Holiday Gifts for Photo Geeks Under $40

Hey there! Nope – I’m not a paid reviewer, but yes some of these folks are friends with great products! These are my picks for gifts under $40 for the photo geek or photo lover in your life. Feel free to forward me your favs to  check out too. -Erika

Digital Photography Best Practices and Workflow Handbook, A Guide to Staying Ahead of the Workflow Curve, By Patricia Russotti and Richard Anderson – Price: $39.95
Patricia Russotti and Richard Anderson provide you with the best workflow practices for planning and capturing to archiving you digital photography and everything in between. This easy-to-follow design paired with detailed charts and beautiful photos will give you the tools you need to perfect your workflow. This handbook is software version independent and focuses more on the key fundamentals that are a constant from software to software.

The Light Scoop by Professor Kobre – Price: $34.95
Lightscoop® is a smart low-tech device that creates soft, flattering light by redirecting your camera’s pop-up flash to a ceiling or wall. Don’t let your convenient little pop-up flash ruin your photos with evil red eye, ugly shadows, hot spots, bleached out faces, underexposed colors, and blurry movement that exist only in your photographs, not in the real world.

Membership with Fotovision – Price: $35.00
A membership with Fotovision will connect you to other photographers, accelerate your career and give you unique opportunities to meet and learn from the documentary masters of our time. Special Discount on hard to find signed photography monographs! Fotovision Membership Benefits : Priority signup for workshops, Preferred seating at lectures and other events, Discounts on select workshops and events, Members’ only receptions, Special offers from our sponsors.

Op/Tech 19″ Velcro Soft Wrap with extra 5″ removeable Pad – Price $12.95 Black/Steel. SOFT WRAPS provide extra protection for lenses, cameras, binoculars, light meters, small tripods, monopods, tools, outdoor gear and other accessories. They offer an extra 5″ pad within the wrap which can be moved around to provide extra protection where needed.  A photographer can never have too many!

Blurb Photo Books -Prices start at $12.95
Create your books with our free, easy to use bookmaking software for Mac and PC OR Want complete creative control? Design your book using your favorite publishing software, then upload it as a PDF.

Paris Photo 2009 Spotlight on Arab and Iranian photography

Les femmes du Maroc: Harem Beauty #2, 2008 © Lalla Essaydi, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York

Paris Photo, November 19-22, 2009
Posted by Lens Culture Magazine

In all, 102 exhibitors (89 galleries and 13 publishers from 23 countries) will participate at the Carrousel du Louvre from 19th to 22nd November in Paris France. The emphasis in 2009 is on photography from Iran and the Arab world. But, as always, the works on display are rich with diversity — geographically, culturally, stylistically — and offer a unique opportunity to discover a wide range of contemporary and vintage photography never seen before in one location.

Paris Photo is the largest and perhaps most important international photography art fair in the world. This year promises to be provocative, inspiring, eclectic, and — due to the sheer volume of imagery — quite possibly visually overwhelming. So, we’re pleased to present here a preview selection of 167 images to whet your appetite.

Guillaume Piens, who organizes the fair, talked about the decision to focus on Arab and Iranian photography:

“Since the turn of the new century, photography has become the dominant medium in the effervescent and very diverse contemporary art scene throughout the Arab countries and in Iran.

It’s worth noting that, contrary to what is often assumed, there is a real fascination in the Arab countries and Iran for the photographic image, and that the relationship with this medium goes back a long way.

Europeans started to photograph the “biblical lands” as early as the 1840s. Photography studios soon opened in Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad, largely run by Armenians who widely contributed to the spread of the practice throughout the region. In Iran, Nasser Al-Din Shah, who reigned from 1848 to 1896, became passionate about photography. He imported equipment and began to practice this new art himself. He even created a gallery in a wing of his palace in Tehran, the Golestan, to display his collection.”

