“Explorations charts the advances in science and technology that have revealed hidden worlds and astonishing images. Well see how remarkable innovations in medicine, photography and astronomy have enhanced and altered our understanding. This is the story of how Mankind is driven to acquire these seemingly impossible visions; it is a journey through the images that have revolutionised how we understand our world.”
“Celebrate the life and work of Santa Fe photographer Eliot Porter. For more than a half of a century Porter pursued the natural world with his view through a camera. He had numerous publications, most notably with the Sierra Club. “In wilderness is the preservation of the world,” Porter wrote. He combined his photographs with selections of Henry David Thoreau’s writings. The Place No One Knew features Porter’s photographs of Glen Canyon before it vanished under the waters of the Colorado River Project. Featured in this look back at Porter’s work is the photographer’s son Jonathan, who reads selections from his father’s writings. Poet V.B. Price reads the Thoreau selections, and is joined by artists, photographers and friends of Eliot Porter to speak of Eliot and the impact of his work.”
View more photographer’s videos here.
No other photographer is more influential to me than Eliot Porter – save my father. I knew Eliot through my mother’s long collaboration with him designing and overseeing the production of over twelve of his books during my formative years. His influences on me are too numerous and wide-ranging to list them all here. A few stand out from the rest.
Eliot was a pioneer who elevated the use of, appreciation of, and collectability of color within the medium of photography, aligning his distinctive style with the subtle and complex palette of nature.
Eliot was probably the most widely published fine art photographer of his day. He was at the forefront of a handful of photographers that defined a style that would later characterize an entire genre of photographic environmental advocacy. It was during the production of Eliot’s book Intimate Landscapes where I was first introduced to digital imaging. When I saw the Scitex machines used in the 1970s I instantly wanted to use them for artistic rather than commercial purposes, but thought it might be a lifetime before I could afford what my mother called a “million dollar coloring book” until I got my own copy of the first version of Adobe Photoshop, which was a dream come true. The posters my mother designed to promote the book and exhibit ultimately became some of the Metropolitan Museum’s most successful, far exceeding the reach of the originals. I learned that an artist’s effectiveness could be dramatically extended beyond rare original works of art through publications made available to large audiences.
James Gleick’s (the author who popularized complexity sciences and fractal geometry in his best-selling book Chaos) choice to join forces with Eliot on their book Nature’s Chaos confirmed my opinion that Eliot had intuitively sensed a deeper order in nature than was conventionally seen and portrayed this in his images. Eliot’s background and continuing interest in the sciences informed his art.
Eliot described his book The Place No One Knew, a portrait of Glen Canyon before it was flooded by a dam, as a eulogy because it was released after the floodwaters began rising and affected public opinion too late to stop the destruction of the canyon’s destruction. Hearing about both the successes and failures of advocacy through the arts, I decided that while I wanted to make my own contributions in this area, there were plenty of other artists contributing in similar ways and new ways were also needed. He knew this when he threw down the gauntlet one day and said to me, “You know, it’s going to be your generation that decides whether we will hand down a habitable environment to future generations.”
Even more influential to me than his photographs was the man. In his 70’s and 80’s, Eliot was physically fit (walking 5 miles a day), adventurous (traveling to remote locations like Iceland and Antarctica), mentally sharp as a tack (loving intelligent respectful debates with anyone of any age or background and often playing the devil’s advocate just to see where the conversation and the other person would go), and actively socially conscientious (continuing his long-standing participation in organizations like the Sierra Club. He was a shining example in so many ways.
NIK recently announced a new version of their exceptional software for HDR imaging – NIK’s HDR Efex Pro 2. It’s the HDR solution with the best visual interface, one that helps you compare your options at a single glance.
Use the code JPCNIK to get a 15% discount on all NIK software
NAPP’s RC Concepcion (Check out his HDR book here.) demonstrates the latest version in this video.
New features include …
Improved Tone Mapping Engine – Develop superior results with better color rendering and improved natural styles
Interface, Interaction, and Workflow – Benefit from improvements to the merging interface, tone mapping and enhancement controls, visual presets, and more
Depth Control – Enjoy added depth and realism in images with the new and proprietary Depth control, which helps counteract the flattened look commonly associated with HDR images
Full GPU Processing and Multi-Core Optimization – Gain even faster performance with GPU processing that takes full advantage of the processors found on modern display adapters
Ghost Reduction – Improved ghost reduction algorithm ensures that artifacts created by moving objects are removed with a single click
Chromatic Aberration Reduction – Reduce color fringes around objects
Graduated Neutral Density Control – Access the full 32-bit depth of the merged image, providing a natural effect especially on images with a strong horizon line
Full White Balance Control – Take full advantage of the white balance in an image with a new Tint slider, which along with the Temperature slider, can be applied both globally as well as selectively using U Point technology
History Browser – Easily review adjustments and different HDR looks via the History Browser which records every enhancement used in an editing session
Extended Language Support – International users benefit by the addition of Brazilian Portuguese and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional) to a list of languages that includes English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and Japanese
Find out about even more features here.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
My free monthly desktop calendar for July features an image from Antarctica.
Download it here.
Justin Quinell makes pinhole cameras and photographs with a combination of reckless abandon and experimental inquisitiveness. His enthusiasm is contagious!
View more photographer’s videos here.
