French Chateaux and Photographic Challenges

Posted on Sunday, 16 November, 2014 by admin

Loire Valley TravelsOne advantage of traveling by bicycle is parking: Compared to car and bus parking areas it’s invariably closer to the attraction you’re trying to visit and has the additional advantage of being free. Disadvantages? Well, it takes you longer to get where you’re going so time may be more of a constraint than with other modes of travel (…or not, as anyone who has tried to negotiate the railway system in Italy will attest). Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Travel | Comments Off on French Chateaux and Photographic Challenges

I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle — Tube Advert

Posted on Friday, 14 November, 2014 by admin
Movie poster for 'I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle' in a Tube station in London
Movie poster for I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle, taken somewhere in the London Underground in 1990

Someone recently brought up this movie in Reddit’s r/motorcycles forum and the memories came back immediately: I photographed the poster advertising this film in a Tube station in London years ago. Continue reading →

Posted in Art & Design, Motorcycles, Photography, Travel | Comments Off on I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle — Tube Advert

Travel Photography – Part 1: Time, Travel

Posted on Friday, 7 November, 2014 by admin

Travel photography may be the most challenging genre of photography of all. Well, next to wartime combat photography and shooting studio portraits of toddlers. What makes it difficult is precisely what makes it so appealing to me. I love the challenges, the constraints of time, weather and circumstances. In this series of posts I’m going to share some of my experiences and ideas about travel photography. If you can’t learn from my techniques I hope you’ll at least be able to learn from my mistakes…

Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Travel | Comments Off on Travel Photography – Part 1: Time, Travel

Pentax 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8: Bargain of the Decade

Posted on Saturday, 11 October, 2014 by admin

Pentax DA-L 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8 EDMore specifically, I’m referring to the Pentax DA-L 1:4-5.8 ED, a telephoto zoom that performs far above its price point. It’s a budget variation on the DA 55-300 4-5.8 ED, differing from its more expensive brother only in that it lacks the "quick shift" focus adjustment and has a plastic mounting bayonet rather than steel. Optically they’re identical. The DA-L version is supposed to be a "kit" lens; that is, sold as part of a body/lens package deal. Pentax doesn’t show this lens in their lens catalogue because it’s not available separately. Well, it’s not supposed to be available separately: Many enterprising retailers split up kits and sell the camera bodies and lenses separately. If you check around on eBay you’ll find several reputable, trustworthy retail outlets doing this (but be sure to check with reputation web sites before buying from a dealer you’re not familiar with). I paid $179.00 for mine.

Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Reviews, The Great Outdoors | Comments Off on Pentax 55-300mm f/4.0-5.8: Bargain of the Decade

The Old Nags Head

Posted on Sunday, 5 October, 2014 by admin

The Old Nags Head is a pub in the village of Edale in Derbyshire, England.
The Old Nags Head Inn
Continue reading →

Posted in Photo Galleries, The Great Outdoors, Travel | Comments Off on The Old Nags Head

Bruce Gilden Does Photography Critique (courtesy of Vice.com)

Posted on Tuesday, 30 September, 2014 by admin

Vice.com recently posted this great video of famed street photographer Bruce Gilden critiquing photographs that were submitted specifically for this purpose. The result is pretty wonderful, which is a little unexpected for me. I’m not a big fan of Bruce Gilden’s photography and even less of the way he does photography. But his critique of photography seems to coincide with my own views to a remarkable degree. In other words, I don’t care for the photographs he makes but I love how he talks and thinks about photography. He’s the complete inverse of Henri Cartier-Bresson, in my book.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Bruce Gilden Does Photography Critique (courtesy of Vice.com)

Plagiarism in Photography and Graphic Design Courses

Posted on Friday, 1 August, 2014 by admin

Plagiarism in the Visual Arts

Whenever you start teaching at a new college or university one of the first things you’ll have to do is attend a seminar on the institution’s academic policies, including plagiarism. I’ve been through this several times over the years and yet I’m still able to confound the presenter when I point out the special difficulties of detecting plagiarism in the visual arts. It’s as if they’ve never thought of the problem before.

Continue reading →

Posted in Academics, Art & Design | 1 Comment

New Film Rebate Downloads

Posted on Monday, 14 April, 2014 by admin
7cd00410 - Independence Pass
Kodak Elitechrome 100EC

I’ve just added a batch of new film frames to my collection of EPS downloads. List below.

Click on any of the images above to see the full gallery.

Download Links

Film Frame EPS Downloads (compressed in zip format)
  6×7 645 35mm
Color
Slide		 Fuji Velvia 50
Fuji Provia 100 		Fuji Velvia 50
Fuji Provia 100
Kodak E100S 		Kodachrome 64
Kodak Elite Chrome 100EC
Color
Negative		 Kodak NC160 Portra    
B&W Ilford HP5+ Ilford HP5+ Kodak Tri-X (4 frames)
Ilford HP5+ (2 frames)
Ilford Pan F+ (2 frames)
Generic Generic 67 Generic 645 Generic 35mm
Movie Generic 35mm Movie Film (8 frames, academy format, no sound stripe)
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

I am making these film rebate files available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This permits all uses – even commercial uses – as long as you give attribution.

Posted in Art & Design, Film, Photography, Photoshop | Comments Off on New Film Rebate Downloads

Another “Pay to be in our book” Scheme: “International Contemporary Masters”

Posted on Saturday, 22 February, 2014 by admin

Not long ago I was “invited” – via email spam, no less – to submit photographs for inclusion in the “International Masters of Photography” book. Even though I didn’t fall for that one and even though I reported it as spam to the host (aitcom.net) I’ve been getting more dubious “offers” from the same IP address range. Continue reading →

Posted in Art & Design, Photography, Publishing, Reviews & Commentary, scam, spam | 1 Comment

Dorrance Publishing Scam… or Not?

Posted on Friday, 31 January, 2014 by admin

I recently received an email from an outfit called Dorrance Publishing regarding my textbook A Semester of Photoshop. The subject line of the email was the rather alarming “Your Copyright Registration with the Library of Congress” and I first assumed it was the Copyright Office informing me of a problem with my registration. A quick glance (after opening the email in a web browser, since Dorrance is one of those clueless entities that sends email in HTML-only format) was enough to reveal that Dorrance is some kind of publishing company kindly alerting me to the fact that my book is a “candidate for publication” with them.

An unsolicited email with a deceptive subject line and evasively-worded opening paragraph set off a few alarm bells here, to put it mildly. So off to the search engines I did go… and I was not disappointed. Continue reading →

Posted in Photoshop, Publishing, Reviews & Commentary, scam, spam | Comments Off on Dorrance Publishing Scam… or Not?