G-Star Raw by Douglas Stockdale
While here in Milan, I just heard a rumor that this week is Fashion Week in Milan. Very cool!
Since at one time it was so uber-cool to be a fashion photographer, I have decided is was now time to get my fashion portfolio together. With only a couple of days to complete this shoot, this should be pretty intense, but I guess fashion photography is all about the passion and intensity, eh?
So far it has been going very well, but yet so much still to do!
Best regards, Doug
Noorderlicht 16 exhibition at Aa-kerk
Another than the train from Oss to Groningen being a little late, everything went well for my one day at the Noorderlicht 16 PhotoFestival. Well, the other issue was that there was just too much to see, although there were four of the six exhibition areas were relative close, the PhotoFestival was spread over the entire city. I did have a map, so not a bad start, eh? What also helped was meeting up with Martin Doonan, a fellow photo-blogger, from the Hauge, a might fine Englishman who has also spent 10 years in the Netherlands and can speak and read Dutch, which was a great help to me.
Since the exhibitions did not open until noon, we had a chance to walk to a couple of the book stores, one of which had a small exhibition of Rob Hornstra, including photographs from his photobook 101 Billionaires, which I was able to acquire a copy of, one of my many photobook acquisitions during the day. Yep, some more book reviews coming soon.
Probably the largest exhibition venue was as the Aa-kerk, which was central off the Visamarkt. The general theme for this photofestival was titled Human Conditions and the mutiple curated exhibits in Aa-kerch were a broad selection of work about that theme. It included the dreadful impact of the 22 day Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip, titled Point of No Return; Foto8 editor Lauren Heinz about the gangs in London titled Closing In; Simon Njami’s Ordinary Pain that focuses on the pain and suffering on the wings of the world in Cuba, Africa, Tibet and Soweto to name but a few of the powerful exhibits that develed into the human condition.
I also had an opportunity to see the photobooks being published by Noorderlicht, which I posted a brief post over on The PhotoBook.
Overall, my take away was that this PhotoFestival is more than a one day to be able to take in all that Noorderlicht has to offer. I was very impressed with the details, as an example, the exhibition at Aa-kerk was hung mostly on a framework of rusted re-bar or bare plywood walls that reinforced the images of exposed re-bar and terrible conditions found in the content of the hanging photographs.
Best regards, Doug
Noorderlicht’s PhotoFestival 2009 catalog cover
I have an assignment that will take me to the Netherlands and I have a weekend open, so I am planning to take the train up to Groningen for Noorderlicht’s PhotoFestvial 2009 that is running the month of September. I am also planning to meet up with Martin Doonan to spend a day walking the various photo exhibits and see what Noorderlicht Publications has in the way of current photobooks.
I have not been to Groningen before, so it should be a great day to see photography, the city, some new books, make some new acquantances and spend some time yaking about who knows what with Martin. nice.
Best regards, Doug
Early last week, I was contacted by photo-eye, the Santa Fe gallery and bookstore, to write photobook reviews for them. We’ve worked out most of the details, as they need a brief photobook review and I can wirte a more encompassing review of the same book, which I can publish on The PhotoBook.
I think that this is a nice win-win for both of us, and I especialy enjoy the validation of my photobook reviews. Thank goodness for spell checkers though, or I would have been doomed from the start of this venture!
One of the great things about this for me is that it provides access to some photobook publishers and their books that I might not otherwise see or be able to acquire. I also get to accumulate some photo-eye points that I can later trade in for some books from their site, again defraying my book purchasing expenses and gaining access to a broader selection of photobooks. Yeah, thats what I call win-win-win ;- )
At the moment, it would appear that my photobook reviews would probably start on the photo-eye on-line magazine in late October. I’ll post an update when the first one is published with them. At the moment, it appears that the first photobook review will probably be Duane Michael’s 50, published by Edizioni Ziz, a publisher located in Verona, Italy. nice.
Best regards, Doug
I am still tweaking the design and layout for my new project-blog, Chinese Picture Postcards. I thought the esthetics for my first choice in WordPress blog designs in line with the project concept, overall black with a red headliner for the blog. But this design was hampered by the fixed width for displaying the paired-up photographs.
My concept is to have the images paired up, thus each image was limited to 300 pixels wide to display them as side by side pairs. But at 300 pixels, the images seem too small to adequately see the content.
Especially in the first pair that I uploaded where I wanted to show the picturesque pagoda within the proper context in the city of JiaXing on the shore of East Lake.
So I changed blog template to a flexible width in order to display 400 pixel wide images side by side, although you probably need a 17″ wide monitor, but may work with a 15″ wide monitor. As I don’t have the 15″ wide monitor, I don’t know for sure. The 30% larger size makes the content more readable and for this pair, as you can just make out the pagoda tower dwarfed by the city buildings in the photograph on the right.
Best regards, Doug
JiaShan Hutong boatman from the series Chinese Picture Postcards
As I continue to develop my new series Chinese Picture Postcards, I decided that I would start my blog for this project very early on. Since this series is intented to be paired images, one side an idealistic composed postcard and the other side a bit closer to reality, I will post the pairs as I fine tune them on this new blog. So expect that the same image may get paired up with different combinations. And probably not much of an explaination, just the photographs.
I now have the new blog linked up on the side, so check in from time to time & see how it develops.
Chinese Picture Postcards www.chinesepicturepostcards.com
Best regards, Doug
Georgia summer heat and humidity; as you walk out the door of your air conditioned house (low temp and low humidity), you hit the wall of warm sticky heat. If your lens is not covered, the front element is immediately coated with a fine layer of condensate and this is what you get. I did not mind, as this photograph immediately recalls the experience of the heat & humidity for me, although I am not sure that the large amount of high edge flare would be always be read that way. But it works fine for me;- )
If you have a very inexpensive camera, you may find that the condensate is coating some interior layers of glass as well, and potentially your sensor. And that may take a while to come to equilibrium and for the condensate to evaporte away. This happened to a couple of inexpensive camera of the family members.
Best regards, Doug
A while back I was impressed by some photographs that Aline Smithson had posted on Lenscratch for a photographer (sorry, name escapes me) who had photographed some museum exhibits, which looked wonderful. So while walking through the small museum at Ft Frederica on St Simons island, I could not resist. All I had to do was chose my composition. nice.
Best regards, Doug
BTW this was depicting the Britsh, led by James Oglethorpe at the Battle of Bloody Marsh, against the Spanish in 1742 over control for this region of the (American) colonies.
St Simons, GA
Beach cottage, St Simons GA copyright of Douglas Stockdale
This is one of those photographs that will serve as a memory link to a nice vacation with most of my family on St Simons island on the S.E. coast of the Atlantic. I had been eyeing this corner for most of the week, but then when we had some overcast days with some occasional rain, the lighting seemed right.
Photographs serve many purposes and documenting such a scene, which will link my memory to my feelings of this time, is but one use. The condensate that is on the inside of the window will remind me that we had a/c inside the cottage, keeping things cool, while outside it was a bit hot and humid. I found out that the fishy weather vane had been on the roof, but at sometime it came down and now sits in vigil in this corner of the dining room. The shell box on the table was constantly be refilled by newly found shells, but then the shells would then be borrowed away, to be played with as part of some game by the kids. The ebb and flow of empty shells. The wicker chair on the edge, was much like all of the wicker chairs through the cottage and similar to the wicker rocking chairs on the “front” porch, overloading the beach. With the wooden floors, nobody paid much attention if they were dripping wet when just coming off playing in the surf and needed a coke from the fridge. Usually a water puddle or two at most times through out the day.
Already nice memories….
Best regards, Doug