Adam Fuss’ photograms encourage you to think about photography, in different ways and much more broadly. His life-sized camera-less photograms represent one man’s attempt to work with, explore, and see subjects, media, and perception more directly. By making camera-less images, Fuss eliminates many distortions inherent in optical systems that employ lenses.
The turning point in Adam Fuss’ work came when he accidentally processed a piece of film that recorded only a grain of dust and its shadow. He had the sensitivity to see something extraordinary in this ordinary moment. Since then, he’s explored many ways of making photograms, including producing images from the chemical reactions created by photosensitive materials coming in contact with viscera and decaying objects.
Fuss’ photograms highlight the idea of the photograph as a trace made by light that has come in direct contact with the thing recorded. Fuss takes this one step further in his photograms, as the objects, not just the light reflected from them, literally make contact with the recording device, which becomes the final art object. Akin to abstract painting, the thing made represents itself more than the subject.
In Fuss’ work, the absence of light reveals as much or more as the presence of light, reversing our conventional expectations of photographs (‘light drawings). This is more than just ironic – it’s insightful.
Like Plato’s The Allegory Of The Cave, where men raised in a cave are bound in such a way that they only see shadows and mistake them for the real things not just reflections of reality, Fuss’ photograms ask us to consider the limited nature of our perceptions and not to confuse the recordings we make with the things themselves.
Read my extended conversation with Adam Fuss here.
Find out more about my influences here.
Be more green!
You can make a difference today!
Make many small changes to make one big change!
And you’ll save a lot!
Take action now!
Here’s one idea.
Clean your Beach!
It’s summer here in Maine and the temperatures are rising. Like anywhere else in the world when it gets warm – we head toward the water. Be it an ocean beach, a river bank or a lakeside retreat we grab our snacks, beverage bottles, and towels and head toward the cool embrace of our local watering hole.
With approximately 80% of the worldwide population living near water, that translates into millions of tons of bottles and snack wrappers ending up on the worlds beaches.
We all know the importance of clean water, but more often than not, the full weight of this responsibility seems unfathomable. Lets look at some numbers… The total length of the worlds coastline is estimated to be close to 217,490 miles, or to put it visually, roughly equal to the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The United States alone has more than 250,000 rivers equaling to 3.5 million miles of shoreline. These numbers can become overwhelming in terms of tonnage and clean up.
But it can be done.
On September 15 for the last 26 years, the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup has held a volunteer clean up day for ocean and waterway health. Each year these indefatigable volunteers not only scour our shores and waterfronts but additionally keep a running total of each specific type of item collected.
During the 25th anniversary Cleanup on September 15, 2010 nearly half a million volunteers combed the shorelines around the world to collect a total of 9,843,121 items of debris. Some numbers are overwhelming… 980,067 plastic bags; 75,168 balloons; 1,094,921 plastic beverage bottles; and 1,892,526 cigarettes or filters are amongst a myriad of other refuse from vacuums to baby bottles, and washing machines.
What can you do?
Start with leaving the beach in better condition than it was when got there. Leave no trace that you have been there, take all your garbage, any neighboring debris and your belongings with you.
Volunteer to clean up your local beach and get your friends and relatives involved. Many local communities ask for help with clearing debris.
Don’t feed the birds! The more food they receive means the more they hang out on the beach which increases the amount of bird droppings on the beach.
Don’t leave debris near storm drains. Most of these drains run directly into the waterways without any filtration. After taking a swim in the nearest waterway these debris will most likely end up on the beach.
So grab those snacks and beverages and remember to clean up your area after you enjoy the cool clean water!
See you at the beach this summer!
Find more resources that will help you take action now here.
Find environmental organizations to support here.
“The recent generations have been bathed in connecting technology from birth, says futurist Don Tapscott, and as a result the world is transforming into one that is far more open and transparent. In this inspiring talk, he lists the four core principles that show how this open world can be a far better place.”
View more videos on creativity here.
People keep asking Seth Resnick and I why we keep returning to Antarctica.
We’ve made four trips and every trip was different. We visit new locations; there are over 40 locations cruises land at and with each visit we get to visit an average of 12. The ice conditions are always different; one month can make a big difference. Surprisingly, the thing that we’ve found makes the biggest difference is the weather, which affects the light dramatically. We saw riotous colors during four hour long sunsets on our 2005 Peninsula trip and “nights” where the sun only skims the horizon but never truly sets south of the Antarctic circle in 2009. Every time we go, we keep wondering how much more could there be to see and how different could the conditions be and every time we’re surprised that we discover so much more and that locations we know look so different. Each voyage has had an entirely unique character.
The two most sublime landscape experiences I’ve ever had were at Sossusvlei, Namibia and in Antarctica’s The Gullet. The Gullet was the remotest, purest, whitest experience I’ve ever had. It felt like being in a frozen heaven. Quietly cruising on mirror calm waters through the dramatic mountains of Crystal Bay to find the narrow channel through The Gullet (like seeing clouds cascade off high peaks to touch the water and be frozen in place) and through to Margueritte Bay lit up by endless hours of midnight color was one of the most beautiful 24 hours of my life. Many of us didn’t sleep that ‘night’ because we didn’t want to miss anything. We knew while we were there that few people on earth had ever had an experience similar to the one we were having.”
See more images from Antarctica’s The Gullet here.
There are still a few spaces available in our Antarctica 2013 workshop.
Email me at jpc@digitalphotodestinations if you’d like to join us.