The special exhibitions about Arab and Iranian photography were curated by Catherine David, (Director of Documenta X at Kassel in 1997 and the author of numerous exhibitions and publications on Arab contemporary art). The special exhibitions include a selection of rare images from the collection of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut; an overview of emerging talent from eight galleries in the Arab world, including Iran; and a program of video screenings, which testify to the growing interest among artists of the region for the dynamics of this medium.

We hope you enjoy our preview picks. If you have a high-speed connection, you will love our high-resolution slideshow. (Give it a minute or two to load up — it will start automatically).

Society for Photographic Education West UnConference

Document and Identity: A SPE West Retreat
YES! YOU are invited – become a SPE member for a conference $$ break!

Dec. 4-6, 2009
Oakhurst, CA

KEYNOTE: Catherine Opie
HONORED EDUCATOR: Robbert Flick

IMAGE MAKERS/WORKSHOPS: Julia Schlosser, Stephen Johnson, Sarah Christianson, Nigel Poor, Diane Meyer, Kim Mowbray/Rachel Hubbard/Renee Peck, Dore Bowen & Liena Vayzman, Douglas Dertinger, Amanda Keller Konya, Sant Khalsa, Sean McFarland, Patricia Russotti, Kate Jordahl, Shiloh Burton.

DESCRIPTION: Think Mountains and start conjuring up memories of childhood summer camp life  – because the SPE WEST “unConference” and Retreat will take you back! The Evergreen Conference Center, Oakhurst (ECCO) is located on the north side of the beautiful mountain village of Oakhurst, California. This is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern central California just south of Yosemite National Park. The air is clear and clean, the streams and lakes sparkle in the sun, and winters are mild. You’ll be nestled in with your colleagues in cabin or dorm style accommodations and served only the best camp style food that ECCO has to offer! Spend your days listening to image makers and taking professional development workshops, sip wine in the great outdoors, visit with your colleagues, take yoga, see your images projected, show your work, enjoy.

As a bonus, participants arriving early will have the opportunity to attend a pre-conference field trip to see Ansel Adams’ original darkroom and house in Yosemite Valley. Pack your warm socks and get in the spirit for Camp SPE WEST. All SPE members welcome to attend – not a member? That’s okay! It’s easy to join!

STEP ONE JOIN or RENEW: SPE offers an option to those interested in membership late in the calendar year. Under this selection the member will begin receiving benefits on January 1, 2010 and also receive membership status for the regional conferences of fall, 2009. **INDICATE THIS PREFERENCE BY FILLING OUT THE 2010 MEMBERSHIP FORM** http://spenational.org/membership/index.html

STEP TWO REGISTER & SEE THE AGENDA: (closes 11/20/09)
https://www.regonline.com/spewest2009

STUDENT? Apply for the student scholarshop by 11/1/2009 www.spewest.org

Oakhurst is located at the foot of the Sierra Mountains near Yosemite and is approximately 3.5 hours drive time from the bay area and 4.5 hours from the Los Angeles area. The closest airport is Fresno, CA.

CONFERENCE FEES: (includes conference fee, 5 meals and 2 night stay at ECCO) $175 conference/no lodging / $175 conference/dorm room lodging / $250 shared double/quad lodging / $425 private double lodging/ $175 RV Hook Up

Not sure what SPE is? Visit www.spenational.org

Adobe Brings Photoshop to the iPhone

Our electronic devices are merging – I’m wondering when I can get a camera and hard drive permanently installed in my head.

Adobe Unveils Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone
New Adobe application brings must-have photo tools and eye-catching effects to iPhone users

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Oct. 9, 2009 – Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today introduced Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone application, delivering Adobe industry-leading digital-imaging technology to users on the go. Photoshop.com Mobile provides consumers a convenient way to edit photos, apply effects and share images instantly with friends – all with the flick of a finger. Seamless integration with users’ free Photoshop.com accounts enables photo sharing and data back-up, saving them valuable space on their iPhones. The application is available free of charge at Apple’s App Store.

