Martin Prihoda, a Vancouver based photographer is holding a show at Whip Gallery and Restaurant
at 209 east 6th @ main street. I encourage everyone to visit this show. It rarely happens that a photographer with unique vision is given an opportunity to present himself.
You can visit Martin’s website at: www.martinprihoda.com
Enjoy!
I have started working on some new fine art nude concepts. I am trying to experiment with digital so I can implement them later on the medium format film.
From the famous Da Vinci the master painter to Ansel Adams the master photographer, they all were blessed by a unique talent of effectively visualizing stories or feelings. It rarely comes an artist with true vision who enjoys the same blessing and can portrait a simple but an effective imagery
Barry without a doubt is one of them. Simplicity is the true essence of Barry’s fine art nude photos.
In his photos the shadows and curves are so naturally and beautifully aligned that makes it difficult to not to stare at them without loosing the sense of time.
A good photographer or visionary is the one who can see beauty in everything regardless of the norms and standards. Barry managed to accomplish that by seeing well and seeing good.
Please take some time and visit his flickr page where has some great works displayed.
I personally like his hands set. You can view a slide show if his hand set at here
I have met many people with extreme passion for photography. I live in Vancouver (Canada), and photographers here are from various backgrounds and different cultures. I was honored to have worked with and learned from many of them. But one managed to overwhelm me with his knowledge about photography and a great dedication to his work and photos. “cucaracha del sol“
It rarely happens that photographers want to teach you every techniques they know, guide you and literary help you with every step of the way to the point you can call one of your works a photo.
But there are some unfortunate circumstances that cause such people to change how they are contributing to the world of photography. I am not sure why some photographers need to steal others work in order to be recognized. Maybe it is lack of confidence, maybe it is lack of patience to get to where you need to get, or maybe it is the nature of people. Whatever the reason could be, it is damaging to the world of art.
My friend and mentor “cucaracha del sol” used to have lots of jaw-dropping photos in his flickr portfolio. But many people stole his photos and used them and in some instances published them as their own.
Although it shows how talented this person is that his photos are being subject of theft by other well-known and established photographers, but also causes a great deal of damage to his passion to share with the world his knowledge and his photos.
It is not hard to learn photography with unlimited resources out there in internet. So let’s learn photography instead of using other’s work. Let’s respect art and the artist.
I am sure we can learn from them.
You have heard it, in fact you have heard it many times that photography is about how you see, imagine and envision your photo. But many of us as photographers fail in that area or get it right by chance. Before traveling to Paris, I assumed by reading books and looking at images you can get inspired but now I feel being in the locations where arts and artists were appreciated and created is giving you more than inspiration. It gives you ideas.
Art and history goes hand in hand with each other so for photographers to be successful, they needs to study a lot of history, not only history of art but history in general. They also need to learn about the cultures and people of different areas.
How individuals see art in Europe is different from how we see art in North America is different from how people see art in Middle-East and Asia. That has to do with culture and history of that area. It does not end with reading and learning history, you have to understand the events happened which influenced our today’s life.
As a photographer, you have to re-live a part of history to come up with fine-tuned ideas. I do not mean that you have to repeat and recapture that history, otherwise you are creating a redundant and repeated art. Try to find things that people missed.
Imagine, someone like Marie Antoinette or Queen of england. Although they are public figures, they had and have private life too. And part of the private life deals with their personal insecurities about their body shape, even their breasts shape and size. Can you portrait that insecurity in a photo without insulting their character?
I would like to introduce to you some photographers with great ideas:
Zingna Zhang from Singapore
Ciprian Strugariu from romania
Tom McFarlane from US
Miguel Pappan from Germany
Camil Tulcan from Romania
by Jim Austin
Oscar Rejlander’s (1813 -1875) studio was unusual; shaped like a cone, the camera would be in the narrow part, the sitters at the opposite end. The camera was in shadow so that the sitters were less aware of it. He estimated his exposure by bringing his cat into the studio; if the cat’s eyes were like slits, he would use a fairly short exposure. If they were a little more open than usual, he would give extra exposure. If the pupils were totally dilated he would admit defeat, put the lens cap on the lens and go out for a walk!” ~ Robert Leggat, 1999
Cats, much to their delight, no longer must endure conscription for use as light meters. Instead of cat’s eyes, we use other tools to expand the usable range of light. HDR photography is one of these important new tools, as it lets us preserve exquisite fine detail in a scene. We explore the appeal of black and white HDR here, with regard to personal and visual awareness.
While the first two parts of this article looked at color HDR, this article investigates key qualities behind interesting black and white HDR work, with suggestions for a B/W workflow. First, we consider why HDR imaging techniques leave the feline method in the dark.
