Last August a new law was passed in Mexico. All commerce had a year to move from antiecological plastic bags to ecological bags. They have six monts left and, of course, everybody’s making a fuss over how many jobs will be lost, how much plastic will stop being produced and how much money will not be earned. Is anyone talking about the main theme here: ECOLOGY? No, of course not. As usual, we’re treating the planet as if today was the only day and the future didn’t exist, rather than use the time to look for alternatives. I know this happens in other countries too, but I’m Mexican, so I also hate to say that this is so typically Mexican that it breaks my heart and keeps telling me I did the right thing for my kid(s): never to bring them to this world. That’s my maximum proof of love to them.
Death and Resurrection of an object II
February 24th, 2010 by ary : Twit this!
Once more, walking in the woods with my dogs, I found some piece of trash that looked interesting: a sneaker shoe. Why one and not two if they’re always around in pairs? Who throws away just one shoe? And what’s more, why leave trash in the woods when you should take it to a garbage bin?
Anyway, I thought it’d be interesting to repeat the exercise of finding ways to “bring back to life” through photography that piece of garbage that had been taken for dead. Following is the series of 15 photographs that show the transformation from “rubbish” to art by means of a different way of looking at it and a camera.
As always, I kept within my own paradigms: I used only available light and no digital retouching with Photoshop or anyother kid of software. It’s all reflections, refractions, glass, metal, and materials of different colours to “paint” the light.
I ask of you, if I may, that you judge each photograph for what it is, not thinking of the rubbish that is the subject. Do you like it? Does it stirr your emotions, your feelings, your memories? Is it beautiful to you? Is it balanced?
Each photo should stand for itself, but each is also one of the 15 in the series. I’d love it if you left me a comment. Thank you.
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- tenis shoe, garbage, rubbish, sneaker, red, vibrant, colors
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If you wish, you can see the first series “Death and resurrection of an object” in the entry: http://www.blog.arysnyder.com/?p=923
Photoshop’s 20th anniversary
February 24th, 2010 by ary : Twit this!
20 years ago I started using Mac computers, and my favourite software wasn’t Photoshop but Illustrator. However, there’s no software that has left me in such awe than Photoshop.
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- Photoshop 1.0 box • La caja de la primera versión de Photoshop
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I remember than when I bought it (Photoshop 2.0), the manuals were far bigger than the single floppy in which the whole software fitted. I managed to produce 3D images in a very easy way, besides many other effects (now, with Photoshop CS3, which is the one I have, I have no idea how to make 3D. As in most software, new version add new features but often make it all more complicated needlessly.
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- Photoshop fitted in one floppy disk! • Photoshop cabía en un diskette.
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Now I use it rather often. Hardly at all for the photographs I take —except what I’d do in a dark room were I to keep using film: a bit of contrast, a bit adjustment in light, a slight colour correction or trimming the shot— (I think I’m a photography purist and I respect my self impossed paradigms), but at work (I work in a magazine). Even though I’m the editor-in-chief and have an art director and a designer who are extremely talented with Photoshop, I sometimes like to do things myself just so I don’t forget and keep up with it. Besides, I allow myself more freedom there.
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- Photoshop CS4
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Nevertheless, I know this software allowed a leap in digital retouching, in photography, in print and in many other areas around those. It broke paradigms. It marked an era. It was a benchmark. So, for that, happy 20th anniversary, Photoshop!
(Please visit this entry where I propose a debate regarding digital retouching in photography: http://www.blog.arysnyder.com/?p=941)
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J.D. Salinger
February 1st, 2010 by ary : Twit this!About two and a half months ago I had an accident and had to have spine surgery. When I was in recovery I decided to try the advise my boss’s boss had given me three years ago and I got a divorce from any news: TV, radio, internet, newspapers, magazines.
Now that I’ve gone back to work I also went back to my stubborn need to follow the news, but the first piece of news I heard rocked me so hard that nothing else has been able to shake this feeling of having been left an orfan: J.D. Salinger’s death.
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The gesture says it all: World, don't come near me.
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When it was the right time (because there is a perfect time to read it), and then many years later, The Catcher in the Rye caused an explosion within myself. It was as if Holden gave voice to so many things I thought and couldn’t express, particulary because I was a teenager that didn’t rebel, didn’t gave any trouble (such a disgrace! You should be a trouble teenager when you are at that age). Holden said something like he wished he lived in an isolated cabin without having to have stupid conversations with anyone. I believe I’m on the right path —at least I already live in an isolated cabin and I’m not much of a talker—, which sometimes scares me because we’re supposed to be social people. But I think he did live like Holden wanted, and to live the way you want is always a major accomplishment.
Later, I found my favourite by Salinger: Franny and Zooey. Both books are not only part of my esential reading, but marked me with the kind of footprint only words can leave.
And like Holden said as well: I wish I could prey —at least to see if I don’t feel such a desperate orphan that way—, but if he didn’t do it because he felt he was kind of an atheist, I don’t do it because I am an atheist.
J.D. Salinger: I will not miss you because you were there, but because you won’t be anymore. I hope you do find the total silence you longed. And this photograph is for you:
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flower as an abstract —abstract photography
January 3rd, 2010 by ary : Twit this!
