PJH Studios

Category: Art

Fine art, painting, photography, mixed media, sculpture

  • Book review: The Passionate Photographer by Steve Simon

    The Passionate Photographer by Steve Simon

    Steve Simon’s book, [amazon_link id=”0321719891″ target=”_blank” ]The Passionate Photographer[/amazon_link], covers photography as more than a hobby.  Broken into 10 chapters, he goes from identifying one’s desire to take photographs to using that desire to share a vision. In between, basic technical issues are discussed related to gear, f-stops, shutter speed and ISO as well as elementary composition techniques.

    Throughout, he intersperses stories and quotes from other photographers, both historical and contemporary. While some photo books only use the authors images, Simon uses others’ images to illustrate points. Each chapter has an assignment for the reader to attempt and how to assess their ability.  Also, Simon uses personal stories to cap each chapter in a “lesson learned”.

    For beginners, Chapter 2, about practice and persistence, and Chapter 3, about ways to keep seeing the world anew will offer the best value. Chapter 6, about how to see light, really shows how to “see” an image–light and contrast creating interesting shapes and forms that are engaging and pleasing to the eye. Chapter 9, details how to go about creating a photo project and executing it, may help all those with ideas of “this would be a cool thing to do…”

    [amazon_link id=”0321719891″ target=”_blank” ]The Passionate Photographer[/amazon_link] is a well sourced and well written book.  Colorful, practical and engaging.

  • Review: Old Masters and Young Geniuses by David W. Galenson

    What happens when an economist becomes an art critic? That’s the premise David Galenson writes in [amazon_link id=”0691133808″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Old Masters and Young Geniuses[/amazon_link] with as he examines numerous artists, primarily from mid 1800s impressionists through mid 1900s modernists. The thesis is that two life cycles of an artist: old masters and young geniuses. Old masters are those that reached their peak later in life, and Galenson believes, due largely to a life of artistic experimentation.  Young geniuses succeed due to conceptual innovation, simplifying previous complexities.  His two metrics to quantify and distinguish artists into either category are the price of an artist’s work from a certain point in their career, or the number of prints, or citations, of their work from a time in their life.

    Galenson also applies his framework for analysis to the Renaissance painters of Michelangelo and Carravagio, 19th century and early 20th century American writers, directors, poets and sculptors. (Photographers are noticeably absent.) The book is dry and reads like a mixture of art criticism and art history.  The depth of research provides an overwhelming, yet comprehensive analysis of creating art, and the citations are provided at the end of the book.  My criticism of the book is probably one of scope.  The artist compared were clumped at particular time periods in history.  What would be interesting would be to see if more contemporary artists fit the same framework for analysis.

    I’d recommend this book as a Kindle read.  I found myself wanting to mark and highlight the book and look up words or research an artist, particularly the poets.  The analysis of poets alone should make someone somewhat informed of Frost, Plath, Eliot and Pound.

  • Art begets art

    Art begets art.  One creative act should be free to inspire another creative act.  To say that one creation, once delivered to the world, remains tethered to its creator, unable to inspire, evolve or grow into something new, restricts the life of the original creation.  As much as one may try to control the perception of the work they created, it’s impossible.  Once you let the light, the art, the work, whatever, out—it’s no longer yours.  Maybe for a time it’s your’s.  But at some point it belongs to someone else. And that person may be inspired by your work to let loose another creative work.

  • A biplane on a rooftop

    For things that aren’t what they seem, a biplane on a Manhattan rooftop is one of them.

    Though Kaufman delights in onlookers wondering if a plane did indeed fly in and land on 77 Water Street, the aircraft is actually just an artistic re-imagining of a 1916 British Sopwith Camel, designed by Rudolph de Harak and constructed by sculptor William Tarr. It was hoisted into place by crane in 1969 and hasn’t moved since.

    Art installations on a rooftop seem better than a helipad or air conditioning units.

  • Photo proof you don’t get it right the first time

    Below shows that the best shot isn’t the first one you take. Iteratively and progressively, you build on what worked, and use your knowledge to make it better. Also, stuff happens in post-processing of images. As an aside, I prefer to shoot in aperture priority mode to control my depth of field, and I’ll comment on settings for folks, if they’re into that sort of thing.

