Wedding Wednesdays

I've got Tuscany on my mind today.  Can you believe how beautiful this Italian wedding reception setting was!?!  If only the photo could show you how this warm night smelled....jasmine, fresh cut grass, olive groves.....

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays!

Thanks to my buddy, Jake, for reminding me about this one.  

I'm taking requests, folks!  What are your favorite love songs?

Friday Photo Facts

Below is the current most expensive photograph in the world.  'Rhein II', by Andreas Gursky, was sold in an open auction at Christie's New York in November of 2011.  

The final selling price?  $4,338,500.

Wedding Wednesday

I loved working with this couple last fall.  Not only were they some of the most gracious and kind people I've worked with, their chemistry and great love for one another was palpable.  Pretty obvious in this photo, don't you think!?

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays!

Friday Photo Facts

The First Aerial Photograph

A Parisian photographer known as Nadar (his birthname is Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) is credited with the first aerial photograph in 1858.  The photograph was taken from a hot air balloon built especially for the occasion in order to accommodate the large format camera needed to achieve the photo.  This balloon, named 'Le G`eant' (the Giant), was so large and inventive, it inspired Jules Verne's 'Five Weeks in a Balloon'.  

While the photo itself doesn't exist anymore, the process to achieve it was so inventive and grand that the credit is undeniable.  Nadar was credited with many firsts in the history of photography and I will comment on all of them in coming weeks so stay tuned.  He is a favorite of mine.  

Here is a fantastic cartoon of Nadar achieving the first aerial photograph.  Below it is a photo of my foot while I achieved my first aerial photograph in Hong Kong in 2011.  What do you think?  Kind of awesome to see similar formats from such different eras, no?  
Nadar:  Hot air Balloon, 1858.  Me:  Helicopter, 2011.  Pretty.  Cool.

Slideshow Thursdays: Lillian Bassman

Lillian Bassman worked as a textile designer and fashion illustrator before working at Harper’s Bazaar as an art director and then a self-taught photographer under Alexey Brodovitch. 

It is pretty clear how her background influenced her photographic aesthetic, but, still, how incredibly brave of her to be a woman working in literally the ‘Mad Men’ era of advertising and magazine publishing New York City, and challenge the way the world sees the female figure.  I am of course editorializing here, but many have and do agree.  Lillian Bassman was a trendsetter in her time.  And in her time, it was very challenging to be taken seriously as a female artist. 

I love her work because it still challenges our perception of ‘woman’ and the female form more than half a century later.  Even her skilled darkroom experimentation can hardly be mimicked today with the most advanced technologies.  Lillian Bassman had the ability to created drama, romance, elegance, and mystery in a single frame.  All the while advertising a brand of perfume, pantyhose, fine jewelry and cosmetics. 

Bassman lived and worked until just last year, passing away in February of 2012.  There were fabulous tributes written after her passing.  If you’d like to read more, please click here to see what the New Your Times had to say.

Do you like her photography?  Do you think it would still make great advertising photography in today’s world? 

Wedding Wednesday

This elegant Mother-of-the-Bride was on her way to her daughter's wedding ceremony after hugging her daughter and wishing her well.  What do you think she was thinking about when this photo was taken?

The Tuesday Face

Music Mondays!

Greetings from Austin, TX!  I'm here taking some photos at South By Southwest for the next few days.  Here's a favorite love song from one of my favorite Texans.  

Slideshow Thursdays: Philippe Halsman

One of my many photographic heroes, Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) proved that portraiture has no boundaries.  The results of his dedication to experimental and psychological portraiture offer proof that no two people are alike and their portraits must be unique and exhibit the same diversity.  
Halsman's archive, library and life history are well managed and preserved here.  You can read Halsman's autobiography on his website, but here's a copy of the brief career overview from his website if you're just stopping in for a quick read...

Philippe Halsman (1906-1979) was born in Riga, Latvia and began his photographic career in Paris. In 1934 he opened a portrait studio in Montparnasse, where he photographed many well-known artists and writers — including André Gide, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, and André Malraux, using an innovative twin-lens reflex camera that he designed himself.

Part of the great exodus of artists and intellectuals who fled the Nazis, Halsman arrived in the United States with his young family in 1940, having obtained an emergency visa through the intervention of Albert Einstein.

Halsman’s prolific career in America over the next 30 years included reportage and covers for every major American magazine. These assignments brought him face-to-face with many of the century’s leading statesmen, scientists, artists and entertainers. His incisive portraits appeared on 101 covers for LIFE magazine, a record no other photographer could match.

Part of Halsman’s success was his joie de vivre and his imagination — combined with his technological prowess. In 1945 he was elected the first president of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP), where he led the fight to protect photographers’ creative and professional rights. In 1958 Halsman’s colleagues named him one of the World’s Ten Greatest Photographers. From 1971 to 1976 he taught a seminar at The New School entitled “Psychological Portraiture.”

Halsman began a thirty-seven year collaboration with Salvador Dali in 1941 which resulted in a stream of unusual “photographs of ideas,” including “Dali Atomicus” and the “Dali’s Mustache” series. In the early 1950s, Halsman began to ask his subjects to jump for his camera at the conclusion of each sitting. These uniquely witty and energetic images have become an important part of his photographic legacy.

Friday Photo Facts

"Ten percent of all of the photographs made in the entire history of photography were made last year..."

Pretty amazing!

-from TIME Lightbox

Wedding Wednesdays!

This little flower girl decided she needed to freshen her lip gloss mid-portrait session.  How could anyone say no to that face?

The Tuesday Face

One of the many reasons I love photography is because I love portraits.  People's faces and gestures are incredibly fascinating to me and I love the relationship that unfolds between me and my subjects during a portrait session.  I always hope to give the viewer a little insight into the subject's character.  I love looking at portraits and imagining where they are, why they're wearing what they're wearing, who else might be in the room, and what they did earlier that day, or later that day...  
Each Tuesday I'll post a favorite portrait for your viewing pleasure.  Let me know what you think.  

Music Mondays!

I'll be posting the 'I Love You Too love song of the week' every Monday here.  This is music city after all....what are your favorite love songs?

Friday Photo Facts

The very first photo manipulation...EVER!

'Cloudy Sky, Mediterranean Sea', Gustave Le Gray 1857

After the first successful photographs hit the scene in the 1820s, there was great controversy surrounding its viability as a serious art form.  Gustave Le Gray was a French painter-turned-photographer and a very skilled darkroom technician who believed that photography absolutely possessed the power to interpret our natural surroundings and express artistic impressions.  

Le Gray set out to create a series of seascapes in order to prove his ideas, but quickly faced a technical challenge.  Photographic materials were not yet advanced enough to capture the ominous skies and clouds while properly exposing the subtle ripples and texture in the water surface below.  In other words, when the water was properly exposed, the sky would render completely white or 'washed out'.  When the sky was properly exposed, the water would be completely black with no detail whatsoever.  Le Gray's solution?  He created two separate glass negatives, each accurately exposing one element and then later seamed them together at the horizon line to create one image.  Seems kind of obvious now, but this was the first time in history this had ever been accomplished and turned many heads in the art community at the time.  One noteworthy French art critic described this series of photo manipulations 'the event of the year'.  The technique was quickly adopted by the photography community and labeled 'combination printing.'

These days, we commonly say, "Eh, just Photoshop it."  Next time you say that, think of our dear Monsieur Le Gray slaving away in his Parisian darkroom in the 1850s and think about how far we've come.  

Have you ever seamed two photos together to create one?  What techniques did you use?