Food & Home Cover #2

Here's another cover for Food & Home Magazine, as shot by me. This features Jeremy Tummell from the Wine Cask Restaurant here in Santa Barbara. http://www.winecask.com





http://www.food-home.com

More Groceries

I have continued my series inside grocery stores. You can imagine how redundant it can get photographing products on shelves. Capturing shapes and random gaps in the product lineup was my first attraction.



This time I went in with color as my mandate. I went to find combinations of colors, and relationships of colors. There are three parts of a color. The hue, which is the color, like green or red. The saturation, which speaks to the clarity of the color or the purity of hue. Meaning there is no contamination of the color by black, white or gray. The third component of color is the tone. Tone could be thought of as the amount of white or black in a color, but is really the lightness or darkness of the color itself.



I have been learning recently about color and photography. You might think with my years of experience I would know all about color photography. Well, I can tell you there is always more to learn.




For instance, analogous colors, are those that are closely related like yellow, orange and red.



Photographers speak of subtractive and additive colors. These are red, green and blue as additive colors because if you add them together in equal amounts of light you end up with white. The subtractive colors are yellow, magenta and cyan. If added together in equal amounts you get black or dark gray. CMYK is the lithographic set of colors for reproduction. C is cyan, M, magenta, Y for yellow and K is black. The printers need to add a plate of K or black for contrast.



I don't want to get too caught up in the science of this but I did want you to know there is reason and esthetics behind color and the way and how we see them in relationship to the narrative or depictive level of a photograph. Whew, that sounds complicated and frankly it is complicated but understanding it a little compounds the enjoyment of the experience.




Enjoy the experience.

Plasticity

Plasticity, is an unfamiliar term when used in connection to photography. The term, as it is used in art, or specifically flat art, like photography, means there is forward and backward apparent movement because of the colors used in relation to the shapes and placement in the picture.

Piet Mondrian is a classic example of plasticity in flat art. You may recall his work by remembering the art you saw that had black lines, a yellow square and a blue square, and you thought I could have done that. What you, nor I, could have done was pre-visualize the movement created by those colors, or in other words the plasticity of the flat surface he created.

True plasticity will give you a sense of colors and shapes coming forward or off the page and others receding almost deep into the flat surface, giving it a three dimensional feel. Look at the photo above. Do you feel the green wall coming forward while the red door, surrounded by blue, feeling as though it is going deep into the page? Yes, in reality that's the way it was but remember you are looking at flat art now. This also involves the concept of refocusing, which is the sensation the viewer experiences when looking at a photo. A sensation of actually feeling your eyes refocus even though what you are looking at is actually flat. It's a hard concept to wrap the thought process around and even harder to consciously try and make photographic images that demonstrate it.

Here are a couple more I made recently. Tell me what you think, did I accomplish it? Do you see the movement?

On The Cover

I shoot for different magazines from time to time. Here's one I like especially since they put my photo on the cover. http://www.food-home.com/

Get Some Groceries

I recently made a new body of work. It's not complete yet but I am excited about it. People who have seen it say it speaks to commercialism and indulgence. I just thought it was interesting shapes and colors.

Now this is a case of beer.

Need to replenish your salts and hydration?

Variety is the spice of life.

Got Milk?

And cookies!

My favorite.


Tell me what you think about these.

Time

I recently read Stephen Shore's book "The Nature of Photography". He talks about all sorts of different things which I always understood but didn't use the same language. Things like, flatness, frame, time, and focus. Time is an interesting portion of the nature of photography. Photography is the only place where we, humans, can see time. Time is broken down into three values. Frozen time, still time and extruded time.

Frozen time is like a photograph of Michael Jordon in mid-air just about to slam-dunk a basketball. Or even that photo we have all seen of a drop of water going into some more water. You know the one. Or a bullet going through a balloon. You get the picture!

Still time is like a photograph of something that's, well, not moving, but not frozen, just sitting there. A portrait for example or a still life of fruit. Pretty easy to understand.

Extruded time is basically blur in a photograph. You've seen a waterfall taken with a long exposure and it looks all smooth and silky. It took time to make the image. Could be a half a second or thirty seconds. If it is blurred it qualifies as extruded time.

It got me thinking. Did we humans ever have the concept of frozen time or extruded time before 1839 when the invention of photography was almost simultaneously announced by Henry Fox Talbot in England and Daguerre in France. It's easy to understand the concept of still time. Almost any painting could qualify. Maybe even frozen time with paintings of an action. But extruded time or even blur, did we see it before photography could show it to us? I wonder.

I made a photo the other night, that shows extruded time. I used a classic symbol, the American Flag because it is immediately identifiable even if it is blurred or even out of focus. It's that strong of a symbol. Here it is.

The Wine Country

Mark Gordon, (http://www.goldenticker.com/index.html) and I have known each other for over 25 years.Yesterday he came up to Santa Barbara and we did a little wine tasting at the Santa Barbara County Vintner's Festival.

I had a small point and shoot digital camera with me and I made this photo at the Melville winery. http://www.melvillewinery.com

For your tasting pleasure.

Communication Arts

I have submitted these photos for the photo annual of Communication Arts Magazine.




CA as it is called in the industry is a premier trade magazine for the advertising, design, photography and illustration business.