Shape
A closed line creates a shape, which is an area having a specific character defined by an outline, contrast, color, value, or texture that is different from the surrounding area. It is often the chief structural compositional element, as it enables a viewer to immediately recognize a face, a structure, or an object in a picture. Shape usually refers to flat, two-dimensional elements, while mass or volume indicates three-dimensional objects. The shape of such objects as rocks and seashells can...
Cold Mounting
Cold mounting pressure-sensitive materials allow for quick and easy mounting of digital prints without heat or electricity. The premium 9.4 Basic materials for dry mounting a photograph. 9.4 Basic materials for dry mounting a photograph. material can be positioned and repositioned for accurate alignment before it is adhered, but may require its own special applicator which might not work with certain receiving materials such as foam core. Mounting sprays can also be used but must be applied...
Studio Strobes
Standalone electronic flash units are powered by special battery packs and synchronized with the camera by means of a flash 5.15 In her quest to investigate the relation between people and their places and things, Yarnelle Edwards brings a lighting kit on location that includes lamps, bulbs, barn doors, black aluminum foil, stands, clamps, and clothespins. In this situation, she used a reflector to emphasize the Caravaggio-like effect of the early morning light that invites viewers into the...
Visual Acuity and 300 DPI
Visual acuity is the capability of the human eye to resolve detail, but this power of human vision to recognize fine detail has limits. When it comes to digital imaging, the point where dots, lines, and spaces are seen by the human eye as continuous tone is approximately 300 dots per inch DPI . This is why photographic printers, known for high-quality output, have resolutions of 300 DPI and higher. There are many variables, such as individual differences in visual acuity, lighting conditions,...
Exposing for Tonal Variations
Exposing for tonal variations is another method that can be used in calculating the exposure. A scene that has large amounts of either dark or light tones can give incorrect information if the exposure is based on a single reading. When making a picture of a general outdoor scene, a correct exposure can be achieved by taking two Manual light meter readings and then averaging them together. For example, suppose you are photographing a landscape, it is late in the day, the sky is brighter than...
The Thingness of Light
Every photograph is about light. Light is a plastic medium that is the key ingredient shared by every photograph and determines the look of every photograph you make. Light's authority defines the essence of a subject. Light is the glue that holds your image together. Light makes known the emotional and physical contents within your visual space and activates vision and meaning. Every image provides a different set of conditions in which we can experience light. If the light does not reveal the...
Homemade Colored and Diffusion Filters
You can express your ingenuity by making your own filters for artistic purposes. Although homemade filters may not match the quality of Center spot Diffuses the entire area except the center. Changeable color Used in combination with a polarizing filter. Rotating the filter changes the color, from one primary, through the midtones, to a different primary color. Color spot The center portion of filter is clear with the surrounding area colored. Color vignette Filters with colored edges and a...
Image Sensors CCD and CMOS
Digital cameras generate images by focusing a scene through a lens, like a traditional film camera. When a photographer makes an exposure with a digital camera, the focused image is captured with a sensor, often a charge-coupled device CCD sensor , and a postage-stamp-size electronic wafer that converts light into electrical current. It is positioned where the film would normally be in a conventional camera. Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor CMOS sensor technology is another type of...
Droplet Size Picoliters
Inkjet printers use different amounts and methods of applying inks to create photorealistic images. General-purpose quality inkjet printers use four inks cyan, magenta, yellow, and black CMYK , while higher-end photographic-quality inkjet printers often add colors such as green, orange, and lighter versions of cyan, magenta, gray, and black, plus matte black. Creating photo-quality prints depends on how many droplets fit within an inch DPI of space, and on the size and pattern of the ink...
Sequences
A digital camera's capability to capture short bursts of sequential exposures in both single frame and continuous shooting modes plus record brief video sequences makes it an ideal tool to explore the 7.13 Jantzen is intrigued with parallel universes, space time warps, and other manifestations of altered, alternative realities. I used a mirror to reflect one direction in a landscape while photographing the other. I stage my landscapes at the boundaries of differing scenic features such as...
HapticExpressionist Imagemakers
Haptic comes from the Greek word haptos, meaning, laying hold of. Haptics are strongly affected by their bodily sensations and subjective experiences, making them highly kinesthetic and likely to physically interject themselves into their work. They associate and apply emotional and subjective values to the color and form of objects and are not particularly concerned with duplicating physical appearances. A prime example of a haptic artist is abstract expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, who...
