This photo took in Nov, 2013. On the top of Stadium Parking Building.
Same spot took yesterday. There is a new surveillant camera!
Monday, September 29, 2014
Something feels personal to me...
Don't know why, but it feels personal to me and I don't even want to post it...
Monday, September 22, 2014
Monday, September 15, 2014
Bokeh Effects...I like them both, so post anyway...
ISO 200 f1.4 1/60sec 50mm
No flash, but I used a lamp for lighting.
ISO 200 f1.4 1/80sec 50mm
Shoot with New instant Cam...
Got a new instant cam, so I took a picture. Just for fun!
This is the new baby!
Creepy Tree Bark...
ISO 1000 f4.0 1/13sec 100mm
with flash SB-910
ISO 1000 f4.0 1/160sec 120mm
with flash
Looks like a Doughnut...
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Monday, September 8, 2014
Photo of the Day!
By the way, today is a traditional festival in China.
So I also made a picture of the Moon cake: a dessert for Mid-Autumn Festival.
I got it from a Hong Kong store in Dallas and it tastes so good!
Photo of the Day!
My dear basketball!
I used to play in school team for six years.
Actually, I am just testing my new flash.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Snap! Snap! The Photobooth.
Photobooth, an instant and automatic photographic process, was patented by Anatol Josepho in 1925. It has succeed immediately and lasting almost a century. Today, people around the world still enjoys and shares a memory with the Photobooth snapshot.
You look around, check your pocket and step into the narrow photobooth. pull the curtain down and shut off the curious eyes. Shield yourself from the outside world. Then, you look at your own reflection on the screen or the mirrored glass. Comb or brush your hair quickly. Adjust your collar and buttons. Check your appearance for the one last time and put coins into the slot. You wait until the first flash starts: snap, snap, snap, snap! a few minutes later, a series self-portraits is spat out from the slot. You hold the still damp photo paper and carefully not to touch the surface. Whether you are satisfied or disappointed at the strip of photos, it will end up at the bottom of drawers, conner of a shoe box or somewhere of a photo album. Years later, you will open the memorabilia and be amused at how young and stupid you were.
Then, one question comes up: why is the Photobooth so popular through the century? There are cheap, fast, available to anybody. The subject has control over the entire process. You are free to pose with a friend, puppy, toys and whatever you want. You can make the most ugly face, play a character and even turn your back on the camera. It become a game and entertainment instead of the traditional photo studio. People starts having fun with self-portraits.
Back to middle school, I was obsessed with snapshots. It was so popular at the time that we even have a Photobooth bar in Asia. The bar has 20 and more photobooths stand side by side. The advanced machine has thousands of templates, frames and background. You can choose every single picture and make up your own strip. Every time I made a new friend, I took him or her to play the photobooth. Sometimes I don’t really care what the photo looks like, I just enjoy the process of making it. One thing scary about self-portrait is that once you starts taking it, you can’t stop.
As a unique form of self-portrait and identity photography, photobooth became an artistic tool for artists to endow meanings and points of view into the four snapshots on a single strip paper. The narrow space, cheap front lighting, the fixed lens and single frame limited the look of photobooth portrait but also became a inspiration and artistic challenge. In 1929, La Revolution Surrealiste magazine published the photomontage which contains sixteen self-portraits of the principal surrealists. These self-portraits are lined up into a rectangle and all the members in the photo with their eyes closed. For the first time, photobooth portraits were raised to an artistic level.
Some artists using these four frames to express their characters. A simple strip of paper can really show the different personalities of people. Some laughed; some never smiled; some made exaggerated expression in every single frame; some had stone face from frame one to frame four and never changed. More interesting, some artists combine four or ten or hundred and even more frames to achieve an abstract montage. Each single frame serve as a pixel. My personal favorite artists are Francis Bacon and Herman Costa. Bacon shot a photostrip of self-portrait in the 1960s. Then he made a painting according to this photostrip called “Four Studies for a Self-Portrait” in 1967. The painting are made by four different abstract oil portraits in a style of photostrip. The background is dark and almost black. the self-figure are paint using mainly red, green and white. The visible brush stroke give each frame a different feeling, but the same choice on color give the four frames a unique style. For the montage, Herman Costa place uncut strips together to build larger, patterned montage work. His work “face” in 1986 are made by sixteen uncut frames. In order to maintain the integrity of the strip, he alway pre planed each frame and let the subject move around in front of the camera.
Even today, among the tons of entertainment and advanced photographic equipment, people still enjoy the photobooth. The traditional photobooth are still set in Mall, parks, fairs and events. More interesting, Apple Mac give the photobooth a new life and bring this tradition into the digital world. My little cousin love to play the Photo Booth App just like I did in middle school. He can take hundreds of ugly face in few hours. I have to say, people are obsessed with self-portraits, even before the “selfie era”.
Photobooth: The Art of the Automatic Portrait. Raynal Pellicer, French, 2010. Translated by Antony Shugaar. Abrams, New York. ISBN: 978-0-8109-9611-3
By Francis Bacon
By Francis Bacon
By Herman Costa
By Herman Costa
Reference
Photobooth: The Art of the Automatic Portrait. Raynal Pellicer, French, 2010. Translated by Antony Shugaar. Abrams, New York. ISBN: 978-0-8109-9611-3
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