January 2016

DSC_9833D80a  Bus Stop © 2015 Paul Light

https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/21640693832/

December 2015

DSC06657NX5N  Amsterdam  © 2015 Paul Light

November 2015

This Month's Photograph   New York's skyscrapers have been magical to me since I was a child. For the past three years I have been photographing the space around the High Line. There is lots of construction going on in that area. Using the panoramic format I am able to create a majestic horizontal view of this section of the New York skyline that is very different than what I would get with a traditional wide angle lens. As I shoot the panoramic, I can only see it as several vertical sections, which are stitched together once I put the files on the computer. With practice, I am able to imagine roughly what it will look like, but never know with certainty until it is assembled on the computer. I like the surprise of not knowing exactly what I have at the time of exposure.

October 2015

This Month's Photograph   I took this photograph in Brussels. The paint and vines make this something beyond just a door. The combination of bright soft-edged painted colors and the vines give it the quality of a landscape that has magically appeared in an urban space. As a photographer, I am always seeking ways to bring out the extraordinary in everyday environments. In this photograph, I had some help from the homeowner, who had created this fantastic door. I like photographing the many ways people modify urban spaces to reflect their dreams and values.

September 2015

This Month's Photograph   This month's photograph was taken in the Boston Public Garden. This is the Boston Acro Play group. When I began photography I was most interested in photographing people I did not know, but I had no idea how to do so. And then I saw the photographs of Robert Frank showing everyday life rather than news events or celebrities. The next day I photographed a parade of children and their pets in Palo Alto, CA. I was disappointed with the results and threw away the negatives. My timing was off - way off. I realized that for the type of candid I was interested in, it was often critical to take the picture before the person could choose how to react to the event. I continue to photograph parades and festivals, but have become much happier with my timing and the subsequent results. Working close creates a dramatic perspective that is unobtainable by any other method, especially when using a wide angle lens. I am most comfortable using ones that have an angle of view of 84 -104°, working 3 feet or closer to my main subject. I don't pose them or talk with them while taking their picture, but they know I am there. The closer I shoot the faster I need to decide when to shoot and continue to only shoot before the person can make a choice how to react to my presence. "Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed." - Garry Winogrand

August 2015

This Month's Photograph I took this panoramic photograph in New York City on the Upper West Side. I have experimented with panoramic photography for a number of years, trying a variety of approaches. I created this photograph using a digital mirrorless camera mounted on a tripod with a Really Right Stuff Panoramic head and editing it with Photomerge in Photoshop. I also use the Autostitch application to create images that might be considered freeform panoramics. My iBook "Autostitched 1.0" is now available for 99 cents from the iTunes stores. It is compatible with iTouch, iPhone, iPad and MacBooks. You need to have an iPad with iBooks 2 or later and iOS 5 or later, or an iPhone with iOS 8.4 or later, or a Mac with OS X 10.9 or later. You can see more of my panoramics at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/sets/72157633709957926/ You can see some of my autostitched photographs at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/sets/72157633378139401 and https://www.flickr.com/photos/paullight/sets/72157633259245123

July 2015

This Month's Photograph This photograph was made in Barcelona. Making photographs in Barcelona gave me my first opportunity to explore using Autostitch outside of the United States. I like to photograph things I have never noticed before. Never having been to Spain before, there was lots to notice. The Autostitch series is an extension of my work with panoramic photography, which I began in the early 1970s by pasting darkroom prints together. I continued the work in the 1980s using a 35mm camera with a built in panoramic mask and then in the 1990s using a view camera with a custom-designed panoramic film slide. In the early 2000s, I began to cut and repiece photographs using Adobe Photoshop. For the photographs in this series, I use a variety of cameras, as well an iPhone and an iPad. Each photograph is composed of several smaller photographs electronically pieced together using an algorithm created by Cloudburst Research and offered in the apps Autostitch and Calico.  Perspective and texture play a central role in all of my photography. In this series, I have perspective options that I never knew were possible. I have always liked wide angle lenses, as well as photo compositing techniques that give a similar perspective effect to wide angle lenses. The algorithms in AutoStitch and Calico enhance the possibilities that I previously only began to explore with lenses and photo compositing.