Can art — as opposed to craft — be taught? I don’t think so, at least not directly, but artists can be taught things that allow them to find a path to making better art. There’s an analogy with creativity. I think the following statements are true of both creativity and artistic ability. Everybody’s got… [Read More]
What’s artistic development — part 1
At the CPA, we mentally divide workshops into categories, two of which are “craft” and “artistic development”. Most of the time, we have no difficulty placing a workshop in one category. Gum bichromate printing goes in the craft bucket. So does digital image editing. “Finding your Work” is artistic development. We recently had a discussion… [Read More]
Landscape Light
No, that’s not “Landscape Lite”, as in lo-cal, dumbed-down, mindless eye candy. It’s light, as in easy-on-the-back, footloose-and-fancy-free, spontaneous, fluid, and instinctual. The key is leaving the tripod at home, and restricting your total equipment weight to five pounds or so. On a recent trip to Jackson Hole, I gave it a try. I took… [Read More]
When iPad apps go bad
I’ve complained before in this blog about the terrible reliability of the New York Times readers, both on the PC and the iPad platforms. I praised the Wall Street Journal for their great iPad reader. That was then. For the few weeks, neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal iPad app worked… [Read More]
The cellphone’s impact on cameras
In the last post, I talked about the cellphone’s impact on photographic art. In this one, I’ll return to safer ground, and tell you what I think will happen to cameras in the near future. Cameras will become ubiquitous in cellphones. Because thinness is a selling point for cellphones, lens focal length and therefore sensor… [Read More]