RichEskinPhoto.com: Nature, Fine Art and Conservation Photography

Quotes

“The best street photography focuses our attention on what we have trained ourselves to ignore.” — Margaret Renkl, NY Times Guest Essay “Baldwin Lee Is One of Those Artists Who Teach Us to See,” October 31, 2022

“You were once wild. Don’t let them tame you.” — Isadora Duncan

It has been about six months since my last blog. I felt that both the blog and my photography were getting repetitive, so I decided to take a “creative hiatus.” I may restart it but probably on a monthly rather than weekly frequency.

I have worked on two books in the interim. The “Marsh Speaks in Metaphor” is a book of poetry and landscape images, all taken at North Point State Park in Baltimore. Ted Forbes did a recent review of the book on the Art of Photography at 3:53 minutes into the blog and referenced my blog as a contact point. If you are interested in purchasing a copy you can contact me at richard.eskin@gmail.com. The book is $20 and I can only accept checks. I have sold some of them through the Ivy Bookshop on Falls Road and will contact them again to see if they might be interested in additional copies.

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— From Andrew Simonet: Artist U Workshops

Post-Processing
— Sharpening by blurring

Quotes

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will. — Stephen King

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” — Carrie Fisher

“My motto is, “If not now, when? If not me, who?” I want to manifest my destiny, creatively, while I’m here.” -— Jamie Lee Curtis

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Ukraine
— Exhibition, Gregory Crewdson: Cinematic Stillness
— Erwin Blumenfeld
— Brief article on the Fulani of the Sahel in Africa
— Ergy Landau
— Bill Owens suburbia

Post-Processing
— Photoshop Cafe: What’s new in Photoshop and Camera Raw

Miscellaneous
— Street photography without people
— Will AI image generators kill photography?
— Three decades of work by Gordon Parks
— Ted Forbes: Photography as narrative

Quotes

“When I dare to be powerful — to use my strength in the service of my vision — then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” -— Audre Lorde

“If only the sun-drenched celebrities are being noticed and worshiped, then our children are going to have a tough time seeing value in the shadows, where the thinkers, probers, and scientists are keeping society together.” -— Rita Dove

“Flow can only truly be achieved when we are willing to let go of the outcome and just play.” -— Sandra Taylor-Hedges, visual artist

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Joel Meyerowitz’s Provincetown
— All American summer vacation
— Hollywood Hotel, 1975
— Pakistan

Post-Processing
— New Lightroom features
— Colin Smith: New photoshop features

Miscellaneous
— Meditations on what not to photograph I disagree with many of these, but do agree that some have been too frequently and others done poorly.
— Lynsey Addario photojournalist
— Sean Tucker: Color photography
— 1960s

Quotes

“It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.“– Samwise Gamgee, “The Fellowship of the Ring”

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” — Leonora Carrington

“If a song moves you, that’s all that’s important. I don’t have to know what a song means. I’ve written all kinds of things into my songs. And I’m not going to worry about it — what it all means.” -— Bob Dylan, 2016

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Sheila Metzner
— Striking images of sacred places
— Helen Glazer: Antarctica
— Gestures of love
— Photos of people from every Native American tribe

Post-Processing
— Making realistic shadows in PS
— Sean Tucker: Controlling color in your images
— Best way to select subject in PS

Field and Studio
— Lindsay Adler: Marilyn Monroe inspired fine art nude photo

Miscellaneous
— Saul Leiter

Quotes

“If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.” — Fay Weldon

“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.” -– Eleanor Roosevelt

“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous “I don’t know.”” -— Wisawa Szymborska, 1996

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— David DuChemin: The photographer’s Voice
— A visual/musical bestiary No music but the pictures were neat.
— The dissolving landscape
— James O. Mitchell: Harlem

Post-Processing
— Combine and merge pictures

Field and Studio
— Cover shoot with Winnie Harlow

Miscellaneous
— A collection of 17 contemporary photographers
— Photographs by women artists
— Tom Heaton talks about the business side of his landscape photography
— Why street photography laws may change I found this analysis fascinating

