Have you ever noticed how ridiculous many of the poses seen in fashion and glamor photographs are? Artist Yolanda Dominguez has a project called Poses highlighting how absurd and artificial the poses are by having a group of women do them in public locations and filming the reactions of passersby. It’s interesting how something so ridiculous when seen in real life can look so “normal” when done by a model in the context of a fashion photograph.
You’ve probably seen (and taken) forced perspective photos before, but South Korean artist June Bum Park goes one step further, using footage from cameras in high places to control cars, pedestrians, and other things in the scene as if playing with a miniature world. Read the rest of this entry »
I love what the Internet has done for the sharing of photography. Social websites such as Flickr make it so easy to get our work in front of the faces of people on the other side of the Earth so easily that it boggles my mind sometimes. This incredible ability of technology has one horrible side effect however. I’m talking about title fields. Read the rest of this entry »
Wanna know how to capture a wide-eyed and wide-mouthed photo of your dog? It’s easy! First, set up your camera on a tripod and point it at your dog. Then, simply throw it some tasty treats with one hand while snapping photographs with the other. There are all kind of expressions you might capture using this technique, but this one by Andrea Sillem is pretty priceless.
Yesterday we shared some fun portraits of dogs taken while they shook of water, but you can take similar portraits of people too. It’s called “jowling”, and is far less adorable. Here how Urban Dictionary defines “jowling”:
The violent shaking of one’s head side-to-side in order to obtain a photograph of one’s face distorted from the intense side-to-side motion.
One useful thing you can do with this technique is to simulate a heavy punch to the face. Read the rest of this entry »
For her series “Shake“, pet photographer Carli Davidson photographed curious portraits of dogs shaking off water. Use a fast shutter speed and you can capture all kinds of strange expressions on your dog’s face. Read the rest of this entry »
How do you get a silverback gorilla to put a GoPro HD camera up to its face? Stuff the case full of raisins, of course!
This cheeky ape turned photographer for a day after being handed a high-definition camera by his keepers. Silverback gorilla Ya Kwanza, 27, happily snapped away at himself and his surroundings in his compound in Durrell Wildlife Park in Jersey. The gorilla even took a number of close-up shots before returning the camera to his keepers by throwing it over the wall of his enclosure. Staff at the park also captured the gorilla photographing himself with the indestructible camera, which was covered in honey and oats. [#]
Lesson learned: if you ever lose your camera to a silverback gorilla, ask nicely and they’ll throw it back.
What just about every scene kid and hipster under the age of 25 calls themselves these days. Many own Canon Rebel xtis and rely heavily on cropping and Photoshop filters to give their otherwise mundane photos an “artsy” feel. It is also not uncommon to see them wielding Lomography cameras (usually a Holga, now that they’re sold at Urban Outfitters) on any given day. Typically, these “photographers” cite Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe, or, in the case of those Vice Magazine devotees, Terry Richardson, Cobrasnake, or Richard Kern, as major influences, because they couldn’t name any other photographers to save their lives.
The typical subjects of their photographs include, but are not limited to: pidgeon-toed girls in Converse that have been drawn on with ballpoint pens and/or Sharpies, flowers/weeds growing out of cracks in sidewalks, juxtapositions of objects that typically don’t go together (in one such case, a Queen of Hearts playing card on a cracked sidewalk), a girl who looks like something out of an American Apparel ad smoking a cigarette, decaying buildings, and just about anything that looks “vintage” (ie, yellowing washing machines in a laundromat).
If you actually know what you’re doing enough to make money from photography, you’re just a poser.
Here’s a fun photo project you can try: recreate each of Calvin’s funny face photographs from Calvin and Hobbes. A version of this project done by a cute Asian boy was a popular viral photo a couple years ago. You can download the original Calvin montage here.