The Golden Mean
The ancient Greeks developed a set of ideal proportions called the Golden Mean, which they converted into ratios that could be applied to draw the perfect body or build the perfect architectural structure. The Golden Mean, AKA the Rule of Thirds is the proportion arising from the division of a straight line into two, so that the ratio of the whole line to the larger part is exactly the same as the ratio of the larger part to the smaller part. Mathematically, it is a ratio of 1 to 1 1 V5 1 , a...
Camera Light Meters Are 18 Percent Gray Contrast
Built-in camera exposure meters are the device most of us initially employ to make our exposure calculations. All DSLRs have sophisticated thru-the-lens TTL metering system that makes getting a good automatic exposure in most situations a sure thing. However, there are particular times when you want to change the exposure mode from Automatic and make specific exposure decisions. The more you know about the camera's metering system, the greater the likelihood you will use it to achieve your...
White Balance 1
Digital cameras have built-in white balance control, which compensates for variations in the color of common types of light so that white and gray objects appear to have a neutral color balance. The color of a light source is described in terms of its color temperature, measured in degrees Kelvin K . If the color temperature of the light does not match the white balance setting, the final image will have a color cast to it. Think of the white balance control as a built-in set of electronic...
Social Landscape and the Snapshot Aesthetic
The idea that serious photography must involve previsualization was challenged in the 1950s by Robert Frank and William Klein's intuitive use of a small 35mm Leica camera in available light situations that disregarded journalistic standards of construction and content matter. Their use of blur, grain, movement, and off-kilter compositions gave photographers a new structure for discovering new content and creating innovative, formal ways of making photographs through the picture-making process....
Contrast ControlTone Compensation
DSLRs have an image adjustment control for altering the image contrast and brightness at the time of exposure. The contrast of an image, the relationship between the distribution of light and dark tones, can be controlled by altering the tone curve. This is sometimes referred to as tone compensation. DSLRs offer a host of contrast management options. The Automatic or default option optimizes the contrast of each exposure by selecting a tone curve to match the situation. Normal uses the same...
Visual Literacy and Decision Making
Our society does not stress visual literacy, and as a result many people lack skills to navigate in our media-saturated environment. With declining newspaper readership and more people relying on video clips as an information source, it is critical to teach people how to interpret these signs or they will not be properly equipped to go through a visual decision-making process. We then risk becoming objects, easy marks for the gatekeepers of information to manipulate and susceptible to the...
Pattern
Pattern is the unifying quality of an object. It is the interplay between shape, color, and space that forms a recognizable, repetitive, and or identifiable unit. Pattern can unify the composition, establish a balance among diverse elements, or create a sense of rhythm and or movement. 2.16 Johnson has been photographing the way that humans create, destroy, and recreate landscapes. Here visual texture brings the elements of irony, incongruity, humor, and the color of people's man's imprint into...
Back Light
Back light is made by pointing your light directly at the back of your subject. It produces a rim of light, a halo effect, dramatically outlining the subject and emphasizing form and shape. The most extreme form of back lighting is a silhouette in which a subject shows no color, detail, or texture, just shape, making it highly abstract and theatrical. Carefully adjust the light so it does not shine directly into the camera's lens, unless you want lens flare. Also, check your viewfinder to be...
Using a Gray Card
Both reflective and incident meters can be easily fooled if there is an unusual distribution in the tones of a subject. For this reason, it is 4.2 There is no such thing as a bad histogram. The distribution of the reflectances will either be clustered to the right, representing a high-key photograph, or gathered to the left, representing a low-key photograph. A histogram grouped in the middle only means there is a lot of reflectance brightness around the mean or 18 percent gray. A scene with an...
Battery
All DSLR operations require electric power in the form of a rechargeable battery supplied by the camera manufacturer or by disposable batteries inserted into a special battery holder. Some cameras can be operated with an AC adapter. This can be useful when using the camera for extended playback operations, such as viewing images on a television, but is not practical for the vast majority of picture-making situations. Battery life depends on the number of frames shot and how you operate the...