“As the digital imaging leader, Adobe is excited to bring Photoshop.com Mobile to iPhone users,” said Doug Mack, vice president and general manager of Consumer and Hosted Solutions at Adobe. “Now, with access to powerful editing and sharing tools, iPhone users are armed with the resources to document all of life’s unexpected moments, make them look their best and then re-live those memories with friends and family.”

Photoshop.com Mobile for iPhone provides a fun, seamless experience to view photos with full-screen previews and edit images with gesture-based editing. Consumers can transform their photos with essential edits like crop, rotate and flip. Users can correct and play with color by adjusting the saturation and tint, enhancing the exposure and vibrancy and converting images to black and white. BLAH BLAH BLAH

Why Photography Now? 15 artists / 1 Question

Wang Yishu, Untitled, inkjet print, 2005

(The first in a two-part series from assistant curator of photography Lisa Sutcliffe, who organized both of our current collection exhibitions of Asian photography: The Provoke Era and Photography Now. Lisa posed a single question to the artists whose works are included in Photography Now.)

Photography, with its ability to “mirror” reality, has a more direct connection to the visible world than most other media, including painting and sculpture. It can also alter our perception of reality, either through the artist’s unique perspective, or by manipulation. Examining artistic decisions can reveal quite a bit about how a photograph is understood. Why was this picture made? Who is the intended audience? What did the artist decide to keep inside the frame or to crop out and how does that change our interpretation of the scene? Or perhaps the artist digitally manipulated the image to create something from his or her own imagination. In the digital age, the photographic medium is being redefined and artists are freer to create whatever image they imagine.

Photography Now: China, Japan, Korea presents SFMOMA’s recent acquisitions of photographs by artists working in Asia, and was conceptualized as a companion to our current exhibition of postwar Japanese photography. Even as globalization and technology have allowed for faster and more fluid cross-cultural influence, the artists represented in the show embrace varied approaches and offer diverse personal visions. Many record the changing urban fabric and the development of a new migratory population. What they all have in common is an interest in expressing themselves with photography. READ THE INTERVIEWS

Old Photography Techniques Made New

Albino Squirrels © Mary Frey, Imagining Fauna, On view at Gallery291, SF, September 10 - October 31, 200

ON VIEW: Gallery 291, 291 Geary Street, SF, CA: Mary Frey, Imagining Fauna: & Michael Garlington, Photocar: September 10 – October 31, 2009

Invented in 1851, the wet plate collodion photographic process produced a glass negative and a beautifully detailed print. Preferred for the quality of the prints and the ease with which they could be reproduced, the new method thrived from the 1850s until about the late 1880s when dry materials became available and less messy.

Today – this process is alive and well and used by many contemporary artists. The materials are slightly updated, but the process which can be produced from a negative or from the wet plate itself – is used widely. The CCSF PH67 class visited Gallery 291 in San Francisco, named after its 291 Geary Street address and met with curator Ed Carey to see the gallery and collection. Gallery 291 celebrates old meets new with works produced using antiquated and alternative photographic methods – many times with a computer thrown in somewhere in the process. Beth Moon makes full tone Platinum Palladium prints after capturing with infrared film, scanning and adjusting the images and outputting to a large digital negative. Mary Frey photographs using E6 film and creates one-of-a kind wet plate images. Michael Garlington places his subjects in unique scenes of Americana, captures with polaroid type 55 film – then scratches the emulsion before printing them in the darkroom.  All artists create carefully crafted and beautiful images. Thank you Ed Carey and gallery 291 for the interesting behind the scenes (and processes) tour! -Erika

Students view images with Ed Carey curator of Gallery 291 ©Edward Worrell

Students view works at Gallery 291 © Edward Worrell

To see an interesting video of part of the process – check out Artist Sally Mann coating and working with glass wet plate negatives.