What you need:
Any size (but not larger than your scanner) canvas or hardboard panel.
An old newspaper or any textured paper.
Mod Podge.
Acrylic or water paints
Optional: distress ink.
Yes, yes I know, I could make some beautiful textures on my PC and it will probably be an easier, faster and a cleaner process. However, I do like the direct contact with the materials I’m using and messing with glue and paints pretty much serves as a fine therapy session for me.
Besides, my room is packed with paints, art materials and found stuff (in fact if you’ve seen my room you would be fooled to think an artist lives here) so anyway with all this stuff lying around I thought I’d better put it to good use.
Ok, now on to the details:
Cover the canvas panel with an old newspaper or a textured paper adhering it with Mod Podge. Make sure your work is sloppy and not smooth so there are creases and bumps to the newspaper.
Paint one thin layer of paint covering the newspaper. Wait until it’s almost dry, add a drop of water to a different color and paint another layer letting the layer beneath show through in some places.
Cover your work of art with any clear finish; mod podge can be used for this purpose as well.
When it’s dry and ready you can scan it and use it as a background texture for your images. Another great application for this thing is to use it as a background for your photo print which you are going to frame and proudly display by your bed.
Usually when I create a mixed media photography piece (which is simply another way of presenting photos, just like framing or arranging them in an album or a book) I just don’t know what it’s going to be and so it takes shape as I’m making it.
But sometimes when I look at the finished product I can see how it actually developed.
In this case I created the collage over a previously used 11X14 canvas panel which was the receiving surface for an unsuccessful image transfer.
The image transfer was of a line of palm trees on the beach and even though I completely covered it, I wasn’t at all aware of the fact I was actually sticking to the same theme while creating this new piece.
While taking photos with my new digital SLR, I’ve noticed a big change in the manner of which I take digital pictures now. I guess after shooting almost solely film in the last 2-3 years, my method of photographing had become more attentive, perhaps even more calculated. And I don’t mean that now I pay attention to any of the scientific calculations in photography, but actually, calculated as in conscious; taking pictures that matter which pretty much translates into taking less pictures.
In the past, when using a digital camera I would sometimes shoot 4-5 pictures of exactly the same thing, which to be honest, often translated into 4-5 useless pictures of the same thing. On the other hand, most of my more successful pictures (i.e. the ones I was happy with), like the one presented here, were unique images I took “on the move”.
This is, in my very humble opinion, a disservice done to us by digital photography – it made us lazy photographers. I know of some *photographers who shoot tens of mindless images of the same scene hoping that at least one of them is going to turn out a good one.
I’m not sure if this practice actually works, and if it does work for them, this is great, but for me, maybe I’m weird or something, but if I had tens of pictures of the same thing on my hard drive, I would rather have “no respect” to these pictures. And since for me, photography is not about turning out “good pictures” this method would never work out for me.
And more amazing to me is that many websites and books about digital photography encourage the photographer to do just that; take as many pictures of the same thing as your memory card will allow you, after all, digital is free and its always easy to delete the bad ones.
What do you think?
Yesterday I received an email message from Lulu.com saying:
” Due to your current success and the popularity of No Rules street photography on Lulu, you have been selected to be a part of this exclusive Scribd iPaper trial, starting in June.”
Incidentally, last week, I asked my friend Jeff (aka. Wxman) to check out Scribd and write a review about it.
Anyway, if any of you is familiar with Scribd.com I would love to hear about your experience and opinion about this site.
Here’s wxman’s review:
For about a week I experimented with a little program called “Ipaper” by Scribd.
Basically, it’s a little embedded viewer that a site developer can use to display multiple documents or photos on a web page.
At first I liked the program… easy to install the “script code” to my site and blog and easy to work with… changing documents and images.
But along with the good came the ugly side.
When you sign up for this program, and without any warning, you are also signing up for a “Social Networking” account… similar to MY SPACE or FACEBOOK.
Also your documents and images become public domain and they are displayed on the Scribd website.
Call me paranoid but I feel very uncomfortable about social networking sites.
The next day after signing up for the account, I was flooded with emails about becoming person x or y online friend. After some work I was able to finally block these incoming emails.
