Open Lab Hours for Spring Break

As you know, Spring Break is next week from March 15-19. The photo labs will be open during the following hours. During these hours students will have access to the Hicks 120 digital lab, the darkroom and the lighting studios. There will be one technician covering all three areas, so if you need help you may need to look around for a moment - please be patient!

Monday: 5-10pm

Tuesday: noon-5pm

Wednesday: 5-10pm

Thursday: 1-6pm

Friday: HOURS SHOULD BE 10:30-4PM. PLEASE CALL THE DEPT TO CONFIRM BEFORE COMING TO SCHOOL.

Enjoy!

Photoshop or Photography?

A recent post by NY Times technology writer David Pogue asks the question: where do we draw the line between Photography and Photo-shoppery? Pogue's questions center around a recent contest in Popular Photography Magazine in which two of the winning photos were "Photoshop Jobs." Questions of this nature have been posted many times on the Bucks Photo Blog. Pogue makes a compelling argument that Photography is subjective by nature. Film photographers have always "burned and dodged" in the darkroom. The photographic frame always leaves out more than it includes. Where do we draw the line? To read the article, click here. Two of the winning photos are posted above.

-Kimberly

Some announcements. .

So many announcements. .

•First, if you see Robin Odland be sure to congratulate him. Robin was given a merit scholarship to attend the Society for Photographic Education Conference in Philadelphia this weekend.

•Remember - the Bucks Arts trip to NYC is on Friday, March 26. Tickets are available in the Art Office in Hicks. Kimberly Witham will be leading students on a tour of Chelsea photo galleries. All are welcomed to come along.

•Did you know there is a scholarship for Bucks Photo Certificate students? If you are a student in the Photo Certificate program and will be taking at least one photo class in the Fall or Summer of 2010, apply for the scholarship. Details are available in the Art Office.

Photo Fight

There has been a bit of a controversy brewing between two art photographers over issues of copying or plagiarizing of work. David Burdeny is being accused of plagiarizing the work Sze Tsung Leong. Both photographers work looks very similar in style and composition and both have photographed the same locations. The question becomes whether Sze Tsung Leong owns intellectual property over these compositions and subject matter. This matter is particularly important to the art dealers and gallerists. "

Sze Tsung Leong

David Burdeny

"The financial ramifications can be considerable. Leong's prints sell for as much as $25,000, and Burdeny's for up to $10,500. Confusion between the work of the two artists in the marketplace could adversely affect those values." from the Los Angeles Times.

I would argue that all of photography is intrinsically about replicating. How many photographs have been taken of the pyramids? Are some going to be similar? Odds are that some will.

Also, style comes and goes. Leong and Burdeny are both working in a contemporary landscape aesthetic defined both by the art market and the artists working today. Overlap happens constantly. It comes with the territory of art. Someone somewhere is working on a similar idea with a similar aesthetic. Is it the person that reaches the highest worth in the art market that gets to claim ownership of this idea and aesthetic?

Chad

Magnum Photo and the digital age

A giant archive of photographic prints from the archives of the Magnum Photography Agency is on its way to Austin, Texas. The archive includes work from many of the best known documentary photographers of the last 63 years. From the NY Times:

It is one of the most important photography archives of the 20th century, consisting of more than 180,000 images known as press prints, the kind of prints once made by the collective to circulate to magazines and newspapers. They are marked on their reverse sides with decades of historical impasto — stamps, stickers and writing chronicling their publication histories — that speaks to their role in helping to create the collective photo bank of modern culture.

“The trucks had GPS, and I was so nervous, I was tracking every single second of the trip,” Mark Lubell, Magnum’s director, said.

Since Magnum’s founding in 1947 by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, David Seymour and William Vandivert, the prints have always been kept at the agency’s headquarters, which has moved around Manhattan. But like many other photo agencies Magnum began digitally scanning its archive many years ago, and in 2006, the cooperative’s membership voted to begin exploring a sale, whose proceeds would be used to help reinvent Magnum for a new age.

For a link to the entire story click here

Do photographs lie or do photographers?

There is an interesting case lately of a nature photographer being stripped of a prestigious award for having staged an image. You can read more about this here. In the end what is the difference between how a tame wolf jumps and how a wild wolf jumps? Should we take the photographer's words about a photograph as truth? Does the photograph validate what the photographer has to say about the work? What are we to believe when both the photographer and the photograph can lie?

Chad

Open Lab Hours for Spring 2010

Welcome Back! Open lab hours for the studios are listed below. Please note: open labs begin Thursday, January 21.

Hicks 120 Digital Lab

Mondays noon-6pm

Tuesdays 8:30am-1:30pm & 5:30-10pm

Wednesdays noon-10pm

Thursdays 5:30-10pm

Fridays 10am-7:30pm

B&W Darkroom

Mondays 8:30am-1pm & 5-10pm

Tuesdays 12:30-10pm

Wednesdays 8:30am-1pm & 5-10pm

Thursdays 5-6pm

Fridays 10am-7:30pm

Hicks 114 Lighting Studio

Mondays 9am-noon & 5-10pm

Tuesdays 9am-10pm

Wednesdays 5-10pm

Thursdays 6-10pm

Fridays 10am-7:30pm