Edward Weston - One of the Grand Masters of Twentieth Century Straight Photography

Edward Henry Weston or Edward Weston was one of the most renowned and influential American photographers of the twentieth century. He was born on March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois. On Edward's sixteenth birthday, his father gifted him his first camera. This was the onset of Weston's love affair with photography.

As a beginner, he started clicking pictures in Chicago parks and his aunt's farm. In 1903, he exhibited at the Chicago Art Institute. Weston moved to California in 1906 to pursue a career in photography. He began by working as a door-to-door portrait photographer. For a formal training, he returned to Illinois in 1909 and attended the Illinois College of Photography. The same year, he married Flora May Chandler with whom he later had four sons. Weston opened his studio in 1911 in Tropico, California, where he operated until 1922. He was a huge success with his 'Pictorial Style Photography' and won many salon and professional awards. Edward even wrote a number of articles on the unconventional methods of portraiture for various magazines, like American Photography, Photo Era, and Photo Miniature.

An exhibition on Modern Art, in San Francisco World Fair, in 1915, greatly influenced Weston. He had grown restless with 'Pictorialism' and found it to be a mechanical manipulation of painting styles. He began experimenting with light, shadow, and soft focus. After meeting Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, he was further convinced that photographs should record the true essence of the subject, dead or alive, living or non-living. On a visit to Ohio in 1922, he clicked some photographs of the Armco Steel Plant. These pictures mark his tilt from 'Pictorialism' to 'Straight Photography,' involving the emergence of a sharp focused style.

Anita Brenner's book "Idols behind Altars," published some of his photographs, which he clicked during his brief stint in Mexico in 1923, along with professional & romantic companion Tina Modetti, who later even posed nude for him. These photos, such as "Tina Reciting and Excused," showed his clear transition into 'Straight Photography.' In 1927, he made a series of monumental close ups for which he is best known. His subjects varied from the objects like seashells, vegetables (peppers and halved cabbages), landscapes, and nudes. Weston skillfully created sharp pictures, using a large format camera with a small aperture, capturing the real beauty of the subject. The photographer, along with his son Brett, opened up a new studio in San Francisco in 1928. Edward Weston became a co-founder of the f/64 group of 'Purist Photographers,' such as Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke, in 1932.

He was also the first recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for Photography in 1937. In 1938, the photographer married his assistant, Charis Wilson, with whom he has been living since 1934. In 1941, Weston provided illustrations for an edition of 'Whitman's Leaves of Grass.' His work started being hampered, as he was struck with Parkinson's disease in 1946. The same year he and Chris divorced. He took his last photos at Point Lobos in 1948. In 1952, his Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio was published with his images printed by his son Brett. Edward Weston died in Carmel, California, on January 01, 1958.

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.Labedzki-Art.com

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Buy one large painting (minimum size 18x24 inches) receive 5 small paintings of your choice (maximum size 11x17 inches) FOR FREE. SHIPPING IS FREE.

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Digital Photographic Mastery and the New Zone System for the 21st Century

Digital photography has made tremendous strides in the past several years. Photographic software has made it possible to alter photographs post capture and clean up defects, enhance lighting or color, and accomplish any number of effects. However, there are still some basics, especially regarding the dynamics of exposure, lighting and workflow that every photographer should fully understand and master.

A Brief History of the Original Zone System

Until Ansel Adams published his 1948 classic book, Camera and Lens, technical photography was confined to scientists who could make sense of extensive log scales and exposure tables. This technical data made it possible to optimize photo exposure beyond the standard "guestimating" used during the photo shoot, based on what was visible, the camera's view finder and the photographer's level of experience.

Adams took this technical data and devised a less complicated process to make photos as fully dynamic as possible. He called this the "Zone System". This system controlled and isolated the 10 distinct tones that make up a photographic exposure, making it possible for photographers to envision the results of an exposure and then execute a capture that could more closely mirror what the artist had in mind for the finished work.