Color Temperature and the Kelvin Scale
The balance of the amount of color contained in a continuous-spectrum light source that has all the visible wavelengths red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet in various amounts is measured as 4.14 The Kelvin scale is used by photographers to measure the coolness or warmth of light. The bluer cooler the light, the higher the Kelvin temperature. This illustration shows the approximate Kelvin temperatures of common photographic light sources. Table 4.3 provides more specific details. 4.14...
list
1.22 Due to the current tensions in the Middle East and my cultural background, I was moved to make a limited edition book probing the relationship of personal history to political issues. I work on books rather organically that is, I get an idea and make a loose mock-up based on the information and pictures I gather. I constantly change pages as I create the book. Using a computer is particularly advantageous for this methodology, as I can virtually collage, move, alter the size or re-do both...
What Focal Length Establishes
Lenses are described by their focal length, which is the distance in millimeters mm between the lens and the image it forms on the sensor or film when it is sharply focused at infinity the farthest possible visual distance . Focal length determines the angle ofview how much a lens sees which controls what portion of a scene will be captured. The portion that gets recorded is also dependent on the size of the sensor or film. The lens's focal length determines the magnification, that is, the size...
Image Transfer
If your camera stores its images primarily on a removable memory card, the card can be taken out of the camera and inserted into a card reader or computer, which can then be used to access and manipulate the digital images. Cameras that store digital photos electronically usually have a connector cable that plugs into a computer for downloading. Cameras that use removable memory cards can also be accessed in this fashion. Others have special docking stations that download the data. Some can...
CV jLJ
2.18 Inspired by the proliferation of very tall signs in the American Mid-West, Floating Logos draws attention to this often overlooked form of advertising. Elimination of the support structure in the photographs allows the signs to float above the earth. In some cases the ground is left out of the image to further emphasize the disconnect between the corporate symbols and terra firma. Making the signs appear to float not only draws attention to this type of signage but also gives them, and the...
Color Filter Array Bayer Filter Mosaic
Color accuracy and rendering are determined by the color filter array CFA pattern. A CFA is a grid pattern of tiny color filters placed over the sensor so that individual RGB filters match up with individual SPDs. Some cameras use three different filters that rotate in front of a single sensor. Others have a fixed color filter array over each individual single sensor. The most common CFA pattern is the Bayer, used in most single-chip digital cameras. A Bayer filter mosaic is a CFA for arranging...
Why is it important to understand and be proficient in your medium
Understanding the structure of the photographic medium allows one the freedom to investigate new directions. Upon first viewing, an image may appear to be exciting and magical however, the photo graph needs to be objectively evaluated. To do this, one must have the expertise of craft to understand that photograph's potential. Mastery of craft allows one the control to be flexible, to sharpen the main focus, and discard extraneous material. This evaluation process requires you to reexamine and...
Straight Photography and Previsualization
Edward Weston's artistic work starting from the 1930s represents the idea of straight photography through the use of what has been referred to as previsualization or visualization. By this concept, Weston meant that he knew what the final print would look like before releasing the camera's shutter. The idea of visualizing the end result ahead of time would bring serious printmaking full circle, back to the straightforward approach of the 1850s, when work was directly contact-printed onto glossy...
imagemaking
Over the past ten years, I have been collecting and responding to conceptual questions posed by students about photographic practice. The following series of questions and answers are designed to present a larger overview of fundamental concepts, images, and issues that can inform creative work. By thinking through these questions, readers can expand and deepen visual potential and latent interests rather than following a current style or trend. The responses provided do not preclude other...
Line
Lines, per se, do not exist in nature. A line is a human abstraction invented for the simplification of visual statements to symbolize ideas. 2.12 Utilizing both pre- and post-capture methods, a zoom lens, and the Photoshop crop tool, Abrams eliminated visual distractions so the rhythm that attracted him to the scene could be captured and communicated. In addition, he selectively darkened and sharpened the image to further emphasize the repetition and symmetrical rhythm in the boats. Terry...
Calculating the Picture Angle FactorSensor Equivalency
Unless the image sensor in your digital camera is the exact size of a comparable film format, the image area covered by your digital lens will differ from that of a 35 mm film camera. The smaller sensor size of most digital cameras gives them a narrower angle of view more telephoto , essentially cropping reducing the area of view. A crop or picture angle factor has been developed to provide a lens millimeter equivalency between the full-frame 35 mm film format lenses and any size digital...
