More and more and more good stuff

www.robertdanielullmann.com is my oldest site, and now, my newest, with a complete overhaul.

Here are the rest

http://robertdanielullmann.ugallery.com

http://robert-ullmann.artistwebsites.com/

http://www.robertullmannphotodigital.com/

Keyworded, meta-tagged and all that kind of good stuff.

Fine Art America and UGallery are absolute gifts of the gods... I'd recommend them to any and all.

Where You Are There You Are

There beautiful and powerful images all around us. All it requires is the presence of mind to see and the nerve to take the picture. Since film is no longer an issue, SHOOT!
And shoot some more.

I've found that I am not filling up my memory card the way I used to when I first started shooting digital, and this is good.

I went to one of my favorite gardens yesterday to shoot (it's part of the NY City Park System, so all manner of rues are in place. One of them is about commercial activity, the other requires permits to use tripods. There was a photography class standing at the gates, surrounding the teacher, who was yelling into his cell at a parks department official and having his class shout, in unison into the phone. He apparently had been told he couldn't have twenty five students with tripods in the garden all at once without a permit.

Public areas are not free for all kinds of uses at all times. Photographers have enough problems with the image of being rude, intrusive and pushy as it is...

New Site....

I will be uploading new content to http://www.robertdanielullmann.com - go look.
The old version had too much and not enough, I'm paring down and simplifying. Not just my site(s), but I'm stripping out any software that I don't use often enough to justify the disk space and wasted cpu cycles.

If You Work For Free...

You get paid what you are worth.
There are a ton of excuses for working fro free or next to nothing, and they all seem to fall under the category of disbelief in one's abilities, talents and value.
The only time I work for free is when I am donating services and take a tax deduction for them.
Yeah - the Internets have made it harder...
You don't have to pay for film, processing and shipping...
You wanna get a start...
It's OK because you have a day job...
Except - The Interwebs has made it possible to market to the entire world, you have huge equipment costs and equipment value drops precipitously, the only start you'll get is with those who won't pay, and with a day job should act as a back-up, not a replacement for income.
Attitude turns it around.

Down and Dirty

Anyway I am going to continue to post tutorials that concentrate on making the technical aspects of shooting a whole lot less expensive.

Most of my studio still life shots are made with window light, either indirect or diffused. Shower curtains, tracing paper, anything without a color cast works.

Here's one. A black card (at an angle) provided the background.

I put an almost rotten pear on a curved sheet of typing paper and shot hand held at ISO 400. Tweaked it in Photoshop - since I can't afford to buy all the chemicals to do historical processes, I let Photoshop do the dirty work.

AND: Why most books I've read on Photoshop are almost worse than useless.
Most computer books are way too expensive to start with. And when I pay $30 - $50 for a book that promises to unlock the secrets of a given program, I almost always feel cheated.

One is faced with a glut of information, and some pretty pictures, ande told to purchase all sorts of extra back up drives, monitors, and such. It's like wanting to learn cabinet making and being given instructions on how to use every tool in the shop in one sitting, leaving no room for what one wants and needs to know.

You don't need to know how to operate a lathe to build a shelf. Or a book case.

I'd prefer that these books kept it simple and concentrated on making images, and not selling us stuff.

To paraphrase old Ansel Adams - making a print (image) is akin to the performance of a piece of music - each time a performer plays the piece there will be slight variations, changes in expression, deeper maturity and understanding of the composition.

1. open image
2. duplicate background
3. save image as a PSD file!
4. stare at image

Repeat step 4 as often as needed.

5. decide what you are going to do with the image (print it, post on blog, email to your cousins, etc.)
6. stare at image some more
7. does it need anything? decide what you need to do.

When I first started printing for publication i was always asked for prints that had "snap" that "popped" and generally would catch the attention of the viewer and would withstand the degradation of the dot screen process as well.

Fast popping technique #1 - open the Levels adjustment layer and move the top right hand slider to the left a little.

#2 - add a thin black line around the image (edit/stroke/black/one or two pixels).

Straw Men

I recently came across another article (don't remember where) in which the author, in the first three sentences raised the old art v science "debate". I don't remember much else about the article because the first sentences stopped me cold. We've heard versions of this for years and years and years and years.

Is there a way art can exist without science? Science without art?

Chemists who make pigments, optical scientists who make lenses possible, metallurgists, mathematicians, textile and paper makers...

And, since science relies on observation - an ability to see, compose, sort, frame, use perspective, and make intuitive leaps seems essential in both disciplines.

These are scary times (when aren't times scary?) partly due to a rush toward ignorance and superstition. Anti vaccinators, homeopaths, psychics, Qui Gongers et al., and religious fundies of all stripes are gaining ground. This is where the art v science "debate" can become dangerous. Scientists are portrayed as nerdy unfeeling cold Mr. Spock logical godless sorts, and the new age/fundie/alt med crowds all vie to be depicted as the owners of spirituality that "art" is built on.

The occasional scientist who paints (or writes, or composes music) is sometimes held up as if to say "see, we make art too!"

I once was speaking with a surgeon who got all "gee golly I could never do what you do how do you do it" with me about my art. I mentioned to him that his ability to take people apart and repair them, to keep them alive and well was probably just as valid as making pretty art. He got all waffly with me again.

The need to make order out of chaos seems to me what drives both disciplines.

Pride Parade NYC 2010 and other odds and ends

The more things change, the more things change... When I was a kid anyone dressed like the gentleman above would have been arrested, hauled off to the laughing academy, and/or worse

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This one would have caused a small to medium sized riot...

And for al the world this looks like Aunt Flo from Fort Lauderdale. It is to wonder.

When I was done shooting the event I wandered over to a local garden where weddings are sometimes held on the weekend. Not for the wedding, but to shoot perty flars and such. Wafting from the garden were the strains of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring". It was a Jewish wedding. This confused me. It's a little like serving pork chops at a Seder.

The bee didn't care...