Talking Ansel Adams @ Yosemite

Nice work if you can get it

What’s coming up?

Just like our friend Ansel, we love to teach others how to advance their photography. You may remember we were doing a beta test on the AYP Club (Advancing Your Photography), well with your help, we’ve wrapped that up and are about to release a new supercharged yet streamlined version. How would you like to learn and advance your photography, step by step with simple easy to follow videos on each component of photography and end up with photographs that you love? Well, stay tuned my friend, we started shooting last week!

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Here’s an interesting look into the life of Allen Ginsberg by a friend of our blog, Eve Pearce. Eve is an avid photographer who likes summer sunsets and writing in cafes. She looked into the life of Ginsberg and discovered that like all of us here, he had a keen interest in photography.

Remembering the Photography of Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg is best known for his poetry and his role as one of the leading figures of the 1950s Beat Generation. However many people are unaware of the fact that as well as being regarded as the poet laureate of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg was also a keen amateur photographer. As a young man, he bought a thirteen-dollar Kodak Retina camera at a pawnshop and began to take photos. In the early 1960s, he lost his camera, bought another and then somehow managed to lose that one as well. This caused him to stop taking pictures for a while but then, in his later life, he rediscovered his passion for photography and continued to take photos until just before his death in 1997.

Defying Convention

Ginsberg’s life was always marked by his refusal to go along with social norms. His attitude to his photography was equally non-conformist. Whilst other photographers basked in the recognition that they received for their work, he remained modest and self-deprecating, stating that he believed that people only took him seriously as a photographer because he had already established himself as a poet. ‘If you’re famous, you can get away with anything!’ he said.

Bringing Out the Luminousness of the Ordinary Event

Ginsberg primarily took photos of his friends. Many of them would go on to be famous, which means that those pictures now generate high levels of interest. One photo, which is displayed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, shows Jack Kerouac wandering along the street after visiting William S. Burroughs. It is not a particularly well-taken shot but captures Kerouac pulling a funny face, which is a moment that most photographers would not have been close enough to him to photograph after his rise to fame. Ginsberg stated that he believed that both poetry and taking photos possess the power to bring out the ‘luminousness of the ordinary event.’

Simple Yet Striking

Most of Ginsberg’s best known work features his friends either going about their everyday lives or standing next to sites of interest. His pictures are more like holiday snaps than photos that have been taken to try and impress anyone, which is perhaps the beauty of them. A photo in the National Gallery of Art depicting William S. Burroughs standing next to a sphinx at the Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art is a classic example of this. It is the type of photo that a child might take on a school trip. However another of Ginsberg’s strengths was his ability to capture intimate moments of friendship or tenderness, for instance his photo of actor Neal Cassady. Ginsberg had an eye for an emotive shot and was able to bring across genuine warmth.

Vigour and Enthusiasm

Ginsberg’s work celebrated the vigour and enthusiasm of the creative individuals that he surrounded himself with. His shots always had an upbeat feel to them despite the fact that many of the people that featured in them would eventually fall victim to drink, drugs or a combination of the two. Some of his pictures included telltale signs of what was to come, for example a shot of Kerouac taken in 1964, which showed him looking bloated and unwell. Five years later, Kerouac died of alcohol-related health problems. Essentially, what made Ginsberg’s photos so poignant was the fact that he was able to get close to so many iconic figures. He successfully documented the Beat Generation with his camera and preserved it for the generations to come to look back on.

- Eve Pearce

 

Alexander Gage has been active in our little corner of the interwebs here at Silber Studios for a long time.  He’s a British expat who lives and works in Switzerland. We admire the absolute passion Alex has for photography and wanted to let you know about a project he did over the course of a year that we thought was pretty cool.

For the duration of 2012, Alex participated in his own, self-imposed 52 photography project. The “52/50 Photography Project”, was shot solely using a 50mm lens which Alex found  to be the most challenging out of his collection. The project turned out to be both immensely enjoyable and educational. We all know how difficult it can be find the time to take and publish a single shot once a week, especially if you have a pesky day job that gets in the way.  The end result, in our judgement, seems to have justified the year long effort. It’s amazing to see how a bite sized goal like 1 picture a week resulted in quite a collection of photos.

You can see Alex’s work by clicking here and on his mirror gallery in Google+

Here’s Alex commenting on the process in his own words:

• I underestimated how time consuming such a project would be and how remarkably difficult it was to take a single (publishable) shot within a week, particularly in addition to the day job which always took priority.

• Related to the above, I found that planning and preparation were the most important aspect to get right for this project to succeed. Walking around town and looking for photographic opportunities is a lot of fun, but across the span of a year there will be those times when you have little time, or you feel tired, fed up, or even ill. A plan or an idea can help you focus during these times. I kept a notebook of ideas of types of shots (indoor and outdoor) that I wanted to try and referred to that when I was feeling uninspired.

• Having said the above, a lot of my shots were taken on the spur of the moment as the opportunity arose. (e.g. the “Firestarter” shot was completely unplanned.) The old adage that you should always have your camera with you worked out well in those instances, even if you can’t always rely on the the fact that such an opportunity will present itself (particularly before that ever present deadline of Sunday night).

• I chose the 50mm lens because it was completely outside of my comfort zone and the one which I found to be the most challenging. The 50mm is now my favorite lens and after almost a year I know it inside out. It is portable, fast, great in low light conditions and has a depth of field which I think adds a special quality to the pictures.