Think of each black, grey and white picture tone as a separate instrument in an orchestra. Filling out the tones is like adding extra players to the ensemble. Just as your musical experience in listening to the Boston Pops is different than hearing a quartet, so does a wider range of black and white tones in a photograph allow for a greater reach of emotional expression.
B/W HDR also solves an old problem. When photographing everyday scenes, brilliant whites and deep blacks can result in washed-out highlights on the one hand, and blocked-up shadows on the other.
HDR bracketing and multiple exposure, help manage this lack of tone control. In Photos 1a and 1b here, compare the HDR multiple exposure at left with one single exposure at right. Shadow details are excellent in the HDR image and the daylight outdoors is not washed out because of the greater highlight detail captured during the HDR process. By the way, there was a cat in the bar but it was too dark inside to see its pupils.
Tonal Range, Visual Elements, Photographer’s Personal Qualities
The alchemy of B/W HDR is to make the unseen visible. One of the implied, unseen elements in photography is the movement of time. In the B/W HDR composition above, revered names of people who were killed in the Holocaust seem to recede without a fixed vanishing point, and so to go on indefinitely, conveying a sense of the infinite.
I finally found a bit of time and created small gallery of my recent fine art nude collection.
Click on more if you want to see the photos in larger format
After looking at David Burdeny’s photos, I became fascinated with long exposure photography. Some people just have creative ideas and the can implement it. Those are the ones that take the art of photography to the next level. David is for sure a talented photographer and a famous artist. But there are many who are completely unknown but as good as David. One would be a photographer who calls himself m_i_n_o_r from Spain. His imagery is superb and his composition is flawless. His style is somewhat similar to David’s but still unique.
The challenge to take such photos according to David is the time of the day and the location. The rest is the equipment you use. He recommends using Black and White ISO-50 film for taking such photos. Obviously adding filters would change the results dramatically. Using neutral density filters would effect the outcome the most. But red and orange filter can contribute a lot specially when you want to expose longer.
You can take a look at the rest of m_i_n_o_r photos by clicking here.
I received an email from a photographer friend, Martin Prihoda, about new series he started called “Yoga meets Fight Club”. I was amazed and blown away by his new work. I met him about six or seventh months ago over a coffee. We discussed how he uses light and how he works with models. At the time he was really excited about his new yoga photos. When I looked at his work I knew he would be one of the few who will make it as a photographer. His style reminds me of master photographers such as Michael Grecco, Drew Gardner, and Adrian Myers but his work is as unique as theirs.
Combination of unique ideas and masterful lighting resulted in creation of “Yoga Meets Fight Club” you can see Martin’s other works at http://www.martinprihoda.com/
After writing an entry called “Nude Photography” in this blog, which describes the basic rules of nude photography, I decided to challenge myself with available light, texture and an inexperienced model. And I wanted to do that all in of course black and white. This time I wanted to get away from a regular studio, strobes, stands, and softboxes. So I chose Ironworks in Vancouver.
I started looking at many nude photos and I realized majority of them lack motion. There is always beautiful girl in a photo with great lighting and shadows, but not much motion. The motion gives the photo another dimension. In that dimension viewers can imagine and build their own story about the photo however they feel and connect with that photo. Also motion in plain studio would limit the viewer’s choice to only the beauty and the skills of both photographer and model.
The lighting is the main challenge in nude photography with available light. You have to work fast so you do not loose the light and it’s direction specially in the winter. You also cannot move the source of light so you have to work with your model to get the lighting the way you visualized it. Another challenge is for the model to adapt her movements to the direction of light.
Tools of the trade:
These sort of photos can be categorized as fine art. In that case you want them to be as authenticate and as true as they can get. My suggestion is to use film camera. The film grains makes the photo much more interesting and true. When it comes to choosing film and since it is a low light scenario your best bet would be either an ISO 400 or ISO 1600 film. My films of the choice are Ilform HP5 ISO 400, Kodak TMAX 400, and Fuji Neopan 1600. When working with films, if you have enough available light that you can shoot at F4 at the speed of 1/125, try to under expose the photo by 1 f-stop. That gives you a bit darker image a bit moodier image. You can apply some filters to achieve different effects. Try to study and learn the use of filters before applying them to your photos. I found these two articles very helpful:
“Using coloured filters with black & white film” and
“Photo Filters for Black and White Photography”
I personally use Nikon F3. It is not an expensive camera to buy and it has all the features I need to complete my project. The light meter is extremely accurate and the body is a solid one. As for digital I use Nikon D200, you can use any camera you want but make sure whatever you capture can be properly converted to the black and white.
The photos you see in this blog are all captured with Nikon D200 and Nikkor 12-24mm which is an ultra-wide lens. This lens makes your photo even moodier.
