pixnoir : : girlwiz

March 9 - May 8

The Amador Gallery exhibit "Kobe," is a series of black and white photographs by Ryuji Miyamoto which display the architectural devastation wrought by the Great Hanshin earthquake upon the city of Kobe, Japan in 1995.

Over the years, Ryuji Miyamoto has kept a watchful eye on Japan's cities as they underwent vertiginous changes. His intention has been to photodocument the demolitions and reconstructions of whole quarters of the cities. Although he tries to photograph the architectural qualities of the cities, he often focuses on the aspect of destruction: the pictures of Kobe after the 1995 earthquake are his most renowned series.

Amador Gallery
41 E. 57 Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022

Posted by at 12:38 AM | Permalink

From the British Journal of Photography website:

ImagePrint v8.0 is a RIP designed for Epson models with some very handy features for wedding and events photographers, says Kevin Carter

Offering features such as borders, frames, layout packages and free access to a raft of first-rate profiles, ImagePrint is a RIP intended solely for photographers. As with rival software programs, it replaces the manufacturer's driver for complete control over the printer, either locally or over a network, so when purchasing a licence you specify a particular model. However there's a twist - the price is based on the format. For example, the license for the popular 17-inch Epson SP3800/3880 is priced at $895 (£570), while the roll-fed SP4880 is $1495 (£953). Support is mainly limited to Epson professional printers, although some pro-orientated HP and Canon models have been added recently and I'd expect to see more in future.

As an ICC colour managed application with support for both RGB and CMYK, ImagePrint can use the vast majority of ICC colour profiles, including your own custom-made profiles. But one of the big attractions of the program is access to ImagePrint's library of profiles, which includes some 27,000 profiles for over 400 papers. A number of profiles are shipped on the disc for your specified printer, but a download manager application is included to gain access to the library. Selecting and downloading the appropriate profile takes no more than a few minutes.
ImagePrint offers a range of greyscale and soft-proofing profiles for Photoshop, plus colour profiles for five lighting temperatures (daylight, tungsten, cool white fluorescent (CWF), CWF portrait and mixed lighting), across a range of Fine Art papers from Hahnemuehle, Canson, MOAB, Ilford, Epson and many others. If a particular profile isn't available Colorbytesoftware will build it for free (although wisely, it doesn't say how many times).

User's guide
I was expecting the user interface to be complicated but it has a very minimalist look and is reasonably intuitive. Colorbytesoftware's approach is to keep it as simple as possible. But relative simplicity masks enormous flexibility and if you are to use the program to its fullest extent, you will need to refer to the manual or watch online videos. There are number of floating windows, and not all of them open by default.
Images are selected from the browser and, providing you've selected the appropriate paper size from the main toolbar, you can add what you like by print size from the Layout window. You can add the same image as many times as you like, or add a mix - ImagePrint will do the rest. You can also position the image on the paper yourself, cramming on as many different sizes as you can. If one doesn't fit, ImagePrint will automatically add another page. If you're printing from cut-sheets, for instance using the SP3800, you can align mixed size photos with precision for the Rotatrim, saving paper waste and time. For a wedding or event photographer this is a hugely compelling feature and a real game changer.
Another attractive and unique feature is ImagePrint's ability to produce split tone prints with the greyscale profiles. I was able to add a split tone defining both the shadow and highlight tints and the point of separation, or blend, with ease. Two colour/tint pickers allow for easy selection, although I found it's easier to click on a point than drag the picker. A slider is used for the blend and the preview is updated in a real-time, making accurate selections possible. If I have a niggle it's that the image is low-resolution, and somewhat slightly disconcerting in use. But for wedding and fine art photographers the greyscale profiles and split-toning feature will have enormous potential.

Other features include adding borders and text, although this requires some skill and a concerted reading of the instruction manual. None of it seems really difficult, but don't expect to be able to knock something up on the fly. And if you do go wrong, you can always take a step back - none of the adjustments are destructive though. A border browser has some templates but with my installation, selecting this window caused ImagePrint to crash.

Crop marks are pretty simple to add and can be used for canvas wraps. Canvas users will also be interested in the ability to adjust the number of print-head passes - the default setting is four, but for media with pitted or highly absorbent surfaces it can be doubled to eight. Both choices have a high-speed option, like the original Epson driver, but unless otherwise required the 4-pass setting is sufficient for most needs. Like the choice of droplet size, either 1440 or 2880dpi, the number of print-head passes is made from the print dialog, so it can't be altered until you literally pass over to the IP driver. Still, without the frustrating resetting often seen in rival printer drivers, IP remembers the last setting making mistakes less likely.

Conclusions
Best of all was the quality of output. I have to say that that I've tried several high-end printer calibration solutions and although it is possible to calibrate for specific lighting, it's time-consuming and expensive. I also have to admit that I find Epson profiles pretty good all-round but there is room for improvement, as ImagePrint abundantly and consistently demonstrates.
One the downsides is that, to prevent misuse, a dongle is shipped with the software. As the discs are mailed from the USA, there's a possibility of VAT and import duties. But considering the support for custom-profiles and the ease of use overall, there's little here not to like.

