∞ Blog ∞
On Photography, Art, And The Creative Life
Welcome to the place affectionately known as my "writings on the walls", where you will find images, thoughts, and discussions on Photography, Art, and The Creative Life... or so I'm told.
Nitro ~ The New Sheriff In Town
There is a new sheriff in town and its name is Nitro from Gentlemen Coders, the software developer behind RAW Power I wrote about recently. This new application, written from the ground up, is able to take advantage of more of the Apple Core Imaging pipeline and newer technologies in ways that RAW Power (written in 2016) cannot since many of Apple’...
Read the Full Post »
Do You Abstract ~ Part Deux? : On the Art of Abstraction in Photography
Believe it or not, all photography is an abstraction. This beautiful quote above by photographer Ernst Haas graces the “front door” of my website for a very good reason. I hold his words here to heart and believe their truth. And just as painting and music are essentially abstract art forms, so too is photography. The “open eyes” that saw this seas...
Read the Full Post »
Do You Abstract?
We all begin with a SOOC image. Everyone of us does. What is a SOOC image? It’s a Straight Out Of Camera image. One that hasn’t yet met your creative post-processing sensibilities. There are a great many of the greats of photography for whom SOOC is the only way to go, and aside from maybe a slight boost in saturation or contrast, “what-they-see-is...
Read the Full Post »
How And Why I See The Way I Do ~ Part Deux
Between being exposed (yes, that’s a pun 😉) to the work of Jerry Uelsmann at an early stage in my photography, and then the work of Man Ray, I had two artists who though very different in style, both made very compelling images that incorporated the solarization process. This image “My Mother’s Hands with Stone” is my digital iteration of this old...
Read the Full Post »
How And Why I See The Way I Do
This image titled, “I’ve Just Seen A Face Series ~ Metropolis (Tape residue on metal)” I was only able to notice and then photograph because of my exposure to a varied and eclectic array of creative artists from many genres. I’m often asked how do I see what I see, or why do I notice something that most wouldn’t pay any attention to? I honestly don...
Read the Full Post »
Nothing To Teach, And No One To Teach It To.
The title of this post is attributed to Alan Watts who was an American philosopher and teacher of Zen Buddhism in the West. So what does it mean for a teacher to say, “I have nothing to teach you”? I think if a teacher teaches you nothing more than how they did something, the step-by-step approach that you then copy and get the same results, they h...
Read the Full Post »
RAW On Screen ~ Ready For Your Closeup?
It all started with a question, as many things do. A fairly innocent question: What is the difference between two computer programs that can both edit RAW image files? I gave my answer as I have extensive experience with both. Many others gave thoughtful and concise answers even better than mine. I trust the questioner got an answer that helped her...
Read the Full Post »
RAWPower: There’s A New Sheriff In Town ~ Almost
A funny thing happened on the way to RAW photo editing: I met Gentlemen Coders. Well, not exactly and not in person, Gentlemen Coders is a company started by, and currently solely run by Nik Bhatt, a former Chief of many hats at Apple who worked on Aperture. I got to meet Nik and his wonderful RAW processing app RAW Power via PhotoJoseph on YouTube...
Read the Full Post »
The Art Of Sensibility
Sometime back I wrote a post about how photographers should not spend time searching for a “style” to set themselves apart, but rather cultivate a “sensibility.” I recently posted a link to that blog post on social media in response to a friend and fellow photographer’s post on the subject of style. My linked comment got some very interesting respo...
Read the Full Post »
This Is Not A Face
“Ceci n’est pas un visage”
But it could be. With the utmost respect for René Magritte and his iconic image of surrealist metaphor, I present this image taken with and created on an iPhone as part of my series called “I’ve Just Seen A Face” inspired by the Beatles’ song. I’ve been noticing faces lately in the odd things I see on my walkabout....
Read the Full Post »
Do You Have A.I. Phobia?
Fear is a powerful thing, and it has a useful purpose in our survival. That said, it can best be utilized as a guide, and not a paralyzing emotion. So who is afraid of the potential of A.I. technology? Lots of very prominent folks in the tech industry are sounding alarms 🚨, but it may be surprising that Adobe, the developers of their own A.I. tool...
Read the Full Post »
A.I.? D.I.Y.!
When it comes to creating (*generating) images using Artificial Intelligence tools, I ask students (really any photographers), can you do that without A.I.? Do you have the requisite skills and know-how to create these same images on your own? If not, then maybe you’re not the artist you think you are. If your first response is “No I’m not that’s w...
Read the Full Post »
A.I. and Ethics
Are there any moral or ethical considerations to be calculated when using Artificial Intelligence to “create” Art (or is “generate” a better term)? This makes me wonder if ethics are taught in school anymore?
So what does ethics have to do with using A.I. tools to create images or art? Well, when the tool is doing what has been termed “scraping” t...
Read the Full Post »
A.I. and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”
So what is all the uproar about Artificial Intelligence and the creation of images/artwork? I have a few thoughts 💭… Now let me say I have not personally interacted directly with any A.I. program targeting the creative image making field (i.e. Photography.) I have however watched a number of demos of some of the newer iterations like Adobe’s “Gene...
Read the Full Post »
It’s the LUT Life for Me!
A while back I did a video tutorial on how I create LUTs using Affinity Photo to color grade images and import them into my desktop 🖥️ program Exposure X5. Because Exposure X5 (and later versions) is one of the only image post-processing apps that has a well developed, robust and dedicated LUTs tool, it has been where I’ve chosen to utilize this p...
Read the Full Post »
Copyright © trace photographs All rights reserved