My ebook Atmospheric FX will help you take control of the weather in your images. Weather can alter the mood of any image. Sometimes weather makes the image. Photographers learn many ways to make the most of the weather. Now, you no longer have to wait for the perfect weather, you can create it using Adobe Photoshop. Learn to do this and you will dramatically expand your creative possibilities. Add an accent or transform an entire image. The choice is yours. Think of the possibilities!

Table of Contents

1 Skies
2 Atmospheric Perspective
3 The Language Of Night
4 Atmosphere
5 Smoke
6 Snow / Rain
7 Illumination
8 Rays Of Light
9 Stars
10 Lightning
11 Rainbows
12 Reflectiion
13 Shadows
 
136 pages fully illustrated.
Updated from my book Adobe Photoshop Master Class.
Compatible with all versions of Adobe Photoshop.
 
$9.99
Buy the PDF here
Download a free preview here.
 

Category: eBooks
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Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on abstraction.

“Abstraction forces you to reach the highest level of the basics.” – Alan Soffer

“Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities.” – Tom G. Palmer

“Abstract literally means to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract… a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.” – Richard Diebenkorn

“To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.” – Ben Shahn

“One of the most striking of abstract art’s appearances is her nakedness, an art stripped bare.” – Robert Motherwell

“It was only since the turn of the century that one returned to the immense role that abstraction plays in the human mind by its power of concentration upon absolute essentials.” – S. Giedion

“I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations of the eyes.” – Jean Helion

“Painting, like music, has nothing to do with the reproduction of nature, nor interpretation of intellectual meanings. Whoever is able to feel the beauty of colors and forms has understood non-objective painting.” – Hilla Rebay

“What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic – this is by no means the same thing.” – Fernand Leger

“An abstract painting is exactly what it purports to be, whether it be paint splatters or stripes, while a representational painting has to give the illusion of the paint being air, or flesh, or flowers… therefore abstract paintings are rather concrete while representational paintings are rather abstract.” – David Leffel

“The abstract painter considers the realist painter to be the abstract painter and himself the realist because he deals realistically with the paint and does not try to transform it into something that it is not.” – Jimmy Leuders

“Abstract art has helped us to experience the emotional power inherent in pure form.” – Anton Ehrenzweig

“I expect of abstraction as much as what imagery does for me… to carry meaning.” – Kay WalkingStick

“The goal of abstract art is to communicate the intangible, that which eludes the photograph and normal seeing.” – Curtis Verdun

Read more

Category: Quotes
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Less Is More

May 14, 2013 | Leave a Comment |

Condensation II, Rockland, Maine, 2001

Were it not for the massive stones of the breakwater that cuts into the ocean for fully one mile before ending at a lighthouse that guards the entrance to the harbor of Rockland, Maine, you’d feel like you were walking on water as you make your way across it. At sunrise and sunset, you’re surrounded on all sides by aqueous color, unless there’s fog and then you can hardly see. Then, as you walk the stones out into the sea, there comes a point when you can’t see where you’ve come from or where you’re going to. It’s disorienting – and magical. You could be anywhere. You could be nowhere. You could end up in either place.

Sometimes the less you can see, the more interesting it becomes. Then, imagination takes over. It’s clinically proven that when people are subjected to minimal sensory input (such as floating in an isolation chamber) for long periods of time, they begin hallucinating – the inside comes out. Creatives often ask how they can leave room for the viewer, encouraging interactivity and participation, rather than spelling it all out, breeding passivity and detachment, knowing that doing so often creates more powerful and personal experiences for them. There is such a thing as ‘too much’. You want to give people enough to enchant them, but not enough to dispel the magic. This leads to the question, “How much room can you leave for the viewer without losing your message?”

Simplicity works for so many reasons. With fewer elements in play attention is concentrated on what remains. There’s more is riding on what’s left. There are no distractions. Ordinarily, this leaves fewer doubts as to what to focus on. Here, in this image, as there is only vapor and water and the suggestion of a horizon, what is taken for granted and often goes unseen comes forward – light and how it fills the air. Strip things down far enough and you can see what ordinarily is invisible.

This image takes my impulse to strip things down to their essentials to its extreme. It presents an experience of space and light, simultaneously empty and full, that is profoundly simple but not simplistic. It asks more questions than it answers. It takes questions like, “How much can you do with how little?” and “How distilled can you make an experience?” and goes further to “How little does it take to make a representational image?” and “What are the foundations for our understanding of reality?” A chain reaction is started and more questions arise.

In so many ways, not just because of the frames they put on the world, images are always leaving things out. They work best when they do this with purpose. They work best when they leave only the essentials and leave out the rest. Sometimes, more can be said with less. Sometimes some things can only be said with less.