CONTACTS
Price, based on printer size:
13-inch $695
17-inch $895
24-inch $1495
44-inch $2495
60-inch $2995
Discounts are available for multiple licenses and flexible licensing on exchange for larger or smaller printers.

NEEDS
Intel Mac running OS X 10.4 or later.
Windows Vista, XP, 2000
colorbytesoftware.com.

Posted by at 7:20 AM | Permalink

For Auction: The Oldest Camera In The World

Text from The British Journal of Photography website:

One of the first predecessors to modern cameras was invented in the 1800’s and were known as Daguerreotype’s, named after the inventor Jacques Mande Daguerre . One of first and most pristine examples of a Daguerreotype has surfaced in a private collection that was previously not known to exist. The camera is called the world’s oldest and most expensive.

The wooden sliding-box camera was made in Paris in September 1830 by Alphonse Giroux, the brother in law of the inventor of the camera. The camera is signed by Jacques Mande Daguerre to verify that the device is authentic.

The camera was found in Northern Germany and is in outstanding condition and even has the manual written in German that goes along with the camera. The whole works is up for auction at a starting price of 200,000 euro. The final sales price is expected to be 500,000 to 700,000 euro.

Posted by at 6:04 AM | Permalink

Diane Arbus: In the Absence of Others
William Eggleston: 21st Century

January 7 - February
 13

Two concurrent photography exhibitions featuring, respectively, a selection of rarely shown photographs by Diane Arbus and new work by William Eggleston. The installation of Arbus's work, In the Absence of Others, brings together a group of photographs of empty interiors and artificial landscapes spanning the 1960s. The Eggleston exhibition is titled 21st Century.

Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

Posted by at 1:43 AM | Permalink

Michael Hoppen Gallery
3 Jubilee Place,
London SW3 3TD

'Weegee-It's a crime to take photographs this good...'

11.25.09 - 01.09.10

From the Michael Hoppen Gallery website:

An exhibition of early photographs by Weegee the Famous and selected artists.

Always in the right place at the right time, Weegee’s lense was perpetually aimed the visceral and sometimes violent city of New York. In 1993, Wilma Fellig, Weegee’s widow, bequeathed his entire archive of original prints to the ICP in New York, and we are delighted to offer selected pieces of this unique photographers work which includes many images never previously seen in the UK.

Weegee photographed New York in the 1930s and 1940s in the same iconic and instantly recognisable way Woody Allen was to film the city in the 1970s. Weegee’s voyeuristic eye sought out theharsh realities of the urban experience, but also the joie de vivre and carefree attitude which typified the years between the wars.

Born in 1899 in the Austrian province of Galicia, which is today part of Ukraine, Weegee (real name Usher, then Arthur Fellig) was the second of seven children from Jewish parents. Weegee's family left Europe in 1910 for the Lower East Side ofManhattan, where Weegee grew up. He left home at 15 and in 1917 got a job in a photo studio and became assistant to a cameraman. In 1921, he got a part-time position at the New York Times and its legendary agency Wide World Photos, soon afterwards switching to Acme News pictures. Eventually, frustrated with the lack of recognition for his work, and not having his name on photographs, he became a freelance news photographer by late 1935.



Weegee’s images bridge the gap between art, evidence and photojournalism. His nickname was a phonetic rendering of ouija,as in ouija board, due to his sixth sense of being able to arrive at a scene minutes after the occurrence of a crime. In 1938, Fellig was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band short wave radio. The trunk of his car was a carefully maintained darkroom, to enable himto deliver his freelance images tothe newspapers as speedily as possible. He worked predominantly at night listening closely to radio broadcasts, often beating the NYPD to the scene. It also meant he was on hand to document the raucous night life in the Bowery, Harlem and The Village, and he went on to document the society events and functions of the era.

Hisphotographs were taken with the very basic press photographer equipment, a Graflek and blue flashbulbs which gave his work such graphic qualities. He had no formal photographic training being entirely self taught, and was a relentless self-promoter.

As an adjunct to Weegee’s work, we will also be showing further images by Sergei Vasiliev, and Stan Healy.

Sergei Vasiliev's graphic and unflinching photographs show the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the characters that inhabit it. The tattoo motifs which Vasiliev was helping to document for the KGB represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics. This was an underclass with its own caste and judicial system, and the history of each individual was instantly recognizable to the other.

Edward ‘Stan’ Healy was born in Missoula, Montana and as a local newspaper photojournalist documented crime scenes and local news stories. Healy has been praised for anability to capture a story in a single image and do so with an eye for composition. However, he also had a taste for the provocative and disturbing, and his images can be shocking. all the more so because of the parochial backdrop of mid 20th century Missoula- a small Midwest city whose boom years at the forefront of the logging industry were sadly over.

We strongly advise early viewing of this unique exhibition. Prepare to be shocked, amused and informed!

All pictures will be for sale.

Posted by at 6:57 AM | Permalink

Black-And-White Black America

National Public Radio features the work of Roy DeCarava, who died recently at the age of 89, with Black-And-White America, an online gallery plus an interview and audio about the man and his work.

Posted by at 6:03 AM | Permalink