier, you will create the background, bring brightness to the eyes, and really enhance the hair.

Lesson 3, Cover Painting (3 Videos) is the feature tutorial from this video in which you will see how to create the image that graces the cover of the DVD case. The image is called Hope. While this kind of work is more natural to try to do in Corel Painter, many people don't want to spend the time to learn another program, and so here you will see how to accomplish this painting in Photoshop.

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The new Ray Flash from ExpoImaging is a unique adapter for your hot-shoe flash unit that is designed to replicate the lighting effect that produced by traditional and much more expensive studio ring flash units. The Ray Flash was built to be lightweight and to be powered by your existing hot-shoe unit, it contains no heavy electronics.

What is a ring flash? First invented in 1952 by Lester A. Dine, it was originally used in dental photography to pinpoint light into a patient's mouth so that a clear picture of patents teeth could be made. In the 1970's, it was found to have other photographic benefits and took off in other genres.

The device itself is a circular photographic flash that fits around the lens of a camera. It is meant to provide even illumination on the subject, and is effective in reducing the number of shadows that can be produced by traditional flashes. In many ways, it works like a soft box in that it spreads the light from many angles and softens the shadows. It is now used in many different areas of photography, especially portrait and fashion photography.

The way the Ray Flash works is through little channels that direct the light from the flash around the ring. Closer to the top of the ring, the spot where your native flash is, there are no little reflectors, and as it channels to the bottom, more channels spread the light around the ring. One thing to note is that you will lose a little lighting power from your flash. It's about a full stop, so you will have to run your flash with a bit more power which in turn will affect your battery life, but that is one of the trade-offs for having a lighter unit.

Installation is really easy as well. As you can see in the image below you just slide the Ray Flash over the head of your flash unit and turn the lock on the top of the unit. Each Ray Flash is made for certain flash/camera combinations so you will need to make sure that you get the correct combinations. There is a list on the ExpoImaging site to make sure that you get the right one for your system.

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Have you ever wondered how professional photographers make their subjects stand out from the background? You may see an insect on a flower that is in focus and everything else is blurred. This is a standard trick used by the pros that is called selective focus. One method of doing this is to control depth of field in the camera by using a large aperture lens to produce a narrow depth of field.

Another method is to hand-manipulate the image in an image editing program such as Photoshop, but that can take time and some skill to get it to look good without that manipulated feel — that is, until FocalPoint from onOne Software.

FocalPoint gives you the ability to use selective focus to remove distracting backgrounds and allows you to force the viewer's line of sight directly onto the subject. While this is often used in macro photography, it is also very popular in portrait, wedding, commercial, and editorial photography as well.

To run FocalPoint on Mac you need OSX 10.4.10, 10.5 or higher with either 1 GHz G5 or Intel core processor. On Windows you need XP SP2, Vista, or later, 1GHz Pentium 4 processor or equivalent. And then you need Photoshop CS2, CS3, or Photoshop Elements 4 (on Mac) or Elements 5 (on PC) or later. You'll need a minimum of 1 GB ram (2 GB recommended), 25 MB disk space, OpenGL 1.5 video card, and Adobe Flash Player 9 for tutorial movies. On a PC you also need Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher.

So what do you get with FocalPoint?

• Selective focus – gives you the ability to add selective focus to images after they have been taken. Unlike attempting this in the image, there is no special knowledge or additional equipment needed. Also, unlike camera-based selective focus, you can adjust the degree, the plane, as well as the "sweet spot" — the un-blurred area of your image — well after the image has been taken.

• Adding vignettes – will now let you lighten or darken the edges of the image to minimize the distractions within the image's edges and focus the attention back to the subject.

• Blur control – gives you the ability to blur via two shapes, planar and round. The planar simulates a tilt-shift appearance similar to that what you would get in a view camera, or a tilt shift lens. It gives a sweet spot that slices through the image from one side to another. The round creates a round or oblong sweet spot that is similar to using a selective focus lens.

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With Photoshop, you have at your fingertips a tool of great power. And with that power comes the ability to create great experiences if you take the time and learn how. The goal of How To Wow: Photoshop CS3 For Photographers is to give you the techniques, tips, insights, and essential principles that will help you achieve the highest quality results. You will gain the ability to produce the wow factor.

It is also the goal of How To Wow to give you the ability to accomplish this with the greatest degree of flexibility, while maintaining the speed to get it done in the fewest number of steps. This book is 304 pages with 15 chapters divided into four sections. I will address the four sections.

