Last year, Carrie had a special birthday surprise for me. Dinner at Fields Farm by one of my favorite chefs, David Touvell of Chow. It was a perfect summer evening, great light, great people and food the was nothing short of perfection. This year we are somewhere near Napa, look for those pictures…August 2011! ;-)

My birthday started off with a great hike on Mt. Bachelor with the family…

A perfect summer day at Fields Farm

My lovely wife…

Chef David Touvell

A little Bluegrass music

I found this great little story over on Apartment Therapy about a couple who lives above an Art Gallery that they run. The article likens them to Herb and Dorothy Vogel. If you are unfamiliar with Herb and Dorothy you should check them out. Herb worked in a post office and Dorothy was a librarian. Together over 40 years they amassed a collection of 4,700 pieces of art from some of the most famous artists in the world…before they were famous! They had paintings strung from the roofs, stuffed under the bed and packed in boxes. They donated the enitre collection to the National Gallery of Art but it could only accept 1000 of the pieces as it had no room for a collection of this size…which fit into the Vogels tiny NYC apartment. They gave the rest away to other musueums and then started filling their tiny apartment again.

Herb and Dorothy a film by Megumi Sasaki was just released to critical acclaim but it almost didn’t happen. Here is what the artist had to say about the film:

“They didn’t articulate why they like this particular artwork, why did they collect a certain artist,” Sasaki says. “The only thing they said was, ‘It’s beautiful. I like it.’ How can I make a film about art collectors who don’t talk about art?”

Sasaki had resigned herself to making a 20-minute short film until an interview with Italian artist Lucio Pozzi convinced her that part of the beauty of the Vogels is that they aren’t so academic about what they like. They act on intuition.

That intuition made them one of the largest and most astute collectors in the New York art scene. Collecting the likes of Christo, Schnabel, Koons, Lichtenstein and hundreds of other world class artists. Those who watched said Herb would just walk up to something and point like a hound. He just new what he liked…and what he liked turned out to be some of the most renowned contemporary art in the world.

Watch the Trailer…

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Here is the basic premise: let’s say you have 6 similar images in front of you. If you edit out, you may pull out 3 but still have 3 left. In reality, only one is a hero shot. Now, if you edit in, you will pick 1 shot out of the 6 and it is the clear winner. It seems like a small shift in perception but it has a HUGE impact on your workflow. You will edit about 70% faster and have a tighter edit when you are done. This will help you tell the story of the event with less images. You will learn more from looking over a tighter edit and you will do more with the resulting images. In this manner, you can end the analysis paralysis that plagues you and choose good solid images and do things with them.

This is not just a pro-technique, it is probably even more useful for consumers. You come home with a camera full of images and throw them on a hard drive. Maybe you share a few but you get overwhelmed by it all and they just sit there. If you take a few minutes to “edit in” you will reduce the number you are storing, only keep the best, and be more likely to actually print them. Remember life with film? You always had prints and ALWAYS put something up in your home to display, whether on the wall or in an album. Editing In will help you actually do something with your images again so you can truly enjoy your memories.

Below is a screen shot with similar RAW images and the one with the box around it is the winner of the bunch. The reason I picked it over the others should be obvious – it is sharp, it has the best facial expression, and the composition and lighting are great. Maybe I would pick one other that is serious but this is a happy, fun bride and this shot sums up a portrait of her in one shot. Why bother keeping the rest? Neither of us will ever use them.

This is also a cool feature of PurePhoto that may help you organize. You can use our split screen feature to split a CF card into multiple galleries. For example, you may have the Fourth of July parade, bath time, and some winter scenes you shot all on one card before you download. With our split screen feature, you can easily drag and drop those images into different galleries to keep them organized. Now they will be easier to “edit in.”

*On the left is the gallery with the 3 different events, on the right is the main library. You can add new sub galleries as you drag and drop the images from the left panel to the right panel. EASY!

About the Artists:

Patrick Borie-Duclaud was born in 1960. “I studied photography for three years in a private school in Toulouse, in the South of France. Then I’ve worked as a freelance photographer in Los Angeles for two years before starting a 20-year long career in publication photo shoots in France. Now back in Brittany, I have dedicated myself to black and white landscape photography”

Nicolas Boudreaux was born in Paris in 1964. “After a few years studying graphism, I started working in publication shoots in Toulouse, France. I am now fullfilling a long-time dream of mine. Every day I get to shoot the island of Belle-Ile-en-Mer with my closest friend.”

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Hello PurePhoto Fans!

Piro Patton has been shooting for more than 2 decades. His work has taken him all over the United States and Europe shooting everything from street scenes to commercial work. He began taking photographs in 1990 at the California Institute of the Arts, where he was earning a degree in jazz performance playing the acoustic bass. Patton found himself increasingly in demand for photographic work. 
So, in 2002 he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and set up a photographic studio, Piro Patton Pictures. Within a few months he was exhibiting at well-known galleries and has been a curator at the Bolinas Museum’s photography gallery since 2004. Patton regularly exhibits his work through out the bay Area and is held in private collections around the U.S. 



