Yes, without doubt! But a word will help every now and then. They do go great together. Here are 8 photographers telling the stories behind their best images for 2015. From BBC.
Enjoy reading!
At the top: Soe Zeya. Above:Beso Gulashvili
😊 Pelle
Tag Archives: memories
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Hi all bloggers and readers. I just received a message from WordPress that I have been blogging for a year. One year! That is a long time. A friend of mine suggested that I should start writing down my thoughts and I owe him many thanks. Thank you Martin Ö. I like blogging. Thinking and to reflect upon life and things.
So what happened? I have written about my own images and my all new interest in horse racing. Among other things. That I did not see coming. With this profession and interest it is easy to examine a new personal interest in images. I have been reading much more on the internet about photographers and their images. I did not expect that, but I like it and I like to recommend you to see and read about many of the talented photographers around. Old and young. Some well known, and others all new to me.
By the way, my personal favorites are Penn, Avedon, Watson, Mappelthorpe, Cartier-Bresson and Steichen. To name a few. All so called classics.
More personal: I am having difficulties in listening to guides at galleries or museums. The language they use and what they say sounds odd to me. If that could perhaps be the word. But OK, it is interesting listening to someone trying to explain a photographers/artists creative view and work. The explaining is also creative, but often it sounds like too much baloney to me.
I really love my profession, and I think you can see that.
Some statistics. I have managed to get 68 followers, made over 120 posts ( including this one ) and got over 500 likes. I like that! Some of you are giving me likes frequently and I am very happy for that. Thank you! I have had 4.950 views and the best ever was on November 13th 2015, 273. The internet is huge and the bloggers are many.
My first post was in Swedish, but after that I write in English. Good exercise and all my friends and colleagues in Sweden reads English. No problem.
What now? Do I have a New Year promise? Not really, but I like to continue to challenge myself. With my blog, my thoughts and my photography.
Finally I like to share an image and new info with you. This image, photographed in New York in 1982 through the binoculars at observation deck, World Trade Center. It has been selected by Duncan Miller Gallery in Santa Monica, USA, to be included in their Your Daily Photograph. ( Photo made with a Minox 35GT, if you are interested. ) However not sold, yet…
Yes, I am happy! About that too.
I wish you all A Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year! With blogging, taking pictures or whatever you like to do. Do it more!
😊 Pelle
In vacation mood
I went to Copenhagen for a few days and put my eyes in vacation mood. My eyes went up and down, and all around. That is usually how I do to see the surroundings. Mostly I looked down. Mostly, but not always. On the ground were large plates of thick iron for us pedestrians to walk on over ground work here and there. They all had, I guess, the owners initials. Very graphic. I like to do series. When my eyes find one, of whatever, they always find more of the same.
😊 Pelle
More water
Seconds after looking at those wunderful waves, here is more water that I just discovered. Through another photographers lens and they look so different. But just as amazing. I think. See the slide show for more images.
The Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata is fascinated by water — in particular, the way it interacts with man-made structures. For the later half of his almost-40-year career in photography, he has explored this relationship in novel ways, hiding horizon lines and taking the perspective of the water itself with his camera, visually evoking its rushing sound.
Each of Shibata’s photographs depicts a different kind of human intervention in the natural movement of water, many of them the kind of mundane engineering projects we rarely think about. “To me,” Jacob Cartwright of Laurence Miller Gallery, which recently opened a show of Shibata’s work, said via email, “the essence of his work is taking ubiquitous yet frequently disregarded parts of our contemporary landscape and transforming them into something visually uncanny through formal invention.”
Philippe Halsman
The man who made Marilyn fly: Philippe Halsman’s stunt shots – in pictures
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/oct/23/philippe-halsman-astonish-me-in-pictures
Marilyn Monroe in mid-air, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis goofing off, the Duke of Windsor in his socks, and Salvador Dalí nose to nose with a rhino – Halsman’s freaky frames defied gravity and convention
The top image is a true classic. Not made with a modern SLR capturing 10 images per sec. A true master of the trade!
See for yourselves!
😊 Pelle
Grief-love-and-lust
The camera is a very delicate instrument. It can, in the hands of talented and sensitive people/photographers, make us see life and what is happening to us or our fellow beings. And more than that, photographs make us react and act. Good or bad, beautiful or ugly images do that. What would the world be without cameras? The thought makes me dizzy.