Mr. Adam's Zone System attempted to simplify the complexities of the technical process of predicting and optimizing the exposure and then follow through with completing the project in the printing process. However, his system proved difficult to master and involved complicated procedures to generate the finished photographs.

In today's digital photographic sphere, the principles introduced by Adams can be used to produce results that go far beyond the non-digital methods of Ansel's era. Calibration and lighting tests can be accomplished in a fraction of the time required by the original zone system.

To make a 21st Century, Digital Zone System work, a photographer needs to know how his equipment will perform before the actual shoot. This requires a consummate procedure for calibration and testing to accurately predict the results.

New Digital Zone System Fundamentals

Remember, you want to be able to pre-visualize your results and cannot simply rely on the camera's view finder or LCD preview. Capturing images is about recording light-that means getting the exposure right. The following are some factors to bear in mind when understanding a new Digital Zone System that will take photographers into the 21st Century and beyond.

• The quality of light you wish to capture and communicate to a viewer
• A comprehensive workflow process that takes you from capture to print
• Post processing techniques to enhance the captured image
• Understanding light sources and their effect on color and contrast
• Exposure control to prevent highlight "clipping" and preserve shadow detail
• Use of a Zone Scale to pre-visualize tones in a print.

Digital photographic imaging is about fully comprehending the basis of photographic exposure. In order to achieve this kind of understanding you need to test the complete system used for capture: the camera, the lens and the lighting! The knowledge gained from proper testing procedures allows for more accurate exposures that guarantee the highest quality of image information. The mastery of this process will lead to the kind of photographs that separate the great photographer from the good photographer.

Lee Varis has worked in the field of photography for over 35 years and is widely known for his Hollywood movie posters and video covers. Lee´s creative imaging has been featured in National Geographic and Fortune magazines as well as numerous trade publications including: Photo-Electronic Imaging, Studio Photography, PC Photo, Rangefinder Magazine, Photo District News and Mac Art & Design.

Lee's expertise offers the pinnacle of digital photography techniques for the intermediate and advanced photo imager seeking to increase his or her competence level. His books: Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies-just released in its second edition and "Mastering Exposure and the Zone System for Digital Photographers" are essential additions to the libraries of photo-technicians everywhere. To receive a FREE, exclusive, 2-part PDF tutorial guide that will introduce you to essential photo techniques that will make your photos shine with expertise, visit: [http://www.varis.com/DigitalZoneSystem/VarisLanding.html]

Mr. Varis conducts nationwide seminars on the finer points of digital photography and maintains close relationships with numerous top hardware and software companies including ongoing consultation services on beta testing programs. He is also the president of LADIG (Los Angeles Digital Imaging Group) To see Lee's newest photo tips, projects and photographs visit: http://www.blog.varis.com/

Exposure Basics

Exposure, it's not exactly misunderstood, but there's more to it than meets the eye. By understanding exposure, or at least what the meter on your camera is doing, you'll get better and more consistent images.

Incident readings, reflective readings, 18% grey, centre-weighted, spot metering; what does it all mean and how does it effect your photography?

In a nutshell, your camera's metering system, or a hand-held light meter, assumes one thing: that the world is 18% grey. Middle grey, as it is also known, is halfway between black and white and has a reflectance of 18% or, put another way, reflects 18% of the light falling on it.

Whether it's a moonless midnight sky on a starless night or a snow covered ski field at midday on a sunny day, your camera's meter thinks it's looking at middle grey. What's more, it is designed to give you an exposure reading that will make that assumed middle grey appear middle grey in the photograph, whether it is or it isn't.

Why middle grey? Well, by being halfway between black and white, it's the median point and allows room for brighter and darker areas. For all intents and purposes, it works pretty well. But it's not perfect.

When metering a scene, many photographers use a grey card: a purpose-designed grey coloured card that reflects 18% of light falling on it. By placing the grey card within the scene, or close to it and under the same lighting conditions, and taking a reading from it, you get a very accurate 'average' exposure for the conditions.

