A S C R A P B O O K O F S O L U T I O N S F O R T H E P H O T O G R A P H E R
Enhancing the enjoyment of taking pictures with news that matters, features that entertain and images that delight. Published frequently.
11 January 2022
In this recurring column, we highlight a few items we've run across that don't merit a full story of their own but are interesting enough to bring to your attention. This time we look at Alec Soth, Andrew Moore, Rachel Seidu, a monochrome architectural series, shadow noise in very low light, budget mirrorless lenses, a free Photoshop script, Dan Steinhardt, Chloe Sells and a color balance trick.
- In Chasing Waterfalls, the Guardian follows Alec Soth on his latest U.S. road trip. Soth began the trip by following the route of Lincoln's funeral train and completed it by following darts thrown at a map.
- Grace Ebert features Andrew Moore's architectural phots of Life in Late '90s Cuba. Moore "snapped more than 700 8x10 color negatives during that period, producing a staggering visual record of a particular moment in the country's history primarily shown through its architecture," she writes.
- Devid Gualandris finds Deeper Cultural Meanings in Lagos-based photographer Rachel Seidu's images. "Breaking down stereotypes surrounding African culture and challenging gender, sexuality and racial preconceptions, her photographs invite contemplation on different lived experiences," he writes.
- Kirk Tuck assigned himself the task of making a monochrome series of images of An Unusual Building. He used his Leica CL camera and a 17mm f1.4 TTArtisan lens. He's made multiple visits to the site because "going down once and finding one good angle with some pleasant sunlight on it just isn't enough."
- Jim Kasson examines Nikon D5 and Z7 Shadow Noise Under Extreme Conditions using default noise reduction after a test without it. "With the higher resolution Z7, I could apply moire noise reduction than with the D5 and hold the same detail, but this is a bad set of images to use to demonstrate that since the D5 images are a bit out of focus," he writes.
- Zach Sutton lists The Best Budget Lenses for Mirrorless Cameras for 2022. For Canon RF, Nikon Z, Sony E and Fujifilm X/GFX mounts.
- Julieanne Kost provides a free JavaScript by Thomas Ruark at Adob for Photoshop to Open as Layer and Rename.
- Stump Dano is a video presentation in PhotoPXL's print series. "In this episode," Kevin Raber writes, "we sit down with Dan Steinhardt, marketing manager for Epson, Jeff Schewe and myself. We ask Dano questions about printing and related technology. Dano provides us some great answers and Jeff throws in his 10 cents too."
- In 'He Was a Handful', Sean O'Hagan talks to Chloe Sells about being Hunter S Thompson's personal assistant and photographer in 2003.
- Dave Williams suggests a Strange Trick to See Light. "If we shoot in a peculiar White Balance, such as Tungsten or Fluorescent when outside or Sunny when inside, we'll knock the color out and start to see the difference in tones rather than the tones themselves," he writes. You could also accomplish that shooting Raw+JPEG and setting monochrome for the JPEG.
More to come! Meanwhile, here's a look five years back. And please support our efforts...