Questions

 When is more less?

When is less more?

How can you do the most with the least?

When does simple become simplistic?

Find out more about this image here.

View more related images here.

Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.

Category: The Stories Behind The Images
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See and learn more about these awesome timelapse videos here.

“Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was the one that ought to matter most to us—Earth.

That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Surveillance spacecraft had done that before, of course, but they paid attention only to military or tactical sites. Landsat was a notable exception, built not for spycraft but for public monitoring of how the human species was altering the surface of the planet. Two generations, eight satellites and millions of pictures later, the space agency, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has accumulated a stunning catalog of images that, when riffled through and stitched together, create a high-definition slide show of our rapidly changing Earth. TIME is proud to host the public unveiling of these images from orbit, which for the first time date all the way back to 1984.

It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. With the help of massive amounts of computer muscle, they have scrubbed away cloud cover, filled in missing pixels, digitally stitched puzzle-piece pictures together, until the growing, thriving, sometimes dying planet is revealed in all its dynamic churn. The images are striking not just because of their vast sweep of geography and time but also because of their staggering detail. Consider: a standard TV image uses about one-third of a million pixels per frame, while a high-definition image uses 2 million. The Landsat images, by contrast, weigh in at 1.8 trillion pixels per frame, the equivalent of 900,000 high-def TVs assembled into a single mosaic.

These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it — razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. It takes a certain amount of courage to look at the videos, but once you start, it’s impossible to look away.”

Category: Video
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Terry White demonstrates how to get started with Adobe Creative Cloud outlining 10 Things Beginners Want To Know How To Do.

Find out about the latest Adobe Photoshop CC features here.

 

Category: Video - Photoshop
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My free May desktop calendar features an image from the Atacama desert.

Download it here now.

Find out about upcoming events here.

Category: Calendar
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May 8 – June 1, 2013

Opening Reception Tuesday, May 7, 6-8 pm

Soho Photo Gallery is presenting a special exhibition during the month of May entitled “Seeing the Unseen: Equivalence in Photography” featuring 13 Soho Photo artists and guest artist John Paul Caponigro.

“Equivalence in photography is a term that sprang from the title Equivalents, which Alfred Stieglitz gave a series of his cloud photographs that he felt were like visual music. In this way, a tradition began of using what is seen to express an inner state or feeling that cannot be seen. This aspect of photography continues to evolve. As Minor White said, ‘The equivalent is one of those ideas that in practice grows by the efforts and accomplishments of the people who explore it.’ Today, photographers explore the ability of a photograph to use the immanent to convey the transcendent, expressing what might otherwise be ineffable.”

Preview the catalog here.

Read my essay Equivalence here.

Category: Exhibit
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Here’s a collection of my favorite quotes on dedication.

“We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort.” – Jesse Owens

“Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.” – Gail Devers

“Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.” Cecil B. DeMille

“If you believe in yourself and have dedication and pride – and never quit, you’ll be a winner. The price of victory is high but so are the rewards.” – Paul Bryant

“I learned patience, perseverance, and dedication. Now I really know myself, and I know my voice. It’s a voice of pain and victory.” – Anthony Hamilton

“My entire life is dedicated to music, and at my age, that makes a lot of years! But all the work and dedication is only that I’m able to forget myself and let the music do the ‘talking.’” – John McLaughlin

“My secret? A desire to work, years of dedication and loving what you do; I can’t live without music.” – Compay Segundo

“Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe dedicated.” – Unknown Author

“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”  – Irving Stone

“There is nothing wrong with dedication and goals, but if you focus on yourself, all the lights fade away and you become a fleeting moment in life.” – Pete Maravich

“Dedication is not what others expect of you, it is what you can give to others.” – Anonymous

“True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.” – Henry Miller

“Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.” – Dr Thomas Dooley

“You’ll know you’re amazing when you get devoted to making other people amazing.” – Robin Sharma

Find more Creativity Quotes here.

Discover more quotes daily in my Twitter and Facebook streams.

Category: Quotes
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“Economics PhD Sebastião Salgado only took up photography in his 30s, but the discipline became an obsession. His years-long projects beautifully capture the human side of a global story that all too often involves death, destruction or decay. Here, he tells a deeply personal story of the craft that nearly killed him, and shows breathtaking images from his latest work, Genesis, which documents the world’s forgotten people and places.”

Find the book Genesis here.

Find out about the collector’s edition book Genesis here.

View Salgado’s talk The Photographer As Activist here.

Find more photographer’s videos here.

Category: TED, Video - Photographers
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Equivalence

May 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment |

The idea of equivalence in photography is richly rooted in a time when photography was beginning to discover its own nature and continues to be a powerful force for discovering our own nature, which is greater than we think.