    This is with a bare flash (Vivitar 285HV wide zoom, 1/16th power and camera at f 8, aperture priority). The flash is too bright, nuking the army dude with light. Need to soften the light a bit.

    armymen070611

    A few shots later, I put a Wescott mini-Apollo softbox over the flash. The softbox is about 10″x6″ and fits on the head of the flash well. The light is softer and direct, but the image needs something more than an army guy on a table.

    armymen070611

    They defend stuff, right? So I grabbed the salt and pepper shakers, letting the title of “defending the shakers” float in my mind. Ok, it’s somewhat interesting, but white light seems a bit much.

    armymen070611

    I took the softbox off the flash and added a warming gel and reattached the softbox. I really like this…

    P1000689 - Version 2

    …and let’s punch it up a bit in post-processing, changing the levels, tweaking the curves and upping the saturation.

    armymen070611

    Continuing on, I added a machine gunner buddy. Cool, but what if I added some light behind them?

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    I placed a LumoPro 160 (1/8th power, zoomed to 85mm, placed a foot from the army guys). I should have known it would have been too hard (it’s like a flash grenade went off).

    armymen070611

    I moved the LumoPro to a counter top, so now that flash is about 6 feet away with the Vivitar still sitting pretty. Like earlier, the white light isn’t doing it for me.

    armymen070611

    I placed a warming gel on the LumoPro, took a few shots, and this is the one I like. Sharp and warm and with a good angle.

    armymen070611

    …and now punched up in post-processing like above.

    armymen070611

  • Bloom like an artist

    An illustrated parable to growing as an artist by IdaEva.

    So true, and applies all the same to any ability to create something.

  • To cull or to surrender

    In an insightful piece of enjoying and consuming art (of all kinds), Linda Holmes discusses the sad, beautiful fact that we’re all going to miss almost everything.

    Culling is easy; it implies a huge amount of control and mastery. Surrender, on the other hand, is a little sad. That’s the moment you realize you’re separated from so much. That’s your moment of understanding that you’ll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there’s something being performed somewhere in the world that you’re not seeing that you would love.

    I’ve learned to stop reading books that I don’t like, skip songs on cds that aren’t interesting me, to stop watching tv shows that aren’t engaging. I’ve also learned to take risks with movies and music and books in order to discover something wonderful.

  • How to steal like an artist

    I nodded my head all the way through Austin Kleon’s “How to steal like an artist.”

    Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of previous ideas.

    If there’s one takeaway for self-described non-creative people, it is that. Synthesize, combine, mash up what you already know, and then you’ll come away with something unique.

  • Framing pixels

    A member of Chase Jarvis’ team writes up how they mounted iPads for an art installation:

    The challenges: iPads are designed to be interactive, to move between apps. How do you keep people from messing with them, checking their email, pointing them at un-savory sites, or worse yet walking away with them entirely?

  • Vanishing America – Michael Eastman

    Michael Eastman’s book, 51wxP7WbngL._SL160_.jpg
    Vanishing America, is a warm, visual elegy to small town America and vintage pop culture. Theaters, signs, stores and other everyday interactions are shown in rich detail with saturated colors. The collection is curated across 10 sections: theaters, churches, hangouts, doors, signs, stores, services, automobiles, hotels and restaurants.

    Each section is reverent to its subject matter. Where some photographers would show decay and the end of life, Eastman focuses on bringing the subjects to life, preserving them as a visual time capsule. Even those subjects that appear derelict, such as the doors and signs, they don’t feel cynical. Theaters, hangouts, signs and automobiles receive the most in depth portraits. From section to section, the subject matter transitions well. From the secular to the things that lead us there and back to the places where we converge, Eastman sees where socialization and relating to others occurred.

    Brinkely’s introduction is poetic, describing how Eastman found beauty in decay.

    Of note, as reverent as Eastman is towards his subject matter, his book was printed in China. Perhaps this bit of irony escaped the process or the publisher had no choice, or market forces determined the outcome much like the small towns have fallen to.