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The sun stroke the flower as if caressing it, and my macro lens revealed a whole new possibility when I photographed it this way.
Planet at great risk unless we change our economic model
January 3rd, 2010 by ary : Twit this!Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Managment, tagged in a trillion dollars the price to fight climate change during the Copenhage talks.
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His specific words were: “They don’t look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race”.
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But if we’re honest, as long as we don’t change our economic model, and I mean the global economy, nothing’s going to change, or, being way too optimistic, little will change. Why?.
Because if a person like you or me think it’s way too expensive to change regular bulbs that sell for less than 10 cents, for saving bulbs, that cost around 8-9 dollars (and take notice: most of the saving bulbs contain heavy metals that, when thrown away, are highly contaminant of the soil) in spite of the fact that they last much longer and their light is cold, thus not contributing that much to global warming, what can we expect of the company we work for, which only cares about quarterly reports —earnings, earnings, earnings—, or from our governments, which only act to gain votes for the next election even if that means giving money away in a populist way and always being careful not to affect the interests of big corporations.
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And suddenly we feel very clever by using electric cars which use lithium batteries and other kinds that when use up all their useful life, contaminate terribly, or we build nuclear plants. Sure, we haven’t had any accident in years, but, what are we going to do with radioactive waste? Can we guarantee that not even one container will crack even slightly releasing radioactivity? The truth is we cannot. Just find out how many states and countries refuse to have radioactive waste buried in their territories, so we dump them at sea with the risk that that implies.
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The fact is that as long as we’re tagging in dollars (or pesos, or yens, or rupias, or whatever currency) how much it costs to fight global warming, climate change, loss of ecosistems, contaminations, overpopulation and all the other problems we’ve caused this planet, we’re not going to get anything fixed and time’s against us.
However, in the news you just hear corporations and governments calculating how expensive and/or not as effective it is to use wind, solar or oceanic energy when compared with fossil fuels. Hey! And how much does it cost NOT to have a planet to live in in the short future? Who’ll be the valient who’ll say “the heck with the price, we HAVE to do it regardless of cost, and EVERYONE has to cooperate and do their part even if this takes us years or centuries back in economic terms”.
And this is some of what we’re loosing:
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I’m working on the second of three books for kids on what’s going and how to save the planet. I believe they can do a lot and they will be able to do much more when they’re responsible grown ups, if there’s still a planet to save. I feel like I’m in a loosing battle, but I also feel it’s absolutely important that I do this.
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So, what are you going to do today, right now?
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Photo credits: http://stylecouch.files.wordpress.com (a trillion dólars); http://www.freshapps.com (skull on fire); Radioactive waste (www.treehugger.com); Ary Snyder (all others).
Requiem for Kodachrome
December 31st, 2009 by ary : Twit this!I have to say goodbye to 2009 by mourning the death of Kodachrome film. That’s the brand of film my dad gave me to prove to him that I could take good enough photographs so I deserved his camera. And now, they not just don’t longer make it, but nobody processes it!
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It’s sad to think my father left about 50,000 slides, most of archeological sites, anthropological issues or cultural matters and soon there won’t be a way of projecting them, seeing them… And the worst part is that those slides, in spite of decades, still have a spectacular quality, whereas digital files get corrupted or become obsolete because the storage device or back-up you use becomes obsolete.
I know I could buy a flatbed scanner or one like this to scan his slides and mine, plus all my negative film, but, you know what? Quality is still unmatched.
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We may never reach the Orwellian extreme of “War is Peace” (where war exists only to destroy material stuff —sorry about the casualties— in order to make people buy everything again thus maintaining the economy of the world going.
Requiem for Kodachrome.
Is it ok to digitally retouch a photo? Is it still a photograph?
December 10th, 2009 by ary : Twit this!I love Flickr, uploading my photos and looking at the photos of others. Very often I find jewels that leave me breathless, however, when I look at them closely, rather often I notice they’ve been heavily manipulated in Photoshop (a digital retouching software) or some other similar program, so much indeed that they look little like the original photo (if you get to see the original photo). So I wonder, can these kind of images still be considered photographs, or should we call them some other way like photoart or photoretouching?
Examples of what I’ve mentioned include loads of photos of droplets with reflections inside, sunsets in the eyes of a frog barely out of the water, skies of backgrounds absolutely stunning but somehow impossible, etc. Somo of this retouching is really highly mastered, but in my opinion they are only special effects, and I believe that when they are exhibited as a photograph without any mention of the retouching, or without refering to them as photoart or photoretouch or whatever name chosen for them, they are deceiving whoever is looking at them. Here’s an example:
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Until I saw below it the original photo. I must say to be fair that who uploaded this did say she’d manipulated the original photo and even posted the original photo, which, as you can see, is not a good one (the subject is too centered, no light on its face, little intention, a metal fence that doesn’t help, a flattish background…)
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But this can’t be the end of it. We’re used to seeing the most amazing special effects in films, and thanks to them we feel what it’s like to be in other planets, with other beings, in extreme circumstances, etc. But we KNOW they are special effects. People work hard to make them as convincingly as possible, but they don’t advertise their movies as “filmed in Jupiter”. Special effects don’t diminish the product, we simply know the little green men is not an alien and that no superhero can fly without a special gadget for it.