During the next few days Ipaper became somewhat “buggy”; I was getting “ page cannot be displayed” messages on the viewer and sometimes I was unable to upload documents or images to be displayed in the viewer.
After about a week’s experiment with this product I finally deleted my account with Scribd.
Last thought about Scibd’s Ipaper:
I would be very hesitant about using product from a company that deceives a customer like they do.
If you publish your book with Lulu you can also purchase the distribution package they offer. This package includes an ISBN number for your book which is then listed with major global book industry databases. Once your book is listed it is automatically picked by different retailers, online and offline like Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes & Noble.
This package costs less than a $100 but it takes looooong time for your book to be visible so be prepared to turn on your patient mode. Once the book is visible there are a few things you can do to help its presentation and visibility.
On Barnes & Noble, for instance, the book is published without any description or any other details so you need to do it yourself by emailing them a file with your book’s data.
On Amazon you can add the key words for your book and also participate with the “Search inside the book” program which not only lets people peek inside your book but also boosts the odds your book will be found through a site search.
For example, if you search on Amazon or Borders (same thing), for “Street photography” my book comes back 3rd on the first result page along with an excerpt from inside the book.
Amazon is currently displaying the wrong image for my book In any case of such inaccuracies, it is up to you to notify them of their error. Barnes & Noble on the other hand, currently selling my book for a lower price than any other seller and that’s another advantage because Lulu has a fixed price but these sites often offer better prices which obviously help to make the book more attractive.
Talking about prices, this is the one thing I didn’t like about this whole distribution package: making my book available to different retailers meant these retailers want their share of the pie as well, which meant the price of the book had to be raised.
One thing I’m not yet sure how it works is the royalties for the sales of my book through these different outlets so stay tuned for part two of this post in the future.
Today in History:
Twenty four years ago, on May 16, 1984, Andy Kaufman died in Los Angeles.
I made this video a couple of years ago using pictures and videos I took on Sunset blvd. where he lived and preformed.
I also combined a few authentic performences and photos along with REM’s Man on the Moon.
that’s it. I really have nothing much to say here.
As the title suggests the digital SLR I ended up getting is Nikon D60. But before writing about it I wanted to thank everyone who shared their experience and knowledge to help me select the best digital SLR for me. I have to say that there’s a lot of joy in sharing my thoughts, techniques and practices on this blog but also one of the best things about having this blog is the privilege of having the access to your knowledge. See, as I was searching for information about digital SLR I realized that I don’t really care (or even understand) all this technical blabber and what I really need is to hear from someone who know these cameras first hand.
The main reasons I decided the Nikon D60 is the best camera for me were its light weight, the fair price and because I already have two Nikon lenses.
The verdict: I already had the pleasure of taking this camera out for a test drive and it was a delight! Fast, easy, quiet, light and with some great results. What I really liked about this camera is that it feels just like my film SLR, and that’s a great bonus for me.
The quality of images took me by surprise: not only they are bright and vivid but also there is no visible noise. Wow.
There are two ways to make pinhole images with the Diana Plus camera: True pinhole and Magnum pinhole. When shooting either pinhole settings the aperture is set to P and the shutter to B, but with True pinhole the lens needs to be removed before the image is taken. Theoretically the magnum pinhole result in sharper images but frankly I couldn’t tell the difference.
According to the shooting suggestions you need to keep the shutter open for about 2 seconds when shooting in bright sunlight and 30 seconds in the shade, but 10 seconds in the shade will do just fine.
Maybe I’m missing something but the Diana plus instruction manual says the shutter needs to stay open for about 6-15 minutes if taking indoors pinhole and 1-2 hours at night… but it doesn’t say HOW to do it. I mean, how am I suppose to keep the shutter open for such long time when the only way to keep it open is by pressing the shutter button… Weird.
But anyway, stick to daylight pinhole and you’ll be just fine. Its actually quite fun.
If you are interested in displaying your book, magazine, article or any other document in a neat way, issuu.com will let you do just that. I don’t even remember how I stumbled upon this site but right away I liked the fact that each and every publication displayed on this site looked good, and possibly even better than the real thing.
So basically its a stylish way of publishing your PDF document to the web, while you can get feedback from your visitors and also dynamically embed the document on your site just like I did here.
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