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| HT2640 - I Miss Photography |
So much of what I love about photography has been replaced by something that is, well, not the same photography I first fell in love with. A great photograph used to be rare; a great photographer used to be a kind of technological priest; before the advent of swipe left, we used to take time to view a photograph and delve into its depths; searching for a photograph used to be a holy pursuit, now it looks more like a trophy hunt. The other day I suddenly realized I missed that older kind of photography of my youth, but then immediately recognized that it is possible, at least in our own lives, to preserve the old ways. |
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HT2641 - Longevity |
Have we arrived at a point in the history of photography where longevity is no longer a virtue? In my youth, archival processing was an important pursuit in our mastery of craft. Now (think of Instagram), the lifespan of an image can be measured in hours, maybe days, certainly not in decades. Photography has fulfilled its prophecy by truly becoming an instantaneous art, not just in the making but also in viewing. |
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HT2642 - Compositional Sleight of Hand |
Layers are one of the most powerful tools in digital processing. An often overlooked use of layers is their abilities in composition. Want to move that car a few feet to the left? Not a problem. Cut it to a new layer, move it where you want it, then use AI to create the new background. This is a bigger deal than might be obvious because of a fundamental change that has taken place in image making |
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HT2643 - The Problem with Canned Slide Shows |
Over the last 20 years, I've seen quite a number of photographic slide shows. The first was a multi-projector affair, with a musical sound track accompaniment in the 1980s. Recently, software has made assembling a slide show a snap. Too often, I find these presentations too metronomic, predictable, uninteresting after the first few images. Too bad, because they don't have to be. Today, a slide show is not a slide show; it's a video. It's not a sequential presentation of still images, it's a living, breathing visual experience. |
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HT2644 - An Entirely New Vision |
The creative idea might appear in an instant, or it might also require years of gestation. I was recently looking at a large collection of images and I had photographed in 2012 in southern Utah. From nowhere I can determine, an idea about how to process these RAW captures suddenly appeared. I could not count the number of times I've looked at these RAW files with no interest at all. How, then, does a wonderfully creative idea suddenly appear? I cannot over emphasize the value of working our image archives so long-dormant ideas have an opportunity to emerge. |
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