Quotes

“It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them.” — Walt Whitman

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.” — Kurt Vonnegut

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” — John Steinbeck in “East of Eden”

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Memory Loss
— A second body of work on memory loss
— Diary of a dying star A good job of taking a very consistent object but making all of the images interesting
— Mordencage

Post-Processing
— Using AI to add people to your images
— Perfect edges on sky replacement

Miscellaneous
— Marcus Leatherdale: Portraitist of NY underground
— William Klein: nonconformist photographer
— Ziggy Stardust: Book and exhibit
— Sean Tucker: Why artists should be more competitive

Quotes

“Letting your mind play is the best way to solve problems.” — Bill Watterson

“He has no problem with failure as long as he is doing work he is happy with. Whether it ends up as a win or loss on a consumer level is not as much of an interest to him as one might think.” — Elliot Roberts about Neil Young

“Once you get to a certain age… you’ve got to try to keep expanding your field. You’ve got to try new things and if you don’t, you tend to get conservative. I always say you dig yourself a rut and then you furnish it.” — Stephen King

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Snail painting
— David DuChemin: Bodies of Work/Going beyond the single image
— Art & Fashion
— NY, London, Paris Subways
— Cheryl St. Onge
— Memory/Loss

Miscellaneous
— Nigel Danson on why you should make your own photobook
— Why photographers can’t sell prints
— Sean Tucker: Getting better images from your cell phone
— Alec Soth on how the stories behind the images in a book impact your understanding For those who saw my presentation on 9/15 about making a book, this is an interesting follow-up

Quotes

“It’s taken a long time to make photographs say what I want them to say, to shape time rather than stop it.” — Jennifer McClure in Lenscratch

“When it comes to both learning your craft and finding your voice within it, the more influences you have, the better. And the more you play with those influences and the more combinations you can experiment with, the better you’ll be able to make choices about what is and is not ‘you.’ Miles Davis isn’t encouraging us to find our style; he’s encouraging us to find ourselves. Or rather, he’s making a case for finding our voice.” — David DuChemin

“Style is expression. It’s all external. It’s what we see. Voice goes further. Voice is not only how we express something, but what we express. Voice includes what we say.” — David DuChemin

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— The density of urban life Very well-done and cohesive body of work.
— Richard Misrach
— Amy Burke: Curated Fridge This is sort of weird, even surrealistic
— Amy Burke: Indiputable Queen Definitely reminiscent of Cindy Sherman
— Kyiv in IR
— Japan

Miscellaneous
— History of portrait photography, Part 1
— History of portrait photography, Part 2
— How a Youtube/landscape photographer makes his money His actual earnings numbers by category. Really interesting
— This one has recipes to go with the pictures

Quotes

“People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.” — Norman Vincent Peale

“Creativity is sometimes unconscious, subconscious, conscious — and often it’s a mixture of all three. And to try to explain it sometimes — it’s like talking about love.” — Madonna

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” — Nelson Mandela

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Surrealist Emila Medkova
— More surrealism from Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison>

Post-Processing
— Content aware tracing tool for better selections
— MattK: Focus stacking in bird photography

Field and Studio
— Improve your street photography at home
— What to shoot when there is nothing worth shooting

Miscellaneous
— Ernst Haas: Seeing things new
— An alternative way to show off ;your images
— David DuChemin: Shoot like yourself
— Selling your work

Quotes

“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” -— Barbara Kingsolver

“I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.” — Muriel Strode

“Your biggest challenges, the ones that stand in the way of your best photographs, are not technical; they are creative. . . . Once you’ve learned the fundamentals, the challenges you have won’t be solved with your tools so much as by your thinking.” — David DuChemin

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Parents and children and vice versa
— How Lee Miller out-surrealed the surrealists

Post-Processing
— PhotoshopCAFE: Multi-image content aware fill New feature available in beta.
— Photoshop Cafe: How to combine photos in PS for beginners
— How to avoid cropping when the aspect ratios that you need and have don’t match

Field and Studio
— Annie Liebovitz and portrait photography

Miscellaneous
— Writing poems in images
— Is the DSLR going extinct? but it is about recent trends in photographic technology
— Sean Tucker: Advice for the shy street photographer
— Simon Baxter and Joe Cornish discuss their “Woodland Sanctuary exhibit

