Jeff Curto's Camera Position

Photography excels at storytelling. While a single image can tell a story, we can tell much more complex stories with sets or series of images. If we set out to create those images with a story idea in mind, it’s much easier to have our stories make sense. This episode presents the essential elements of storytelling with images. We’ve all known great storytellers and we know that what they are able to do is tap into both the personal and the universal when they tell a story. They also understand that a story has to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Typically, a good story has most, if not all of these elements, each of which is explained in the podcast: * Introduction * Situation * Main Character * Detail * Setting The Hook * Tension * Consequence * Conclusion I’ve found that photographers have a much easier time with storytelling if they photograph with story in mind. If you start thinking about the story that you’ll tell before you start to photograph, you’ll have an easier time of making a story work than if you try to impose story on photographs you’ve already made.

While Camera Position has been quiet for a while, a whole lot has been going on in my life as a photographer, a teacher and a traveler. This episode is an update on the past, the present and the future for Camera Position and for me. Play Podcast: Interactive iBooks by Jeff: * Basic Photography – An overview of the components of a camera to an exploration of exposure, aperture, shutter speed, lenses, depth of field, composition and more. * Resonating Images: Communicating Messages Visually – An introduction to the visual concepts of gestalt psychology, helping you see the cognitive reasons that some images resonate with us and others don’t. Using both graphic and photographic visual examples, I show you how to go beyond making images that are just visually pleasing and look at how images communicate messages to viewers. * The Lakeshore in Winter – I’ve spent nearly every summer on the southern shore of the largest of the Great Lakes, Superior. I’ve sailed across the waves and I’ve braved its cold water to swim all summer long. In January of 2013, I was able to spend a week in the same place that I enjoy during summer. This book is a record of that time on the lakeshore in winter. Teaching in Italy: * Italy Photography Workshops: www.photographitaly.com  Get on the Advanced Notice List for the workshops. * University of Georgia Study Abroad in Cortona, Tuscany Apple Distinguished Educator: * Apple Distinguished Educator – Apple Distinguished Educators (ADEs) are part of a global community of education leaders recognized for doing amazing things with Apple technology in and out of the classroom.

Photographer Olivia Parker has been an influential and prolific photographer for more than 40 years. We look at Parker’s work, her background, her persistence and the way our networks can help inspire us and help us move us forward in our work. Play Podcast: Olivia Parker’s website: www.oliviaparker.com Olivia Parker Books: Weighing the Planets Under the Looking Glass Society for Photographic Education  

In this episode, we take a third look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by creating digital stories. Using iMovie, Final Cut Pro, ProShow Gold or similar software to combine image, motion and audio, we can get our photographs in front of viewer’s eyes. I discuss content, tools and process with the goal of getting you to tell your own stories. Once you create your digital story, post a link to it on the Camera Position Facebook page. Play Podcast: * iMovie – It comes free on every Mac and can be a great entry point into creating digital stories * Final Cut Pro X – Like iMovie on steroids, Final Cut Pro is a great choice for authoring digital stories * ProShow Gold – A windows-based digital storytelling application * TripleScoop Music – Great music for your digital stories. Also try FriendlyMusic * Jeff Curto’s Podcasts Facebook page – post your digital stories here The Digital Story: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Penfield House Penfield House from Jeff Curto on Vimeo.

This episode offers a second look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by creating ebooks using iBooks Author to get our photographs under viewer’s eyes. You can download the free book The Lakeshore in Winter from the iBookstore using the link below. * The Lakeshore in Winter – my free iBook on the iBooks Store * Jeff’s Podcasts Facebook Page – Like the page and post a link your iBook or other platform e-publication there when you finish it * Tuscany Photography Workshop – My Tuscany workshop registration is now underway; only two spots left

As photographers, we translate our ideas into objects. In this episode, we look at how we can get our work “off the wall” by using the print on demand service MagCloud to get our photographs under viewer’s eyes. *  MagCloud – I’ve linked to the “Create” section here where you can find out how to make a MagCloud of your own. * At the Lake’s Edge – Jeff’s MagCloud publication available either printed or as a free e-download * Jeff’s Podcasts Facebook Page – Like the page and post your MagCloud publication link there when you finish it * Tuscany Photography Workshop – My Tuscany workshop registration is now underway; only a few spots left  

Learning photography is like learning a language. As we assimilate photographic vocabulary, nuance and the like, we wind up being interpreters or translators of our ideas, interpreting those ideas into objects. I’ve realized that as I progress, my interest in photography as an artistic practice is in the learning of more visual languages and in becoming a strong enough speaker in each to effectively translate the many stories I have continually flowing through my mind.