Section I, "Workflow & Optimizing," begins by reminding us that Photoshop is not the most important tool, but rather, it is the camera that shapes the story you want to tell, and the camera provides you with the raw material to present your story to the world. After you have captured your image you now must have processes in place to prepare your image for display. You will need Adobe Bridge and Camera Raw to begin your preparation, a smart, non-destructive workflow to make sure that you harm no pixels, the techniques and abilities to make selections, and the ability to optimize your colors and tones with targeted tweaking.

Section II, "Retouching & Repairing," explains that the reason for retouching is to remove the distractions that draw the eye and mind away from the subject and subsequently your story. To do this you need to know what a distraction is, and what an integral part of the story is and how to remove the former and enhance the later. This all begins in Camera Raw. Next we look at the skin and how to soften it and let the subject shine through. From there you will see how to patch, reduce wrinkles, reshape body parts, enhance eyes, teeth, hair, lips, and skin, as well as replacing, removing and repairing objects in your image.

Section III, "Enhancing & Embellishing," is all about going beyond that captured moment and crafting what you experienced in the camera and translate that experience to the viewer of your image. This is where you put your best foot forward. It is the icing on the cake. It is the WOW factor. In this section you will learn how to take some liberties with your image. Primarily these will be with your colors, tones, and hues. You will see how to work with edge glows, overlays, and blurring effects. It will be with conversion to black and white, tinting, and hand coloring. It is all about making the most with your image.

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The 10th Annual Waterfront Film Festival on the scenic shore of Lake Michigan was held June 12-15 in the artsy village of Saugatuck, MI. Midwest premieres and world premieres were among the eclectic selection of full-length feature films offered at the festival. Dozens of film shorts, seminars on various film-related topics, and special events were also sprinkled throughout the schedule. More than 14,000 tickets were sold to regular viewers for the various screenings.  Also in attendance were numerous directors, producers, screenwriters, and actors. Following the tradition of many indie film festivals, open Q&A sessions with filmmakers followed most of the screenings.

Named by SAGindie as one of the Top Five Film Festivals, Waterfront's carefully selected movies served as a demonstration of the fact that notable independent film is often where the upcoming talent is found. As a general rule, independent films are created within the constraints of much lower budgets and shot in a fraction of the time frame of their commercial movie studio counterparts. Despite this, the Waterfront films displayed magnificent cinematography and beautiful sets. Many contained celebrity casts, while others showcased new talent.

Though I was not able to attend every film at the festival, there were, in my opinion, a few that stood out from the crowd. Dakota Skye was a clear winner on every level. A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl with the superhero power to know the truth behind the lies people tell, this movie ranks at the top of my list. Amongst the slew of recent superhero films, Dakota Skye managed to add a new spin that made the main character so essentially human. The writing was fresh and intelligent, while the directing invoked the perfect blend of adolescent angst and empathy. The casting was equally impressive and I have no doubt that we will be seeing more from these young talents in the future. A testament to its pure entertainment factor, the young man who sat next to me laughed so hard that he could barely recover between scenes. A complete review and a separate interview with director John Humber, writer Chad Shonk, and actor Ian Nelson will be published soon.

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To paraphrase an old Beatles song, "Everyone has something to hide except me and my ColorMunki!" What do I mean? It is the hidden colors that exist in your photo, and because of any number of reasons, don't show up either on your monitor and/or on your printer, because they are not calibrated correctly and together. That is what the ColorMunki can do.

ColorMunki is the latest offering in the profiling and calibration market from X-Rite corporation and it brings some exciting capabilities to the prosumer photographic market as well as to the graphic design community. There are three models of ColorMunki, the ColorMunki Create, the ColorMunki Design, and the ColorMunki Photo.

Just what is a ColorMunki? In the case of the latter two, it is a full circle calibration and profiling product that makes round tripping from your monitor to your printer affordable to non-professional photographer and designer. It runs on Windows 2000, XP Vista with a Pentium IV/Athlon XP or better, or Mac OS X (10.4 or higher) G4 or higher processor, you need a powered USB port, a color monitor with 1024×768 or greater resolution, 16-bit video card (24-bit recommended), 512 MB RAM, and 300 MB of hard-drive space.

There are really two types of ColorMunki. One is geared for Photographers and the other two are targeted to graphic designers and illustrators. The version that I am reviewing is for photographers and is called the ColorMunki Photo.

The ColorMunki functions in two main areas. One is for monitor calibration and the other is for printer profiling and calibration. Anyone who has worked with photographs for any length of time is familiar with the problem with getting the image from the camera, through the computer and on to the printer and having it come out reasonably close to looking like what like what you shot.

