All posts by Jeff Curto

Camera Position 123 : Print The Small Stuff

When’s the last time you printed a photograph of your best friend, your child or your parents? Now that the holiday season is concluded, we all likely have a lot of photographs of friends and family and places we visited. Make sure you spend some time printing those photographs of the things that matter to you so you can share and preserve those memories.

It turns out that the “small stuff” is really the “big stuff.”

Jobeth, Ann Marie & Amanda; workshoppers and friends
Jobeth, Ann Marie & Amanda; workshoppers and friends

Camera Position 122 : Craft Is Not Content

Photographer Jerry Uelsmann once said something like, “while you can memorize the dictionary, it doesn’t mean you have anything to say afterwards.” The idea of course is that craft is not content. While the mechanics of photography can be a point of refuge for many image makers, photography’s power exists in an image’s message.Ansel Adams said that there is nothing worse than a sharp photograph of a fuzzy idea. Jerry Uelsmann said that while you can memorize the dictionary, it doesn’t mean you have anything to say.

Eagle Harbor, Winter, 2013 - Photograph by Jeff Curto
Eagle Harbor, Winter, 2013 – Photograph by Jeff Curto

Camera Position 121 : The Raw and The (over)Cooked?

At what point do photographers manipulate their images? Does it happen when we choose a camera, lens and field of view or does it happen afterwards, in post-production? When it comes to manipulating your photographs, is there such a thing as “too much”? This episode of Camera Position looks at one photographer’s confession of “over cooking” his images.

Lake Superior Shore, 2012 - Photograph by Jeff Curto (with a little help from Aperture)
Lake Superior Shore, 2012 – Photograph by Jeff Curto (with a little help from Aperture)

 

Camera Position 120 : Visual Acoustics

As the greatest photographer of Modernist architecture, Julius  Shulman’s images stand as icons of the  architectural boom in mid-20th Century America.

This podcast is a quick and enthusiastic review of a wonderful movie entitled Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman, which is available as a DVD or as streaming video at the locations linked below.

You’ll learn a lot about photography, modernist architecture and Shulman’s great spirit.

Koenig's Case Study House #22, photographed by Julius Shulman
Pierre Koenig’s Case Study House #22, photographed by Julius Shulman

Trailer for the film:

Camera Position 119 : The Power of the Single Photograph

A photographic project is a wonderful thing, but a single image is powerful too in a wide variety of ways. Single photographs can be fulfilling all by themselves and they can also be harbingers of bodies of work yet to come.

Eagle Harbor Afternoon 2012, Photograph by Jeff Curto
Eagle Harbor Afternoon 2012, Photograph by Jeff Curto