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is a phrase attributed to  psychologist Abraham Maslow, but I’ve always thought it had application to photography and its practice, too. In this episode, I discuss how the small Panasonic GX-1 has energized my photography and brought me to new ways of seeing.

Not long ago, I saw an article by Nicholas Day on Slate.com about babies and pointing. The article discussed how babies point at things to help them create meaning in their world and to share their experiences with someone else. It immediately made me think of what photographers do. We use our cameras to point; to carefully and systematically say to the rest of the world “look at that!” In this podcast, I discuss the importance of pointing and what it means when we point in a sophisticated way at something. Here’s the article on Slate And here’s the podcast:  

I’ve long loved the detail image; the photograph that shows just a snippet of the larger world. In this episode, I look at an image of mine that has that sense of detail and also look at the historical referent of images by Ansel Adams that brought me to that place. Think about the way focusing on the details of the world can help you create meaning in your images; work toward an understanding of the importance of what at first might seem insignificant.  

Photographer Carol Golemboski has taken the idea of an electronic book – or any sort of electronic presentation of photography, farther than any I’ve yet seen. Her iPad app Psychometry combines images, text, video, interactive panoramas, extensive background on how the images were produced, a virtual darkroom experience and myriad other amazing details. It is like a book in that it’s a presentation of Carol’s work, but it’s unlike any book you’ve ever seen because it’s so comprehensive, engaging and filled with so many different ways of showing us the photographs and helping us interact with and learn about them. Many photographers who grew up in my generation understood the monograph to be one of the solid culminations of a photographic project. In today’s world of publishing, we are confronted with an interesting yet challenging landscape where anyone can produce a print-on-demand book of their work on their own, even as hard copy books seem to be less popular than they were in the past. Electronic books have arrived, yet are often one-dimensional; a simple screen-rendering of the hardcover book that came before. What’s even more interesting is that Carol’s photography is completely darkroom based. The Psychometry series of images is completely dependent on the darkroom process to make the images look and feel the way they do. What the app presents, then, is a completely digital-age way of looking at the old-world method of making photographs using silver-based materials. The app’s design takes advantage of the tactile nature of the images themselves, giving us a sense of a hand-made environment, even as we interact with it on our glossy-screened iPads. If you have an iPad, this app might be one of the most inspirational and engaging apps you can find. Check it out here: Psychometry – Photographs by Carol Golemboski  

I had lots and lots of great ideas from podcast listeners about Camera Position 125, “Thinking in Monochrome.” Several listeners suggested a digital tool that I’d not thought of before and that was to set the camera for B&W, but to also set “Raw + JPEG” as the file format. Other listeners talked about the great options provided by electronic viewfinders on some cameras that allow you to actually see the framed scene in black and white. And that reminded me of the monochrome viewing filter I recently unearthed as I was packing up my office for a move. * Jeff’s Podcast Facebook Page  * Monochrome viewing filter 

We all try to spend time with photographs by photographers whose work we admire. We spend time trying to figure out how to emulate their work, then produce work that is similar in style to what they do. But here is the rub; our problem is that once we get to a point where those photographs are good, solid derivatives of what our photographic influences are, what’s next? How do we make our pictures so that they are different in style and substance from those who came before us? My friend, the great contemporary photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, has nicely wrapped up a set of ideas about this problem in this transcription of a talk he gave called “Stay On The Bus” Links for this episode: * Arno  Minkkinen’s website * A PDF of Arno’s “Stay On The Bus” talk  

I grew up making black and white photographs. It’s what I love the most about photography and the way I have long thought about the photographic image. But the digital revolution has spawned a dilemma; the digital camera sees in color, and I have to shift my mind to think in black and white. I’m intrigued by the difference in mindset that happens when you have a camera that you know can only take black and white images and when you have one that you know can make both color and black and white. Post some of the images you make in black and white at the locations below. * Jeff Curto Podcasts Facebook Page * Camera Position Flickr group

The word “photography” comes from a combination of two Greek words; “photos” (light) and “graphos” (writing or marking). So, “photography” means to “write with light” and light has a counterpart, shadow, something for light to play off of. I’m giving Camera Position listeners an “assignment” to work with these two fundamental building blocks of photography. Go out, shoot some images with this idea in mind and, if you’d like, upload some to either the new Jeff Curto Podcasts Facebook Page or the Camera Position Flickr group so we can all take a look. Links for this episode: * Jeff Curto Podcasts Facebook Page * Camera Position Flickr group