Here is a wonderful series of images that makes me react, and perhaps act too…
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151109-12-images-of-grief-love-and-lust
Text to featured image:
Christopher Anderson (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009)
“In 2008, my first child was born. Up until that point, my photographs as a ‘war photographer’ had been about the experiences of others in far away places. Now, for the first time, I found myself photographing my own family,” says the photographer Christopher Anderson. His intimate portrait – far removed from the frontline – is included in a new project by Magnum. Up Close and Personal features the work of 68 photographers: some domestic snapshots, others glimpses of strangers in a moment of vulnerability. At the click of the shutter, one subject is caught crying, never giving the reason; another is lost in mourning. Strangers flirt; a father lifts his son in the air; a prostitute clutches her client’s back. Yet the images reveal as much about the people who took them as their subjects. “It didn’t occur to me that these photographs had anything to do with my ‘work’,” says Anderson, talking about his own family photos. “But I now realise that these images were actually my life’s work and that every photograph I had made up to that moment was just a preparation to make these photographs of my family.” Up Close and Personal features the most intimate images from Magnum Photos, as interpreted by more than 60 photographers and artists. Signed and estate-stamped prints for $100 will be available for a limited time, from Monday 9 November until Friday 13 November, on the Magnum website. (Credit: Christopher Anderson/Magnum)
Newsha Tavakolian (Tehran, Iran, 2010)
The act of photographing can itself induce emotion within the subjects. “I decided to turn my own apartment into a studio, and have neighbours and friends come over to have their portraits taken,” says the Iranian photographer Newsha Tavakolian. “Naghmeh is one of the most popular young women in Tehran, she’s beautiful, smart and funny. I took pictures of her in total silence. Suddenly, her face expressionless, tears started welling up in her eyes, as if she was trying to show me something. Afterwards she said goodbye quietly and left.” The power of the image comes through that spontaneity; Naghmeh’s unguarded look is a far remove from a posed portrait. “Later, when I had the image framed, one of the glass plates had a scratch on it and the framer asked if he could keep it,” says Tavakolian. “He hung it in his shop. Customers debated, wondering why she was so sad. ‘You could write a book with all the stories people come up with when they see this portrait,’ the framer told me. I never asked her why she cried.” (Credit: Newsha Tavakolian/Magnum)
Steve McCurry (La Esperanza, Colombia, 2004)
The photographer of the ‘Afghan Girl’ image, which ran on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, believes that photography itself is an act of intimacy. “In this picture, the relationship between a father and his young son reveals total intimacy with each other, and intimacy with the photographer who records that moment in time, who then transmits this feeling of intimacy with viewers wherever and whenever they see this photograph,” says Steve McCurry. “This family was not rich in material things, but very rich in relationships, trust, and the kind of love that drives away fear. They are both at ease and completely comfortable in each other’s presence without any self-consciousness whatsoever. It doesn’t get any better than that.” (Credit: Steve McCurry/Magnum)
😊 Pelle Another BBC story
It is in the details
I gave it a second chance. The images from last race, and I found a few more that could be worth saving. i think. Images change when you do a different crop. Now I am waiting for some more dirt.
😊 Pelle
Again and again and now again
I went to the track today again. I am having trouble staying away. I meet so many talented and nice photographers every time, and I learn so much that I never knew before. Or even thought about. It is exciting, never the same. But it is getting colder. For horses, jockeys and the audience. This morning it was 0 degrees and there were frost also in the city. Brrrr! I wonder how the jockeys keep warm during the races? Some were not even using gloves. I have heard that this is also a winter sport. Brrr, again! The jockeys are so short and small but oh SO strong. You see them more standing than sitting during a race, and often almost without rest they change clothes/colors and horse and they are off again. Supermen AND women!
If I remember right the next race is an evening race. Colder and darker, much darker. It will be all lights around the track. A real challange for photographers at maximum ISO. Today I have also recorded sound. Hope to use it with some images soon.
😊 Pelle
Not nobody
Perhaps you have seen this photographer before? The webb is huge. If you have not I´d like to introduce him to you. Jim Radcliffe. He calls himself a nobody with a camera, but that is all too modest. I think. He has many cameras, but most of us have. What we do with them is the important thing. And that comes from your eyes and your imagination. This text is taken from his homepage:
I have no specific photographic interest. I photograph any and everything. I am always looking for something to photograph, from a macro to a seascape to a starscape. I love color. I love black & white. I have used a DSLR, a rangefinder and mirrorless cameras. I shoot for my own enjoyment and share my photography here because photography is meant to be shared. What good is any photograph unless others have the opportunity to see it?
Jim has a personal style. Colorful even if it is in b/w. Visit his page through this link. A very talented person with a style that I like. I like to share his fine images with you. Because sharing is what it is all about, as Jim says. Jim covers a great width of subjects. What ever comes in front of his camera, he manages to do something very good with.
😊 Pelle
More horseracing, or dressed for success.
Perhaps these pictures should be called “dressed for success”? Some horses has to be “dressed” so they can keep concentrated on running and nothing else on the side. Some are not especially fond of going into the start box. I have missed some races lately but happily I could go to the track yesterday. Horse racing is a sport for betting and for that you need computers. When they fail there is interruption. That happened yesterday. The horses were waiting and so were jockeys and audience. During that period I managed to get some portraits of owners and horses. I get more and more interested in the contact between jockeys and horses. The jockeys riding on several horses during a day has to know all the different personalities and know how to get the best from them. It is getting darker and colder. Next time I will put my heavy boots on.
When they are not running on grass it is called dirt track. You see why. 😊 Pelle
On a photographers mind 