• The project has forced me to try out new ideas, experiment and generally have a lot of fun with my photography. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who is prepared to put in the extra time.

Thank you Alex for sharing your work and the things you learn from this project with us. If you have a project of your own that you’d like to share with us, drop a line and let us know!

What the heck is that thing called a “histogram” and how do you use it anyway?

A histogram is a graph that shows the exposure from pure black on the left, to pure white on the right. It is a tool you can use to see how well your image will be exposed in your camera. One of the secrets of photography is to learn to “see” what your camera sees. Your eye can see a much wider range of light than your camera, so using the histogram can help you see only the range of light that the camera will capture. The word histogram is derived from histo meaning mast (the vertical lines) and gram denoting something written or recorded–as a graph. So in our case it is a graph showing the range of light being exposed on your camera’s sensor.

Master photographer Joe Holmes gave us a short tour of how to use your histogram, with some tips for getting “perfect exposures.”  Watch this video then grab your camera, take some shots and look at your histogram and see what you can learn from it.

Note: You also have a histogram in your photo editing software like PhotoShop and Lightroom, as well as video editing software like Final Cut Pro,so you’ll want to get to know how to read these graphs as a tool to get better exposed images and digital films.

And for an advanced lesson, take a look at how using the histogram fits right in to Ansel Adams’s “Zone System” and stay tuned for more on the subject…

We got a chance to talk to the one and only Joe McNally, who’s shot cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, FORTUNE, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Joe also happens to be the photographer who shot the first all digital coverage in the history of National Geographic Magazine. He was kind enough to share some of the tricks of the trade that he’s learned over the years.

What should we ask Joe the next time we catch up with him?

This interview with Camille Seaman is packed with so much goodness. She talks about using natural lighting in shooting subjects as varied as giant icebergs to TIbetans who don’t use lights indoors at all during the day. More importantly what really struck a chord is how WHO a photographer is plays a central role in their work.

We had a chance to catch up with our good friend , renowned studio and dance photographer RJ Muna. RJ’s won a couple of hundred awards (really). We love RJ because he has a great sense of humour and despite the fact that he’s so accomplished he is very generous in taking time to talk about his craft. He gave us some choice tips. If there’s something you’d like us to ask RJ or our other guests when we see them next, leave comments below!

Just a beautifully composed shot by Felix Kunze using Nikon's "Holy Grail"

We recently had a chance to catch up with our friend, celebrity portraiture photographer Felix Kunze. This was no small feat as someone who’s highly in demand like Felix is a globetrotter by necessity. He might be found in New York assisting Annie Leibovitz with her work one day and in Europe shooting a fashion campaign for Danish fashion brand Atelier Bogelund-Jensen the next.

Felix recently returned to the UK where he covered the London 2012 Olympics this past summer. Though he was “in the throes of London Fashion week madness”, he was gracious enough to make some time to chat. As always Felix was good for an interesting story (or three.) He told us about some very interesting work he did for the cover story of Nikon Magazine. The two stars of the story were Double Olympic Gold Medalist rower, Pete Reed and Nikon’s 13mm f5.6 lens aka The Holy Grail. Here’s Felix in his own words :

On a cold November morning in 2012, I attempted something that arguably no-one had ever done before.

I was given an assignment to photograph a portraiture session with an extremely wide-angle and rare lens; Nikon’s 13mm f/5.6 rectilinear marvel, often dubbed the ‘Holy Grail of lens design’.In simple terms, this is a wide-angle lens that has almost no distortion, a problem that most wide lenses suffer from. The distortion can cause a kind of warped feeling, as if things in the edge of the image are stretched. This $30,000 behemoth employs some glass to counteract this effect. It is designed for architectural photography and has wide applications in landscape. Proving difficult and expensive to manufacture, only about 350 of them were ever sold. The lens is no longer in production.

It’s unusual to shoot portraiture with a lens such as this, it requires me to be very very close to the subject, not made any easier by my decision to shoot part of the editorial on the rushing river Thames after heavy rain.

We chose to base our shoot in rowing because the long lines of oars, boats and the riverbank would demonstrate the capabilities of the lens.

Double Olympic Gold Medalist Pete Reed (Beijing 2008 & London 2012 in the Coxless Four) was kind enough to undertake this crazy task with us. Pete is a keen photographer himself and was an absolute sport despite the low temperatures and challenging conditions.

It was definitely an unusual shoot – Felix’s full thoughts are expressed in the full article found in the latest issue of Nikon Owner Magazine. Below is the behind the scenes video you can click to watch:

Behind the scenes with Felix Kunze shooting for Nikon Magazine

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.  With love in the air we’re bringing you an interview with San Francisco based wedding photographer Anna Kuperberg. Anna’s work has been featured on the cover of Photo Magazine and Professional Photographer. This year she was voted one of the 10 best wedding photographers by American Photo magazine.

Pic of the day:

This picture was taken by the Associated Press’ chief photographer in Pakistan, Muhammed Muheisen. Apparently theres a brouhaha in Pakistan between conservatives boycotting Valentines day and Romantics who are striking back with pink teddy bears and flowers. Story here

How am I celebrating the day with my special lady? By taking her on a group date: Me, her and Bruce Willis in “A Good Day to Die Hard” .

Why be cliche and go with candles when you can really turn up the romance with HUGE EXPLOSIONS ? Apparently CNN agrees with me.