Michael Hedges revolutionized solo acoustic guitar performance.
Aerial Boundaries is quite possibly his best known performance.
It’s absolutely brilliant!
Listen to more music here.
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There are at many ways to convert an image from color to black and white. Here's a roundup and evaluation of the top seven plus a set of considerations to help you choose the best one for your needs.
1 Desaturate
Desaturate or use the Saturation slider to make all the channels the same without control over the mix. Desaturaton is useful for near neutral images, otherwise it produces compressed tonal structure.
2 Convert Mode To Grayscale
Grayscale conversions eliminate all channels but one. The default mix is 59% Green, 29% Red, 11% Blue. This can be customized by targeting a single channel before conversion, to get 100% of any channel in any color space, including Lab. Quick and direct, this method eliminates future flexibility; its limited use is to create Grayscale images for reproduction but it's not the best way to make a conversion from color to black and white.
3 Channel Mixer
The Channel Mixer set to Monochrome allows you to customize the mix of channels and can be used as an adjustment layer, which allows you to change the mix at any time in the future.
Mike Manring demonstrates his musical virtuosity with his custom made bass capable of switching to different tunings mid-performance.
In this extended video, after his first astonishing performance he eloquently celebrates the instrument he loves, before playing two more pieces.
He’s a musical pioneer who continues to break new ground. In my humble opinion, he is the world’s finest bass player – ever.
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Irving Penn.
“I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer.” – Irving Penn
“A good photograph is one that communicate a fact, touches the heart, leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.” – Irving Penn
“I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.” – Irving Penn
“A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.” – Irving Penn
“Over the years I must have spent thousands of hours silently brushing on the liquid coatings, preparing each sheet in anticipation of reaching the perfect print.” – Irving Penn
“I’ve tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I’ve failed. I’ve tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can’t control. I’m really quite narrow, you know.” – Irving Penn
“Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is the one they would like to show to the world… Every so often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.” – Irving Penn
“Many photographers feel their client is the subject. My client is a woman in Kansas who reads Vogue. I’m trying to intrigue, stimulate, feed her. My responsibility is to the reader. The severe portrait that is not the greatest joy in the world to the subject may be enormously interesting to the reader.” – Irving Penn
“What I really try to do is photograph people at rest, in a state of serenity.” – Irving Penn
“I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn’t go to it out of hunger.” – Irving Penn
View more 12 Great Photographs By Great Photographers.
Read more in The Essential Collection Of Quotes By Photographers.
View more in The Essential Collection Of Documentaries On Photographers.
In the vernacular the phrase “black and white” can be used to describe definitive answers, while the use of the phrase “gray areas” often means an area defies easy definition making it difficult to draw hard and fast lines.
While there is a general consensus as to what constitutes the colors black, white and gray, opinions vary significantly when it comes to identifying absolute blacks, whites, and grays.
Which of these colors is absolutely neutral? Which are warmer than neutral? Which are cooler than neutral? All of them are nearly neutral when compared to fully saturated colors. More importantly, which colors do you prefer? Which colors would most enhance the images you are producing?
It‘s helpful to sensitize yourself to these many possibilities and to identify your personal preferences.
Read more in my Black & White lessons.
Learn more in my digital photography and digital printing workshops.
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Harold Edgerton.
“If you don’t wake up at three in the morning and want to do something, you’re wasting your time. ” – Harold Egerton
“When I was a boy, I read with great interest but skepticism about as magic lamp which was used with success by a certain Aladdin. Today I have no skepticism whatsoever about the magic of the xenon flash lamp which we use so effectively for many purposes.” – Harold Egerton
“The trick to education is to teach people in such a way that they don’t realize they’re learning until it’s too late.” – Harold Eugene Edgerton
“We worked and worked, didn’t get anywhere. That’s how you know you’re doing research.” – Harold Egerton
“In many ways, unexpected results are what have most inspired my photography.” – Harold Egerton
“Don’t make me out to be an artist. I am an engineer. I am after the facts, only the facts.” – Harold Egerton
“Work like hell, tell everyone everything you know, close a deal with a handshake, and have fun.” – Harold Egerton
Read more in The Essential Collection Of Quotes By Photographers.
View more in 12 Great Photographs By Great Photographers.
View more in The Essential Collection Of Documentaries On Photographers.
high key
mid key full scale
mid key high contrast
high contrast
low key
Most successful artists define a consistent palette for their life’s work, for periods during their careers, or for individual bodies of work. It’s one of the primary things that creates an easily recognizable signature style. This is as true for black and white photographers as it is color photographers.
You can precisely describe black and white palettes by identifying the overall lightness or key (high – light, medium, low – dark) and the amount of contrast (high, medium, low, none) held in three ranges of tones – shadows (zones 0-3), midtones (zones 4-7), and highlights (zones 8-10). Put more broadly, the dominant range of tone is identified first and then each range of tone can be described as expanded or compressed; a range of tone that does not exist in an image could be described as fully compressed.
Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Edward Burtynsky.
“[Taking good images] is about knowing oneself and trying to listen to that kind of intuitive forces that allow you to respond more positively to one image or to one subject over another and pay attention to that emotion and to follow that and also to be aware of it.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I think you learn about pictures in yourself … being true to things that you personally respond to and this is the only way you find your original voice, by following your own instinct.” – Edward Burtynsky
“You need to have an inquiring mind. You have to ask questions (…), not accept what is given, but say: “Why is it so?” And it is in that kind of asking that you begin to get behind some of the issues that allow the world appear the way it does. So if you just accept the world the way it is and don’t question it I can’t see how you can go far creatively.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Sometimes you don’t know why you’re doing something. You’re intuitively following, to see where it leads.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Somebody referred to what I do as subliminal activism, which I like.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I wish my artwork could persuade millions of people to join a global conversation about sustainability.” – Edward Burtynsky
“We come from the nature and we have to understand what it is, because we are conected to it and we are part of it. And if we destroy nature we destroy ourselves” – Edward Burtynsky
“Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.
These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Like all animals, human beings have always taken what they want from nature. But we are the rogue species. We are unique in our ability to use resources on a scale and at a speed that our fellow species can’t.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I’m working in this very complex set of issues having to do with who we are as a species and how much we can do to the Earth before it starts to buckle under. My work can easily read as an indictment, but I don’t see it as that simple a problem.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn’t changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Industrial landscape – define us and our belonging to the planet.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Water, like many other resources, is harvested, transported and used throughout all aspects of society. Unlike other resources, water is critical to the survival of all forms of life. The underlying question that sits at the core of my exploration is to what degree can we shape water before it begins to shape us.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I think the environmental movement has failed in that it’s used the stick too much; it’s used the apocalyptic tone too much; it hasn’t sold the positive aspects of being environmentally concerned and trying to pull us out.” – Edward Burtynsky
“Digital photography and Photoshop have made it very easy for people to take pictures. It’s a medium that allows a lot of mediocre stuff to get through.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I wish I could create an IMAX film that would make my work accessible to a broader audience.” – Edward Burtynsky
“I wish we could launch a ground-breaking competition that motivates kids to invent new ideas in sustainable living.” – Edward Burtynsky
Read more in The Essential Collection Of Quotes By Photographers.
View more in 12 Great Photographs By Great Photographers.
View more in The Essential Collection Of Documentaries On Photographers.
