I found this to be a useful and low-cost, albeit more labor-intensive way to calibrate your monitor using a newer Samsung or iPhone and a manual monitor setting.
Photo Printing: Using a Lab vs Buying Your Own Printer | PetaPixel by Phil Hawkins
https://petapixel.com/photo-printing-lab-vs-printer/
I have used a number of labs and printed some of my own photos on different all purpose color ink jet printers I owned over my last 20 years of digital photography. Both delivered quality as well as disappointing print results. I didn’t print enough that it was worth researching the subject of best photo print options until recently as the volume of what printed increased and with it the importance of quality control and cost. This is especially true after the last batches of photos I printed through several different labs were costly (with shipping) and the quality was spotty at best.
Since I have been planning to print more going forward, it was finally time I take a look at the big picture of photo printing before I spent more money on prints, and determine how to control the quality of the print output consistently across the board and then look at cost when the print volume increases.
In my research, this was one of the most concise and useful articles I found on the topic. Moving forward from here will be an interesting journey.
Klyde Warren Park | Dallas | October 2022
Halloween Weekend at Klyde Warren Park in Dallas TX
“Side by Side” 2012 American Documentary Film Trailer
This film on the topic of “film vs. digital” technology as it applies to movies is now 10 years old but has stuck with me ever since I discovered it back then. I found it profoundly entertaining, educational and fascinating on many levels and still do. While the primary focus of this documentary is how the topic applies to movies, there is much of it that applies to still photography today. With the recent reemergence of still film photography, this film comes to mind often with me. I was born into the film/darkroom age but have yet to get my 35 mm film camera out again, but am planning to for the first time in 25 years after seeing some of the images people are creating on film today.
Anyone who enjoys. movies, the technical and creative aspects of the visual imagery being produced today as well as those in the past, whether still or moving, would probably find this a captivating documentary.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/side_by_side_2012
David Yarrow’s Dallas – D Magazine
By Jonathan Thompson | October 14, 2022|9:51 am |Photography by David Yarrow, Portraits by Henrik Olund
https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2022/october/david-yarrow-photographer-dallas/
This is an interesting article and a unique perspective on Dallas as a photography setting from such a world-renowned British fine art photographer. Anyone who has lived in Dallas for any amount of time knows it is an ever-changing city with a rapidly evolving culture. As one on the inside, it is always fun to hear how people on the outside looking in perceive the city. The only constant here is change.
Let’s Not Forget How Awesome Our Cameras Are — FUJI X WEEKLY
This is a good and timeless reminder that it is not about the gear in photography (and other technologies), but the ability of the user that creates the manifestation of its purpose in the most humanly sublime ways.
5 Tips for Black and White Photography by Hugh Brownstone | B&H Photography
This short video has some great still photographs and good tips for shooting in black & white with some apply to color as well.
Personally, I struggle with number two at times, using an EVS setting to expose by eye instead of meter. If I am moving around, the type of photography I am shooting varies wildly, the light and shadows are ever changing, I play it safe by shooting RAW, meter, bracket to get good HDR, use spot metering for precise focusing, and S priority to ensure no motion blur. That is just me and overkill sometimes.
I especially like number five, being in the right place at the right time as a function of your state of mind as much as anything else. I know for Street Photography, the first part is essential, the state of mind gets you there. I am not a Street Photographer and am acutely aware that I have yet to muster up the proper state of mind to be a good one. Until then, I will happily appreciate the images created by those who have mastered it!
Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) and American Photography by Lisa Hostetler | Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/stgp/hd_stgp.htm
When I was in photography school years ago, besides learning all the facets of working with film photography, we also studied the history of photography, including the biographies of the great photographers from its roots to the present.
Of all those, I found Alfred Stieglitz one of the most fascinating. He was schooled in engineering but was a pioneer who took photography beyond the technical and just capturing images, into the aesthetic , artistic world of infinite creative possibilities. His life spanned a time of significant geopolitical events and modernization that changed the world. His life with Georgia O’Keefe helped further assimilate photography into an expressive art from. He was a skilled photographic technician but also excelled in whatever genre and style of photography he chose to work in.
If anyone enjoys art, photography, history and a good story as much as I do, but is not aware of the life and work of Alfred Stieglitz, then I would suggest you take a look at the brilliant legacy he left behind to enrich our lives.
Illuminating photography: From camera obscura to camera phone – Eva Timothy
I studied photography in school during the film/darkroom days, well before the age of digital photography. We would process all our own film/prints in darkrooms. This included color, which was difficult in comparison to black and white, due to the chemical process involved. After school, I worked in a custom color and black and white photo lab where we processed film and made prints and transparencies for customers of all types, from fine art to commercial. This education and experience gave me an appreciation for the fundamentals and roots of early photography and the pioneers who brought it all into the digital age.
In the end, it is about the visual image, and when I look at the first photograph made, and the images after that, I also think about what it took to get those images before my eyes. It is beyond amazing to me how that change with how visual images could be made in the early 19th century created an impact on the history of the world since that is truly unfathomable to fully comprehend.