Modern on-camera meters (that meter through the lens) are a type of reflective meter, ie they meter the light being reflected from the scene before it. Another type of meter is an incident meter, the hand held meters you often see studio photographers and cinematographers using.

An incident meter measures the light falling on a scene and is used by placing the meter at the subject and facing it back towards the camera. In a way, an incident meter assumes it is a grey card and tells you what your exposure needs to be in order for it to appear mid grey. Once again, an incident meter gives you an accurate 'average' reading.

Most cameras nowadays, especially SLR's, give the photographer a few metering options. These are generally spot, centre-weighted and matrix. With a very small (often a 1? field), spot meters can measure very specific parts of a scene. By measuring the darkest part and the lightest part separately, for example, the photographer can expose halfway between the two or anywhere towards either end of the scale, depending on their vision of the final print. And we just took a step towards Ansel Adams' well-known 'Zone System' that I won't go into any further here.

Centre-weighted meters were the standard for years and in many photographers experience offer the most consistency. They work by giving preference to the central part of the image area as seen through the lens.

Their consistency is due to the meter measuring enough area to give a balanced exposure without getting tricked by large areas of light or dark.

Matrix metering arrived in the late 80's and has gone from strength to strength. It works by dividing the scene into segments, measuring each and then giving what it calculates as the best exposure.

A good test to help with understanding exposure is to zoom in and out while looking at a scene and keep an eye on the exposure readout. As you zoom, the given exposure will change; as the lens widens, more variations in the light occurs, as you zoom in, less.

The light falling on any particular part of the scene isn't actually changing. The exposure readout changes as the meter averages the reflected light before it. As you zoom out, you may bring more bright sky into the image; as you zoom in, it might be towards a fairly dark part of the scene. If that's the case, two very different exposures will be given, even though the light on the scene hasn't changed.

Say, for example, that there are some trees in the middle ground that will be in the final image regardless of whether you zoomed in or out. The light falling on the trees hasn't changed at all, yet they will be rendered quite differently depending on which of the two exposures you use.

Something to think about is whether your chosen framing is predominantly dark or light; in other words is it noticeably either side of an 'average' (equal amounts of light and dark).

If the scene contains predominately bright areas (snow, sky, reflections on water etc) your meter will want to pull that brightness down to replicate middle grey. You will therefore need to compensate by giving one, two or even three stops more exposure than indicated. If the scene contains a lot of dark areas (shadows, dark colours etc) your meter will want to bring it up so you will need to give less exposure.

Naturally, the instinct might be to underexpose in bright light and overexpose when it's dark but remember that your meter is trying to find that middle (grey) ground.

Those two examples are also perfect situations where you could take a reading from a grey card or, if spot metering is an option, meter the brightest part followed by the darkest and expose halfway between (or slightly to either side).

When in doubt, you can always bracket your exposures (take additional images above and below the indicated exposure). As useful as it is - and we've all done it - bracketing is something of a cop out. Better to understand exposure and apply what you've learned by shooting a few tests. Your photography will be the better for it.

Matthew Smeal is a photographer and journalist from Sydney, Australia. To contact Matthew or to view his work, visit his website at http://www.matthewsmeal.com

To Frame or Not to Frame - That is the Question

Is this worth framing?

If you like it, if it gives you enjoyment, if it has sentimental value, then frame it and enjoy it. Don't judge it, and don't let others judge it either.

A few years ago I owned and operated three picture frame shops/art galleries. The number one question I used to get was, "is this worth framing?" My answer was always, "Yes, of course it is."

I would get customers carrying in snap shots, children's artwork, prints from the free calendar they got from their insurance company and just about any picture or print that you can imagine from a number of sources. Yet, the answer is always the same. What makes an item worth framing is what it is worth to you, and no one else. The vast majority of that value has nothing to do with dollars and cents. It has to do with its intrinsic value that no one else can appraise or appreciate.