What are the advantages of digital imaging over silverbased imagemaking
Practically speaking, you don't need a physical darkroom with running water and expensive enlarging equipment that exposes you to the 1.19 The natural world, as observed and recorded by the camera, rarely measures up to our conception of its inherent power or raw beauty, depending on which ideological filter we use to endow the image with meaning. Because we lack the ability to truly replicate this world and in the face of our failure to fully dominate it we are left instead to imitate it, to...
Additional Information
Adams, Ansel. The New Ansel Adams Photography Series. Boston Little, Brown, 1981. Adams, Robert. Why We Photograph Selected Essays and Reviews. New York Aperture, 1994. Beckiey, Bill ed. with David Shapiro. Uncontrollable Beauty Toward a New Aesthetic. New York Allworth Press, 1998. Davis, Keith. An American Century of Photography From Dry-Plate to Digital. The Hallmark Photographic Collection, Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged. Kansas City, MO Hallmark Cards in Association with Harry N....
How do photographers explore complex relationships of time space and scale and
The process of making pictures involves keeping an open mind to single and serial image constructions, narrative and non-narrative formats, in-camera juxtapositions, and post-camera manipulations. How does changing the sense of scale, the size you expect something to be, affect viewer reaction Does the unusual scale evoke humor, mystery, or horror How does this make you rethink the subject Consciously ask yourself questions like these How does image size affect viewer response How would...
Why We Make Pictures A Concise History of Visual Ideas
The human desire to make pictures is deep-rooted. Forty thousand years ago, Cro-Magnon people made paintings of large wild animals, tracings of human hands, as well as abstract patterns on cave and rock walls. Now, instead of colored oxide and charcoal, people can use a camera. What propels this picture-making impulse The fundamental motive for the vast majority of picture making is the impulse to preserve to document and therefore commemorate specific people and events of importance. Artists...
Why study the history of photography
History is how we define ourselves based on what we make of the past, which determines our future relationships. Being grounded in photographic history allows an imagemaker to see what has already been done. Photographs are built upon other photographs. Look at the work of other imagemakers who have covered similar ground and ask What did they do that allows you to connect to their work What would you do similarly What would you do differently Photo history also offers an opportunity to learn...
Preface
Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms. Dr. Samuel Johnson 1707-1784 . Since the start of the 21st century, digital imaging has become the dominant force in commercial, educational, and scientific photography, turning chemical photography into an alternative process. Since I began writing this book in 2006, numerous photographic companies, including Kodak, Nikon, and Konica Minolta, have announced the...
The Grammar of Photography
The fundamental grammar of photography is based on how a camera utilizes light and form to record an image that is then interpreted through societal visual codes that have evolved over centuries of imagemaking. Learning how to operate a camera, gaining an awareness of how light can reveal or suppress a subject's attributes, and then making a print or other form of visual presentation are the first steps one must master to transform an abstract idea into a physical photographic reality. This...
Light and Lens Photography in the Digital Age
AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier Acquisitions Editor Diane Heppner Associate Editor Asma Palmeiro Developmental Editor Stephanie Barrett Publishing Services Manager George Morrison Project Manager Kathryn List on Assistant Editor Doug Shults Marketing Manager Christine Degon Veroulis Cover and Interior Design Maria Mann Illustrator Greg Erf Focal Press is an imprint of Elsevier 30...
Edinboro Shostak
I want to thank all the people at Elsevier's Focal Press who have offered their cooperation, time, knowledge, and support of Light amp Lens, including my editors Stephanie Barrett, Diane Heppner, and Asma Palmeiro Kathryn Liston, my production editor Carol Leyba, my copy editor Pamela Andrada, my proofreader and Keith Shostak, my indexer, for their thoughtful efforts in bringing this project into being. I'd also like to thank Lauren Braun, who assisted with the art program, caption writing,...
Artist Contributors
Koya Abe, Terry Abrams, Bill Adams, Theresa Airey, Thomas Allen, Mauro Altamura, Barry Andersen, Jeremiah Ariaz, Shannon Ayres, Darryl Baird, Nathan Baker, Olaf Otto Becker, Paul Berger, Laura Blacklow, Colin Blakely, Ethan Boisvert, Michael Bosworth, Susan Bowen, Deborah Brackenbury, Richard Bram, Kristi Breisach, Priscilla Briggs, Dan Burkholder, Edward Burtynsky, John Paul Caponigro, Ellen Carey, Samantha Casolari, Catherine Chalmers, William Christenberry, Kelli Connell, Gina Conner, Raquel...