Sunday, June 30, 2013

Traveling in the US: July 4th, and its fireworks are just days away

Fireworks at the Philadelphia Museum of ArtNext week, in the United States we'll celebrate our nation's birth. In Philadelphia, America’s birthplace and it's first capital, that means after a concert at the foot of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, more than a half million people will enjoy one of the largest, most spectacular fireworks displays in the nation.

I'll be there. If you're there too, look for me south of the Art Museum.

This year I'm going to be experimenting while photographing the fireworks at the Art Museum. I'm going to use some neutral density filters to enable me to use longer exposures, enabling me to capture more fireworks' bursts in my images. I'll be experimenting with neutral density filters which add 1, 2, or 3 f/stops to my exposure. I'll explain below what that means in terms of shutter times.

Photography Exhibition: The Getty Museum - Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto

Rice Harvesting, Yamagata Prefecture, 1955, Hiroshi Hamaya, gelatin silver printThe Getty Museum in Los Angeles has one of the great photographic collections in the world. The exhibition, Japan's Modern Divide: The Photographs of Hiroshi Hamaya and Kansuke Yamamoto is one of the Getty’s most interesting in some time.

This exhibition will run through August 25, 2013.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Safely post your vacation photos while you're away, especially of your children

On VacationYou're away from home on a “trip of a lifetime,” or perhaps just an ordinary outing to the summer seashore, but whichever vacation you're on, you've decided to post some photos of it, showing how much fun you're having. For family vacations, you decide to post photos of your kids for their grandparents, and the rest of your family and friends, to see and enjoy.

So, you pull out your smartphone or camera, and get some great images of your family on vacation, having the time of their lives. You log into Twitter or your Facebook account or Flickr, or Smugmug, and upload the photos.

“Does that make sense?”
“Is it safe to post vacation photos, which may include your children, to the Internet, while on vacation?”
The Terminal, 1893 (negative); c. 1913 Alfred Stieglitz, American, PhotogravureThe Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the foremost exhibitors of fine art photography in the nation, especially since the completion of its Perelman Building. Photogravure: Master Prints from the Collection is a wonderful exhibition worthy of this great institution.

This exhibition will run through August 11, 2013

Photogravure, a printmaking process that combines elements of aquatint etching and photography, was a prized medium among artist-photographers of the late nineteenth century, who labored over their hand-pulled prints.