I especially encouraged parents to frame children's artwork. Now obviously this can get a bit expensive if the child is cranking out 3 or 4 a day in a school art class. However, framing selective pieces can go a long way towards encouraging a budding future great master or just building self-esteem in general.

Vacation snap shots are also worth framing. The more time that passes the more you will be glad you made the investment. With all the new computer technology, it is easy to touch them up. You may be surprised to find you have a little more "Ansel Adams talent" in you than you thought.

I have a good friend that lives in a beautiful home surrounded by a golf course community that boasts of residents that include NFL Football stars and professional golfers. She is retired now, but at one time was a rather large art dealer specializing in paper art. Her home is beautifully decorated, as one would imagine an art dealer's home to be. I can't begin to tell you the huge amount of artwork she has had the opportunity to chose from, many of them very valuable.

Yet, walking through her entryway into her home, the very first piece of artwork you see is a small but gorgeous, professionally framed and matted print entitled "Ted". I sell it in my eBay Store for .00, http://stores.ebay.com/FrameHouseGallery/.

When I asked her of all the beautiful prints and originals (not that this one isn't beautiful) that she had to chose from why was "Ted" picked to be the first piece one sees when they enter the home, her answer was simply, "Because I like it!"

So if you like it, it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks. Frame it, hang it and enjoy it!

No permission is need to reprint or distribute an unedited copy of this article as long as the about the author information including links are included.

Floyd Snyder owned and operated three framing galleries for nearly 20 years. After selling his business in the late 80’s he has returned to the business he has always loved and missed. He has established an eBay Store at http://stores.ebay.com/FrameHouseGallery and his own online store at http://www.FrameHouseGallery.com. He can be reached at Floyd@FrameHouseGallery.com.

Great Decorating Ideas For Home and Office With Inexpensive Artwork

When you are trying to decorate your house or apartment on a dime, the best idea is to start looking for an inexpensive print with one of those ready-made frames. There is no question the price you pay for a collectible oil painting or watercolor can be pretty high for an average wage earner. Artists and their dealers are aware of this and that is why they make a poster or print is so very affordable. The selection of well known artwork is enormous. You can find a reproduction of almost anything you've seen in a museum but that is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a huge assortment of modern art by modern masters, noted photographers and talented unknowns too.

Right now we are in a golden age of art production. Art material and supply stores are selling their products to artists so they can make more art of all kinds like never before in history. The better artists have managed to attract a loyal following of well heeled patrons to their original works. Lucky for everyone else this output of their imaginations is also available as posters which are inexpensive. When they are framed pieces they look their best so you can enjoy and show them off.

You can look for and buy posters of all the great masters in art history. One of the most popular choices from the 20th century is Salvador Dali. The melted watches in his Persistence of Time paintings and several of his landscapes remain very popular. Dali is just one of the many artists you may want to search for. Other well known artists like Picasso and Monet can also be found easily. For example with Picasso you can select from his famous Blue Period or the simple drawings of birds and peace symbol doves. There are so many popular Monet landscapes; it may be difficult to select just one.

Some of the other established artist names that you can find include Cezanne and Andy Warhol. There are even posters from Leonardo da Vinci's notebook drawings. The great thing is all of these artists have their own unique and memorable styles. No matter what type of art you like or how you want to decorate your living place, you will likely find the right combination of color, artistic style, and subject matter for a perfect fit.

Don't forget the posters from photographs that are readily available to decorate your home or office. If you want Ansel Adams' landscapes in black and white you will find plenty. He is probably the most famous but there are many more talented photographers that also have color cityscapes and sports action pictures in poster sizes. Whatever you are looking for, there is an inexpensive print or poster that can save you a fortune. You will get exactly what you were looking for, and the final result is a stunning addition to your living environment.

