My Blog

A Short Course in Photography: An Introduction to Photographic Technique (6th Edition)

This easy-to-use, inexpensive book introduces beginning picture takers and makers to the fundamentals of photography and suggests ways in which they might create photographs that have meaning. Oriented toward traditional black and white photography, the book also explores digital techniques and web photography resources, equipment, cameras and camera accessories, the exposure and development of film, and the making and finishing of prints. All aspects of the process are explained and illustrated clearly in two-page spreads, each of which addresses a self-contained topic. For people who don’t know anything about photography and would like to learn, and for those who want to make better pictures than they already do.

Read more…

Pixar’s unprecedented string of hit animated features was built on the short films in this collection. John Lasseter and Ed Catmull used these cartoons the way Walt Disney used the “Silly Symphonies” during the 1930s: as a training ground for artists and a way to explore the potential of a new medium. Although it’s only 90 seconds long, “Luxo, Jr.” (1986) ranks as the “Steamboat Willie” of computer animation: For the first time, audiences believed CG characters could think and feel. (It was also the first CG film to make audiences laugh.) When the artists began work on Toy Story, they had learned so much from the shorts, they were ready to undertake that landmark creation. In the later shorts, the viewer can see the artists continuing to experiment: with a more realistic human figure in “Geri’s Game” and with new ways of suggesting atmospheric effects in “Boundin’.” Some of the more recent shorts continue the adventures of the characters from the features. “Jack (more…)