Photography is about doing, but it’s also about thinking… looking, seeing, appreciating. It’s possible to learn more about photography just by doing it, but it’s a lot easier when you pay attention to how others do it. This episode of Camera Position discusses the ideas of connoisseurship; the art of how we come to know what’s good. Looking at, studying and collecting photographs that you love is a part of learning photography.

Marion Post-Wolcott – Biscuit lady, a member of Wilkins family making biscuits on corn-husking day, North Carolina, 1939

Links for this episode:

• Art Institute of Chicago – Photography Department
• Museum of Contemporary Photography – Chicago

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Those of us who work with traditional photographic tools sometimes wonder… will those things disappear in the face of the digital revolution? Will we be stuck in the middle of an island with no way to produce images? We consider those ideas in this episode.

Links for this episode:

• B&H Photo – Great source for photo supplies
• Bostick & Sullivan – materials for handcrafted photography
• Freestyle Photo – Keepers of the old-school flame
• Pinhole Resource – It doesn’t get any more simple than this

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What is an “arts background”? Whether we know it or not, I think we all have one. Having a background in creativity is about synthesizing things that we already know and combining them with new things that we learn to come up with wholly new ideas.

Venice, Sunrise – Photograph by Jeff Curto
(click for a larger view)

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Is beauty enough in a photograph? It’s an odd concept in photography, especially in today’s visual world where so many photographers seem to ignore it. Or… are they ignoring it? We take a look.

Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Abruzzo, 2007
Photograph by Jeff Curto
(click to enlarge)

Links for this Episode:

• Robert Adams’ Beauty in Photography @ Amazon.com
• Alec Soth’s contemporary “landscape” photography
• Derek Henderson’s The Terrible Boredom of Paradise
  
• Camera Position #49 – “Know Thy Subject”
  • Terry Bowyer’s comment
  • Jeff’s response to Terry
• Ted Byrne’s essay in response to this podcast at his Imagefiction blog

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The Camera in The Cathedral: A Brief History of Photography of the Natural World

In a bit of “podcast cross-pollination,” I’m presenting an episode of my history of photography podcast here on Camera Position. If you’ve heard the Photo History podcast of this same topic, you’ve heard this podcast, but for those Camera Position listeners who don’t listen to the Photo History podcast, I thought this topic might prove useful to you.

From the very beginning of the medium, photographers have wanted to portray their sense of wonder and awe in the face of the natural world through the camera’s lens, often offering up nature as the Great American Cathedral. This romantic tradition continues, but the mid-20th century saw a change in the way photographers looked at the world around them; a change that altered the face of photography

By looking at photographs from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, we’ll explore the ways photographers have recorded and interpreted nature with the camera.

• Mayslake Nature Study and Photography Club – Oakbrook, IL
• The Machine in the Garden Revisited – American Environmentalism and Photographic Aesthetics (PDF) – an article by Deborah Bright
• Handout for this podcast episode
• Slides for this podcast episode

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