To the casual observer he might seem to be wondering aimlessly through the city capturing moments at random but when you understand him and his art it is a vastly different story. His street work is bordering on genius, as is the method to his madness. Piro is an accomplished Acoustic Bass player and his work reflects the subtle nuances the way the notes of his bass might sound if they were pictures. His long history of Jazz mimicked in his artwork sets a fast paced shooting style but still displaying great thoughtfulness. What Piro seems to do, especially with Hole, is contrast subjects that may seem ordinary in their own right – like trees and a portal – but when put together make an amazing, thought-provoking image. One could say the same about music, especially Jazz. It’s the act of putting the notes together that makes beautiful music, not the playing of individual notes. His work is a wonderful piece to have in your collection, not just for it’s technical elegance but for the true meaning behind it. The dichotomy between man and nature is evident in most of his work. While thought provoking, it is very subtle. That’s what makes great art; the ability to deliver a message without having to beat you over the head with it.

Behind The Image: Hole (Piro In His Own Words)
Piro describes “Hole as a great metaphor; that both nature and beast can be beautiful. Taking that picture was conscious; if you look at it the other way it doesn’t work. The other way the metaphor is different. Imagine a lonely tree on a highway with trash around it. It is man’s abuse of nature. I’m an optimist and just don’t see things that way. Like music I see everything working together to from a symphony. By themselves the parts of Hole might not make a great photo but the combination of the two is a beautiful marriage. My aim is for you to understand the photograph without talking or thinking too much about it. You get the metaphor even if you are just casually looking.”

He shoots exclusively with a Hassleblad 903swc, an architecture camera with no mirror. It is the perfect tool for this kind of patient work. The lack of mirror means that his camera never “goes dark.” He can wait for all the elements to come into play before he snaps the shutter. It is instantaneously preserved as intended.

Much of Piro’s selected work from the past few years is available in PurePhoto Collections and you can pick up some of his pieces at great prices in our Members Gallery His work is offered in all 3 of our Collections and should be a staple for any new collector.

Additional work by Piro Patton:

View our Fine Art, Limited Edition, or Member Galleries to fill your life with more amazing art and make every room in your home or office a personal gallery of things you love. You’ll be glad you did!

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Find one that fits your price range: <$25; <$50; <$100; <$500; <$1000; >$1000.

*Camera Set-Up:
I want to start out first by making sure your camera is set-up properly. Most of you have the LCD of your camera set to maximum brightness. Read your manual and find out how to change this setting. You want to change the brightness level of the LCD to the halfway point. Your image wont look as great on the back but you will have a more accurate idea of what your file is really going to look like. This also has the added benefit of forcing you to use your histogram, which is what will truly tell you if you have nailed your exposure.

Reading your camera’s histogram:

The histogram probably pops up often but you just don’t know what it is or how to read it. The basic idea is that the left side is your black point and the right side is your white point. If you pass the bottom corner and your data starts to slide up the side than you are clipping information. If everything is stacked up to the right than your picture is overexposed (too bright) and you need to adjust your shutter speed until it comes back into range. If everything is stacked up to the left than your picture is underexposed (too dark.) You will need to adjust either the shutter speed or the aperture in order to correct this. While adjusting, beware that your shutter speed stays above a 60th of a second unless you are on a tripod. Also be aware of your aperture if you are going for a specific creative choice.

Turn on your camera and play around with it. Adjusting your LCD Brightness will probably clear up many of your exposure problems. Press the Histogram after your next few shots and see what you are getting.

UnderExposed (Too Dark) Black point has travelled up the left side.

Good Histogram. Left and Right side are contained and nothing is sliding up either side.

OverExposed (Too Bright) The white point has travelled up the right side and information is being lost.

This is where your LCD brightness should be.

This is the same shot with the same exposure. The difference is the LCD brightness. See how easy it is misjudge your exposure based on your LCD brightness?

Any specific questions, leave a comment!

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Paul Souders: “For much of my adult life, I have been lucky enough to get paid doing the things I love most. My work as a itinerant travel and wildlife photographer has sent me around the world and across all seven continents.

Over the last two decades, I have had ample opportunity to appreciate the absurdities of life on the road, having once spent 27 memorable hours during my first trip to Kenya digging a bogged safari truck out using only a sauce pan. In addition to my work in Africa, I have traveled extensively in Alaska, Australia, Antarctica and Asia.

I’ve done so many stupid things over my career that it’s hard to keep track. During my brief foray into international news coverage, I got shot at (and missed) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti during election violence there. I was once woken from a sound sleep in Kenya by a pride of lions pawing at my tent, and I have spent 27 memorable hours trying to dig my safari truck out of a swamp using only a sauce pan. On my last trip to Greenland, I slipped while photographing spawning shoals of capelin from some shore rocks, and found myself chest deep in ice water. I shredded my fingers trying to claw my way back out of the ocean before I froze. The time I got my boat stuck in the ice in front of a glacier was good for a laugh, especially when I started hoping between ice floes trying to drag the thing out by hand. Getting chased around in the water and head-butted by whales in Patagonia was diverting, too.

There are a lot of stories I don’t tell my mom.”

Antelope Silhouette | Kenya

Cheetah’s Nap | Kenya

Lunch | Kenya

Deep Blue | Nordenskjold Island

The Impossible Project set out to bring back the famed SX-70 and other Polaroid films that are now discontinued. For the serious Polaroider it probably falls short but for great fun give it a shot.

Personally, when it comes to Film Effects, even Polaroid, I am all about Alien Skin Exposure 3. Here are is the original RAW shot with no processing and then SX-70 and Time Zero Versions.

RAW File:

SX-70:

Time Zero:

SX-70