One thing to note is that because of the fact that my screen and printer are calibrated differently than yours, there is no way for me to display my results and guarantee that you will see anything close, so all that I can do is explain the process. The company who makes ColorMunki has been making profiling devices for many years and is well established in the professional market and so they bring a lot of respect and reliability to this new device.

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The amount of power and capabilities in today's digital cameras give you a lot of technical sophistication, but all of these features alone will not guarantee the capturing of a compelling image. To do that, you have to have more than just technology, you must have skills. To do it well you must be one part photographer and one part digital artist.

In Practical Artistry: Light and Exposure For Digital Photographers, Harold Davis' aim is to present the best practices of the craft of photography in the context of the digital era. A great photograph begins with the photographer's understanding of light and proceeds with a good and creative exposure. Practical Artistry is 176 full color pages that are divided into six chapters.

"Understanding Exposure" begins with the exploration of what is an exposure, especially with regard to the capturing of light. Here the discussion is about the relationship of aperture, shutter speed, and light sensitivity - also known as ISO. Here you will learn about the exposure equation, measuring light, and intentional over- and under-exposing of images.

"Working with Aperture" provides you with a solid foundation of understanding what f-numbers are and how f-stops work. You will see how aperture and depth of field relate, how to work with selective focus, when aperture does not matter, and how it relates to macro photography.

"Selecting Shutter Speed" is all about time and how shutter speed is really about the duration of time that the shutter is open. The discussion is about the affects of time in the photographic equation, about shutter speed and camera shake, subject motion, and the creative use of motion.

"ISO and Noise" explains where camera noise comes from and how it relates to light sensitivity. You will see when to boost ISO, how to use noise creatively, and how you can reduce noise in post processing.

"Using Light" gets in to the use of light in the capturing of images and how a creative exposure can lead to a creative image. By finding the best light for a given composition, you will be able to create your best images. By being a student of lighting situations, you can gain an understanding of how light sources interact with each other and the external situations. You can also enhance the existing light by the use of artificial light sources as well. Here you will learn about white balance, front lighting, side lighting, back lighting, overcast lighting, night lighting, and flash lighting.

"Digital Darkroom" is all about post processing. Here you will learn about working with Raw Conversion, adjusting exposure, white balance, working with noise reduction, multi-Raw production, cross processing and working with black and white.

What I like about Practical Artistry is that it gets back to the basics about photography and does it in the digital age framework. In the old days before the advent of built-in light meters, a photographer had to understand the photographic equation; the relationship between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. These techniques still are relevant today with the digital camera.

This instructional book is richly illustrated with full color photographs from the author. The text is explained clearly and in detail with an accompanying photo to illustrate the effects of decisions made.

Practical Artistry is a great book for anyone who wants to understand the traditional methods of photography within the realm of the digital age. I can easily recommend this book.

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After you deal with the technical aspects, the crucial elements that determine the quality and strength of an image are the organization of the elements and their content. It is these elements that make up the art of the photograph. Creative photography is built upon the mastery of these elements.

In The Photograph: Composition and Color Design, Harald Mante, a distinguished teacher of the photographic arts in Germany, explores the principles of line, shape, color, contrast, and design. His goal is to explore composition and design at a much greater depth than is available in most books to date. The Photograph is an oversized book with 280 full color pages and is divided into six chapters.

“The Point” refers to a means of organization in which the relation to the image plane is small or relatively small. A point is static and maintains its location. In this chapter you will explore various arrangements involving the point within an image. These points may be defined by an object, a color, a shape, or even multiple points, but they all draw you in. You will explore the point’s simplicity, arrangement, repetition, texture, pattern, and more.

“The Line” is a method organizing an image in an active arrangement. By using lines, you actively draw the viewer’s eye through the image, clearly creating movement. Here you will study how forces acting on a line force the eye to something in the image. You will study the properties of a line – how horizontal and vertical lines work differently in an image, and how diagonal, irregular, oblique, and groups of lines affect images.

“The Shape” is the design element by which areas of tone and color are bounded within or are allowed to cover the entire image. Described here are rectangles and squares, circles, ovals, triangles, as well as variants of irregular shapes. Also included are the contrasts of shapes.

“Universal Contrasts” are almost always present in a picture. These are the differentiations of light and dark, or of monochrome and colors. They give rise to the special effects within a picture. They are the differences between the figure and the ground, and the variations of space, and can be caused by the natural environment or the use of focal lengths.

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