Photo of the Day — December 4, 2010 (graphic image)

This image is by one of my all time favorite pho­tog­ra­phers, Joel-Peter Witkin.
I’ve been fol­low­ing his work for around 20 years. The sec­ond I saw his work I was totally mes­mer­ized but there’s very lit­tle middle-ground in terms of lik­ing Witkin’s work, you will like it or not. For me, the atten­tion to detail, the fab­u­lous com­po­si­tions, the very unusual sub­ject mat­ter that he has pho­tographed for decades, and his mas­tery of print­ing make him one of my all time favorite photographers.

Mother of the Future (2004) Joel-Peter Witkin

Mother of the Future (2004) Joel-Peter Witkin

Photographs — should we change the word — Photography podcast #43

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #43‚asks the ques­tion do we need to change the word pho­to­graph because it is not descrip­tive enough. With pho­tographs being so heav­ily edited in Pho­to­shop, do we need more spe­cific terms (or a new lex­i­con) to describe what kinds of pho­tographs we are look­ing at?‚

FYI — Next pod­cast will be less philo­soph­i­cal and more instructional/practical.

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Post pro­cess­ing thread

Thanks as always to Vlad,‚Andre_f,‚deb­bieT, ‚Elio and Alen for‚recent com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Histograms in digital photography — Photography podcast #41

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #41 offers a primer on his­tograms in dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy. A his­togram is just a graph show­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of tones in a pho­to­graph. We dis­cuss how to ‘read’ his­tograms and how much atten­tion we should pay to them.


Images cour­tesy of cambridgeincolour.com

The images above reveal the his­tograms asso­ci­ated with them. Notice how in the right pho­to­graph there is still tex­ture in the white in the dog’s face and in the sand. If the his­togram was closer to the right edge we’d lose detail in the dog’s face and start los­ing detail in the sand.

Pho­tog­ra­phy links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
More in depth his­togram expla­na­tions:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms1.htm
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/histograms2.htm
HDR Pho­tog­ra­phy

Thanks as always for the com­ments and sug­ges­tions. We LOVE com­ments and sug­ges­tions so please send more.

You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.