Movie Backdrop Art Will Blow Your Mind!
By Arthur H. Bleich— They worked in shifts, round-the-clock, painting gigantic images to be draped behind the actors featured in the movies of their day. Each artist was given a section of the backdrop to paint as time was of the essence. When lighted and integrated with the action, you’d swear you were in whatever location they depicted. Which, of course, was the whole idea. After the movie was “in the can,” the canvasses (called...
$25 Will Restore A Blind Person’s Sight
By Albert Chi— If you’re a photographer or artist, eyesight is everything. That’s why a recent column in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof caught my attention when he recommended several charities, one of which he’d personally visited in Nepal called the Cure Blindness Project. I thought it might be of special interest to those who are in, or love, the visual arts and want to make a one-on-one contribution to a cause that...
Acquire Great Art on a Shoestring Budget
By Anna Andersen– When Erik Culver graduated with a BFA from The University of Texas at Austin in 2008, he went home with hundreds of photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints and almost all of it went into storage. Ten years later, while his art still collects dust, he’s helping students find better homes for their work. Culver and his co-founder, Alok Marwaha, launched ArtStartArt to sell student artwork through monthly...
It Takes Guts To Use This Camera
By Arthur H. Bleich– In the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage, a team of scientists and their submarine are reduced to microscopic size and inserted into the bloodstream of a colleague to remove a blood clot in his brain; a procedure too risky to do surgically. Science fiction? Of course– but a thriller all the same. By 2001, scientists have shrunk a digital camera, lights and a radio transmitter to fit into a vitamin-pill-sized capsule...
Digital Photography– Where Next?
By Chris Gatcum– You only have to look at what’s happened to photography in the 21st Century to see how rapidly the technology that underpins it is moving: in the year 2000, full-frame cameras were a mere suggestion; a digital SLR costing less than $1,000 was a dream; and CSCs [Compact System Cameras], sophisticated camera phones, and high-resolution digital video were simply unimaginable. Yet today all of these things—and more—are...
Spectrum Expands For Color Blind Photographers!
by Arthur H. Bleich– If your prints look good to you but not to anyone else, you could be color blind. More than 14 million people in the U.S. and Canada are afflicted with some type of color vision deficiency ranging from mild to severe which makes it impossible for them to see colors that normal-sighted people see– and to tell different colors apart from one another. With almost 60 million people seriously involved in photography,...
Our National Parks Odyssey
By Andrew Slaton– Steam from the early morning chill rises off the Green River in the Wind River Range of Wyoming. Squaretop, an aptly named handsome granite mountain in the distance catches the first rays of the sun, rising somewhere I cannot yet see. I sip my scalding, black coffee in our trailer and wait. This is what I do. I get paid to just sit out in some of the wildest places of the world until that unreal moment of light,...
Keyboards Short, Long, Fat, Thin, Loud, Soft And More
By Arthur H. Bleich– For years I wanted to take a circular saw and cut the numerical pad off of my keyboard. The the last time I used it must have been…I don’t even remember. But there it sat, just taking up space and putting my mouse just beyond a comfortable reach. Then, one day, tucked away on the Web, I found two companies you’ve probably never heard of– Fentek and Matias. Fentek has the largest collection of specialized PC (and...
ANURA Pocket Photo Drone Will Capture Spur-Of-The-Moment Images
By Arthur H. Bleich– Jason Lam is a San Francisco designer and builder of Aericam photo drones–the kind used by Hollywood to shoot spectacular aerial scenes that shock and awe. Their prices–in the thousands–can elicit the same response; most require intricate remote control equipment and some even need trained pilots to fly them (from the ground, of course). I wrote about one of Jason’s drones in a photo column about four years...
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