In women’s magazines, and many others too, is rutinary to do heavy retouching on the photos of whoever’s on the cover so he/she doesn’t have any wrinkles, any imperfections, any extra weight, but they don’t tell us about it. They don’t show us the original shooting, therefore, what’s the journalistic value –not to mention the moral one– of those photos?
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However, photography, as a means to capture an instant, has always manipulated such instant somehow: by the way the photographer frames the picture, using this lens and not another, changing the depth of field, lightening or darkening the shot, using different speeds...Pero todo eso se hace usando su herramienta: la cámara. But that was all done using its tool: the camera. It may alter the way we see something, but it’s still a reflection, a copy of reality.
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Subject at the center. No much to it.
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That’s better. The subject charged to the right (its center is in golden meassure) makes it more interesting, and the little depth of field helps bring it out.
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Wow, that’s far better. Using a different lens (a macro) an almost unknown side of a dandelion is shown, and the image is beautiful. Now comes the question: Was reality altered? Was the looker of the photograph lied to?
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Ok, the photo of some flowers and a bee. Not very interesting, and if the bee is the subject of the photo, it gets almost lost between so many elements.
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Again, by closing up on the subject and changing the point of view, the photo is much better without any retouching. It’s still a photograph. En resumen, mejorar un poco la imagen está bien, es como editar un texto. Pero cambiar la realidad completamente, bueno, pues también está bien, simplemente que ya no es una fotografía.
Of course, when photographs were taken with film, it was possible to make them better in the darkroom: framing them better, lightening or darkening some area or all of it, correcting color, etc. The same should hold true for digital photos, the point is not to reach an extreme where we don’t know if the bee was really there, if the flowers were actually yellow, if the dramatic sky looked like it when the picture was taken. In short, a slight betterment of the image is ok. That’s like editing a text. But changing reality completely, well, it’s fine, but it’s just not a photograph.
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This is also a photograph. No digital retouching, no photoshop. It’s the capture of an instant…
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…This one hasn’t been manipulated either. It’s just the camera, the lens and my eye...
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Same as this one: no retouching.
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This too is a photograph.
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[español]Y también esta es una foto
Entonces, quizá sea el momento de hacer una propuesta: llamemos fotografías a las que lo son, y busquemos otro nombre para las imágenes tan alteradas que son… otra cosa distinta a una foto. ¿Tienes alguna propuesta?[/español][english]And this too is a photo.
Then, perhaps this is the moment to make a proposal: let’s call photographs photographs, and let’s find a word for the ones that have been so heavily altered that are something other than a photo. So, do you have any name proposal? [/english]
Muerte y resurrección de un objeto
December 6th, 2009 by ary : Twit this!A series of 15 photos describing the finding of an useless, therefore “dead” piece of an object (a pet bottle) and its resurrection through photography.
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My Green Book.
December 6th, 2009 by ary : Twit this!A couple of months ago went on sale a book that’s a project I directed. It’s a book for kids that explains why our planet is sick and what to do to help it.
We wrote it in an everyday language so it wouldn’t seem a text book, it has a lot of sense of humour in spite of how serious the subject is, and it’s objective is make kids feel they have the power to demand the adults in their life to make the changes in habits that are needed to try and revert the ecologic emergency we’re facing.
The first thing kids read is a letter from a fictional company thanking them from choosing the Earth to live. Next, of course, they see the other “options” they had, like Mars, Venus and others and why they couldn’t live there. Then the structure of the book is like that of a manual of instructions on how to use the product (the Earth) correctly so it doesn’t stop working properly or gets out of balance.
The book has activities, scientific experiments, tips to help the Earth, brief historical facts, and we always gave all points of view on touchy subjects so kids judge themselves (for instance, on nueclear energy). The book was reviewed and approved before going into printing by the Environmental Ministry and the biggest NGO in México.
Here are some pages. We used three talented illustrators to give more dynamism to the book.
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The book includes a table game where kids have to make choices that are good, neutral or bad for our planet, plus an infraction booklet so they fine their parents, teachers, neighbours, friends, etc., regarding the way their environmental actions, like wasting water or electricity.
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And well, we’re already working on the second book. There are three books in the series. The text was written by Guadalupe Alemán, the art director was Jaime Esquivel,
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When I was 11 years old and realized what we were doing to our planet I chose not to have kids. I couldn’t bear the extinction of species, the ecosystems destroyed… I didn’t want to show my kid the photo of a whale and tell him how amazing whales were, but we killed them all. Through my life I’ve kept asking myself about it because I would’ve loved to have a kid, but I just don’t like the way I see us treating the Earth, I don’t like how societies are working, I can’t bear to have it and then tell him/her: “well, I wanted a kid and though things suck, you’re going to have to put up with it”. However, I will not stop trying to do all I can to change the way we treat our planet, and that’s why I feel so proud of this book. It’s my contribution to human kind.