Alfred Stieglitz first used the term equivalent as a title for a series of photographs of clouds, whose aspirations were more musical than representational, and to describe a particular kind of activity in art and its result, “My photographs are ever born of an inner need – an Experience of Spirit … I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it sometimes in the form of photographs.”  In stating that his photographs have power “not due to subject matter” he suggested that photography, capable of but not limited to abstraction, can move beyond transcription without abandoning verisimilitude. The visible can be used to reveal the invisible; the external can be used to reveal the internal.

Extending what Stieglitz started, Minor White stated, “When a photograph is a mirror of the man, and the man is a mirror of the world, then Spirit might take over.” Equivalence embraces and elevates the debate over whether photographs are windows (onto the world) or mirrors (into the soul) and whether they are taken (through distant observation, objective to varying degrees) or made (through immediate interaction, subjective to varying degrees), illuminating many more levels of an evolving process. Through equivalence the photographic object created becomes a reflection of both the external things it represents and the internal states of its creator. This reflective capacity is extended to the viewers, who re-experience this shared process in their own ways.

White remarked, “One should photograph things not only for what they are but also for what else they are.” and “Equivalence is a function, not a thing.” He did not mean to suggest that equivalence was merely a rhetorical device. Equivalence is more than a rhetorical device, not a simile that suggests shared commonalities (this is like that), not a metaphor that observes shared qualities through the power of transformation (this is that), but a process inclusive and transcendent of both. Like a simile its power starts with the recognition of shared qualities and like a metaphor its power lies in transformation, but an equivalent transcends both through a heightened state of self-awareness, even to the point of transforming the self through its accompanying effects of clarity and commitment.

A change of perspective is a change in state. Jean Piaget reminds us that, “What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.” Perception changes reality – if only but not necessarily only because we are a part of reality. The more conscious the perception the stronger the change. Furthermore, the quality of consciousness one engages perception with influences what is perceived, what is produced, how it is received and the consequences that has. Acting on what one observes, choosing and sustaining one thing / quality amid many others, reinforces that state of being and this is particularly true if during observation one creates something tangible and durable and never more true if multiple related works are created. Often, during the process of manifestation perception continues to change, further extending this process of revelation and transformation.

Resonance is a consequence of equivalence. What we create can transform us. We then become cocreators, creating not only things and ideas but selves. What we create can also transform others, triggering cascades of sympathetic vibrations, if we imbue our creations with a persistent resonance, brought on by intensity, clarity and connection (connection to subject, medium, self, and others). Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both the ones who create directly and the ones who reperceive indirectly. Just as whether something is seen or unseen depends on a degree of sympathetic vibration, whether this capacity is activated depends on whether an equivalent resonance is produced in the viewer, which is influenced by the clarity and intensity of transmission and the capacity of the viewer to receive it. In this process, the connections between all things are highlighted. In this light, photography, like all forms of art and many other disciplines, is an agent for heightened perception and thus an agent for change.

Equivalence is born out of a state of being and the equivalent is a record of and a catalyst for that state of being, which can be reenacted by others. Equivalence is a process of revealing and exploring not only our greater nature but also our connection to and unity with a greater spirit / energy field. Equivalence is a shared lived process of revelation and transformation. Equivalence is not a process reserved only for photography, it is possible in every medium, it is not only for artists, but for each and every individual. It is universal. The question that still burns is not does it happen, but when it happens how intensely and with what quality does it happen?

Stieglitz set a shining example for us all. He demonstrated that the full power of our photographs lies not in special subjects or moments but in what we bring to the picture, which can be much more than technical skill, compositional prowess, and cultural awareness. Through photography we can simultaneously bear witness to things / events, affirm our connection / participation with them (even if only as observers, no small thing), and clarify our understanding / interpretation of the confluence of everything that is brought to bear in each moment and the continuing resonances they produce. More than an intellectual interpretation or emotional expression, this is a process of holistic integration. The photograph can be much more than a material trace of another material; it can even be much more than a trace of light and time; it can also be a trace of spirit, the energetic confluence of body, mind, and emotion, either single or multiple.

White reminds us that this process of self-realization is open to everyone, “With the theory of Equivalence, photographers everywhere are given a way of learning to use the camera in relation to the mind, heart, viscera and spirit of human beings. The perennial trend has barely been started in photography.” Though all photographers do it, not all photographers do it with equal clarity or intensity. Regardless of what level they engage this process, whenever photographers break through to new levels of consciousness the results are transformative for the photographer and the viewer and even the viewed, sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically.

Read Minor White’s essay Equivalence: The Perennial Trend.

The exhibit Seeing The Unseen: Equivalence In Photography opens in NYC at Soho Photo Tuesday, May 7.

Category: Exhibit, Statements
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