How to Series: How to compose a picture – Or the Golden Mean is now on your iphone…

March 23, 2013 — Leave a comment

The Golden Ratio or Golden Mean was first mentioned by Euclid and based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers and found all throughout nature. It is the secret proportion to all things. The God Equation if you will. It has been used in Art and Design since as far back as the pyramids. Why? Because everything looks great when you use it!  Today in the modern world it is rarely taught for some reason.  As the saying goes, “there is an app for everything” and now you can use this app on your Iphone to make a really well composed picture. If you like to draw and you have 8 minutes, listen to this guy who teaches you what you will need to know. Don’t like the Golden Mean? Try the Rule of Thirds.

 

 

 

***There is also a program that overlays the golden ration onto any program you work in: http://www.phimatrix.com/viewdemo.htm

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Best Philadelphia Photographer Series: Ruth Thorne-Thompson

March 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

Ruth uses a pin hole camera to make these incredible and surreal images as 4×5″ silver prints.  There are few living masters practicing surrealism in photography and she is one of the best. You can still get her book here but its getting very rare.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Exhibitions London: Landmark: The Fields of Photography

March 20, 2013 — Leave a comment

Landmark: The Fields of Photography.  14 March – 28 April 2013

 

Curator William A. Ewing:

“Landscape has been and remains one of the most powerful forms of photography, and is even more so in a world which is changing so fast we can hardly keep up. Rising seas, melting glaciers, the ozone hole, desertification, coastal cities under threat – we add to the list everyday. And photographers everywhere are grappling with these problems, creating brilliant pictures which put a vivid face on otherwise abstract issues. These images range from the sublime to the ridiculous; photographers are on the front lines – our eyes and ears. But they also remind us to slow down and appreciate the beauty of the world – often where we least expect it”

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Exhibitions London: Laura Letinsky @ The Photographers Gallery

March 18, 2013 — Leave a comment

Everything I make is a Picture of a Picture in some respect. Pictures of Pictures have always interested me. They are a little bit like a room of mirrors in how they operate. Letinsky has long done a cool and calculated type of still life of mostly food and objects in white rooms the best ones being when she introduces subtle shifts in the color of her lighting.

In this series she changes her game and photographs cut out images of magazines in her minimalist style.  With this academic body of work she is a bit more like a postmodern Vermeer with a camera. Want to see more artists who use mass media images in their work? It all started with Andy Warhol and the legions of artists that followed in his footsteps.

Laura Letinsky Ill Form and Void Full  18 Jan – 7 April 2013

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Shinichi Maruyama mixes multiple art traditions and then shows us the impossible

March 17, 2013 — Leave a comment

Take one part Japanese brush painting tradition, one part Jackson Pollack’s gesture painting, mix with a little water and you get the work of  Shinichi Maruyama in this series titled Kusho

http://www.shinichimaruyama.com/portfolio/permalink/384426/4ab8f78a666a04

 

 

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