The best way to hang a poster or a print is to frame it without spending too much money. For one thing, you will want to protect the paper and printing so it will look nice for a long time no matter how often you move it around. Framing also helps to showcase artwork so that it looks its best.

So why not purchase some nice posters to decorate? The quality of the art is great, you can select from photography color and black and white. The choices can even seem endless which may make it difficult to choose just one or two. The good thing is they will showcase your tastes and interests, serve as conversation starters or even lift your mood to a creative place. Then you can add a frame to protect them and show them at their best. This is certainly one way for you to decorate an entire home or office at a relatively small cost that it might otherwise require.

There is lots of art to see at DougsArtGallery.com with many other articles on Dazzling Landscapes as well as travel destinations. Check us out at http://www.dougsartgallery.com and discover some great artwork.

Photography as a Fine Art

Compared to most art forms, photography is a relative newcomer. Having been around for less than 200 years its place in the art world is still being established. Interestingly, there have been many arguments against photography being considered art, one of which is that the camera is a 'machine'. However, one must ask if a camera is any more a machine than a musician's instrument, a sculptor's chisel or a painter's brush?

Another argument is that because of the nature of photography, endless prints can be made from the one negative. While true, it is for this reason that many photographers will produce their work as limited editions just as screen-printers, etchers and wood-block artists will. Some photographers have even been known to destroy their negatives after they have completed printing the edition. However, the ability to produce numerous prints is usually considered part of photography's uniqueness.

Historically, many photographers themselves once considered photography a lesser art form. Called 'Pictorialists' these photographers produced work using soft focus, and often, poor quality, lenses hoping their work would look like Imressionist paintings. Although the Pictorialists won a small battle in having photography recognised and given wall space, they certainly didn't help win the war of photography being recognised purely on its own artistic merits.

There is a great quote that states: "There is no art, only artists." Very true words, as there are many great artists who use photography as their chosen medium. It would be very hard for people to argue that the landscape and nature work of Ansel Adams; the natural world, nudes and still life's of Edward Weston; the abstract forms and textures of Brett Weston and the compositions of Paul Strand are not art.

Because of the passion and extremely high quality work produced by these and other American photography pioneers, the American public and those within art circles could no longer deny that photography was a valuable and expressive art form. Oddly, Europe never seemed to have any trouble accepting photography as art. The work of Henri Cartier-Bressen, Brassai, Latrigue and others has always been held in the highest esteem.

The modern-day ease of photography has also led to a lot of very poor photographic work being passed off as art. Automated cameras have also lent considerable weight to the argument that it's the camera doing the work, not the so-called artist. It is little wonder that many gallery owners are reluctant to give wall space to photographs. It must be remembered that the camera doesn't make a good photographer any more than a piano makes a good pianist or a brush makes a good painter. An artist is an artist no matter what the medium.

Where Photography Becomes Art

What constitutes a fine art photograph would be quality: quality in composition, quality in the negative and quality in the print. Edward Weston once said that, "composition is the best way of seeing." Like other mediums, how the image is composed is of vital importance regarding how the print will be viewed. The photographer then needs to be able to put onto film what he or she is seeing and 'visualising' for the final print. Lens choice, film choice, aperture and shutter speed relationships, what to exposure for and which filters to use (especially for black and white film) all play a vital part in what the final print will look like. Finally, the photographer needs to bring that 'feeling' and expression out in the 'fine' print using a very demanding darkroom technique.

How a Fine Art Photographer Prints

Ansel Adams was fond of saying that the negative is like a musician's score and the print is like their performance. Good photographers will know how to do both very well: photograph to produce good negatives and then make an expressive print that conveys what they saw and felt at the time of exposure.

A photographer will go through a few stages before arriving at the fine print. This begins with making a 'proof print' of the negative and evaluating it to determine how best to properly print from it. The photographer then moves through a series of 'work prints' as he or she fine-tunes the print exposure, cropping and contrast. More often than not, certain areas of a print will require more or less exposure than other areas. Giving more exposure to specific parts of the print, 'burning', will darken those areas. Holding back exposure on specific areas or 'dodging' will lighten them. When the photographer believes that the print is as expressive as possible, they will make a 'fine print' using their (often) extensive notes regarding dodging, burning and contrast.

