Archive for February, 2012
WPPI 2012 Las Vegas Itinerary
Out + About 
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Tue 02.07.2012
My tough-as-nails schedule often keeps me tethered to my studio until the wee hours of the morning. My social life (or lack thereof) has seriously taken a hit due to the demands of being a serious creative and entrepreneur.
WPPI’s convention in Vegas seamlessly blends my joint passion for hard work and hard partying (finally, I can get out!)—I don’t care if it sounds cliché, it’s 100-percent true. The whole affair is teeming with photographers just crazy enough to throw every ounce of their passion into growing their business. WPPI is where like minds can join forces to collaborate, inspire one another and, yes, talk shop over a stiff martini with two olives. In fact, it’s our inalienable right.
Below, scope out all the highlights of my planned itinerary at WPPI 2012, with highlights including my Platform Class on savvy use of social media, two days of judging, a special TWiT Photo Episode, and plenty of free evenings for indulgence in my aforementioned elixir of choice. Business and pleasure, if you’re doing it right, always join forces.
Many of WPPI’s Platform Classes are going to fill up quickly. I encourage you to act fast! Register via Pre-Board here.
San Francisco’s famed Julia Morgan Ballroom – a study in timeless architectural beauty and unassailable elegance – is the backdrop for this image. Last year, I was generously invited to use this opulent ballroom as the site for a photo project, in which I recreated the unique glamor of Old Hollywood.
Here, a model in period wardrobe peers out the window, her vision assisted by the use of Galilean binoculars.
Powerful images engender an enduring effect not just because of their sheer technical mastery or absolute beauty, but more so because the photograph tells a story.
A pretty model might be nice or interesting for a viewer to look at, but unless something about her compels the viewer to ask questions – in this case, “What is she searching for?” or “What does she see?” – the image is ultimately forgettable.
Through the use of this prop, these history- and class-laden Galilean binoculars, the model invites a slew of questions that provoke the viewer to engage the photograph as a story whose conclusion they’re dying to discover.
Don’t miss a chance to watch or listen to your favorite photographers – download the TWiT Photo podcast on iTunes for free :)
The question on everyone’s mind must be: what hasn’t David Bergman done? With 11 covers for Sports Illustrated, including the coveted 2010 Super Bowl, and his distinction as official tour photographer for Bon Jovi, David gets a lot of game. He joins us live in the TWiT studio to discuss his now-famous GigaPan shot of Obama’s inauguration and shows viewers how he processes 600 frames of a GigaPan shot in a live software demo. Also, the music geek shares inside secrets on being a successful music tour photographer, and you won’t want to miss the moment he shocks Leo and me with his gigantic, $10G+ bazooka 600mm F4 Nikon lens.
Excellence Is In The Margins
Guest Posts 2
Wed 02.01.2012
Photographer and writer Guy Tal rises above the white-noise chatter of the blogosphere with his deeply subtle, radically humane reflections on artistic inspiration. Guy approaches life with a unique-order joie de vivre, and as a photographer, his landscape images lend vibrant and fresh energy into the medium. As a writer about the craft of photography, his profoundly philosophical and measured meditations stir my soul. It’s with great excitement that I present to you Guy’s guest contribution — in this moving, incisive essay, he explores why artists create and, alternatively, why we create excuses for our perceived imperfections. Ego and insecurity have no place in our lives, they are but self-fabricated delusions that only interfere with what’s really important in life: quality experiences endowed with truth and meaning.
Follow Guy Tal on Twitter.
Post by Guy Tal. Image by David Fantle
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
–Emile Zola
Ever wonder what makes one image “better” than another? In some cases it may be obvious – one may have more compelling subject matter, another might suffer from poor technique, some benefit from fortuitous circumstances (“same place, but with a rainbow on top”) etc. Still, most of these can be canceled out through practice or luck. There is still that “something,” though — that elusive “je ne sais quoi” — that sets off great from good. It is why some can produce great work more consistently than others, even working in the same medium and with the same subjects and using the same tools.
