Whenever I see images like the ones below by Drew Gardner, I always ask myself how the hell they do it. Apparently they do it with $36,000 cameras. That’s not to say it’s all about the equipment, but 39 mega pixels doesn’t hurt. The Phase One camera system seems pretty incredible: a medium format, full-frame sensor that can produce “Noise-free exposures of up to an hour”. Crazy…
Artistically Gardner’s work (examples below) isn’t really my style, but technically it always amazes me that people can create images like this. The Strobist recently mentioned Gardner and his Phase One Masterclass. At $2,850 I won’t be attending anytime soon, but it would be great to see the process of someone who has mastered photography on this level.
Here’s a peek at Gardner’s process in his “Epic Location Photography” trailer:
I’m all about lonely and melancholic photography this week — though more importantly — I’m really into the effective implementation of a deceptively simple concept as seen above. Like Nobody is there, this series by J Bennett Fitts steers clear of any human subject; this time with a slightly more ominous tone. The focus of No Lifeguard on Duty is the abandoned swimming pools found throughout the country, usually alongside a similarly neglected hotel/motel from the 60’s. Just in time for summer! (At least in San Francisco…elsewhere in the country a more appropriate summer image might have the pool filled with water and people frolicking about. Here, summer means cold and foggy.)
Swimming pools are signs of spiritual optimism, economic prosperity and the hedonistic good life, so the image of a pool dried up and cracked or half full of dirty water becomes a symbol of disappointed hopes and dreams. A sign on the wall by a pool that was filled in with grassy sod says, ”No lifeguard on duty,” which is funny at first, and then starts to sound like an ominous judgment about modern American life. Ken Johnson
Photographer Tim Navis is participating in The Mongol Rally, a drive from the UK to Mongolia. You can follow along at Tim’s Rubik Crew page. Seems like an incredible adventure, I imagine he’ll be coming back with some amazing shots, can’t wait to see them. And in case you haven’t checked in on Tim since we last featured him, here are a few of his recent shots to refresh your memory:
Somebody is there is a cool Flickr set by Yosigo. As the title so aptly puts it, each photo in the set has a picture of someone “there”, usually depicted from afar. The one on the end is from the related Nobody is there, where as you can see, no one is there. I enjoy photography based on simple concepts like this, especially when it involves the beach. Some of the photos are a little too post produced for me (heavy vignetting etc), but there are a number of pretty cool shots in both sets.
I came across Dutch photographer GoWithTheFlowEnzo’s work (not sure of his real name, only says “Robin” on the page) the other day and I’m really enjoying the color and style. According to the EXIF data he used a Canon EOS 450D for most of the shots. The crazy part is that he took a couple of them with a little Canon IXUS. See if you can spot which ones without looking at the EXIF.
Most have heard of The Manhattan Project — the program lead by J. Robert Oppenheimer to develop the first nuclear weapon — but few have seen what’s left of it. Today I came across Martin Miller’s photo essay — Slouching towards Bethlehem — which gives an inside view of the surprisingly intact facility where the project was based. I was immediately stricken by the aesthetics of this massive nuclear laboratory.
I’ve always wondered how much time and thought is put into the purely aesthetic aspects of military/industrial design. Were the engineers who built this place trying to make it look good? Or am I just appreciating the fruits of design born solely from the pursuit of functionality. At any rate, the photos are excellent and whether intentional or not, the design ethic at work in these facilities is amazing. Link
Some people that you randomly come across like Jason Cawood just go around and collect, take, and share great vintage images that i’ve probably had on my computer for awhile now and I don’t know which images are his or if they’re from someone else, either way these 2 from shopping malls always caught my eye. I feel silly tagging this post “1970s malls” hah! if someone actually searched for that i’d be pretty amazed, now the ISO50 blog has that covered. On a side note, I never remember Fairlane looking soo impressive.
So I picked up some Nikon flashes last week and have been having a lot of fun with them. I got the SB-900 and its little brother, the SB-600. I’ve been running the 900 attached to the camera (D80) and have the 600 as a remote slave using Nikon CLS. Using the multiple flash setup has yielded some really great results (see this post for some examples) but even with just one flash attached directly to the camera I’ve found it’s pretty easy to get great shots.
Just thought I’d post some random shots I got playing around to illustrate how easy it is to get decent stuff using a good flash. I didn’t do all the post-processing stuff I usually do so you could see the raw output (save for the first one which I color filtered inside the camera). These were all shot with NEF RAW in adverse lighting conditions, most in very low incandescent light. As you can see, just the single flash was enough to fully light the scene and balance the color. If memory serves correct they were all taken with the SB-600 attached the camera. Also check out Alex’s post on the SB-600 for some other examples. As I work with the flashes more this week I will post more examples and info.