Most fine art black and white photographers will use fibre-based paper for their fine prints. Fibre-based paper tends to have the edge over its cheaper cousin resin-coated paper. Fibre-based paper also has more archival permanence, however, modern resin-coated papers claim to be the same. Fibre-based paper is harder to print on successfully, however, generally looks better, is preferred or demanded by museums and galleries and is also somewhat demanded by photographic tradition. Good photographers will have no qualms about this and would feel as though they were cheating if they produced their work on resin-coated paper.

There are myriad other variables in fine art photography that include: choice of film developer, choice of paper brand, choice of paper developer and whether to tone the print. All affect the look of the final print and it is the experience of the photographer to know how best to pull all these together to produce a print worthy of being called 'art'.

Matthew Smeal is a fine art black and white photographer and journalist based in Sydney, Australia. His work can be viewed on his website at http://www.matthewsmeal.com

His Most Famous Photograph - Pepper 30 by Edward Weston

Ace photographer Edward Weston was born on March 24, 1886, in Illinois, USA. In 1932, he co-founded the influential 'Group F/64,' with Ansel Adams and Willard Van Dyke. His famous works, mostly done with an 8" X 10" view camera, included a series of landscapes, nudes, and still life. His interest in still life, especially certain vegetable, as evident in his "Pepper #30," was rooted into the initial years of his career, which started more as a hobby. After being gifted a Kodak camera in the year 1902, Weston began photography in the public parks of Chicago and at his aunt's farm.

Edward had an uncanny ability to bring out sensuality even in the vegetated life. His frames covering the ordinary peppers (vegetable) formed a complete body of work, with over 60 different photographs. The picture that earned him highest acclaims belonged to this series, titled "Pepper #30," which was taken in the year 1930. It is a black and white shot, closely focusing on a curved pepper. Weston was highly fascinated by the shapes and curves of this vegetable, which, according to him, carries an analogy to the human body. A careful and well-prepared shot of these peppers also gave an impression of magnificent abstract sculptures. One glance on "Pepper #30" makes it look like a picture of a well-carved figure, with an underlying voluptuousness. Only a closer examination reveals the object as an ordinary vegetable. Weston was a master of the use of light in all his works, especially the still life. The mesmerizing power of "Pepper #30" is greatly attributed to the effect of light. The source of light is placed transverse above, such that it illuminates the frontal portion of the vegetable. The frame can be divided into two portions - the upper one with pitch-dark background and the lower one, which is partially lit. The brightly shining upper half of the pepper remarkably stands out against the black background, whereas the lower half is demarcated only by its own shadow.

Edward Weston took a great care in capturing the frame from an angle that portrays the pepper in three dimensions, rather than as a flat image. Deciding upon the darkness of the original print is also challenging for images that thrive upon the interplay of lighting. Weston's rich experience is demonstrated from "Pepper #30," the 23.97 cm X 19.05 cm print of optimum strength that underscores the sensuality and the mellowness of the picture. The prodigious appreciation of an isolated piece of an otherwise common object is what makes Edward's this work, an epitome of artistry!

Annette Labedzki received her BFA at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. She has more than 25 years experience. She is the founder and developer of an online art gallery featuring original art from all over the world. It is a great site for art collectors to buy original art. Is is also a venue for artists to display and sell their art . Artists can join for free and their image upload is unlimited. Please visit the website at http://www.Labedzki-Art.com.

Annette has bonus offers on her work only. Buy 2 paintings of any size and receive 1 painting of your choice for free of equal size and value. Shipping is free in Canada and the US on smaller items. Please feel free to subscribe to her newsletter at http://www.Labedzki-Art.com.