Quotes

“People can like what I do or not like what I do, but Jesus, there’s a body of work there, and I’m really proud of it.” — Conan O’Brien

“ Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” -— Leonora Carrington

“The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.” — James Dean

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Peter Lindbergh
— Koreatown
— Unseen photographs from Africa

Post-Processing
— Add colors to boring skies

Field and Studio
— Lindsay Adler: Thrift store fashion shoot

Miscellaneous
— Interesting outcome
— f/8 and be there.
— Barbara Bordnick’s iconic images
— Ted Forbes: Amazing photo books
— How Kodak makes film

Quotes

“Stop making excuses; you’re the only one stopping you.” — Issa Rae

“A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.” -– Man Ray

“There’s power in looking silly and not caring that you do.” -— Amy Poehler

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Marna Clarke: Time as we know it
— Mushroom people This is kind of neat.
— Candace Biggerstaff: The Circus

Post-Processing
— Create realistic puddles in PS
— Get help from the “Discover” facility in PS

Field and Studio
— One tip on how to improve your insect macrophotography

Miscellaneous
— Lessons from Robert Maplethorpe
— Ted Forbes remembers Lourdes Grobet
— Self-quarantining exhibition
— Why we struggle with creativity

Quotes

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

“Success is the process itself.” — Matt Damon

“I’m deeply interested in the photograph as a record of an encounter and enjoy putting myself in a timeline of image-makers, alongside other travelers, such as anthropologists, colonists, missionaries, even tourists. I do that to emphasize subjectivity, rather than privilege any single perspective—I see myself as only one of many storytellers.” — Susan Meiselas via Kent Winchester, ABQ Gallery

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Lee Miller: model, photographer, war reporter

Field and Studio
— Nigel Danson: Compositional tips Nigel judged a competition and uses submissions that didn’t quite make it to illustrate how to improve your compositional skills.

Miscellaneous
— Roman Urhausen: bending reality
— Blind spots in Christ’s iconography This was really interesting.
— Sean Tucker: Making the art you really believe in
— Subversive dream logic of Emila Medkovas After the Supreme Court is done taking about our freedoms, will they tell us what art is acceptable and what is not?
— Some good surrealistic images
— A film interview of Berenice Abbott.
And this is an interview with the filmmakers

Quotes

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” — Stephen King

“Let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.” — Carl Sagan

“Don’t try to lessen yourself for the world; let the world catch up to you.” — Beyoncé Knowles

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Inland: Haunted by the dessert
— Don’t look up Interesting abstract architectural photography

Post-Processing
— The utility of locks I noticed these, on my photoshop panel but never took the time to understand what they did.
— Straighten without cropping
— How to refine AI masks in LR and ACR This really helps to eliminate halos from your masks
— Use real shadows for more realistic composites

Field and StudioS on my photoshop panel
— Wildlife opportunities for older folks

Miscellaneous
— NFTs Part 4 Note Yamashita’s comment: “if you are not posting video, you’re not getting any new followers”
— Birds
— Images from women

Quotes

“It is important to me that the text is not a caption but integral to the image.” — Hal Fischer

“I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.” — Man Ray

“Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.” — Stephen King

Links
Photoessays/Bodies of Work
— Arista Slater-Sandval: Unusual self-portraits
— One, 1 thousand Well-done and moving story of caring for an autistic young man. The addition of text to the images in my opinion really enhances the project.
— Hannah Altman: A permanent home in the mouth of the sun Exploring time, ritual and ancestry through Jewish identity and culture
— Amanda Diaz portraits
— Unhoused in San Francisco

Post-Processing
— Using the smudge tool to improve selections
— MattK: New AI preset capabilities in LR LR is getting really powerful

Miscellaneous
— Sean Tucker: Are we the best judge of our own work?
— Semiotics revisited Interesting subject. You should definitely read the article, not just look at the pictures.
— Alan Schaller: Monochrome photography He doesn’t follow the rules, but his work is exceptional